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Anybody played reach yet?
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Join Date:Posts: 50576
NeoKubrick wrote: »So, after deflecting from citing a single game that was comparable in experience to the combat found in Halo: Combat Evolved twice and my repeating the request a third time, you finally cite Half Life, Hidden Dangerous, and Allied Assault as comparable to Halo: Combat Evolved before its release. I didn't ask of you to find games comparable to Halo: Combat Evolved, just the experience of Halo: Combat Evolved's combat; so, you can't excuse your finding little to none examples because of a differentiation in mechanics. Allied Assault was released after Halo: Combat Evolved; so, that example is void. Hidden and Dangerous example is tenuous, because first it's third-person shooter with the option of a first-person view and second, play is mostly based upon stealth. Half Life had solid artificial intelligence for its time, but it is nowhere near advanced as Halo's, and consequently, the combat isn't comparable (Half Life was great because of level design). If those three examples are the basis for your argument that PC players had experienced it all before Halo, then that argument is completely and utterly void.
I'll repeat myself in the hope that you drop the ridiculous 'nothing new' argument. Your reasoning is comparable to that of someone criticizing a revolutionary design by an architect because he uses steel - what previous architects used; that fact doesn't degrade the quality of the design or upgrade the quality of other designs which use steel. As I've quoted to you before: "Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal", which means great creators make already existing ideas and designs better and become their owners. A game is a sum of its parts, not a collection.
You need to look up your definition of Revolution again. Just how was Halos combat revolutionary? How did Halos combat mark a sudden, rapid and landmark change in FPS combat. As far as I see there is nothing revolutionary about it. Not only did it do anyhting new but it also has changed the face of FPS gaming very little. Your statement that the combat in Halo was revolutionary is utterly ridiculous and you can't bring up any examples to back it up. Slight influenences in console FPS games maybe but a revolution? Nonsense. So I'd like to see what you come up with that are examples of this sweeping revolution that Halos combats. I find it hard to believe that you wil lcome up with something considering Halo is a game full of borrowed ideas, slight refinements and a boring weapon selection. Do you really honestly think that Halo's combat is such a massive leap ahead of the games I mentioned that it's a huge revolution or have you just been reading Edge too much?NeoKubrick wrote: »You continue to fail to understand that the sum of all those parts you cite with many others are the reason Halo's combat is revolutionary, not the parts themselves. Your inability to understand this is two-fold: you erroneously think Halo is a simplistic and dumb shooter, and you do not want to admit that all those times you've looked down upon players for praising Halo was based upon pretense.
It is a simplistic and dumb shooter just like most shooters out there, it's not a bad thing. You point at things and pull the trigger until they stop moving and move to the next group. I can't see how anyone can say it's anything other than that but there's certain people out there that think it's the pinnacle of game design and innovation. The only reason I can think of that people would have this opinionis if their only experience of FPS games was on the console were the last great one before Halo was Goldeneye whereas any person I know into PC's at the time didn't see the bhow Halo was a big deal other than how pretty it was at the time.NeoKubrick wrote: »And, Starsiege Tribes had armour and an energy cell. Energy cell powers the jetpack and armour is your health. Tribes implementation of its health system is not like Halo, at all.
Denying this doesn't make it true. You've obviously never played tribes. I doubt you have much PC gaming experience either.
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just finished it there.. im a big Halo Fan, The first one blew me away and 2 and 3 were great fun, Reach just does'nt feel the same at all to me.. its a good game but i did'nt have any of those 'wow' moments that i got with any of the other games, and the Atomosphere that was created in previous games away from all the shooting etc was totally missing for me... it just seemed like bungie have finally run out of ideas.. its a shame 'cause i really was expecting so much more... graphically i think it was average and although i believe bungie built a new engine for this game.. you would'nt really notice it... all in all good fun but it didn't hold me like the other games in the series.. im a bit dissapointed
played on heroic and took about 8/10 hours... not a bad game but prob my least favorite in the series... shame.0 -
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I don't think lingering on the past is very useful in this argument. The fact remains though that in its current state its hard to find ANY game that does community like Halo:Reach. I think thats the only really revolutionary thing Bungie can really claim to have done. I'n terms of community its doing more then any other game has ever down on console. Everything else had been done before but thats far from insulting. Bungie have always been good at refining an experience to its most user friendly.
one word, "Valve", that is all
Just messing, but the amount of content you got from half life 1 + 2 is insane and they support they're game for YEARS, ****.. css (released what.. 6 years ago) is getting new updates right now.
Bungie are awesome tho, they beat the ****ing **** out of IW when it comes to updating and balancing there game.0 -
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NeoKubrick wrote: »First, you shouldn't question others' experience of PC gaming when you up to a year ago you still held that Half Life was a better game than Half Life 2. Tribes does not operate like Halo's recharge shield mechanic.
You claimed that the combat in Halo wasn't revolutionary because it did nothing new and that PC players had experience of the type before Halo, and I asked you to provide examples of this combat comparable to Halo: Combat Evolved's. You cited a game that was released after Halo, a third/first person tactical shooter/stealth hybrid with little to nothing in common with Halo, and Half Life, which was nowhere near Halo in terms of combat. Therefore, by your criteria and not mine, Halo is revolutionary. Don't waste my time with semantics. Revolutionary: involving or causing a complete or dramatic change (Oxford dictionary).
Halo isn't a simplistic shooter. If you can't understand this simple statement, how am I to expect that you will understand how Halo's combat was a 'dramatic change' from everything that had been previously written on PC or console? To you, Halo is Doom. Here's the distinction:
Lessons from Doom
The 30 Second Combat Cycle
You still haven't given any examples of how Halo was a revolution. Stop avoiding the question.
I've read both articles and I still think Halo is doom with outdoor enviroments grenades and better AI, and linearity. Not exactly a revolution.
I also did provide examples of games with combat like Halos. Very good examples. All were games you point at things and shoot at them. You can fool yourself as much as you like by looking into game design theory but at the end of the day Halo isn't much more beyond this. It has it's own little systems in place like the way every JRPG has it's own little systems to differentiate them but just like these JRPGs Halo isn't revolutionary.
I was just waiting for the 30 second cycle thing to come up. I'm sorry to announce that this isn't a new thing, Bungie just gave it another name and people like Edge magazine try to present it as some massive move forward in game design. The 30 seconds of fun cycle has another name, pacing, and is an integral part of game design. Don't believe me that it's nothing new? How about half-life which has better pacing, seperating it's action segments with areas to build action and story with it's enviroment. Further back, try Rocket Knight Adventures and Gunstar Heroes. It's a 30 second boss battle followed by 30 seconds of action repeated. Further back, how about what is commonly regarded as one of the greatest games ever made Robotron. 30 seconds or less between each screen. Nothing new or revolutionary, just a videogame design 101 lesson given a fancy name.
Shields weren't a revolution. They just replaced health packs and encoraged more gun ho gameplay. There was no need to design levles around having health pick ups after every encounter. Did it fundamentally change the way FPS games are played? No. I've played CoD 1 and CoD 2 and the recharging health didn't change the way the game was played, they felt very similar. Neither did the AI, which for me was highly scripted in parts. You could tell a elite would do his roar thing when his shield was down which was stupid since he should have found cover and taking out an elite always made the little yellow turds run away. Anyway similar AI interaction behaviour was already shown well before it in playable for when MGS2 was demoed. As for the one button melee and grenades as I stated it wasn't a new innovation, far from it and its implementation didn't change FPS games just like it never changed FPS gaming in the other games that it was in first.
As for me preferring HL1 to HL2, well the games are so close in quality that it really only comes down to personal preference. HL1 has the better level design and weapons while I feel HL2 was consistently great the whole way through which swings it for me. If anyone told me HL1 was better I couldn't question it since the games are so close in quality. What took me to change my mind was that I recently played through them again and and re-evaluated both games,admitting to myself that I might have been mistaken which seems to be something you just can't seem to do.
I've just read that Doom article. It's overwritten. John Romero said the same thing in one sentence when he said Doom was Gauntlet in 3D. It's no secret.
How about this, Halo was de-evolutionary to the FPS genre. Before Halo came out FPS games were branching into new and exciting directions on the PC. The biggest change was the RPG hybrids like System Shock 2 and Deus Ex that showed just how complex and immersive FPS games were. Then came along Halo a simplistic shooter. Doom with a fur coat and jewellery and financially the way to make money was dumb shooters again. I'm playing Stalker at the moment and it's a breath of fresh air to actually be playing an FPS game with a bit of depth again. There'll always be a place for the simplistic FPS and there's nothing wrong with them. It's just when it's to the detriment of better and more complex experiences is when it's bad. Cliff Blezinski said that the future of FPS is in RPGs. I think he is right but I also think that it should have been in the past and that Halo prevented a revolution.
Here's some Tribes, check out those recharging shields
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I'm not a big halo fan at all (found 3 very boring), but I'm enjoying Reach. Just picked it up because most of my friends over here have it and Walmart were selling it for $60 with $20 credit thrown in, which is fine with me since I get my groceries there!
Played the first 3 chapters of the single player campaign, then went playing it again co-op on live with difficulty set to legendary. Also did some firefight achievement whoring. I still yearn for keyboard and mouse control
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Just finished the campaign in system link Co-Op - fantastic fun, better than Halo 3 and ODST by a long shot, definitely the best since the original.
Not as many storyline driven achievements though as in Halo 3/ODST, having finished the campaign on legendary, and having got some MP achievements, still a paltry 385 points
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NeoKubrick wrote: »Again, Retr0, that shield mechanic in Tribes is not the same as Halo's, which is what you claimed. So, your point is moot.
You select the shield pack in Tribes. You take damage. After a set period of time your shield regenerates unless you take more damage which resets it.
In Halo you take damage. After a set period of time your shield regenerates unless you take more damage which resets it.
What's the difference? And don't even claim to think that Bungie weren't influenced by Tribes because after it was released in 1998 everyone was playing Tribes.NeoKubrick wrote: »And it is irrelevant how little difference there is in the quality of Half Life 1 and 2 (the difference is considerable, but beside the point), you questioned my experience of PC gaming and I was aware of Half Life 2's superiority long before you became aware of it. Therefore, if I understand little of PC gaming, you understand even less by definition.
Well I'd say that the difference is minimal, like the difference between Mario 3 and Super Mario World. Both superb games and it comes down to personal preference which one you prefer more. There's HL1's deathmatch mode which on somedays swings it for me because of how fun it was on my friends 4 player lan. So I understand less about PC gaming than you because I preferred HL1 to HL2 for a while? I think the fact that I'd been playing PC games since 1992 and had my own PC since 1996 counts more.NeoKubrick wrote: »See, you don't understand that Doom is simplistic and Halo is not, even after reading two articles which show that one design is different than the other and virtually explaining the difference. First, let's clear up a misunderstanding you have of what's simple and complex and establish the difference....
Doom is a simplistic game. As LeBreton said, it has more common with Robotron than a modern shooter. The strategy of the game is simple, less than Tic-tac-toe. Whereas, Tic-tac-toe has not an execution component, Doom has. So, Doom has simplistic strategy and relatively simplistic execution. Halo is not a simplistic game. A player has three types of attack, variations in enemies and enemies' attacks, and the artificial intelligence implements simple cause and effect behaviour, and all this increases the depth and complexity of the game, and it is also has an execution component. Halo is not a simplistic game and it's not a complex game, either (games comparable to a complex game like Chess would Starcraft etc.); it's somewhere in between and it is not comparable to Doom's level of simplicity/complexity at all. Deus Ex's and System Shock 2's mechanics are no more complex than Halo's are (I know this will sound controversial to you, but it really shouldn't be).
Doom is simplistic and so is Halo. Halo has 3 types of weapons. Doom has 8 to choose from as well depending on your situation. Oh but there's elemental properties like behaviour? Well Deus Ex and System Shock 2 has that as well but sure they're simplistic as well. Also if you have ever played Robotron you'd realise that for a simple game there's a lot of strategy involved in it as well just like there is in Doom and in Halo. You can go on and on about how Halo has a shield or one button for grenades or better artificial intelligence. These are small improvements to a formula that has been evolving since doom and before it. They aren't revolutions. The game is hardly more evolved than half-life not matter how much pomp and pretention its developers give it's mechanics that you seem to be swallowing hook line and sinker.NeoKubrick wrote: »One of the three examples of games you used to show that PC players had experienced Halo's combat was a game that was released after Halo.
I said it was released around the same time as Halo. Review copies were sent out about a month after Halos release meaning there was no time to be influenced by Halo.NeoKubrick wrote: »However, there is no onus on me to prove that Halo was a revolution, because you just unwittingly proved it in your own post and therefore you've destroyed your own argument. You claimed that Halo was a de-evolution, which you can infer that it had changed the first-person shooter genre. If Halo had no significance and its combat was experienced on the PC before, then it wouldn't have been in a position to change anything and devolve the genre. So either, Halo had no significance and didn't effect any change or devolve the genre, or Halo had significance and effected a revolution of the genre but to the detriment of it. You're self-owning your own argument.
De-evolution was the wrong word. Stagnation is more fitting.It's made sure that in the last 10 years the FPS hasn't moved on in the way it should have. You still haven't provided examples of how revolutionary the combat is.NeoKubrick wrote: »As you can read, you're constantly contradicting yourself: you tell me that I'm fooling myself to study the game design of Halo but use the same game design of other games as the basis for your argument for your praise of other games. You distill Halo to 'point and shoot things', which is the same as distilling Super Mario World to 'run and jump things'. I guess Chess is just people moving around a bunch of wooden pieces on a wooden board right? The foundation of design (any) is to differentiate between bad and good fit for purpose. The purpose isn't the goal of design. If that were the case, then Miyamoto would just have Mario 'run and jump things', because there is no task for a designer beyond defining a purpose of a game according to your reasoning.
Well Super Mario World is basically run and jump on things isn't it? It's basically just building upon the foundation that was laid before it in Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 3. It adds a load of improvements to the formula. A new cape to fly, puzzle ghost house levels. New Enemies, bosses that use the SNES's mode 7 effect. However I'd never call in revolutionary. Halo adds it's own flavour to the established FPS genre but again I'd never call it revolutionary becasue it isn't in the same way that Mario Bros and Mario Bros 3 weren't revolutionary in terms of platform mechanics.
I tell you what was revolutionary, Super Mario Bros. and here's a good article much better written than the two you posted to show why:
http://www.gamespite.net/toastywiki/index.php/Games/G5-SuperMarioBros
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The FPS console controls that Halo used were just borrowed from previous generation games like Quake 2 on the PS1, Alien Resurrection and in Medal of Honor you could configure your controls this way as well.
I'm just trying to correct some people that seem to think that Halo is unflawed and was something special when it came out when it really wasn't. It was special for console gamers thathad never played an FPS that polished but for people with PC gaming experience it was merely a good FPS in the vein of what had come before it.
So you don't see any flaws in NeoKubricks argument despite the fact he hasn't backed up his claims of how revolutionary it was?
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Yep he is but he's also never had a PC before in his life and was a massive Bungie fan growing up with only Macintosh computers. I still doubt he would ever say Halo was revolutionary though. I'm also not saying the games are crap, they aren't other than the single player portion of Halo 2 which was bad.
Halo seemed something special on the Xbox because for over a year it was the only game worth playing on the machine. It didn't really popularise FPS games on the console, Goldeneye was a massive game and Quake 2 was pretty damn big on the PS1 along with other FPS games like Timesplitters and Red Faction on the PS2. As a PC gamer but mainly console gamer at the time, Halo was great game in the FPS mould but didn't change significantly or revolutionise anything in gameplay terms but did shape the face of the games market financially. The original Xbox is one of the worst consoles I own due to the lack of exclusive titles but Halo made it worth owning for a lot of people. If it wasn't for Halo I doubt the 360 would even exist.
In gameplay terms I'd say Halo has changed gameplay significantly less than even the cover system introduced in Kill.Switch and popularised in Gears of War. Sure a lot of games use it but I'd be hard pushed to call it a revolution.
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Kind of have to laugh at me getting called out for looking at Goldeneye through rose tinted glasses after the amount of times I've been given out to on these boards for telling people it's aged terribly
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