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!
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.
With the explosion of Multiplayer gaming these days, sometimes the old hands forget what it is like to be the new guy. So if you’re new to the world of online gaming, or have been away for a while, here’s what you need to know.
1. You are a n00b. Whatever you do, you are a n00b, even if you’ve been playing the game for years, you are a n00b. You are a n00b if you die a lot, a n00b if you win and a n00b and if you do anything that results in beating another player with a higher ranking fairly and squarely, you are a n00b.
See also nub, newb, noob, just got the game, huh?
2. You use hax. If you play the game using elements placed there for use by the developers of the game, you hax. If you use last stand, you are hax. If you use a scope on an AK47, you are hax. If you use anything at all other than hip firing a bolt action rifle, you are hax. See also get some skill, grow a dick, etc
3. You are cheating. If you use a rocket launcher against another player, or a grenade launcher, you are cheating. Even if they just used the same tactic against you, YOU my friend, are the cheat, you cheater. Mr Cheater C Cheaterton III (really you’re the IV, but you’re such a cheater).
4. You are gay. Even if you’re married with six kids and had more tail than everyone else in the game (which wouldn’t need to be all that much), you are gay. See also: gh3y, WoW
5. You are of colour, Mr Albino from Sweden
6. You are lagging. Even though you’re not. See glitching
7. You are glitching. Despite the fact that network communication iver the internet is quite a complicated and marvelous thing, you are the reason the connection is poor and that they are losing. See also lagging
8. You are camping. This means you have found a quiet spot to fire off a sniper rifle and that your opponents are too lazy to come around behind you to take you out.
9. Bullshit. Whenever someone thinks they are better than you and you kill them, it is obviously bullshit. See also: hax, n00b, lagging, glitching
10. You should develop an interest in the thoughts of 12 year old children. Otherwise you will fail to appreciate the rich social commentary that is only possible from players of this age. Children say the darnest things such as “fuck you, you black jew fag hax nub lagger.” It’s so cute. They think they’re people.
11. If the child in question is headset enabled, you are in for a treat. Not only will you get an aural Live Journal update, but you may also experience the joy that is the favourite music of this child either through an MP3 playing while the child plays, or if you’re really lucky, a live rendition of said child’s favourite song or songs (though it’s usually just the same song over and over again. Actually it’s usually only the first verse over and over).
12. Fuck IWNet. See also Fuck Kotick, Fuck Activision, Fuck Infinity Ward and Fuck Bowling up his Fat Pipe.
So there you have it. The reasons why I never plugged in my headset to my consoles or PC, the reasons to keep out of team chat and the reasons why single player games will never die.
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
We have a quick look at Halo 3 ODST. Warning- audio quality is a bit off for the first few minutes, but it improves. Unfortunately, the quality of conversation throughout is consistent.
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.
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
Roll up, Roll up to the one and only genuine DLCarnival. Yes I have gone mad and decided to fill in my current game playing drought by downloading more and more DLC for my favourite games and skipping the games I don’t want to play. A few weeks ago, it was the Call of Duty World at War map pack. Before that, it was Fallout 3′s Operation Anchorage. This week, its Halo 3 maps and Guitar Hero World Tour songs, two games I haven’t touched this year, but have been meaning to go back.
Why? Prince of Persia sits on the entertainment unit, its surface barely scratched (metaphorically). I just don’t fell like it right now. I know its good and I’ll probably have a go soon but I really just want to shoot my fellow man in the face (or more likley, be shot in the face by a whiny punk). So despite enjoying the maps for CoD WaW, I realise that I can’t compete with the levelled up dufus who in habit these games ever since CoD4 removed any casual fun from the series.
So Halo 3 got the downloads. There are new Gears of War 2 maps and Killzone 2 maps available now or coming soon, but those games just aren’t as much fun online as Halo 3 (with the headset switched off). There’s a rip off of The Guild with 30′something Halo 3 players that’s not really that good, but considering The Guild also isn’t really that good we’ll just suppose its accurate. I wouldn’t know as I don’t play games in clans, guilds or any other loose confederation of nerds where teamwork means teabagging. I just play to have fun. So i’ll play these maps for an hour or two and then move on.
Then on GHWT I will just buy a song, play it once and move on. I would like to play the James Bond Theme and the Queen songs (some of which i already have on Singstar). That’s it. I might even try to play a bit more of World Tour mode, but I’m not counting on anything.
Why play the DLC when there are so many new experiences coming out such as Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV and more? Because none of it speaks to me as a gamer. Nothing says, “play me.” Street Fighter might as well say “bite me,’ for all the appeal it has. In prepping for a podcast a few months pack, the three of us looked through the coming soon section of EB’s US website. We really couldn’t find much after Killzone 2 that appealed to any of us. Expect lots of demoes Focus Tested in the next few months. The one shining light on the new release beacon in the near term is Infamous. We’re all pretty jazzed for that. But maybe its because there’s no Crackdown 2 announced. The web believes its coming but my spare pants are still on Defcon 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
