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Halo |OT19| 793 Posts, And None Worth Reading
- Thread starter Ozzy Onya A2Z
- Start date
- Status
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
Brad full circle revealed, Halo. It would be cool for a dev to save speculation from now and repost the ones on the money post release.
I enjoyed the latest HaloGAF Radio episode. It's always funny to hear, how the people sound different, than you would imagine.
Oh and for some reason, I still can't download the episodes on iTunes, on my iPhone. It starts to download and immediately stops. Wanted to listen to them, while I was travelling, but yeah, I couldn't.
PS: Somebody tell Chettlar, that I have him on ignore.
Oh and for some reason, I still can't download the episodes on iTunes, on my iPhone. It starts to download and immediately stops. Wanted to listen to them, while I was travelling, but yeah, I couldn't.
PS: Somebody tell Chettlar, that I have him on ignore.
Please don't quote him or I will call the mods! :lol
The gems get quoted by people that aren't morons. That being said, I should go back to ignoring people.
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
nvm.
xxjuicesxx
Member
Would anyone like to do Spartan Assault Co-Op Xbone right about now?
Trying to clear out all the Co-Op stuff today http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic
Trying to clear out all the Co-Op stuff today http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
lol How about this, you keep my name out of anything you post and I'll do the same? Keep your snarky shit out of here if you can't handle the little jabs and jokes I throw at you.
I was actually joking with that post.. Don't confuse me as being serious because that's what OddOne chooses to respond with.
It's like I have a direct path under his skin huehuehue
squidhands
Member
I think this may be the worst HaloGAF thread.
ElRenoRaven
Member
Nope we've had worse.
User 73706
Banned
OT19 is preddy bed.
OT17 was gud.
OT17 was gud.
Getting the community banned was probably the best, but that was more of a long, delayed climax than a single thread's fault.
The Real Napsta
Member
Why are you guys anti-funknown anyway? Dude knows what he's talking about when it comes to Halo CE for the most part.
^ I would not have asked that if I were you, bro.
Am I missing a reference?
What megapost?
EDIT: Oh....that. Ok, sure whatever. I kind of have to mentally start over after what Prinz Eugn said, but I don't mind, because I think it really helped me refocus where I'm going.
PS: Somebody tell Akai_ that I can see his comment, since I do not have him on ignore, and if I did, I probably wouldn't care in that case. So...there? And also about last few pages....jeez guys. Ok, I fucked up. I communicated badly, but I was arguing with a bunch of different people at one time, each with different opinions, all at different stages of the argument, so you know.......It was kind of mentally exhausting, so my post quality was pretty much shit. I know it was my fault, but once it happened, I didn't really see my way out. I swear I'm not that ridiculous of a poster normally. I handled that situation badly. Apparantly nobody saw what I posted in response to Prinz Eugn. Whatever.
Am I missing a reference?
What megapost?
EDIT: Oh....that. Ok, sure whatever. I kind of have to mentally start over after what Prinz Eugn said, but I don't mind, because I think it really helped me refocus where I'm going.
PS: Somebody tell Akai_ that I can see his comment, since I do not have him on ignore, and if I did, I probably wouldn't care in that case. So...there? And also about last few pages....jeez guys. Ok, I fucked up. I communicated badly, but I was arguing with a bunch of different people at one time, each with different opinions, all at different stages of the argument, so you know.......It was kind of mentally exhausting, so my post quality was pretty much shit. I know it was my fault, but once it happened, I didn't really see my way out. I swear I'm not that ridiculous of a poster normally. I handled that situation badly. Apparantly nobody saw what I posted in response to Prinz Eugn. Whatever.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
If there's anything that can be gained from this it's that you've endured a shitstorm and survived. Not a single banburger was bunned that day.
I'm surprised and grateful I didn't get banned. I'll try to learn from this in that case.
Ragnarok Flames
Banned
So I go back to work today, and im picking up escalation.
i work in a comic shop
11/10 would literally read again.
Gabotron ES
Member
Gonna have to give the podcast a listen after all the good comments.
When it's done.
Don't be waiting for it. My brain thinks in a very nonlinear fashion, so putting complicated thoughts to English (a linear method of communicating) is sometimes difficult. I have to figure out everything in it's whole before I even start writing, and since Prinz Eugn's post I now kind of have to start over, but I don't mind at all.
And it will only be a mega post if it needs to be. I am not concerned with the length. I don't mind megaposts from others as long as they are well done.
squidhands
Member
now I understand.
xxjuicesxx
Member
Name: Spartan Assault
Genre: Third Person Shooter, Twin Stick Shooter
Company: 343i Industries, Vanguard Games
System: Xbox One
Release Date: December 22, 2013
Rated: T for Teen
Time to complete: 2 Hours to beat first time, 30 hours 100%
Gameplay + Controls:
The gameplay consists of a top down view and moving your dude around maps like every other twin stick shooter. Usually you are either in a wave based mission or exploration based mission, with an occasional escort mission where you have to protect something. That’s about three types of missions pretty much. So for instance you are protecting a base from waves of enemies or protecting an engineer from waves of enemies while they do some random task. The second type of mission offers no real challenge because you can really take a few enemies out at a time unless the game adds the challenge of completing the mission in a certain amount of time, which are always a bit too generous in the amount given in my opinion. The tutorial is great and I'm almost sure they nailed every single possible scenario and thing to do in a very short little simulation mission chosen from the main screen. The controls are pretty good however there are a few things I disliked. You move with the left analog stick and aim with the right analog stick. At certain times you are really fighting that analog stick to get the precise correct degree in order to hit an enemy and find your shots going just a smidge too far left and then too far right, a bit more aim magnetism would have made the entire game a bit less frustrating. Also as soon as you start aiming your gun out your Spartan moves at about half the rate of speed and this makes you feel very slow. I was hoping for a button that you could hold to walk or else you would just always run and run + gun at the same speed. Like for example Hold A to walk button or something. Those are my two gripes I have with the controls. One thing I want to mention is after completing all the Assault Ops I had a ton of credits to mess around with the Spartan Laser, Sniper Rifle, Rockets and the three AA's, the Sentry Gun, the Overshield and the Seeker Drone. Those are some of the most fun things in the game sadly behind a really unnecessary paywall. It’s a shame 343i allowed this to happen, milking these players who already paid 14.99 for Spartan Assault is a bit outrageous. If more missions had these weapons and armor abilities it would have been a lot more fun and felt a lot less repetitive. The game could also have been more creative in its use of numbers of enemies and types. Several missions got really repetitive by the end, especially if going for 100% completion.
Sound + Music + Graphics:
I don't think "Yeaaaa, Nice work Dawg!" should have been kept in the game, also I'm pretty sure the jackals say "What the fuck!?" the music and sound effects are pretty good otherwise and seem to fit into the Halo universe. I can't really complain about the music and sound. The graphics were pretty good for a 14.99 Xbox Live game. No graphical glitches were found of any kind during my play. There are 10 videos you can watch from the options menu that tell the story which is nice because they are very short and you really can’t remember what’s going on to well while playing through 5 missions to get to the next lore video. You sort of forget what happened in the last video by the time you get to the next one, so that’s nice. The graphics in the video are very well polished and subtitles are always very legible. Graphically the UI could use some more work.
UI + Polish:
The User Interface of the menus could have been done a lot better, here's a link to my suggestions that I think would make it look better and be more informative. http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n97/xxjuicesxx/HaloSAGUI_zps05a0334c.jpg Assault Ops is fine in the menu where it is, because it’s not its own mode in itself it is more of an info screen, but the objectives to complete the Assault Ops should be shown on the mission loading screen right before hitting A to continue onto the mission so you can view them easily and see your progress. There were other obvious problems like the quote dialog box before a mission wasn't really justified correctly and the box was always way too big and should have been sized based on the size of the quote itself. Then there was a ton of blank space where a nice three column objectives could have gone. Overall the UI was a bit unpolished and could have used a bit more polish regarding the text, pictures, buttons, icons, spacing, and artwork. The skeleton of the UI worked very well though and the game did not crash once on me.
Difficulty:
One major con is the difficulty. The campaign is very easy besides like one or two missions that have really high difficulty spikes, and some missions weren't explained that well. Getting the gold stars on the missions are pretty easy and you never need to purchase score boost to reach gold which is nice, however Co-Op gets really hard if you are trying to hit gold. There should be a difficulty option that affects either the damage the enemies do, the number of enemies on the level, or the amount of ammo dropped, or some combination of those, for those elite players out there who want to push the games limits. You don't need to use XP or credits ever so there is no real point to the skull system and would have rather it modified your score instead of your XP gained. Some of the Assault Ops are much more difficult than the other ones to achieve and also payout less than the easier ones which again makes no sense. All the achievements are pretty easy to get with a bit of grinding, and none really give you the feel of achieving something great, a bit more Vidmaster’s would have been nice too.
Additional Content:
Some Assault Ops objectives are grind fests and none ever really give you the feel of an achievement of any kind, it’s more like doing homework on a concept you already have down pretty well. Just very simple time sinks. For instance A-2's kill 40 Elite Minors with the Plasma Repeater when the stage only seems to have about 5-6 Elite Minors on it and you sort of have to kill the first elite without the PR to get his PR weapon. So in order to get this one Assault Ops task done you will be replaying this mission about 8-10 times. The absolute worst one has to be killing 20 Jackals with SMGs on D-4. There are about four at the end of the stage so you have to make it through the map with SMG's and if you are dedicating all your focus on getting Jackal SMG kills your Elephant will quickly be destroyed by suicide grunts so the chance of getting more than a few per attempt is quite low. This is a terrible objective. You'll be playing that mission quite a bit if you want that one Assault Ops objective done. On top of all that that objective nets you only 170XP reward while the infinitely easier objectives on that mission offer you 540XP and 210XP. There were a few more like B-3 killing 40 Grunt Majors with grenades and so that take 10+ attempts. The numbers needed to complete the Assault Ops needed to be worked on. There are 3 Assault Ops objectives for each mission totaling 90 Assault Ops objectives to complete. Completing all 90 nets you one Xbox Live achievement. Basically the numbers attached to these side-quests seem very arbitrary and just randomly made up and not tested all that well and need a lot of work.
Co-op:
Co-Op consists of five stages where you and a match made player or a friend fight the flood. Matchmaking works slowly compared to other games I've played and quite often it will notify you that no players are found and to retry with different settings. A few times I could tell people were going for the “enemy of my friends” achievement where you have to get a higher score than your teammate because there were a few people when I was doing better than them score-wise they left the game and when we got re-matched they left the lobby. So that achievement I would say is pretty bad and detrimental to the experience of co-op. The Gold Star scores are much harder to hit and I didn't hit any playing with a random match made partner, so you might need a friend to help if you are a completionist. The co-op is a lot more fun than the campaign as it’s a lot faster paced and hectic; at times you really get overwhelmed with enemies. You can chat with your partner through the Kinect by default which is nice.
More video of the game than anyone would ever care to watch can be found over on my Twitch channel. A lot of it is grinding, but if you skip around it will give you a good overview of the game. Spoilers.
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/493167868
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494146213
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494151341
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494201767
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494824562
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/495201893 - Co-Op
7.5/10
Genre: Third Person Shooter, Twin Stick Shooter
Company: 343i Industries, Vanguard Games
System: Xbox One
Release Date: December 22, 2013
Rated: T for Teen
Time to complete: 2 Hours to beat first time, 30 hours 100%
Gameplay + Controls:
The gameplay consists of a top down view and moving your dude around maps like every other twin stick shooter. Usually you are either in a wave based mission or exploration based mission, with an occasional escort mission where you have to protect something. That’s about three types of missions pretty much. So for instance you are protecting a base from waves of enemies or protecting an engineer from waves of enemies while they do some random task. The second type of mission offers no real challenge because you can really take a few enemies out at a time unless the game adds the challenge of completing the mission in a certain amount of time, which are always a bit too generous in the amount given in my opinion. The tutorial is great and I'm almost sure they nailed every single possible scenario and thing to do in a very short little simulation mission chosen from the main screen. The controls are pretty good however there are a few things I disliked. You move with the left analog stick and aim with the right analog stick. At certain times you are really fighting that analog stick to get the precise correct degree in order to hit an enemy and find your shots going just a smidge too far left and then too far right, a bit more aim magnetism would have made the entire game a bit less frustrating. Also as soon as you start aiming your gun out your Spartan moves at about half the rate of speed and this makes you feel very slow. I was hoping for a button that you could hold to walk or else you would just always run and run + gun at the same speed. Like for example Hold A to walk button or something. Those are my two gripes I have with the controls. One thing I want to mention is after completing all the Assault Ops I had a ton of credits to mess around with the Spartan Laser, Sniper Rifle, Rockets and the three AA's, the Sentry Gun, the Overshield and the Seeker Drone. Those are some of the most fun things in the game sadly behind a really unnecessary paywall. It’s a shame 343i allowed this to happen, milking these players who already paid 14.99 for Spartan Assault is a bit outrageous. If more missions had these weapons and armor abilities it would have been a lot more fun and felt a lot less repetitive. The game could also have been more creative in its use of numbers of enemies and types. Several missions got really repetitive by the end, especially if going for 100% completion.
Sound + Music + Graphics:
I don't think "Yeaaaa, Nice work Dawg!" should have been kept in the game, also I'm pretty sure the jackals say "What the fuck!?" the music and sound effects are pretty good otherwise and seem to fit into the Halo universe. I can't really complain about the music and sound. The graphics were pretty good for a 14.99 Xbox Live game. No graphical glitches were found of any kind during my play. There are 10 videos you can watch from the options menu that tell the story which is nice because they are very short and you really can’t remember what’s going on to well while playing through 5 missions to get to the next lore video. You sort of forget what happened in the last video by the time you get to the next one, so that’s nice. The graphics in the video are very well polished and subtitles are always very legible. Graphically the UI could use some more work.
UI + Polish:
The User Interface of the menus could have been done a lot better, here's a link to my suggestions that I think would make it look better and be more informative. http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n97/xxjuicesxx/HaloSAGUI_zps05a0334c.jpg Assault Ops is fine in the menu where it is, because it’s not its own mode in itself it is more of an info screen, but the objectives to complete the Assault Ops should be shown on the mission loading screen right before hitting A to continue onto the mission so you can view them easily and see your progress. There were other obvious problems like the quote dialog box before a mission wasn't really justified correctly and the box was always way too big and should have been sized based on the size of the quote itself. Then there was a ton of blank space where a nice three column objectives could have gone. Overall the UI was a bit unpolished and could have used a bit more polish regarding the text, pictures, buttons, icons, spacing, and artwork. The skeleton of the UI worked very well though and the game did not crash once on me.
Difficulty:
One major con is the difficulty. The campaign is very easy besides like one or two missions that have really high difficulty spikes, and some missions weren't explained that well. Getting the gold stars on the missions are pretty easy and you never need to purchase score boost to reach gold which is nice, however Co-Op gets really hard if you are trying to hit gold. There should be a difficulty option that affects either the damage the enemies do, the number of enemies on the level, or the amount of ammo dropped, or some combination of those, for those elite players out there who want to push the games limits. You don't need to use XP or credits ever so there is no real point to the skull system and would have rather it modified your score instead of your XP gained. Some of the Assault Ops are much more difficult than the other ones to achieve and also payout less than the easier ones which again makes no sense. All the achievements are pretty easy to get with a bit of grinding, and none really give you the feel of achieving something great, a bit more Vidmaster’s would have been nice too.
Additional Content:
Some Assault Ops objectives are grind fests and none ever really give you the feel of an achievement of any kind, it’s more like doing homework on a concept you already have down pretty well. Just very simple time sinks. For instance A-2's kill 40 Elite Minors with the Plasma Repeater when the stage only seems to have about 5-6 Elite Minors on it and you sort of have to kill the first elite without the PR to get his PR weapon. So in order to get this one Assault Ops task done you will be replaying this mission about 8-10 times. The absolute worst one has to be killing 20 Jackals with SMGs on D-4. There are about four at the end of the stage so you have to make it through the map with SMG's and if you are dedicating all your focus on getting Jackal SMG kills your Elephant will quickly be destroyed by suicide grunts so the chance of getting more than a few per attempt is quite low. This is a terrible objective. You'll be playing that mission quite a bit if you want that one Assault Ops objective done. On top of all that that objective nets you only 170XP reward while the infinitely easier objectives on that mission offer you 540XP and 210XP. There were a few more like B-3 killing 40 Grunt Majors with grenades and so that take 10+ attempts. The numbers needed to complete the Assault Ops needed to be worked on. There are 3 Assault Ops objectives for each mission totaling 90 Assault Ops objectives to complete. Completing all 90 nets you one Xbox Live achievement. Basically the numbers attached to these side-quests seem very arbitrary and just randomly made up and not tested all that well and need a lot of work.
Co-op:
Co-Op consists of five stages where you and a match made player or a friend fight the flood. Matchmaking works slowly compared to other games I've played and quite often it will notify you that no players are found and to retry with different settings. A few times I could tell people were going for the “enemy of my friends” achievement where you have to get a higher score than your teammate because there were a few people when I was doing better than them score-wise they left the game and when we got re-matched they left the lobby. So that achievement I would say is pretty bad and detrimental to the experience of co-op. The Gold Star scores are much harder to hit and I didn't hit any playing with a random match made partner, so you might need a friend to help if you are a completionist. The co-op is a lot more fun than the campaign as it’s a lot faster paced and hectic; at times you really get overwhelmed with enemies. You can chat with your partner through the Kinect by default which is nice.
More video of the game than anyone would ever care to watch can be found over on my Twitch channel. A lot of it is grinding, but if you skip around it will give you a good overview of the game. Spoilers.
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/493167868
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494146213
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494151341
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494201767
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/494824562
http://www.twitch.tv/sometimesimepic/b/495201893 - Co-Op
7.5/10
squidhands
Member
Nice writeup, juices. Based on your and Havok's review, I'll be passing on this until it hits Games with Gold level cheapness.
That's fine the exponential nature of idea's doesn't transfer well to the linear nature of writing, unless you start with prose and then do a full reply based from initial idea'sWhen it's done.
It's actually quite good,lol at the speedy with the gravity gauntlet kick starter response.
I'll most likely do the same it's not exactly value for money for what it's offering. That UI would look so much better, with your suggestions Juices.
ElRenoRaven
Member
Hit it on the money. Pretty much sums up my thoughts perfectly. Hell even the review score is exactly about what I'd give the game myself.
Sounds like it's worth a pickup, although the price may or may not be worth it for you at present.
It is a shame that they didn't do a bit more work on converting it so that it wasn't as much of a ported mobile experience (micro translations but also the short missions.) looking forward to playing coop with friends once it drops for 360.
ElRenoRaven
Member
Yea it's a fun little game but it without a doubt is a mobile like experience.
I very nearly started just trying to write it but stopped when I realized I really needed to refine my thinking on it a bit. It would have been stupid to post it yesterday like several people kept telling me to.
Orochinagis
Member
I hope for not bland, one direction enviroments, watching halo 2 speedrun yesterday makes me remember how much features were removed in campaign to be reduced to "press the button to trigger the next thing".
I really wish fewer shooters would just be about shooting. Even good shooting, with nothing else, feels lacking.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
Nice job man, I bought it for Windows and Xbox One to get the deal so its not like it set me back. I actually though it was onscreen co-op (my bad)
Other than that with whatever you mentioned it just isn't fun Halo or not.
Spartan Assault... eh. IMO, a 7.5 seems a little high for a mobile game that costs $15 and yet still locks away the only things that make the levels seem less repetitive behind a paywall (different weapons and AAs). Broken economy only serves to fuel this cash grab (sure you can lethargically grind for like 10 missions so you can use that sniper for a single mission... but come on. It's ridiculous)
I actually liked Polygon's review of the game. Shocking, I know
Every once in a while Polygon will have a pretty decent review, but I wish they'd stick to journalism and reporting, since I like that. I love the interviews they do.
The interview article with Ken Levine (the title had something to do with Idaho) was a really good read.
xxjuicesxx
Member
The Polygon review was terrible. He made it sound like he graded it based on a full priced game when it was a mobile game transferred to console. So its a 7.5/10 of what a mobile transferred game is. Sure it could be better but it was a bit of fun going through the campaign. The repetitive stuff was the completionist stuff, it doesn't get too repetitive til you start doing all that. Also forgot to mention I had zero game crashes while playing about 30 hours.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
LOL, not mine.
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
Good review Juices, I agree with you 100%, the other articles are being too critical IMO
LOL, not mine.
Does Spartan Assault have a dedicated multiplayer mode? Just curious.
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
So I am home from work sick, not only is my DLP which I just fixed making a new noise but my Xbox One will not play my discs. I thought it was just a fluke the last few days but now it wont eject and it sounds like its eating it. grinding noised and such.
Syphon Filter
Member
LOL, not mine.
Man, 343i have just run Halo into the ground
wonder why CEA was excluded? I mean if you're going to use a mobile game, why not the remake?
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