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Halo: Reach |OT5| A Monument to All Our Sins

GhaleonEB

Member
PsychoRaven said:
See that just shows you how play style can play a big part in how you view the game. I always have jumped down there and find the Boneyard encounter to be fun as hell.
Yeah I did that once, got rocked by FRGs and concussion rifles, and stayed back ever since. The second fight is even simpler.
squidhands said:
Definitely, and the ability to vary up how you work your encounters really speaks to how well the game is designed. There are at least three different ways that I know of to approach that first section of Boneyard (one of which skips the battle completely), which really can't be said about too many other FPS games.
Heh. I hold it up as one of the worst encounters in the game. I just dislike the staging, giving us the high ground with a bucket of enemies dumped out below.
 
MrBig said:
Anyone up for playing through TPoA on Reach today? I never really gave the encounters a chance after my first run and never actually fought the boneyard encounter. Skipped it the first time and haven't gone back to try it.
nvm doing a solo ODST legendary run
No! Do a endure run with moi!
 
Havok said:
I don't hate Halo 3's Halo or anything, but that was such a dumb fight, and the trip to Legoland afterwards was awful. Randomly collapsing floor tiles that require memorization to avoid and bad Warthog physics that cause a bounce-to-stop on every big jump (of which there are many) ruined the neat atmosphere that section had for me.

it requires more speed than memorization. I made it through my first time without dying.
 

Havok

Member
The Real Napsta said:
it requires more speed than memorization. I made it through my first time without dying.
The first time I played through with a friend on release night, I went over smallish jump and the tile I was going to land on exploded right before I landed. There are also sections (usually before the tunnel areas) where if you don't choose to drive on the correct side of the path after the roundabout structure, it's almost impossible to get to the next area because 90% of the area collapses.

It's not good, and could have been fixed by making the mini-explosion on a tile before a collapse happen sooner and be more visible.
The Real Napsta said:
Co-op makes it harder because the guy in the lead triggers everything. You have to stay close to each other.
We were in the same 'hog. I'm not saying it's the worst problem in the world, but it can get really annoying the second or third time it happens.

GhaleonEB said:
Yeah I did that once, got rocked by FRGs and concussion rifles, and stayed back ever since. The second fight is even simpler.
I think this is the worst part of the Reach campaign - there are so many enemies with instakill explosive weapons or weapons that throw the player around and disorient them. I remember the first time Fuel Rod Grunts appeared in the first game in Two Betrayals, and it was a 'holy shit' moment. Now every other encounter has three of them.
thezerofire said:
I went left side in almost every tunnel and never had a problem
By "right" I mean correct, not literally the right side.
 
Havok said:
The first time I played through with a friend on release night, I went over smallish jump and the tile I was going to land on exploded right before I landed. There are also sections (usually before the tunnel areas) where if you don't choose to drive on the right side of the path after the roundabout structure, it's almost impossible to get to the next area because 90% of the area collapses.

It's not good, and could have been fixed by making the mini-explosion on a tile before a collapse happen sooner and be more visible.

Co-op makes it harder because the guy in the lead triggers everything. You have to stay close to each other.
 
Havok said:
The first time I played through with a friend on release night, I went over smallish jump and the tile I was going to land on exploded right before I landed. There are also sections (usually before the tunnel areas) where if you don't choose to drive on the right side of the path after the roundabout structure, it's almost impossible to get to the next area because 90% of the area collapses.

It's not good, and could have been fixed by making the mini-explosion on a tile before a collapse happen sooner and be more visible.


I think this is the worst part of the Reach campaign - there are so many enemies with instakill explosive weapons or weapons that throw the player around and disorient them. I remember the first time Fuel Rod Grunts appeared in the first game in Two Betrayals, and it was a 'holy shit' moment. Now every other encounter has three of them.
I went left side in almost every tunnel and never had a problem
 

Tawpgun

Member
With the increased memory of the nextbox it would be amazing if it was a $15 arcade title. Remastered graphics. Same engine with the same bugs. Perhaps tighter anti modding stuff, otherwise keep it the same.

Or if MSoft was really cool... Halo 2 Anniversary bundled with Halo 5.
 
GhaleonEB said:
Yeah I did that once, got rocked by FRGs and concussion rifles, and stayed back ever since. The second fight is even simpler.

Heh. I hold it up as one of the worst encounters in the game. I just dislike the staging, giving us the high ground with a bucket of enemies dumped out below.
I agree, there's little of PoA that I like as well. It was more of a specific example of how Reach, and Halo in general, still surpasses how most FPS games can maintain replayability of its campaign

Gui_PT said:
I can't view any video at work any more and it won't load on my phone, so I couldn't tell you. :-|
 

Gui_PT

Member
squidhands said:
I agree, there's little of PoA that I like as well. It was more of a specific example of how Reach, and Halo in general, still surpasses how most FPS games can maintain replayability of its campaign

I can't view any video at work any more and it won't load on my phone, so I couldn't tell you. :-|

Oh you thought you only had youtube blocked. A sad place you work at =P
 

Veelk

Banned
I'm pretty surprised that people hate reach's campaign now. I have recently played through the entire series again (sans Halo Wars), and I still say Reach is the best, with 3 being the only one to surpass it in certain areas of gameplay, such as vehicles.

I really don't understand some of the complaints. The sandbox is bad? In my play through, I used more or less every weapon. The story sucked? Eh, I guess, but so did all the other Halo's. I felt that reach actually did a pretty good job by Halo standards. Uninteresting level design? What? In terms of gameplay, it allows for open gameplay like no other. In terms of visuals, you'll have to expand on that one a bit, because I don't see what you mean at all. There were skyboxes, covenenant cruisers and strongholds, shit being destroyed, etc.

I especially don't really understand why so many people hold CE on such a pedestal. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but it's been surpassed in so many areas that when I went back to play it, it felt outdated to me.
 
GhaleonEB said:
I think the last mission in the first game is better than PoA. Between the boring trench run (Mongoose down a light downhill series of s-curves on a dirt road), shooting gallery encounters (the two Boneyard fights), momentum-halting Drone encounter and endless siege battle, only two sequences are well crafted, IMO. Everything before you get on the Mongoose, and the battle right after, with the Brutes and the Wraith in the back. (That's actually one of my favorite fights in the game.)

Hitting up the Armory, pulling open and then blowing the four engine cores and the epic Warthog trench run in Halo 1 is a tighter, more successful sequence for me.


By my count:

Winter Contingency – 2
Nightfall: 2
Long Night of Solace: 2 (I'm including the space station defense)
Exodus: 1
The Package: 1 (but it takes up half the level)
Pillar of Autumn: 1 (also takes forever)


You counting the space fights, a totally unique gameplay element to Halo as a firefight encounter...?

Striker said:
Cortana and Halo were terrible, terrible ways to end the game. Both were two of the least entertaining levels I've endured in the Halo series.

Halo 2's story was its best part, but the fantastic cut-scenes are what makes it all shine. Been downhill since.

Agreed, Cortana and Halo are the two worst levels in the Halo series in my opinion, which just kind of kills the game for me.

Halo 2's cutscenes were LEAGUES better than anything else in the series. Not sure why they couldn't recreate that in future games.

Blue Ninja said:
No man, open-world RPG set in Westeros. Inject it right into my veins, please.

I just mentioned this to my roommate the other day when I saw him playing Oblivion. I needz this noaw!
 
MrBig said:
Hang_Em_High.png

This looks absolutely beautiful. Simply cannot wait to play these maps

Does anybody know a solution to rendered films not playing on b.net? Everytime I try to watch this clip

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/FileDetails.aspx?fid=19744356&player=The Henery

it counts to 4 at the top of the clip then displays "could not open media file... 3000 an error has occured" message.

I've tried removing it from my fileshare then putting it back, in order to re-render it but it appears rendered again. Is there a wat to 'unrender' a clip?

Thanks
 

Hey You

Member
Wait, is this Bungie "One of Seven" thing new or old? It said it was posted on July 14th, but I didn't notice it before.

Edit: Apparently its not published on the frontpage and someone got a link to it from their swag bag.
 
GhaleonEB said:
Yeah I did that once, got rocked by FRGs and concussion rifles, and stayed back ever since. The second fight is even simpler.
There's a lot of cover scattered around the encounter to delay your attack on the FRG however long you want. And I think there's only one Elite with the concussion rifle. If you can't make the cover work for you, you should take those two out first then jump into the chaos on the ground. I just did a replay of TPoA and I was able to use the cover available most effectively.

...

I'm not going to respond to your entire post, but for Halo 3, most of the human levels, Crow's Nest, Tsavo Highway, and The Storm, take the sandbox and encounter design far past anything in Halo 1.
PooBone said:
Reach: Other than Long Night of Solace, there's not much about the game I wanted to go back and play, the art was gray and boring, the story was ho-hum by the numbers I thought they'd be able to work a twist into what we knew would be the fall of the planet, but they didn't, other than Jorge none of the Spartans were likeable, especially that douchebag Emile, all the good parts of the game were usually parts that reminded me of Halo 1.
:lol

Edit:
Steelyuhas said:
Agreed, Cortana and Halo are the two worst levels in the Halo series in my opinion, which just kind of kills the game for me.
I don't really understand how the last levels of a game can negate the rest. From the Crow's Nest to The Covenant, there's nothing but awesomeness. Besides, Captain Keyes is just as bad as Cortana, I think. Definitely not better than "Halo (3)."
 

ElRenoRaven

Member
squidhands said:
You can grenade jump to the section with the bridge on the right hand side. I don't have access to youtube here at work or else I'd find it for you. :)

I'll be damned. And the video linked is interesting. I never would have thought of grenade jumping up there. That's why I'm not a trickster. I just don't have the ability to think of interesting ways out of situations.

Hey You said:
Wait, is this Bungie "One of Seven" thing new or old? It said it was posted on July 14th, but I didn't notice it before.

Nope never saw that. Wonder what it's for.
 

MrBig

Member
Hey You said:
Wait, is this Bungie "One of Seven" thing new or old? It said it was posted on July 14th, but I didn't notice it before.

Edit: Apparently its not published on the frontpage and someone got a link to it from their swag bag.
what is this?

e: looks to be Willy Wonka-style Golden Ticket that some people got in their bags to have something to do with Bungie's new game.
 

Risen

Member
thee henery said:
This looks absolutely beautiful. Simply cannot wait to play these maps

Does anybody know a solution to rendered films not playing on b.net? Everytime I try to watch this clip

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/FileDetails.aspx?fid=19744356&player=The Henery

it counts to 4 at the top of the clip then displays "could not open media file... 3000 an error has occured" message.

I've tried removing it from my fileshare then putting it back, in order to re-render it but it appears rendered again. Is there a wat to 'unrender' a clip?

Thanks

It works for me... no error at all.
 
Hey You said:
Wait, is this Bungie "One of Seven" thing new or old? It said it was posted on July 14th, but I didn't notice it before.

Edit: Apparently its not published on the frontpage and someone got a link to it from their swag bag.
wait, do you enter on July 7, 2012 or are you entered from that Swag Bag thing? If the latter, I missed out on ordering one.
 
Dax01 said:
I don't really understand how the last levels of a game can negate the rest. From the Crow's Nest to The Covenant, there's nothing but awesomeness. Besides, Captain Keyes is just as bad as Cortana, I think. Definitely not better than "Halo (3)."

It doesn't negate the rest, but it certainly puts a dampens the experience when you're getting right to the end of the game, the previous two levels were pretty damn epic (The Ark and The Covenant) and then all of the sudden, you are just muddling through suckage.

I had no issues with Keyes personally. Nothing comes close to Cortana for me, its not just a bad Halo mission, its an awful mission for any shooter.
 
PooBone said:
Reach: Other than Long Night of Solace, there's not much about the game I wanted to go back and play, the art was gray and boring
Seriously? Did you play Exodus, Winter Contingency, New Alexandria or ONI Swordbase? Every of these level is beautiful and colorful. Even when ONI Swordbase looks kind grayish at the first look. Yeah Kind of agree if you said that the art looks brown. And the art is boring? the city in Exodus looks very futuristic and beautiful in my opinion.
 

PooBone

Member
Dax01 said:
:lol

Edit:

I don't really understand how the last levels of a game can negate the rest. From the Crow's Nest to The Covenant, there's nothing but awesomeness. Besides, Captain Keyes is just as bad as Cortana, I think. Definitely not better than "Halo (3)."

I should clarify, the art isn't gray, but the visual splendor and color that sucks me in and is such a joy to look at in other Halo games was definitely more muted in Reach.

And I don't think the last levels of a game can negate the rest, but they certainly hurt the overall experience. Keyes is my least enjoyable mission in CE but I still would rather play that than half of the levels in Halo 3.

It's just my opinion. Halo 1 is a much better game, even all these years later replaying them both back to back, (which I did recently) I enjoy CE's campaign more. A lot of that is my personal taste for Forerunner environments, and that's just about all you see in CE.

On a side note, I feel like because the forerunner environments are alien, their geometry and layout doesn't have to have any explanation. They can design a space for an encounter and it's awesome. When they tried to apply the same design to human environments they get varied results, and usually end up sprinkling human objects all over the place to make it seem like an actual location populated by human beings. It takes the mystical feeling of the area you're exploring out of it, or at least it does for me, and makes me NOT want to explore at all.
 
Hitmonchan107 said:
Have you tried using a proxy site to get around it?
No, but it's really not that big of a deal to me. I can view GAF and Google Reader, and I can view most videos on my phone if I need to. I don't want to stir up any more trouble for myself with the IT department; I'm sure they watch me enough as it is. :)

PsychoRaven said:
I'll be damned. And the video linked is interesting. I never would have thought of grenade jumping up there. That's why I'm not a trickster. I just don't have the ability to think of interesting ways out of situations.
Reach makes it even harder for me to do any grenade jumping, and I wasn't that good to begin with. I never would have figured it out on my own, but watching Tyrant's videos make me want to try stuff that I'd never normally think about.
 
Hypertrooper said:
Seriously? Did you play Exodus, Winter Contingency, New Alexandria or ONI Swordbase? Every of these level is beautiful and colorful. Even when ONI Swordbase looks kind grayish at the first look. Yeah Kind of agree if you said that the art looks brown. And the art is boring? the city in Exodus looks very futuristic and beautiful in my opinion.
New Alexandria is the shit. I'd live there.

 

Miggytronz

Gold Member
Hypertrooper said:
Seriously? Did you play Exodus, Winter Contingency, New Alexandria or ONI Swordbase? Every of these level is beautiful and colorful. Even when ONI Swordbase looks kind grayish at the first look. Yeah Kind of agree if you said that the art looks brown. And the art is boring? the city in Exodus looks very futuristic and beautiful in my opinion.

Im with you on this. Halo 2 and 3 were so washed out. ODST was dark and that because thats what it was, a gritty representation (which i loved). Reach is beautiful.
 

ElRenoRaven

Member
God all this talk about the games has me wanting to finish up my monthly run through. Finished Halo 2 the other day. I think I'm going to pop in Halo 3 now. After this time I'm not playing any of the campaigns again till November then I'll play them in order from Reach through Halo 3 with Anniversary taking my Halo 1 copies spot. lol
 

PooBone

Member
Hypertrooper said:
Seriously? Did you play Exodus, Winter Contingency, New Alexandria or ONI Swordbase? Every of these level is beautiful and colorful. Even when ONI Swordbase looks kind grayish at the first look. Yeah Kind of agree if you said that the art looks brown. And the art is boring? the city in Exodus looks very futuristic and beautiful in my opinion.

Of course, I've played the game through several times. I felt like too much of Reach was spent in brown, desert-like environments (Exodus and Winter Contingency notwithstanding) and while the skyboxes are pretty and the art in the cities is "good," I really just don't find them interesting to me personally. I'm not trying to knock anyone else's opinion, this is all my perspective, but Halo Reach felt more like your typical futuristic shooter in terms of environments, and less like I was exploring a mysterious, ancient artifact that I love from the first 3 games (and even Halo Wars for that matter.)

When you go down to Halsey's lab and see the forerunner artifact in the glacier, I got SOOOOO giddy. Then you play a firefight map and leave. I was fuckin pissed. And they follow it with "THE PILLAR OF AUTUMN" the worst level in the game, and one in which I expected to board the PoA for a nostalgia trip and didn't.
Mikasangelos said:
Im with you on this. Halo 2 and 3 were so washed out. ODST was dark and that because thats what it was, a gritty representation (which i loved). Reach is beautiful.
<_<
>_>

Not sure if serious.
 

teamaxe

Member
PsychoRaven said:
God all this talk about the games has me wanting to finish up my monthly run through.

Yeah, I'm debating going through again from the beginning, but I don't know if I should wait for CEA or not. I'll probably go back and finally Legendary ODST and at least play through Halo Wars first.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Hey You said:
Wait, is this Bungie "One of Seven" thing new or old? It said it was posted on July 14th, but I didn't notice it before.

Edit: Apparently its not published on the frontpage and someone got a link to it from their swag bag.
Whoa. I wonder how final the text is, some of it seems a bit off. I wonder if it was meant for public consumption. The header though is interesting.
Dax01 said:
There's a lot of cover scattered around the encounter to delay your attack on the FRG however long you want. And I think there's only one Elite with the concussion rifle. If you can't make the cover work for you, you should take those two out first then jump into the chaos on the ground. I just did a replay of TPoA and I was able to use the cover available most effectively.
Or you can stand on the high ground and shoot everyone dead.
 
Steelyuhas said:
I had no issues with Keyes personally. Nothing comes close to Cortana for me, its not just a bad Halo mission, its an awful mission for any shooter.
I don't understand how you can have no issues with Captain Keyes but hate Cortana. Generally, they're the same layout wise. They both have you fight in tight corridors fighting endless upon endless waves of Flood. Though Captain Keyes has you drop into the coolant areas that's completely dark, and the player has a flashlight with limited battery life, and your forced to do the same thing you were doing on the ship. Then you go back into the ship to do the same thing again.
 
PooBone said:
And they follow it with "THE PILLAR OF AUTUMN" the worst level in the game, and one in which I expected to board the PoA for a nostalgia trip and didn't.

I'm with you here, but I think part of the problem is that if they did play the nostalgia card and you got on the Autumn, it'd be hard to get off the Autumn in a way that didn't seem like an ass-pull. Think about it: you're on the Autumn fighting off waves of brutes, skirmishers, and anything else the Covenant's trying to throw at you in their last stand, and you're expecting to take off with the ship. Then, suddenly...
"Cruiser! Lieutenant, there's a Mass Driver rigged up seven clicks from the starboard bow. I need you to take one of the Warthogs from the vehicle bay and take it out. Given how far it still is, I'd say you've got six minutes..."

dammit, wait, I meant that to sound bad :lol

EDIT: You know what, scratch that. You know what'd be amazing? If you switched characters temporarily. Like, you're near the end and give Cortana to Keyes, and then you switch to Chief (without cortana, but Keyes wakes him up early temporarily) briefly so you can ward off any Covenant and make sure Six gets to the Mass Driver safely. Now you're playing as a Spartan-II and not a III, and you run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and have stronger shielding and health. It'd be pretty tear-jerking if Chief watched Six progressively take out more and more Covenant (including the cruiser) until he eventually got taken out or something like that.
 

MrBig

Member
Zee-V70 said:
I'm with you here, but I think part of the problem is that if they did play the nostalgia card and you got on the Autumn, it'd be hard to get off the Autumn in a way that didn't seem like an ass-pull. Think about it: you're on the Autumn fighting off waves of brutes, skirmishers, and anything else the Covenant's trying to throw at you in their last stand, and you're expecting to take off with the ship. Then, suddenly...
"Cruiser! Lieutenant, there's a Mass Driver rigged up seven clicks from the starboard bow. I need you to take one of the Warthogs from the vehicle bay and take it out. Given how far it still is, I'd say you've got six minutes..."

dammit, wait, I meant that to sound bad :lol
That would have been amazing.
 
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