The way Will games

• 2012-11-05 0 notes

  Halo 2 retrospective review

  Let’s be clear: Halo 2 is an unfinished game. It is a shadow of what it could have been, and for every part that shines there are ten that are noticeably rough to the touch, and even some that leave splinters.

  The first thing you notice about Halo 2 is that it looks better than Halo CE. Much better. The opening cutscenes are gorgeous, aptly showing off Bungie’s new game engine, with lighting and textures made especially impressive by having finished the first game a mere ten minutes previously. Almost as soon as this graphical prowess has been established however, it begins showing its holes. While the Master Chief looks incredible, other human characters look terrible, with facial animations and details which are just downright embarrassing. These inconsistencies are found every few seconds throughout Halo 2. The vehicles may look great (the Ghosts and Warthogs are particularly pretty, especially when damaged), but the surfaces you use them on are just ugly, with rocks and stone being the worst. Explosions and muzzle flares are horrible to look at too, lacking any kind of definition, reducing them down to monochromatic clouds. The design work is more or less the same as Halo CE, but with unforgivable corners cut; whoever decided that the ring should be obscured by cloud on the Delta Halo levels should be shot.

  The sound design suffers from the same problems. Ghosts sound wonderful, and some of the new Flood sound effects are unforgettable, but everything else just sounds fluffy and flat. None of the weapons have any kick to them, rendering the Plasma Rifle, SMG, and Beam Rifle in particular completely undesirable. Even the much lauded Battle Rifle is unpleasant to use as it just feels fat and vague. The only two weapons with any notability are the Carbine and the Brute Shot, but even these aren’t anything to write home about sound-wise. The soundtrack is more or less the same with some unnecessarily dull extra tunes thrown in, and the voice acting swings between impeccable (Ron Perlman as Lord Hood is an inspired piece of casting, and Sergeant Johnson rightfully gets a fully fledged role) to the terrible Miranda Keyes and supporting marines. 

  It’s the gameplay however that scores the lowest. Gone are the sprawling open battlefields of Halo CE, replaced instead by miles upon miles of identical corridors. The vehicle physics are vastly improved, but at the expense of anywhere interesting to use them. With very few satisfying weapons to use, shoot-outs on foot are boring, a problem made especially frustrating with the huge number of ‘defend this point’ objectives (I’m looking at you, Outskirts). Worst of all are the Arbiter missions, which while narratively interesting, are devoid of any excitement. After getting frustrated and bored by the initial infiltration of the Forerunner facility in the Arbiter’s first mission, I realised I could just cloak and run through the mission, meaning that every Arbiter level could be completed in ten minutes flat. 

  Despite all this and the general consensus of everyone else in the world, I like Halo 2’s plot. The internal politics and religious drive of the Covenant are valuable additions to the universe, leading to a much better informed, and thus motivated battle. Dramatic irony is used to perfection, and while the Gravemind isn’t as shocking a revelation as Bungie perhaps wanted it to be, there is much more going on than in Combat Evolved. The Covenant is no longer purely homicidal, but misinformed and ironically primitive, and the development of the Arbiter’s character is a fascinating portrayal of religious disillusion and consequently dissolution. Having said that, the plot’s integration into the gameplay is terrible. While the previous game had little or no filler, Halo 2 is almost entirely filler, with logical gaps (why have the Arbiter fight on the gondola to the Library when there is a Phantom following above it away from the Flood’s reach?) and entirely unnecessary missions (Outskirts, Regret, Sacred Icon, Quarantine Zone) abound. This is a four hour campaign stretched out to fill eight to ten.

  Halo 2 is hugely disappointing and unmistakably incomplete. A product of too much ambition and not enough time. 5/10.

• 2012-11-02 81,754 notes

  

  (via eddplant)

  Source: p-essimist

• 1 note

  Halo CE retrospective review

  With Halo 4 coming out on tuesday, I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself of the story so far, so over the past few weeks I have systematically played through the entire Halo series campaign, in order of release. (All, that is, except for Halo Wars; I don’t give a monkeys about that one.) What follows are my thoughts and opinions of the games, starting of course, with Halo: Combat Evolved.

  Halo CE is still a great game. Even without the Anniversary edition’s updated graphics and sound (I replayed the original version for this review) it is very easy to forget that this was a game made ten whole years ago. Graphically, this first entry into the series is exceptionally consistent, and it’s clear to see that Microsoft were taking no chances with their console’s launch title. You can almost see the time and money spent on uniformly applying polish to every texture and effect, and the result seems to be some kind of timeless immersion. Sure, it’s a dated looking game, but the trick that it manages to pull off is that of making you forget it looks dated, like when you play Minecraft for long enough and you stop seeing the blocks, and start seeing the beautiful scenery instead. This is in part helped by the strong visual identity this game creates. From the Aliens-inspired human technology, to the brushed metal geometry of the Forerunner structures, to the slick shine of the covenant’s ultra-colourful menagerie, everything in Halo is part of Bungie’s own visual language. That’s without even mentioning the insanely iconic imagery of the ring itself, both imposing and graceful overhead; Larry Niven would be proud.

  As for sound, the same is true ten times over. The guttural rumble of the Assault Rifle, the crisply defined bolts of plasma, the ‘wort wort wort’ of an oncoming Elite: it’s all great, and better yet, it was all completely new. Each of the sounds Bungie created are unique not only to the object they are assigned to (even some modern games can’t make their weapons sound different from each other) but are unique to Halo itself. I still to this day question why the Grunts make the sounds they do, and understand that they are a large reason for why Halo is considered less serious than other shooters. It may not be the most mature of games, but how can a developer justify having Grunts and The Flood in the same game? Also, the mixing of the audio in cutscenes is often very poor, with dialogue taking a backseat to music nine times out of ten. Even so, the music is enough to make up for the baby shrieks, and expect perhaps Skyrim, I have never heard a better soundtrack in a video game. It is worth noting that the guitar solo towards the end of “The Silent Cartographer” is significantly worse in the Anniversary Edition, but this does nothing to spoil a truly great set of tunes, from the spooky soundscapes of “The Library” to the pulsing cello-based rock of the main theme, this is stellar stuff.

  Gameplay is perhaps the most fascinating part of Halo CE. Yes, the physics engine seems to have very low gravity, yes, the vehicles are difficult to adjust to (looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow), and yes the grenades are far too powerful, but when in motion, this game is just downright graceful. Halo: Combat Evolved doesn’t try to be gritty and realistic because it doesn’t need to; you are the Master Chief, you are a god on the battlefield, and Halo is best played in one fluid, godlike motion. Spray bullets at a turret, jump six feet in the air, turn to stick an Elite with a Plasma Grenade, steal his weapon, beat down a Jackal, and commandeer a Ghost, all without stopping. Graceful is the word, and its the word which stuck with Bungie for ten years.

  The story is modest, but fulfilling. Exposition is kept to a minimum and contextualised as well as it can be, and nothing really seems like filler. At no point does the game have you doing something which doesn’t serve the progression of the main plot, and it’s this which keeps the campaign from being frustrating (well, except “The Library”, but again, the need for that level’s hoops is explained well enough by the containment protocol). What’s impressive is how much of the universe’s backstory had already been fleshed out at this early stage, with a reference to Reach within the first 30 seconds, and cryptic but telling remarks made by 343 Guilty Spark regarding humanity’s link to the Forerunners. The latter lines were largely lost on me until this latest play through, probably because of the aforementioned audio mix problems, but it was great to finally hear them. In terms of science fiction narratives, Halo breaks no boundaries, but in wearing its influences on its sleeve, it creates a coherent and simple enough plot, and keeps its pacing throughout.

  All in all, Halo is a great game. It’s not perfect by any means, but it certainly deserves the reputation it has. 8.5/10.

• 2012-08-01 7,868 notes

  (via reiana)

  Source: pokeposters

• 2012-07-13 12 notes

  

  After getting put off by a Frost Troll, and embarking on a side quest which resulted in me becoming Master of the Thieves Guild, I finally made it to High Hrothgar!

  Source: actionyurt

• 0 notes

  Red Dead Trade-in

  After visiting my brother yesterday, I got back a few games I had lent to him, ready to trade them in at the next opportunity. These include Crysis 2 (garbage), Bulletstorm (one of my favourite games, but no replay value), and Left 4 Dead 2 (far superior on Steam).

  These made me take yet another look at my collection to see what else I could cope without, like the Dead Space games, and one game in particular is giving me a headache: Red Dead Redemption.

  Now I have played a good five or six hours of Red Dead, and found it both compelling and authentic, with all the solid gameplay you can expect from Rockstar, but the trouble is how cinematic it is. It is so filmic that I actually ended up watching my friend Tom play large portions of the game, to the extent that I now know the entire story, including the ending (which is amazing). Combine that with my few hours of gameplay, and I feel like I’ve beaten the game myself.

  So my question is: have I got enough out of it? Should I keep it just to experience the whole thing eventually, or should I capitalise on it as a trade in?

• 0 notes

  songsfrompaul asked: As far as I know, both consoles have always been able to output 1080p graphics but in the first few years there were *very* few games that actually featured it due to problems with keeping a steady framerate. The games that did have 1080p were usually relatively simple (smaller PSN / Xbox Live titles / last-gen remakes) or had very controlled environments where the player only a small amount of stuff at a time (racing games, for example). And even now, a lot of 1080p games are just upscaled.

  That makes a lot of sense actually. I didn’t own a 360 until October last year, so I missed out on a lot of the early releases, before developers began working out how to use the hardware properly. I think you can also tell when games are upscaled, for instance Halo Reach and Killzone 3 are both very obviously created with full HD in mind, whereas I think the first Dead Space game, and maybe things like Gears of War 1, and Mass Effect 1 seem more likely to not be natively 1080p.

• 0 notes

  jamescuresboredom asked: You would be correct sir. To play BF3 on ultra on a computer you need a really good processor. The graphics card doesn't have to be state of the art/brand new because the majority of the graphical fidelity comes from lighting, effects, etc. which is all run from the processor and consoles can't keep up with that so consoles are only running BF3 at low. I always though it was medium but my friend did a comparison and watched a few comparison videos on youtube and its crazy that it's on low.lol

  Ah, that’s very interesting! I’m not a PC gamer (I have Steam for my Mac, but it can only really handle Source Engine games) so I’m not all that well clued up about processors and graphics cards. It’s incredible that even at 720p, Battlefield can still look as good as it does, but as you say, a lot of that is probably lighting. It makes sense that DICE would have to compromise on resolution, particularly with things like the new level of destructibility on the “Close Quarters” maps.

• 0 notes

  1080p consoles?

  Been seeing a lot of comments on YouTube recently, particularly on the gameplay footage from this year’s E3, saying that the Xbox 360 and PS3 can’t run at 1080p, and that only PCs can.

  What?

  All of my Xbox games, even as far back as Halo 3, run at 1080p resolution. Hell, even the Shadow of the Colossus PS3 remake is in full HD. Where are people getting this misconception from? I know that the console version of Battlefield 3 (at least the PS3 version) only works at 720p, but presumably that’s because there’s so much else going on, so they had to save processing power?

  Just a thought.

• 2012-07-12 0 notes

  First impressions

  Now I’ve had the chance to play a bit of 3 out of the 4 new games I got this morning, I thought I’d share my first impressions.

  Metro 2033: fairly disappointing. Gorgeous and atmospheric, but clunky voice-acting and flimsy gunplay take almost all of the excitement out of the action.

  Mirror’s Edge: A very stylish tech demo. I see this as similar to the first Assassin’s Creed game, which had little to offer besides a fledgling and often irritatingly clumsy parkour mechanic.

  Mass Effect: Clearly a much deeper experience than I anticipated. Perhaps it was a mistake to have started this while I still have Skyrim on the go; I’m not a huge RPG fan, but when I take one on, I like to give it my full attention.

  My housemate Tom has Deus Ex for his PS3, and having seen bits of his gameplay, I’m very excited to give it a go myself, so I’m saving it for last. I can definitely see myself trading in the other games fairly quickly though, which is a shame.