Halo 0.3

Redlambs

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So, I finally decide to get a 360 (because it was free), and after the shite that was Halo 2 (not as a standalone game, but as a follow up to the much superior Halo), I've got Halo 3.

VERY underwhelmed. You'd think after all this time, they'd actually hire a decent level designer? I have full respect for the Bungie boys for Halo, but they listen to the fans far too much and as a result over the two sequels have taken the game backwards.

Still better than a hell of a lot of the so called 'next-gen' games, but still a letdown in it's own right.
 
Played the original Halo on the XBOX and I couldn't see what all the fuss about it was to be honest. Massively overrated games IMO.
 
I don't have an Xbox, nor do I wish to have one, but my cousin does and I loved Halo 3, I thought it was great.
 
esmufc07 said:
Played the original Halo on the XBOX and I couldn't see what all the fuss about it was to be honest. Massively overrated games IMO.
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As a proper FPS fanatic, Halo was great. Especially since it was one of the first games to really make the simple Melee attack work and the A.I was far superior to most rivals of it's time.

Nothing other really new compared to the PC games of the time, but the feel of a proper FPS on a console can be a unique experience. I played it almost as much as I used to play Goldeneye or Perfect Dark on the N64.

Halo 3, however, lost the golden touch of the original, hence it's far inferior to the latest FPS's on the PC.
 
Redlambs said:
So, I finally decide to get a 360 (because it was free), and after the shite that was Halo 2 (not as a standalone game, but as a follow up to the much superior Halo), I've got Halo 3.

VERY underwhelmed. You'd think after all this time, they'd actually hire a decent level designer? I have full respect for the Bungie boys for Halo, but they listen to the fans far too much and as a result over the two sequels have taken the game backwards.

Still better than a hell of a lot of the so called 'next-gen' games, but still a letdown in it's own right.
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640 vertical resolution as well, from the biggest first party game Microsoft has or had or blah blah on that point. Yes, they added HDR lighting, it couldn't fit into the eDRAM, etc. etc. etc. It had no AA as well.

This is what sparked all the discussion of how maybe the XB360 is slightly broken and whether it was really designed as a standard definition machine, only to be upped to high definition at the last minute because of what Sony were doing.

The entire idea of having your ROPs embedded onto the eDRAM buffer is that it gives silly bandwidth to said frame buffer to do shit like AA. Yet Halo 3 didn't do it. They didn't even bother tiling to get it up to 720p, maybe it cannot tile that way (limited bandwidth?).

Sorry to derail your thread, which was about game design rather than the technical aspects. What I have played of it, it was reasonable, but nothing outstanding. I personally think that there are far too many developers nowadays that design games first around the multi-player first and foremost, and then think about single player mechanics at the end. For me this is totally the wrong way to go about making a decent game, because it totally defies any HCI theory. The first thing you do is create a believable world that one single person can feel immersed into and be comfortable interacting with - being a game, this immersion obviously should be fun. Then you add on multi-player. XBox LIVE has a lot to answer for IMO, to the point that decent single player games now get reviewed at up to 15% less than they would have if they had the wonderful multi-player facility. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is an example of this, so is Rachet & Clank: FTOD. Yes, COD4 gets brilliant reviews all around where most people actually agree that the single player is not really up to that much. This is wrong IMO.
 
WeasteDevil said:
You should play on a PC in this case, because there is nothing that does FPS as well as a PC.
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Prefer consoles myself, PC requires too much upgrading for the lastest games, whereas a console will last you 5/6 years untill a new one comes out. The only game I really play on the PC is FM08
 
WeasteDevil said:
640 vertical resolution as well, from the biggest first party game Microsoft has or had or blah blah on that point. Yes, they added HDR lighting, it couldn't fit into the eDRAM, etc. etc. etc. It had no AA as well.

This is what sparked all the discussion of how maybe the XB360 is slightly broken and whether it was really designed as a standard definition machine, only to be upped to high definition at the last minute because of what Sony were doing.

The entire idea of having your ROPs embedded onto the eDRAM buffer is that it gives silly bandwidth to dais frame buffer to do shit like AA. Yet Halo 3 didn't do it. They didn't even bother tiling to get it up to 720p, baybe it cannot tile that way (limited bandwidth?).
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I'll get into this discussion with you another time.


Sorry to derail your thread, which was about game design rather than the technical aspects. What I have played of it, it was reasonable, but nothing outstanding. I personally think that there are far too many developers nowadays that design games first around the multi-player first and foremost, and then think about single player mechanics at the end. For me this is totally the wrong way to go about making a decent game, because it totally defies any HCI theory. The first thing you do is create a believable world that one single person can feel immersed into and be comfortable interacting with - being a game, this immersion obviously should be fun. Then you add on multi-player. XBox LIVE has a lot to answer for IMO, to the point that decent single player games now get reviewed at up to 15% less than they would have if they had the wonderful multi-player facility. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is an example of this, so is Rachet & Clank: FTOD. Yes, COD4 gets brilliant reviews all around where most people actually agree that the single player is not really up to that much. This is wrong IMO.
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VERY MUCH AGREE.

As an ex-pro game designer, I hate this shift into Multiplayer, game design has certainly suffered and it's become less about interacting in a world as it is about trying to hunt down a decent contest.
 
esmufc07 said:
Prefer consoles myself, PC requires too much upgrading for the lastest games, whereas a console will last you 5/6 years untill a new one comes out. The only game I really play on the PC is FM08
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Then you are missing out on an experience.

I'm the opposite, I crave 60fps in my shooters, and very few Consoles games give that. Doesn't mean they can't be good, but it does mean I can't be arsed.
 
Redlambs said:
Since when?

Not everyone can be arsed to sit there and play a bunch of kids online who can't take it when they get their arses handed to them on a regular basis.
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I had some bloke tell me he had my social security number and he was going to pop round and sort me out

i dont even have a social security number as far as I am aware
 
James Parkin said:
I had some bloke tell me he had my social security number and he was going to pop round and sort me out

i dont even have a social security number as far as I am aware
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Just like the Playstation one helped cause the casual gamer, Xbox live has worsened online multiplayer.

Time was you'd just get accused of hacking if you were good, now you get whiny 12 year old voices and/or idiots switching off when they are getting hammered.

I miss the old days and sometimes feel sorry for genuine gamers who missed them. Not to say you can't have lots of fun these days, it's just harder to find.
 
Redlambs said:
Then you are missing out on an experience.

I'm the opposite, I crave 60fps in my shooters, and very few Consoles games give that. Doesn't mean they can't be good, but it does mean I can't be arsed.
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The trouble with the PC is that you do need to upgrade all of the time, and it's not just the graphics cards. I'd love to see a PC that can run Crysis on high at 60fps. This leads us down another game design question - should you push it to get all of the graphical effects, or should you pull them back until you get a stable frame-rate? Many people don't mind even if it goes down to 20 or so. What pisses me off is the lack of stability. If it's 20, lock it at 20. If it's 30, lock it at 30, and so on. Constant screen tearing pisses me off - cut it down - people are becoming too ambitious on the consoles ATM, they need to learn how to walk before they run.
 
WeasteDevil said:
The trouble with the PC is that you do need to upgrade all of the time, and it's not just the graphics cards. I'd love to see a PC that can run Crysis on high at 60fps.
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I am, of course, aware of that. I'd just rather buy a new PC or upgrade every couple of years, although I inevitability always get the consoles too.


This leads us down another game design question - should you push it to get all of the graphical effects, or should you pull them back until you get a stable frame-rate? Many people don't mind even if it goes down to 20 or so. What pisses me off is the lack of stability. If it's 20, lock it at 20. If it's 30, lock it at 30, and so on. Constant screen tearing pisses me off - cut it down - people are becoming too ambitious on the consoles ATM, they need to learn how to walk before they run.
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I hate games that run unstable, but I've always said sometimes you just need smoother framerates to make a sequel. Take my comments on Halo3, it looks pretty much like Halo1, and plays slightly worse, so instead of adding some poncey little lighting effect than 99% of gamers wouldn't even notice, just remake Halo1 with a decent frame rate and a few new bells and whistles!

20fps is a huge no-no in my book, 30fps is the bare minimum. I don't think I'm being overly picky either, I just hate sluggish controls, especially in a console game where the controls aren't as precise as a mouse movement.
 
James Parkin said:
I had some bloke tell me he had my social security number and he was going to pop round and sort me out

i dont even have a social security number as far as I am aware
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WeasteDevil said:
That would be your NI number. :lol:
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fecking kids! Time was you'd get a hacking attempt (well, script-kiddies anyway) if you really feck someone off, now they want to come round and stab you! I blame the parents :D
 
Redlambs said:
20fps is a huge no-no in my book, 30fps is the bare minimum. I don't think I'm being overly picky either, I just hate sluggish controls, especially in a console game where the controls aren't as precise as a mouse movement.
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Oh yes, 20fps for a shooter is very wrong, especially first person.

I used to love my Amiga horizontal scrollers, always 50fps and slick as feck (well the good ones). :D

It was in that era though the techies and the game designers never quite came together. You could have brilliantly designed games that stuttered (or were not silky smooth), then you had wonderful technical stuff like Shadow of the Beast that played like crap.

And Bubble Bobble is the best two player game ever!
 
WeasteDevil said:
Oh yes, 20fps for a shooter is very wrong, especially first person.

I used to love my Amiga horizontal scrollers, always 50fps and slick as feck (well the good ones). :D

It was in that era though the techies and the game designers never quite came together. You could have brilliantly designed games that stuttered (or were not silky smooth), then you had wonderful technical stuff like Shadow of the Beast that played like crap.

And Bubble Bobble is the best two player game ever!
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Bubble bobble is immense.

The Nintendo Snes was the first real piece of technical brilliance that started to bring together both techies and designers, but only because they had to go and put in a shitty cpu to ice the cake and force both sides to work together to get the best out of it. The FX chip was even worse to work with from what I can remember, but finally gave the machine the power it deserved.

Ahh, the good days. I actuallt paid £120 to get the snes version of Street Fighter 2 turbo! I can barely find a game I'd pay £30 for these days ;)
 
Halo2 and 3 are not single player games. They were designed as MP games actually. The single player bit was an added bonus. FWIW, the single player missions suck but MP battles are a lot of fun. a LOT of fun

shootingUSDevilinback.jpg
 
Redlambs said:
Since when?

Not everyone can be arsed to sit there and play a bunch of kids online who can't take it when they get their arses handed to them on a regular basis.
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Since its always been far better online.

Halo 1 had a semi decent 1 player game, 2 and 3 certainly not. Pick it up only to play online.
 
Ekeke said:
Sometimes people like to have the option, even if its shit in comparison to proper single player games.
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Right, there is nothing wrong with having the option, the point RedLambs and I were making is that any game that wants to include a single player element should first concentrate on that aspect, then add the multi-player. There are probably quite a few XB360 owners that do not have XBOX Live, and are stuck with Halo 3 as it is in single player mode. If it was designed to be multi-player, then it should only be multi-player IMO.
 
They did make it clear though that Halo2 and 3 were designed for MP, not for SP. Its only because fans complained that they tacked on a SP bit to Halo2. Halo3 had a bit more thought put into it, which wouldnt be difficult since Halo2 was particularly bad.
 
Weaste sumed it up there really, they are designed backwards and that pisses me off. In my opinion Halo 1-3 are the most overrated games i have ever played.
 
Halo1 was quite possibly the best game i'd played (at that time)

I used to love MP games like Goldeneye etc but Halo1 really took it to a different level of fun. The choice of weapons, vehicles and things you could fly, plus things like invisibility cloaks made it the best fun when you played against a few mates.

Halo2 was pants.

Halo3 is a bit better but MP is fantastic fun.

Halo is not everyones cup of tea though so if you didnt like the first one you certainly wont like the others
 
The point being, Halo wasn't designed as a multiplayer game and the design and storyline showed that.

2 and 3 are pale imitations and prime examples of how to take a game with seriously decent foundations and ruin it.

The multiplayer is fun I must say, but it's still not a patch on the fun the first game gave when you finally worked out how to outwit the A.I on legendary mode. If it were the case it was always intended as multiplayer, they should have actually designed it like that. As a product, it's good, but bettered in all aspects by any number of games.

Again, as Weaste pointed out, it's no way to design a game. They chased the bucks and tried to cash in and be clever. A bit like the Matrix films when you think about it, clever start, but listened to people too much for the sequels and tried to make it something it was never going to be.
 
One thing that also bothers me about the game, is why the feck does the console running it have to make soooo much fecking noise?

My PC is a hell of a lot more powerful and runs at a fraction of the noise.






Don't bother answering that one people, I obviously know the reason, it's a rant about the shitness of the quality of the machine. Still, free is free!
 
WeasteDevil said:
Right, there is nothing wrong with having the option, the point RedLambs and I were making is that any game that wants to include a single player element should first concentrate on that aspect, then add the multi-player. There are probably quite a few XB360 owners that do not have XBOX Live, and are stuck with Halo 3 as it is in single player mode. If it was designed to be multi-player, then it should only be multi-player IMO.
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Fair point, but the only reason I can see for buying an xbox 360 over a ps3 would be Xbox live. I mean, if you had the money for either...

Halo 3 multiplayers speaks for itself. The single player game is like... An extra. Like how sometimes games have extra modes... that nobody ever uses.

The only reason I played the single player game in Halo 3 is because 3 of the cast from Firefly did voiceovers.
 
Thats the point I've been trying to make

Halo was designed first and foremost as a SP game. But, everyone raved about the MP part as it was such fun, and different from everything up till that point.

The developers then decided that the next game would be designed for MP only. There was never meant to be a SP mode! However, when this was leaked fans went mad because they wanted the storyline to continue. Hence a SP part was rushed through and tacked on. Needless to say it was shit. The MP part was even shit because there was nothing really new in it. A case of cashing in on the name really.

The 3rd one was again designed first and foremost for MP. This time they've got that part right again. Its great fun. The SP part was not so much an after thought as number 2, but it was designed 'backwards' as you guys put it. I agree that this is the wrong way to do it but they got what they wanted. A great MP game.
 
golden_blunder said:
Thats the point I've been trying to make

Halo was designed first and foremost as a SP game. But, everyone raved about the MP part as it was such fun, and different from everything up till that point.

The developers then decided that the next game would be designed for MP only. There was never meant to be a SP mode! However, when this was leaked fans went mad because they wanted the storyline to continue. Hence a SP part was rushed through and tacked on. Needless to say it was shit. The MP part was even shit because there was nothing really new in it. A case of cashing in on the name really.

The 3rd one was again designed first and foremost for MP. This time they've got that part right again. Its great fun. The SP part was not so much an after thought as number 2, but it was designed 'backwards' as you guys put it. I agree that this is the wrong way to do it but they got what they wanted. A great MP game.
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I know all that, although it's never been different to anything out there really. I loved Halo 1, but for the single player being a different game to most, the Multiplayer was fun but never spectacular.

Doesn't change the fact it's nowhere near as good as people like to make out, in fact I'd class the whole thing as a good game, but far from being in the league of the likes of Rainbow 6 and Unreal Tourny, to name but two.
 
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