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The Podcats: Reach and Move

Talking about Move whilst playing Halo Reach

Just a note: I will be on holiday for the next month. There are scheduled updates (at least one a week) until I’m back at home.

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Review: HALO REACH

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Bungie. Published by Microsoft

After five Halo games, Bungie are riding off into the sunset, off to work on multi-platform games with Activision. Reach is their swansong to the franchise that took them from a Mac game developer to makers of the defining console FPS franchise. Bought by Microsoft and later gaining their independence, Reach is the best thing Bungie have done, and that’s no mean feat.

A prequel of sorts to the Masterchief starring trilogy of Halo 1-3, Reach puts you in the suit of Noble 6, replacement trooper in a squad stationed on the planet Reach. At the start you think you’re dealing with rebel colonists but things get shitty very quickly when you find yourself defending against a Covenant invasion. Being a prequel, it’s not a spoiler to say things don’t end well for Reach, but Halo Reach is a game where the journey is its own rewards.

Being a Halo game, you can shoot and melee opponents, drive vehicles (and steal them from foes), activate the odd switch and take control of some turrets. Reach adds new weapons and new vehicles to the Halo formula, but also adds armour abilities such as jet-packs, sprinting, holograms (to draw fire away from yourself), shields and armour lockdown (and no, I still can’t work out what the hell that last one does). If you’ve played a Halo before, you know pretty much what to expect. Bungie have given fans what they expect, but added new elements to the mix.

Each Halo game seems to have fun in rebalancing the weapons in the game. Reach gives us the DMR, which is more like an M1  or M14 semi-automatic rifle than the battle rifle of old and occasionally the grenade launcher which fires a bouncing shell. There’s still the standard assault rifle, a scoped pistol, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and a new grenade launcher on the human side, but it’s the Covenant who have received the most munitions upgrades. Easily my favourite is the Needle Rifle which is like the Needler but with a slower rate of fire, a scope and longer range. The Beam rifle and the carbine don’t seem to be in Reach in any form but the plasma rifle now has an automatic rifle version in the form of the Plasma repeater. The energy sword from Halo 2 and the Gravity Hammer for Halo 3 are back. Like ODST, there is again no dual wielding of pistols.

The above-mentioned new things include being able to drive more prosaic vehicles like Forklifts and trucks as well as Covenant Revenant (which replaces the Choppers from Halo 3) but the big ticket item are the Space Battles. Yes, you get to fly a starfighter and for about 20 minutes the game becomes Ace Combat or Rogue Squadron. While the game seems to made it very easy for you to hit anything, it is very well done and just shows that Bungie have taken the “cut and paste” design criticism over the years to hear and taken positive action.

So that’s the single-player. There’s this other thing that I hear the kids are into called co-op. Four friends can apparently play through the single-player campaign as a team, though with difficulty that scales with the extra players. I haven’t tried Reach with coop but I did find Coop useful for beating tough areas in Halo 3. There’s also Firefight which is an extension of the mode from ODST (really the only new thing ODST brought to Halo’s multiplayer), now with matchmaking.

But while I ignore most games’ online components, Halo isn’t one of them. These days, most games offer ‘new takes’ on multiplayer but in the end, most gamers stick to one or two favourite modes. Reach, whilst keeping the best of earlier games in the series, has a fair few new modes worth investigating. The beta introduced players to the objective-based Invasion mode, which pitted Spartans Vs Elites for the first time in Halo multiplayer. There’s also my new favourite, Headhunter, which is like a mix of Team Deathmatch, Headquarters and Capture the Flag. Each time you kill someone,  they drop a flaming skull. To actually score points, you have to collect the skull and head to the randomly appearing collection zones for your score to be counted. Of course, if you die, those skulls fall wherever and you score nothing. And anyone can collect your fallen skulls and claim them. This is fun until all the kiddies start stealing your skulls. Mates don’t steal Mate’s skulls. Mate!

There has been some criticism of the number of maps included, some of which are all created on Forge World (bundled tools allowing you to build your own levels) but at the end of the day, whilst MS probably have designs on selling a few map packs, they are also allowing you to play other people’s maps for free (hi, Activision). Bungie have, by far, the best console network code outside of games using dedicated servers and the matches I’ve had have all been lag- free so far, even when my connection wasn’t always optimum (ie- my wife watching streaming videos on her computer-”Honey, I’ve taken out the trash but you may possibly be lagging me, dear”). A large local player-base probably helps reduce lag as well and I hope MoH and CoD developers remember to add those filters into their matchmaking solutions at launch (it took Infinity Ward several months to patch MW2 with that ‘feature’).

So whilst the gameplay in Halo has always been lauded, on area that hasn’t always had an easy ride was graphics. The first two games looked great on the original Xbox (though Halo 2 did have that horrid texture pop where the high resolution texture would load a little later than was optimum), but Halo 3‘s graphics had a far more mixed reception with horrid looking human characters. Reach looks, in a word, superb. Every model looks great, every texture detailed and apart from a few minor framerate hitches, the game runs near perfectly. And at 720p (Halo 3 was derided by pixel counters for its sub-HD resolution). The particle effects have also had a noticeable jump in quality and apart from a motion blur effect that takes some time to adjust to, this game looks better than not only all previous Halo titles, but almost any other Xbox 360 game. Gears of War,  with it’s corridor based gameplay, still has the edge but without having to draw the vast open-air vistas as seen in Reach.

Sound is again great. We have an almost totally new score from Marty O’Donnell which only occasionally cribs from the Halo catalogue and some top-notch voice work all round. But the sound effects, always a high point of the series, sound beefier here than any previous game. Also, the low-gravity level has some serious audio processing that gives that space so much more atmospheric than you’d normally find (despite the literal lack of atmosphere in that level).

After playing it, you can’t help feel this is what Halo 2 needed to be, a Halo game that everyone felt beat the original game. I didn’t feel the buzz that I got when I got the first Halo game, but I didn’t feel shortchanged in the way that some fans felt they were by Halo 2, Halo 3 and ODST. It offers an excellent single player with replayability, co-op, firefight and excellent multiplayer. You sure get a lot out of your $60 (OK- add a few bucks for XBL Gold).

Controller1.com Rating 3/3 (Get this unless you really dislike Halo for whatever reason, or you can’t stand  shooters)

Now Playing: Anything with Halo in the title but not Reach

Yes, I’m that guy. The one replaying Halo 3 and Halo:ODST before Reach. As I write this, it’s now two days since Reach was released and my copy has just turned up. But I have the last two bits of ODST to replay and I liked them so much I just want to give it another go.

HALO 3

The thing that struck me playing through Halo 3 again was not how ugly the human faces are. Nor the the occasionally stiff animation. What leapt out was the fact that the levels nearly always followed the same formula. Start at point A- go to point B. Then go back to point A. From a production point of view its fantastic since you get to reuse the assets without the sections being cut and paste (another Bungie favourite). But the Halo deja vu persists.

Of course, Halo 3 has one of my favourite additions to the series- The scarab battles. I loved these first time around because Halo is one of the few games where replaying a large-scale battle can be fun until you beat them. The second playthrough (on Normal again since my first attempt to replay on Heroic met with failure) was easier and I tended not to get stuck going through the same section again and again. I still feel Bungie has made these huge levels, filled them with enemies, yet made it too easier to skip over some great battles.

HALO: ODST

2009′s full price expansion is still controversial in its brevity. But there are some who absolutely love the campaign that’s shorter than the average height of the finalists of the Herve Villechaise Cosplay contest. And I am one of them. ODST breaks up the action into sections of traversing the overworld and then intense battles told in flashback. The overworld is rather meh but the flashback battles are fantastic and are some of my favourite in the series. Oh dear, the facial models are uglier than the Elephant Man’s stuntman. Even ones modelled after Tricia Helfer and Nathan Fillion (he’s so dreamy). While hiring expensive voice actors (and their likenesses) for an expansion pack (we have three of the stars of TV’s Firefly here) might seem excessive, they do a very nice job.

I still like ODST but I’m powering through since I’ve heard only good things about Reach. Another 45 minutes and I can start!

The Top Games of 2009 According to this Site

Controller1.com’s top games of this past year.

Sleeper of the Year (aka The game that came out of nowhere, the one you expected to ignore but couldn’t because of the great word of mouth)
RED FACTION: GUERRILLA. Volition and THQ’s third RF game came out of nowhere to be one hell of a blast of supercharged entertainment. Sure, Volition misunderstood the difference between easy and insane. But the core mechanics of the game and the freedom you had to progress meant few stumbling blocks to gaming nirvana. I have no idea what the story was about so let’s assume it’s rather ordinary and skip to the good bits: blowing things up. I can’t name a game where destruction has been done better.
Runner Up: Borderlands

Overhyped Game of the Year (AKA The game that was expected to make coffee, bend time and rule all but in the end was a bit meh)
KILLZONE 2. Sony and Guerrilla Game’s follow up to the justifiably ignored Killzone was meant to be many things. Here’s what it was and wasn’t.
IT WAS: A decent FPS, put together well and looked beautiful.
IT WASN’T: a system seller, or a particularly great game.
Year of PS3 got off to a false start and was almost disqualified from the race with KZ2.
Runner up: Scribblenaughts

Most Disappointing Game (AKA Games with buzz and hope that just didn’t deliver)
Wolfenstein Coulda, should but didna. Wolfenstein squandered the hope that long term fans had for a worthwhile follow up to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. What they got was a good single player that seemed to need a teeny bit more polish and content and a terrrrrrrrrible multiplayer. Do you get this game? Do you like MP more than SP? Flip a coin.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2

MOST IMPROVED (AKA They fixed the shit in the first one that was busted)
Assassin’s Creed II. Oh Lord is it ever so much better than the first game. In every single way, this game is more fun than the original. The content is better organised so that the game is not “here are 10 things you can do, go do each of them 500 times.” The whole concept is still a bit silly and Kristen Bell’s character looks like she had a lip transplant from the original Kryten but overall any game that has Uncharted Guy doing voices is good.
Runner Up: Uncharted 2

BEST DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT: SHADOW COMPLEX

BF1943, GTA episodes and Trials were there but Shadow Complex was by far the best DL only game released in 2009. A Metroidvania that’s probably more palatable to a modern audience (since it has Uncharted Guy doing voices, of course), the game managed to astound, entertain, stir up controversy and offer a good few hours of gameplay.
Runner Up: Halo 3 ODST (no, not really, but it should have been)

Best Game Only on Wii: NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS WII
OK, so it was really only one of two Wii games I bought this year. But it was the one I didn’t sell (HotD: Overkill). It’s frustrating as all fuck, has a save system that’s as pointless as the one in Dead Rising and I’m not playing it right now. Why am I not playing this right now? I don’t know.

Best Game Only on PS3: UNCHARTED 2
Sony had two really good games this year. Uncharted 2 and Infamous. Infamous is blown out of the water by Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 is the quintessential adventure game. Whereas the first game promised platforming but delivered a gears of War Clone, the sequel mixes things up so successfully that you never realise when the game is going to go from one style to another. yes, you know at least once per chapter there will be something you’re standing in collapsing around you leaving you hanging from one arm but that’s beside the point.

Best Game Only on Xbox 360: SHADOW COMPLEX The 360 almost had a gap year with the only big exclusives being Forza 3 (which a LOT of people love and recognise as the driving game of 2009 to play), Halo 3: ODST which really was just a bit too much recycling with such a short single player campaign.

Best Game Only on PC- this is the year 2009.

Best Game on Everything: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. IW may have pissed off as many people as they please with MW2. There’s the story that eschews any semblance of realism for moments of turkey-slapping-a-sleeping-lion thrills, OTT Multiplayer perks and combos, poor matchmaking and the various PC issues that made the game into a must play for many into a meh for some.

Best Pissing Away Goodwill. TIE: Infinity Ward and Activision.
Infinity Ward for doing the dirty on PC gamers and Activision for driving Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero into the ground. Oh, and splitting Starcraft II into three different games.

Most Improved: Sony. They cut the PS3 price from hysterical to merely funny (after three years it’s finally at the PS2 launch price), released the Slim and released Uncharted and Infamous. It still takes way too long to download and install a patch and most people still spend more on Blu Ray than they do on PS3 games, and PS3 ports are still often slightly lagging behind 360 in terms of graphics but it’s basically where it should have been three years ago. Just in time for God of War III

Most Potential for 2010: Microsoft. Really, they sold the 360 well but didn’t release that many 1st party games so you’d think game over, but then you see they have Crackdown 2, Halo Reach and Alan Wake. And then there’s Natal.

Least Potential for 2010: Wii
So we have a vitality sensor as the big piece of hardware? Really? Few games still support Motion Plus. Few gamers care and the signs are than grandma doesn’t either.

Game of the Year: Uncharted 2. Are you at all surprised? Naughty Dog redeem themselves after the disasters that were the Jak and Daxter sequels. This is the only game this year that a non-gamer will sit and watch as if it were a movie and enjoy it.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2.

It was a pretty good year overall. The only disappointing part of the year was the end. While we had some cracking titles such as Uncharted 2, ODST, Left 3 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed II, MW2 and Super Mario Wii it still felt like something was missing.Oh that’s right about 2 or 3 more must-haves in the lead up to Christmas that we wouldn’t get to play till 2010 anyway. Having them all come out in the first quarter of 2010 seems to have upset the natural balance.

REVIEW: HALO 3 ODST

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Bungie. Published by Microsoft Games Studio

So Halo 3 ODST is here. Here are the facts.

1. It’s an expansion pack to Halo 3, using its tech but telling a side story that occurs between the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3

2. The Multiplayer is basically all of Halo 3′s multiplayer maps, plus all of the Halo 3 DLC maps plus three new maps. It even comes on a separate disc.

3. There is a new Firefight mode which is much the same as Horde mode in Gears 2 or the Zombies in CoD WaW

4. Though the multiplayer is mostly recycled, the main campaign is rather short and it was conceived as a cheap expansion, it is full price

5. The game is excellent

6. No Flood. No Cortana (the level). No Library.

So you play as ‘Rookie,’ seemingly  the only survivor of an ODST squad who’ve landed in New Mombasa shortly after the Covenant attacked the city. Your squad is no where to be seen and your job is to traverse the enemy-infested streets of New Mombasa searching for clues as to your team’s whereabouts. Once you’ve found an item belonging to one of them, you’ll experience a flashback to what happened to that trooper. Then you’ll be playing as that trooper for a mission.

So there are two parts to the game. The first part: Rookie search for clues across town  at night and having encounters with Covenant troops along the way starts off to be slow, confusing and not all that much fun. You need to use your scanner (pressing X) which lightens dark areas and draws colourful outlines around everything (and looks like a GRAW game). You also quickly learn that the health system has gone back to a similar style to that of Halo 1. You don’t have a shield now, just stamina that will renew itself if you can stop taking damage for a bit. Once your stamina is depleted, your health will start to suffer and will only regenerate if you can find a health pack. Thing is, they don’t obviously look like a health back so by the time you have memorised what they look like, you will be finished the game. Did I mention the game is short? The distances you will cover on foot start to irritate until you start finding Covenant ghost’s lying about the place (you can’t use any of the other vehicles strewn throughout New Mombasa). Once you do start using them, they time you spend travelling in New Mombasa decreases dramatically as does the amount of time you’ll spend fighting the small groups of Covenant on the city streets. A collectible in the game are the segments of audio diaries hidden in the city documenting one woman’s story as she auditions for The Archers (I guarantee no one who reads this blog will get that one so move on). They are similar to the info drops in Infamous. They give the game some character but are ultimately just something you look for if you absolutely have to do everything in a game. Keep looking and you’ll find a clue to the whereabouts of a crew member and then that’s when the game resumes being awesome.

Once you’ve found the clue, you’ll then play a mission as one of the ODST team members and these are uniformly excellent and proof that Bungie still know how to put together a really tight game. You will also get a chance to drive warthogs, Scorpion tanks and Banshees in some of these missions as well as use some of the bigger guns the Haloverse has to offer. Apart from the differences in ODST troops’ abilities from a Spartan such as Masterchief, these play like the more epic battles in any Halo game.

Also on disc one of this 2-disc set is Firefight mode. Here, you and/or some friends (and they need to be friends due to the lack of matchmaking offered for this mode), you take on successive waves of Covenant in a very similar way to Horde mode in Gears of War 2, Zombie mode in Call of Duty World at War and of course, Left 4 Dead. This was also the subject of our most recent podcast if you’re at all interested.

Disc 2 is known as the Mythic Disc although it shows up as Halo 3 on your Xbox dashboard. Unlike the actual Halo 3 disc, this disc will load faster if you install it on your hard drive. It includes all of the original Halo 3 multiplayer maps plus all of the DLC maps (of which there were quite a few) and 3 new maps. These still hold up well and as not every fan of Halo 3 picked up the DLC, at least here you can be sure of a sizeable population of players with all the maps.

Presentation is pure Halo 3. The same tech, prettied up in places with its maligned sub HD resolution and rock-steady frame rate. There are some ugly textures visible here and there but overall the look is colorfully appealing- though the poor face of Buck seems out of place on such a polished package. Maybe it’s better if Bungie stick to guys wearing masks. The user interface is a little slicker than previous Halo games since it’s now 3D in places and the cinematics in general are nicer. There’s even a nice little tag scene after the credits which is well worth watching. Sound is phenomenal as usual, and we have a voice cast including three guys from Firefly, Caprica 6 and Uncharted guy.

Have you heard the game is short? The package on it’s own is actually great value. A great single player campaign, plus a ton of multiplayer maps and a great coop mode in Firefight.I already had all of the multiplayer maps and I could complain about that but then I also felt that way when I bought Orange Box and ended up with another copy of both TF2 and HL2. There’s no Crackdown 2 multiplayer beta (that would be ironic) included but there is a Halo Reach beta invite included so there’s that as well.

So yes it is worth it but not essential. If you like shooters and own a 360- you should get this if you haven’t already. Would I buy a 360 just to play ODST? No- Halo 3 is still a grander experience. This just gives you more of what you want, which does me fine.

Controller1.com rating 2/3

E3 2009- part 1. I Need to Change my Pants

Controller1.com is not a news site, its a blog so rather than being your one stop shop for E3 news, we’ll just have some opinion. The show hasn’t opened yet but half the big publishers have already had conferences and briefings so I’m going to change my pants, recap my reactions to the news from MS, Activision, EA Ubisoft and others.

EA

Lego Rock Band and The Beatles Rock Band shows that EA and Harmonix can do the exact thing as Activision/ Neversoft- that is make a game once  and then reskin 15 times. Brutal Legend was demoed and I still don’t know what the hell the game is about- apart from Jack Black being involved somehow.  Is it a driving game? An action game? Saboteur from Pandemic has been on my radar for a while and hopefully its not just Mercenaries 2.5. Mass Effect 2 looks to have more awesome than an awesome star going supernova. Crysis 2 is coming and its on consoles as well. APB (from the makers of Crackdown) coming early in 2010 should be fun. I might need to get a gaming PC this year.
Dante’s Inferno seems to be another hellish God of War game but Bioware made a splash with the Old Republic trailer that made people who want Ewok porn care for Star Wars again.

Left 4 Dead 2!!! A Valve game where there’s been a yearly update. And it looks like it does everything Dead Rising didn’t do. I am looking forward to this in a way most Valve MP-focused games don’t ‘click’ for me.

Ubisoft

Red Steel 2 looks like Motion plus might actually be a worthwhile pickup for the Wii. But while Assassin’s Creed 2, if it fixes the flaws of the first game might be a great game, its Splinter Cell Conviction that looks to be THE Ubisoft game you buy at full price. The rest, you just wait for a few months to get it for a third of the launch price.

Activision

Wow, another Guitar Hero game. I could pass this year and just stick with Beatles Rock Band. Tony Hawk Ride, with its fancy controller, doesn’t appeal at all. But Modern Warfare 2 looks just as good as anything Infinity Ward have done to date. It will be a HUUUUGE game in 2009. Wolfenstein looks great, despite the fact the trailer tries to hide the fact its a WWII game.

Microsoft
Halo 3: ODST came and went which should be fun, but then Bungie and MS are doing Halo: Reach.
Buy ODST and you get a MP beta invite for Halo: Reach so things look interesting. Forza 3 for you hardcore racing fans will make the 360-owning revheads reaching for the tissues. Considering its likelihood to go up against GT5, it has better be impressive.

MS also showed off their new camera based controller. The thing is, it doesn’t use an actual controller. Natal looks to be goofy, Eyetoy-esque and fun for all the family. There needs to be more info. Peter Molyneux was there to talk about his new project with a boy called Milo. Its a virtual prisoner in a pit so the sadists should be satisfied. I’m still wondering why you would want to with Twitter and Facebook with your 360 but if it lets you do screenshots for sites like this, I’ll be interested. Alan Wake is coming early next year, and I continue to be intrigued but there’s Crackdown 2 from Ruffian games. Not only am I interested, but Cameron won’t be shutting the fuck up about this for the next year.

Oh and there’s a Metal Gear game on 360 featuring Raiden. To me, it sounds like a Ninja Gaiden style game but that’s just pure speculation.

And the show hasn’t even started yet.

NOW PLAYING: Prince of Persia, Halo 3 DLC

The new Prince of Persia kinda crept on us like a stealth camouflaged Pedo bear. I was expecting a cel-shaded Assassin’s Creed and what we have Prince of Persia Sands of Time with an even more automated control scheme. Its like trying to type something with auto-fill on. Predictive text may be great on phones, but its not so great when you’re trying to pull off complex moves smoothly.

The new PoP apparently does away with death. Bullshit. All it does is put more checkpoints in and cover the fact with a cutscene. You will be watching that short non-skippable cutscene of Elika grabbing your hand many, many,  many, many times. Why? Because this is a game that expects you to ignore your instinct whilst playing.

Its hard to describe. In order to pull of the move list, you need to unlearn. Need to double jump? Press A to jump then Y to have Elika use her mojo to give you an extra distance boost. Jump across a chasm and press A to jump up? No the game does it for you automagically. If you press A again, you’re jumping backwards to your temporary death.

I’m very conflicted about playing this game any further. I like it and it shits me to tears within the space of five minutes. Its a great game to play in 20 minute installments. The reason you can’t play it any longer than that is because you realise that you’re spending so much time on one jump sequence because the controls don’t quite do what you need them to. Prince of Persia is in fact the best argument for Mirror’s Edge using a first-person perspective.

PoP is the last 2008 game I have left to play and is the last of my gaming Xmas pressies I had to play. We have a long weekend coming up so it will be interesting to see how much time PoP actually gets. Right now its level pegging with Halo 3 time.

So Grifball. What the fuck is that? I played this as part of the Mythic Map pack last night and its basically a room where two teams are only armed with melee weapons such as the Gravity Hammer and the swords. It was fun apart from one of the few instances of lag I’ve noted in Halo 3. Like, it was really really bad lag. There’s a bomb in there as well but dying when enemies were nowhere near me made it a little confusing.

The other team modes are just plain fun. Its a pity the bigger team games are so objective based as I want to shoot more than I want to capture flags. The question remains, why is Halo 3 easier to play (its P2P just like most live games) online than CoD WaW, where there is a noticeable lag between you shooting and hitting an opponent.

I’m kinda waiting for something to hit me in the face. Hopefully Infamous will be that game as its the only game on my radar for the month of May. Maybe I’ll look at some more DLC stuff like Burnout Paradise Cops and Robbers pack. Part of me wants to replay some faves like Bioshock, Crackdown and even the campaign from Halo 3.

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

Halo 3

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Bungie. Published by Microsoft.
The fight has been finished… Until the next one comes out…

In 2004, Halo 2 came out. The sequel to 2000′s Halo: Combat Evolved was a huge smash and the killer Xbox Live app until recently. It also had a seemingly truncated single player experience that, while it avoided much of the repetition of levels from the first game, seemed to just peter out, like the first season finale of Heroes.

Halo 3 is, quite simply, the best action game on the Xbox 360. It is probably the best game on Xbox 360 and one of the best games since Bioshock (yes, but since that was the best game since 2004′s Half Life 2, it’s still saying something). Halo 3 makes Gears of War seem like a placeholder rather than a great game in its own right (which it is, but Halo 3 has raised the bar higher).

The story is fitting, and makes more sense that either of the first two games. The voice acting is great, helped by a fantastic script (even though the hero character says all of 5 lines in the whole game), it’s the ‘extras’ that bring this world alive. Graphics don’t immediately strike you as being great, but the “Halo 2 in HD” epithet fades as soon as you look closer. The human characters still have some strangely bad facial models and frankly appalling animation in the cinematics, but the aliens, vehicles, environments and props look fantastic, with a draw distance most games would give their right thread to feature. The audio is another drawcard with a score that will be referenced by gamers for years to come. FX and Voice work are great, but it does seem if some of the weapons are a tad quieter than you’d expect. The game also runs with a silky smoothness- not running at 60 fps, but it never dips below a solid 30, even in Multiplayer.

Multiplayer is of course one of the Halo series main claim to fame. Even if Halo 2 single player was not as great as the original, Xbox Live Halo 2 was brilliant. Halo 3 on live, whether it be online co-op, deathmatch or team games, is sublime. Yes, you have the racist 12-year olds, but you have them in every PC shooter I’ve ever played so deal with it, and you can mute individual players easily.

Apart from the second last level of this game, i can find very little criticize. If you hate previous Halo games, Halo 3 won’t change your mind, but if you liked Halo:CE or Halo 2 at all, you will LOVE this.

I can’t recommend this game enough. The worst part is trying to work out what to play next!

C1 Rating: 3/3