Halo Infinite Discussion
By CyReN, June 10, 2018 in Halo General Discussion
1 hour ago, Mr Grim said:
Imma say this right now. Half life is the most overrated game series of all fucking time.
I think Half-life 2 suffers from pacing issues that get overlooked a lot. It has a much better structured story though.
I have no qualms with Half-life 1. I played it almost 20 years after it released and it's still a very enjoyable game.
Making Spartans Feel Powerful on a Large Scale Battlefield
Vehicles are inherent to large scale battles and melee is useless against vehicles. A Railgun that is built into the Spartan's armor and activated with the melee button would extend the range and increase the viability of his melee attack, allowing him to engage larger threats on the battlefield.
Crouch is useless against vehicles. Armor Lock that is activated by the crouch button allows the Spartan to engage approaching vehicles as well as disengage from distant vehicle fire.
If jumping is useful against vehicles then a Jetpack is even more so. A Jetpack that is activated by holding the jump button while airborne allows the Spartan to evade and gain position on ground vehicles as well as hijack aerial vehicles.
Jetpack, Armor Lock, and Railgun allow the Spartan to fly over, duck under, or go through vehicles on the large scale battlefield.
SpitFlame
16 hours ago, Ramirez77 said:
Yes...?
I'm not really a fan of Bioshock, and believe me I found you putting it over Ce just as objectionable. Combat too slow, enemies too tanky, ammo too scarce. I can comprehend why people like it, it's a very good survival-ish sort of game with amazing atmosphere and better than average story, but I don't get all the ZOMG BEST CAMPAIGN EVAR because it's really not..particularly if you're more a fan of traditional frenetic shooters instead.
Half-Life 1 is extremely rough around the edges and isn't even best game of it's era...not to say it's bad but no, there's no way in hell it's better than Ce under any kind of objective lens. Half Life 2 is a good game and I really should get around to replaying it, though it's also heavily linear in comparison and has less depth to enemy encounters. One thing that sets Halo apart from most other games is you don't just approach every single enemy with the mindset of "shoot it until it dies", enemies have very unique relationships with the various guns. Bioshock largely has this too but everything else about the game is a drag anyways.
Never played Crysis.
Though I'll say I don't feel the need to defend the second half of Ce's campaign either. I feel like the rehash argument only truly applies to Two Betrayals, but beyond that it's just so mediocre in comparison to the first half anyways it's not even worth my energy to object to the rehash complaints.
I'd really hate to criticize CE too much, since I genuinely do like its campaign, but in terms of level design and innovation, it's nothing special compared to Half Life or BioShock.
If you just want frenetic shooters like Doom or Halo, sure, you might not care for BioShock. The latter game requires a significant level of environmental awareness and planning ahead, and you generally have to rely on most of your guns and gadgets to get through smoothly (unless you're playing on a low difficulty setting). That's why some guns freeze enemies, other guns set traps, others hack into places. There's also plasmids that can effect the environment or distract enemies. In CE none of that happens; it's only really viable to run and gun (why else is there so much ammo in the game?), and stealth is practically nonexistent.
I don't see how CE's gameplay has as much depth as you're giving it. All the guns do the same thing: make enemies take damage. It's just a matter of how much. Sniper does most damage to the head; rockets do AOE damage; plasma guns do a lot of damage to shields but less so to health. It's pretty standard stuff. By "enemies having unique relationships with various guns," I assume you mean certain guns simply do more damage to certain enemies than others. Oh look, there's a Hunter; just gotta shoot it three times in the back with a pistol to kill it. No real creativity involved. (It would be cool if you could make Hunters go berserk and start attacking everything and everyone, but no, you just gotta shoot it). In that case, it absolutely is a matter of "shoot it until it dies." Like that's literally what Halo campaigns are: you kill waves of enemies. I'm really baffled by your claim here. What else is the point of shooting enemies in CE if not to kill them? To lure them away? You can do that in a lot of other games. Maybe you're doing some sort of challenge where you don't try to kill many enemies? It's dubious no matter how you shuffle it.
How does anything in CE's gunplay match the depth of the gravity gun from HL2? You don't even have to kill enemies with that thing, although you can; you use it to creatively manipulate the area around you: stack things together, move things out of the way, launch almost anything at enemies, etc. CE is the least linear of the games, but that doesn't matter so much when it has the least amount of valuable exploration. Seriously, what's the point in exploring CE's mostly empty environments? To find easter eggs that add nothing to the gameplay, I guess? In BioShock the level design is set up almost like a maze, kinda like Metroid. You explore, get rewarded for it, and then you have the advantage with knowledge of the layout of the map. Even the tanky enemies (I assume you mean the Big Daddies) reward you. You don't even have to kill most of them, but it's generally worth it.
I really shouldn't be surprised that people are picking Halo over Half Life on a Halo forum. Not sure what I expected.
Mr Grim
a nugget of blubber
Trust me crysis is overrated trash too. It's claim to game came solely from it's ability to melt most gpus when it came out.
10 hours ago, Mr Grim said:
In Half Life any combine soldier can be effectively dealt with just by shooting central mass with any gun. The guns are all just as effective at doing that, it feels largely interchangeable. And in turn they just attack you with the same hitscan guns.
In Halo that is not the case. Enemies have clear strengths and weaknesses. Even just "circle strafing a hunter with Magnum" is already doing much more than you would be in Half Life, and using the same tactic doesn't work against completely different enemies like Elites which would kick your shit in if you tried. You have to be completely mindful of both enemy and weapon choice. Now mix all these enemies together and there's plenty to consider in moment to moment combat.
You vastly over exaggerate the depth of the gravity gun in actual gameplay. Picking up and moving things is hardly relevant outside of puzzles (or extreme prop surfing exploits) and most objects outside of extremes like pop cans and sawblades are the same at killing enemies.
And don't go implying I'm a Halo forum kid while acting like Half Life is in some unnapproachable league of its own that another game like Halo couldn't ever conceivably be preferred over.
1 hour ago, SpitFlame said:
This hurts my feelings.
1 hour ago, Ramirez77 said:
Yeah straight up, half life 2 is easy as shit. The gravity gun is fun in that you can launch saw blades at people to kill them but it's mostly used for puzzles which are also easy to figure out. So easy that they get boring and repetitive.
I mean, I agree that Half Life's gunplay isn't that great, but why tell me that? I never defended it. I was talking about the gravity gun. It's a cool weapon because it's physics-based, and you can do stuff like levitate a piece of metal in front of you and use it as a shield, or throw explosive barrels instead of waiting for enemies to walk by them. It's certainly more fun to use than anything CE has. But in terms of deep gameplay I'm more focused on BioShock.
Here's the important difference between Halo and BioShock. In BioShock ever weapon has a purpose and you need to use all of them every once in a while; this makes sense since you have all your weapons available at once, so it lends itself to that design. Can't say the same thing for Halo, because you only have two weapon slots. None of the fights in CE (or any Halo game for that matter) can be all that strategic, since the developers can't know which guns you'll be carrying at any given time, save for the weapons you start with. So they have to streamline the gameplay where you can get through every fight with at least your pistol/AR. But in BioShock there are tons of scenarios where you have to figure out how to use your plasmids, weapons, and gadgets to overcome them. Some enemies require armor piercing rounds, others need to be burned or zapped before they become vulnerable, and others are best dealt with by sneaking up behind them.
You can try to play CE in some clever way, but simple headshots with a pistol and/or chucking grenades will solve 95% of the enemy encounters in that game, and there's such a constant stream of ammo that you never have to worry about running out. I guess for enemies in vehicles you need either the sniper or rocket, so... I guess that's better than nothing.
Turrets are big guns that are mounted to the map somewhere.
To begin operating a traditional turret, you walk up to it and hold X. Unlike traditional turrets, Promethean turrets can only be entered via use of the Tele Link armor ability. LB teleports the user inside of the Rover. RB teleports the user inside of the Slider. Both turrets appear as hovering metallic spheres with a red circle for a "face". The Rover hovers atop a telepad while the Slider hovers along an energy rail.
Traditional turrets are stationary, remaining fixed to a single position. Promethean turrets have an element of mobility. While inside the Rover, the user can teleport his turret-self between up to three telepads using LB and RB. While inside the Slider, the user can move his turret-self left or right along the energy rails using LB and RB.
Holding X teleports the user out of the turret, causing his player model to reappear on the map.
The Tele Link armor ability allows the player and the map to become one.
Crysis 1 is ok. I had a good time with it. Having your jaw on the floor for 5 hours is pretty neat. Only ok though.
_Synapse
The Library makes my brain bleed and the rest are just the first 5 missions with extra steps (minus Silent Cartographer)
Why though? I hear a lot of hate for the Library, but I never understood why. CE's flood are a decent change of pace from fighting covenant 24/7, and the encouraged play style against them is extremely chaotic and fun. It's like a perpetual multi-streak in Cold Storage FFA. As long as you don't prematurely walk into a section where 4 waves of flood spawn, you'll be fine. There's only one room in it that's unreasonably difficult to clear and that's because it's the only room in the game with unlimited spawns. (Room with narrowly opened doors that shut once you enter and 343 GS leaves you with flood spawning from two vents)
The last five missions make a lot of creative use of old map geometry and changes in sandbox. Seriously, the shotgun almost becomes your primary for the second half of the campaign. It makes each mission play way differently. There's a lot of brilliant encounter design in them too, like the huge assembly of covenant near the end of two betrayals, the spec-ops elites at the end of Keyes and at the beginning of the Maw, the Warthog run, and just a lot of the huge battles between the covenant and the flood.
On 1/9/2020 at 1:04 AM, SpitFlame said:
Seriously? Even from a gameplay standpoint, you think CE's campaign is better than freaking Half Life, BioShock, or the original Crysis?
I mean, you're entitled to your opinion, however objectionable it is.
Yeah. I never played much of Crysis, but I can definitely say that I find CE better than the other two.
CE's campaign has been (accidentally or not) designed to be almost perfect in every regard, especially in terms of enemy design, encounter design, and sandbox design. The distinctiveness of each enemy type, the effort required to take them down, and the effectiveness of the sandbox combine together beautifully. It comes to the point where even the slightest changes in an encounter make for a very different flow of combat.
The game manages to make the minute-to-minute combat enjoyable, to the point where mere permutations of said shooting are also enjoyable. I've beaten the campaign on legendary well over 20 times by now, and the game's depth only grows with each playthrough.
15 hours ago, _Synapse said:
Why though? I hear a lot of hate for the Library, but I never understood why.
Because there is no change in gameplay or scenery for 20+ minutes. All previous levels have changes in scenery or gameplay or both. e.g. "Halo" introduces Jackals, Banshees, Spirits, Warthogs, defending an area until extraction, snipers. Truth introduces stealth (it's in the game before but it's highlighted), turrets, Hunters, covenant ships, active camo (before becoming a repetitive corridor boi). Silent Cartographer is just all-round excellent in variety. Assault on the Control room has Wraiths, Ghosts, tanks and massive open skirmishes. 343 has the flood and a horror/creep element that is unique and awesome (also swamp).
The Library has no horror or creep, you just face wave after wave of zombies in the same 3 play areas 900 times. So fucking dull.
Two Betrayals/Keyes make sense to me because the dev team was small and Two Betrayals has some sick large scale battles.
But the Library is just butts.
Also there is literally not a single book or librarian in sight. Like, for fucks sake I came with my library card with full intent to use it, and where are they? Fuckin nowhere.
0/10. Terrible library.
The "horde mode" aspect of Library wouldn't be so insufferable if the level wasn't so excruciatingly boring from a design aspect. Obviously that's partially a limitation of the platform, but staring at one primary color down endless uninspired hallways with random geometrical protrusions of no conceivable point and no identifiable architecture to speak of does not an enthralling experience make.
Here's the question though. Cortana gets a rep as being a legendarily terrible level (I quite like it), but is it as bad or even worse than the library?
Cortana is awful gameplay-wise, but not that hard. None of H3 is, even on legendary.
Scenery and atmosphere wise I like it.
Hard Way
The Library is certainly repetitive, but I enjoy it, especially in MCC with the multi-kill medals going bonkers the whole time. To me it feels frenetic and fun and fast-paced the whole time, if a little repetitive and probably 1 floor too long. Cortana on the other hand is only aggravating. From Gravemind constantly yammering on and slowing you down, to the confusing layout and ambiguous pathing/direction, to the tanky as fuck enemies that post up and melt your shields instantly, to the poor checkpoint acquisition, to the general lack of lethality you have with your mag size and dps against the hordes of flood...the mission just sucks ass.
If Gravemind fucked off, the shooty-flood had about 1/3rd of their health, and it was more clear where you were supposed to go at any given time, the mission would be fine for the most part.
2 hours ago, Mr Grim said:
Yeah that level can eat a big bowl of butts. Has all the exact same problems as The Library.
1 hour ago, Hard Way said:
The Library is certainly repetitive, but I enjoy it, especially in MCC with the multi-kill medals going bonkers the whole time. To me it feels frenetic and fun and fast-paced the whole time, if a little repetitive and probably 1 floor too long.
That's exactly it. I wouldn't mind it but it legitimately feels like you play 1 level twice over. If it had some damn variety like a warthog drive bit (Halo 2 did this in Quarantine) or an outside area. Like it would be super cool if Guilty Spark said "I can't teleport you within the library, it's protections are too strong. I can get you outside."
Then you enter The Library from the outside after a bit, Guilty Spark complaining the whole time about the Flood spreading as your fight through a cool area (snow/swamp/Halo-style doesn't matter) then go inside, pummel your way through a few corridors before reaching an outside area where Pelican drops off a warthog, you get in with marines/co-op partner and have to run the gaunlet of rocket-wielding flood for a little bit then back on foot to assault the central complex.
Fortunately, Bungie basically did all of this for Halo 2 so I'm not salty about it.
The Hoverbike looks like a motorcycle with a sidecar hovering above the back end of the bike. One player drives the bike and one player rides in the floating sidecar.
The driver accelerates with LT and activates Quantum Tunnel with RT, allowing the vehicle and its occupants to pass through solid objects.
The sidecar occupant can detach from the bike with LT, becoming an independent vehicle. Once detached, the left thumbstick moves the hovering sidecar and the right thumbstick aims the mounted turret. If the bike passes underneath the detached sidecar, they will automatically reattach.
While attached to the bike, the sidecar occupant fires his hand weapon. While detached, the sidecar occupant fires the mounted turret. The Stinger faces downward while attached, disabled. Once detached, the Stinger faces forward, active, fired with RT.
Artist's rendition:
IMO Cortana is worse than The Library because, as said with The Library having the same scenery, Cortana is the same but also blends in with the Flood itself, and an ugly/hard to look at color at that.
The starting outside thing would be super cool. Like why can we teleport inside but only the 1st flood, in the middle of a room, and not the 4th floor? Give us an outside battle and then cut The Library in half and it probably would have been perfect. I actually really enjoy The Library and it's change of pace - but I also agree it's far too long and repetitive.
Two Betrayals is mostly a backwards AotCR but using some Banshees but it plays completely different. Same with the back half of Keyes + the Spec Ops Covenant makes it even harder.
Larry Sizemore
I actually like Cortana. Decent weapon variety in that one, and smaller encounter sizes/lower enemy aggression means it's the only level in Halo 3 that doesn't force you to carry a headshot weapon the entire time. (Floodgate and Halo will spawn like 20 combat forms and have them all rush you once they've been alerted, so carrying a BR is all but mandatory to cut a bunch of them down before they can get close.)
A full team of Brutes in an Invasion match consist of 6 pawns, 2 knights, and 1 queen. Low ranking brutes have no armor abilities or modifiers, just basic movement. The two medium ranking brutes can superjump, lunge, and ground pound. Up, over, down. The high ranking brute can deploy a rolling death wheel that is remotely steered left and right with LB and RB, allowing it to travel in any direction the user wants.
15 hours ago, Boyo said:
We already have chess in reach.
How about this: Invasion has two parts. The ground battle and space battle, both of which are played concurrently. Players need to accomplish things on the ground in order for the players in space to advance and vise versa. Like knocking out planetary shield generators for super carriers. Maybe the space players can attack the ship (includes landing inside) and knockout coms while the players on the ground do their thing. Both parts of the team have to accomplish their goals in order to advance to the next stage.
Like, let's say the first goal for the ground team is to capture and or blow up gates or something. The objective is space can be Slayer where the players dog fight around the ship until a certain amount of kills is reached (Meaning the defenders can technically win this round rather than just "stop" the attacker. So even if they advance to the next stage they won't have all the points. The defenders could then steal when the teams switch). Then the next objective for the ground team would be destroying shield generators so that the space team can enter the ship and destroy it from within. The ground objective while this is going on could then be tower defense in a way where they switch to being defenders and need to hold their position. The enemy team would then charge them and try to recapture the base. Another stage that the "attackers" could lose while still completing the match.
Hell, let's have the ground players start in space, but drop pod down to the planet, first person odst cutscene style.