NOW PLAYING: HALO3 DLC
So the weekend provided a couple of entertaining hours playing Halo 3 multiplayer again. I have all the available maps for the game and thankfully Bungie’s playlists make it easy to play just the maps you’ve bought. So in the 18 months or so since I played Halo 3 on a regular basis, how do I think the multiplayer has held up in this post CoD world?.
Pretty good. Halo is one of the last old school games where there’s no really levelling up. I mean your skill progrsses through the rankings but there are no bonuses for doing so. Which means there are no penalties for only playing the game occasionally. Which is why Halo 3 is great for dipping in out of if you don’t have 2 years of spare time in order to unlock a gold AK47.
Ok, say for one thing- people are shy. I know I mute the headsets for a start but if you have a good game, no one really wants to partner up and so you have to go throigh the matchmaking again. Bungie’s matchmaking is a hell of a lot better than Epic’s though it seems a lot slower than Infinity Ward’s. At least Bungie want to say its because of my NAT so maybe I’ll tweak the settings on my router. Or maybe not. I still like the gameplay in CoD4 and CoD WaW but Bungie’s game seems more likley to partner me up to people in the same country- which is not something you could ever accuse WaW of doing during daylight hours. Its a pain when, in CoD WaW, you leap out a guy thinking you’ve gotten the drop on him but thanks to his lower ping he shot you last week.
A curious by product of having to go through matchmaking after every round is a propensity to play the same map three times in a row. I can say I love the Sandbox level, and am ambivalent towards the Assembly level. Bungie continue to support the game in a way that ridicule’s Activision and Infinity Ward’s decision to let CoD MW flounder with the same maps.
Halo 3 is a much simpler game relying on reflexes and coordination (two things I sorely lack) but at least you know you aren’t being hampered by an opponents perks. JUGGERN00bS! Of course If you get people who don’t think to get in the driver’s seat of a warthog so someone can get in the turret, you know that team is going to lose. Halo’s maps aren’t really big enough to support vehicle’s properly considering they don’t respawn very quickly compared to tanks in the Treyarch-developed CoD games.
I don’t think I’ll be playing H3 in a month, but I think I will be well prepped for ODST, the world’s biggest expansion pack when it is released later in the year.
UPDATE: Still playing and starting to get the hang of it a bit better. Loving it
April 20th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
It is unfortunate with the Mythic playlist that you only have three maps to choose from, and sandbox comes up 50% of the time. Try some of the normal playlists, they sometimes show up with mythic.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
You know, I never really got into Halo multiplayer. Dunno why. I wish I could quantify it. Single player was okay though.
I love me some COD4/5 however. I recently made the big step of deleting all the demos off my XBox’s 10gig hard drive and installing COD4. If you haven’t done this yet (I realize I’m probably wayyy late to the party here) do it! It especially pays for COD4 as it seems to access the DVD drive about 5 times per second resulting in a very noisy experience.
Now it’s quiet as a… dare I say it?… SNES!
April 20th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Installing is great- it actually made the loading screens in Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Boilts fly. Unfortunately Halo 3, is one game where installing slows down the loading even more so I’ve been putting up with the noise.
I did play some normal playlists and again I got the same map three times in quick succession
(and I’m sick of Guardian)
April 21st, 2009 at 2:10 am
I guess Halo just hates you. Try playing Far Cry 2′s multiplayer. It simultaneously turned me off of class based gameplay and made me appreciate Halo.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Anyone tried the L4D DLC yet? Or is it too early?
April 28th, 2009 at 5:05 am
I’ve been meaning to try it. I believe Cam now has the 360 version of the game and may talk a bit about over the next few weeks. Or not, the lazy sod.