Monument To All Your Sins *SPOILERS*

Batmantastic

Anyone finished this achieve? What were the toughest levels for you?

I played through on Heroic first to get a feel for it, as I'm without Xbox Live for the moment

Then the Legendary playthrough was absolutely NUTS! I managed to finish it solo on Sunday evening and the 7th mission and the last mission were the toughest. Emile was actually SO useless in the last mission because he did absolutely NOTHING and basically left EVERYTHING to you.

Having said that, the relief when you finally

Destroy the Corvette with the MAC Cannon

is overwhelming to say the least. Last mission wasn't quite as epic as Halo 3's final mission but in fairness, the races in Halo 1 and 3 were far too easy IMO.

One thing Bungie did a fantastic job this time around was leaving you feeling helpless while playing on Legendary. I couldn't tell you the amount of times I felt like chucking the controller out the window, but my perseverance paid off and while it didn't feel quite as epic as finishing Mile High Club on CoD4, my fist was firmly thrust into the air the minute I finished it

Great campaign IMO, can't wait to get Live back and get stuck into MP.

Raze_them_all

Few tough bits as I went straight into legendary so I didn't know what was where.

Any level where you face more than 2 elites at once was tough tbh as I generally found myself ectremely low on cover and scrambling for a good hiding point.

I made mission 9 a bit harder by getting the tank achievment.

On the final level when yer using the big yoke, you don't actually have to get in it till the end and fire one shot, makes it much easier.

Batmantastic

Raze_them_all wrote: »

On the final level when yer using the big yoke, you don't actually have to get in it till the end and fire one shot, makes it much easier.

That was insane on Heroic as it was, so I knew about it going into Legendary, just chilled out behind the stairs until the shot was available

maximoose

Batmantastic wrote: »

That was insane on Heroic as it was, so I knew about it going into Legendary, just chilled out behind the stairs until the shot was available

that part absolutely infuriated me for quite some time before i realised i could just hide then jump in when the moment was right

apart from that, didnt find legendary THAT hard..i thought halo 3 was a lot harder in comparison

Batmantastic

maximoose wrote: »

apart from that, didnt find legendary THAT hard..i thought halo 3 was a lot harder in comparison

On the whole, Halo 3 was tougher, but the final mission in Reach was just INSANE on Legendary, and the 7th mission just drove me nuts aswell. Had to take intermittent breaks during those two missions before I went :pac:

Batmantastic

Batmantastic wrote: »

On the whole, Halo 3 was tougher, but the final mission in Reach was just INSANE on Legendary, and the 7th mission just drove me nuts aswell.

I just finished the campaign last night for the first time, due to there being a MENTAL amount of other stuff to do on the disc. Played through it on Heroic as i usually do for my first run. Overall i thought it was an excellent game, and really enjoyable, but not as polished overall as Halo3. Very good overall, but I have a few niggly criticisms of it:

Firstly, graphics-wise there seemed to be framerate problems the whole way through the campaign, which detracted from the overall experience.

Secondly. It was a more difficult game overall than H3 i thought, which is fine, but there was a fair amount of cheapness to the stuff that made it difficult in parts rather than just clever game design and AI. I thought there were a few unnecessary annoying difficulty spikes throughout due to a combination of some dubious checkpoint locations, and also because the weapons available always seemed to be the wrong ones for the situation at hand, unlike other halo games where you were usually spoiled for choice.

The first time i fought some elites, i thought bungie was on crack with the difficulty settings for them compared to H3. Their speed and how they evade almost everything seemed way over the top, but then i figured out how they work, and that the "noob combo" (overcharged plasma pistol shot+magnum or DMR headshot) made them like shooting fish in a barrel, so that was fine. Apart from the elites, and maybe the hunters, every other enemy in the game was about the same as before, except for the new, faster breed of jackals, which were a real pain in the ass sometimes but succumbed to headshots very easily.

Throughout the game, the NPC teammate AI was particularly thick, and that's saying something for Halo teammate AI, which is dreadful at the best of times. Normally i avoid relying on my NPC teammates wherever possible, but on sections like taking down anti air guns where you have to rely on a teammate to shoot tanks and footsoldiers while you drive a warthog or whatever, when you get in the driver's seat and they stand there for 15 seconds doing nothing while you're getting shot at, it's hard to avoid screaming at your TV.

Easily the most thrilling and enjoyable part of the game was the firefight outside halsey's lab at the underground artefact. Easily the worst was the space combat sections, which were slow, easy, and generally a big interruption to the fun of the rest of the game.

Also I couldn't help but feel a tiny bit let down by the last section and the ending. I thought the MAC gun sequence was a pretty weak way to finish it, and i thought bungie relied on the whole firefight "hold this area" mechanic too much throughout the game. During the whole sequence there didn't seem to be any definite narrative in the back of my head going "this is it, one last big push and it's done".

When it was over, i got somewhat of the same letdown feeling as i got on H2, the kind of "oh....that's it.....aw?" feeling. I had kind of suspected that noble team would end up getting picked off or giving their lives one by one throughout the course of events, and i didn't really expect to survive the fall of reach, but i thought i would go out with more of a decisive climax than that. The lone wolf mission after the credits was a nice touch, but a grander death would have been better. An end something like in the "deliver hope" trailer would have been nice, taking thousands of the covenant out as a last op, instead of just a handful of elites.

Overall i thought the game was excellent with the exception of a few niggly technical bugs, and some uneven pacing, especially towards the end. It's a fitting swansong for a great set of games by bungie, and you'd be hard pressed to find more value on a disc, but i think as genre defining FPS single player games go, Halo 3's campaign just pips it at the post. The multiplayer, co-op, and forge modes on the other hand, well that's a different story.....

maximoose

Throughout the game, the NPC teammate AI was particularly thick, and that's saying something for Halo teammate AI, which is dreadful at the best of times. Normally i avoid relying on my NPC teammates wherever possible, but on sections like taking down anti air guns where you have to rely on a teammate to shoot tanks and footsoldiers while you drive a warthog or whatever, when you get in the driver's seat and they stand there for 15 seconds doing nothing while you're getting shot at, it's hard to avoid screaming at your TV.

the AI when it came to vehicles was disgraceful haha. You cant rely on your AI team mates to be the gunner in a vehicle, because they wont shoot at anything...and you cant rely on them to be the driver because they will literally drive straight into walls and try to keep going.

sierra117x

maximoose wrote: »

the AI when it came to vehicles was disgraceful haha. You cant rely on your AI team mates to be the gunner in a vehicle, because they wont shoot at anything...and you cant rely on them to be the driver because they will literally drive straight into walls and try to keep going.

i was happy enough having them as gunner . the only problem i found was that they tended to shoot hills and rocks that where blocking direct line of sight to an enemy . but it was way better than letting them drive when they werent driving into something there where stopping right beside a ton of elites and letting you get milled out of it

sierra117x

sierra117x wrote: »

i was happy enough having them as gunner . the only problem i found was that they tended to shoot hills and rocks that where blocking direct line of sight to an enemy .

that mission where you're trying to take out the anti air guns and kat is in the warthog with you was a real head wrecker for that. She would constantly shoot at the most insignificant targets and be no help against the tank or bazooka grunt or whatever that was milling me out of it from somewhere else.

As soon as you get capsized in a hog you're a gonner too. It takes them an age to actually find their way back to the warthog and get in. If you don't wait you've got no gunner, if you do, some sneaky elite bastard will invariably stick you with a grenade.

One big omission from halo in general is some kind of basic instruction menu for your AI team mates. The D-Pad was largely unused, it would have been good to be able to use it to give instructions like "all out attack", or "covering fire" or "hang back and don't blow my cover like a muppet while i'm trying to do something stealthy". Prioritizing targets would have been good too, so the AI shoots at what you tell it to instead of engaging a rock or a tree.

I much preferred being a lone wolf as the master chief. Less likelyhood your liability of a team would get you killed.

Gi joe!

Found legendary pretty straightforward to be honest, there's only a handful of parts that were very difficult.

Unlike 2, which thanks to the jackels with beam rifles was controller smashing hard.:mad:

Not The Real Scarecrow

Thought legendary wasn't as hard as the others in the series to be honest. Blasted through it in about a week playing only a few hours a night. Halo 3 on Legendary almost feckin killed me.Was grand up until the last level escaping the flood then got stuck there for about a month lol.

Batmantastic

Meatwad wrote: »

Thought legendary wasn't as hard as the others in the series to be honest. Blasted through it in about a week playing only a few hours a night. Halo 3 on Legendary almost feckin killed me.Was grand up until the last level escaping the flood then got stuck there for about a month lol.

That level was SUCH a pain! I never finished Legendary solo in Halo 3, co-op ftw, ODST was a cakewalk and Reach, although insane in parts, never got to the insanity levels like that

Meatwad

Meatwad wrote: »

Halo 3 on Legendary almost feckin killed me.Was grand up until the last level escaping the flood then got stuck there for about a month lol.

I thought the level in the ship where you're rescuing cortana was the most annoying flood level in any of the halo games, without a doubt. When i'm re-playing through H3 occasionally i will just totally skip that one because the fun rating just takes a dive once you get to it. It's just annoyingly frustratingly hard. That one room where the skull is hidden is a complete b*stard to get pinned down in, and i remember a couple of slogs up passagways full of swarms of flood that were nigh on impossible to get through.

Bungie went a bit OTT with that one if you ask me. It should have been picked up on in playtesting. I mean, we all know that flood levels suck, but come on, that one just takes the p1ss....