Let me just start of by saying I do not mean any of the following to be directed as offensive Ghal.
GhaleonEB said:
Reach does a poor job providing feedback to the player, in a number of ways. When I get shot, I can't tell from what direction. This means I react poorly, which means I die more. In every other Halo game, turning to face (or flee) incoming fire became instinctual because the visual feedback upon receiving fire was clear, so this is no small thing. It often makes my death feel random.
I don't understand how you have trouble telling when you're getting shot from. The same direction warning flashes up on your HUD when you're being shot. It indicates left/right/behind... Perhaps you just aren't used to being shot with ranged weapons all the time... In Halo 3 the majority of gun-play happened within a small range due to the nerfed weapon set and the AR spawn. Now that everyone spawns with a weapon that works at a good range, gun fights can happen from across with map. Instead of a run+spray battle with the AR.
When I melee or am on the receiving end, I have to look at the text in the corner to see what happened. The visual feedback is just messy and unclear. The shield delimiter - no matter how much shield is up, a melee with pop it and no more - is, for lack of a better word, stupid. It really breaks close quarters combat, and coupled with the already poor melee feedback and lack of clarity, it makes close combat feel like a complete mess. Melee fights are confusing, hectic and have what feels like arbitrary outcomes.
Melee fights are honestly my only area of concern for the core of the gameplay... I don't know yet what to think of the way they behave. The new system prevents a player from charging me with the AR and then punching, which is a very welcome change. Yes I do agree it does still need further tweaking, but i am so far happy with the change.
Some targeting reticules, such the pistol, are very hard to see in many situations; this not only makes aiming hard, but timing the rhythm of the shots difficult.
I am not sure what everyone is talking about in regards to the reticule not being visible... I am playing on an HD TV and I have no problem at all with seeing my reticule.
Grenade damage, and the way if blows out the sound. The fuck?
I absolutely love the way it blows the sound out, Bungie do not change this. As for grenade damage, the radius has certainly been modified so now the splash is more deadly, but I personally don't see why that is a bad thing. It is a grenade, it should be deadly.
The feedback loops on the guns are entirely forgettable. Remember how great it feels to shoot the Halo 1 AR and pistol, or the Halo 2 and 3 BR? None of the guns in Reach are anywhere close. The pistol is apparently a beast, but it feels like shooting a cap gun. It's not fun to shoot in this game.
Shooting the DMR and the Pistol is amazing, there is such sense of satisfaction when using almost any of the guns (excluding the AR). In my opinion the only weapon that is a bother to shoot is the AR, everything else I couldn't be happier with the way it behaves/sounds.
Of the two maps, I simply hate one of them. Sword Base is a poorly designed, arbitrary, bland and confusing mess of a map. I put it among the worst in the series.
Sword Base is great. While I was at first confused about its layout after a few games I began to understand the flow of it. I have fun playing almost any gametype on the map and certainly do not see any reason why you would say it is poorly designed. Learn the map and you will begin to appreciate it.
Player movement feels more like Oblivion than Halo. Gone are the joyful, smooth jumps, the elegance of the strafe, the feeling of agility in close quarters movement. I feel like I have weights tied around my waist (or am constipated, as someone else said). I keep saying this, but it just does not feel anything like a Halo game to me. It's not the movement speed or the jump height, it's that they simply redid how the game plays. I don't know why and can't really articulate it. But playing Reach is simply not fun.
The move speed doesn't ever bother me, I think the speed is perfectly fine. The jump height has certainly been nerfed a little bit, but the maps were made with that in mind. There have been only a few times that I have cursed the new jump height, otherwise it just feels natural.
In all the previous Halo games, the simple act of leaping around and shooting was fun. I recall vividly my first day of playing the Halo 3 Beta, in the F&F kick off. The first thing everyone did was jump around shooting, getting a feel for the weapons. It was euphoric. Doing those things are not fun in this game. I don't feel like the game is a playground. It feels like work.
Sorry that running around and firing you AR wildly into the air isn't as enjoyable as it was in the previous Halo games, but I am extremely thankful that it isn't. This game rewards skill more then any of the previous Halo games (excluding Halo 1). It was a shock to me at first but now that I understand the flow of the game I really appreciate everything Bungie has done so far.
Most of the expansions to the game work well. Menus, much of the UI, the armor abilities, the audio, the graphics. Some of the abilities, like Sprint, are pretty great. Most of the stuff they added just works. But the underlying core is broken. Melee, jumping, shooting, moving. Important stuff, and none of them feel anything like Halo any more, and more importantly, they feel likes something that's not fun to play. The heart and soul of the game is just gone. I'm sitting here, after two days of playing the Beta, and I don't have a strong desire to play it again.
The UI is incredible, my only suggestion would be to have a way to accept game invites from other players without having to pull up the blade. The less time I spend in the slow blade UI the better. As for the core of the game, I love it. The game has changed drastically, but it needed to. I was growing tired of the same forumla being re-hashed this change has certainly upset a few but I believe will ultimately end up being for the best.
Ghal I am sorry you don't like it, I feel your pain... A game you've come to know and love is now unfamiliar and lacks the fun that you desire. Honestly though that is the same way I felt from the transition of Halo 1 -> Halo 2 and 3. I continued to play Halo 2 and 3 because it was Halo, and I loved it... But nothing could ever be what Halo 1 was. Now that I have tried Reach I can say that this is certainly a step in the right direction. Rather then catering to the casuals they have actually made the game skillful and enjoyable to play seriously.
I feel like an ass ripping on the game so hard, but as a longtime fan of the series, and thus Bungie, I'm just crushingly disappointed. I'm clearly in the minority on this stuff, I haven't found anyone that's had as negative a reaction as myself. But that's where I am with the game. FWIW.
I hope you get used to the changes Ghal, I really do. And I apologize if I sounded like an asshole during this post, but these are all my true feelings.
Reach is what Halo should have been all along...
Last note: While I am praising Reach a whole bunch in this post it should also be noted that the game still needs a lot of work to have a proper balance... One Flag on Powerhouse is essentially broken at this point. Defenders spawn ontop of the flag and have access to all major power weapons right off the bat. I have player probably 20+ games of one flag on that map and I can only count a handful of times where we have actually scored a flag capture.
