GhaleonEB said:
This clip is a microcosm of everything that's wrong with Reach's gameplay, IMO. The short lifespan, the grenade spam, the repeated deaths after killing a player, charging in to strip the shields (which is more of a problem under the new system than it ever was in the previous Halo games), the boring gunplay. And this is Slayer Pro.
Uh, I don't see it. More than anything, I see user error at work here, with a lot of (repeated) mistakes of judgement. I'm not saying I wouldn't have made the same or similar mistakes, but watching this film over would have made me shake my head at my own performance, not the game's.
Here's what I would have been thinking:
1. My teammates were bunched as fuck, which encourages grenade throwing. But despite this, and despite repeated deaths on my part over the course of the beta from grenades, I decided to stay close to my team in a tight corridor, within distances spanned by the diameter of a frag grenade, in an area where opposing players would be throwing downhill. Cool.
2. When I popped my head around the corner, I immediately saw a sniper trail fly down (never mind that my teammates were charging underneath a guy who can rain down on them even without that weapon), and yet I still felt the need to peek up at High Vent to check? I'm not sure why I scoped to do so; it was unnecessary and actually hurt my situational awareness.
3. A grenade then exploded in my face. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that was completely unexpected under the circumstances. Of course, if I hadn't pressed forward in spite of an immediate and present danger (the sniper), this might not have happened. The instant it did, I should have got to cover; I should have strafed left. Instead, I backed into a wall and tried to get my own desperate grenade off, leaving me exposed for as many as two vital seconds, and thus dead. Lesson: I should never have been there, shouldn't have stayed, and I reacted badly when attacked.
4. Knowing that the area was hot, what did I do on spawn? Went back there, to the same spot, with the same approach, the same weapon, and with the same proximity to my teammates. Which is disappointing, because I could have hopped out onto the window ledge when I spawned to try and flank the other team, getting shots at them before they rounded the corner, and from a place where they couldn't easily grenade me and my equally confined teammates. Or I could have found another (longer) road, with a better sight line, and thus confounded Blue team's expectations. Instead, I conformed to them.
5. So Blue team knew we were there and were repeatedly charging the spot. What did I do? I stayed tight to a blind corner where I couldn't see what was coming and stayed static there, inviting attack, and reacting to the situation rather than acting upon it. At every moment I was at a suboptimal range for the weapon I was holding. Not once did I check behind me or look for another route. When one of Blue team eventually did make the smart move and skipped a frag at me and my teammate, I was forced to run forward
into trouble because of my poor positioning, and died from a grenade in almost the same spot I did last time. There was a lesson to be learned, but instead I kept banging my head against the wall and then complained when it continued to hurt.
I'm not saying these things to be a dick, and I think issues with the melee and grenades absolutely encourage the kind of behaviour Blue team were exhibiting, but there were so many other things you could have done that would have better suited the situation, and even if you felt you
had to keep pushing that corridor no matter what, you should have been standing further back, maximizing the usefulness of the gun you have by catering to its range (and a better, longer sight line). Why continue to squat in a small corridor hugging your teammates for warmth when it worked out so badly the first time? Blue team had higher ground, they had better weapons (sniper and sword, neither put to use well), and they knew where you were. You are complaining because you and your teammates waited to die in the same spot over and over.
