Wolfire Games Forums

If you play online there aren't any idiot grunts running round. Find a server with real players, or get some friends to play with you. Either way, it is fun once you get real players. For instance, me and my friend played online not that long ago, we were on turf (multiplayer map pack) and it was 4 against 2, the 2 happened to be pros at it and always worked together so they were nearly unstoppable, you'd think that'd be annoying. But on campaign I'm always unstoppable, so it was fun to be on the loosing side. We did kill them alot, but they killed us more. 4 against 2, and the 2 won.

I don't care how cheap they were, it was fun. Especially once I got my hands on the rocket launcher and blew them both to halo delta and back.

Halo's gameplay is awesome. The vehicle combat is perfectly intergrated into the game, you have rechargable shields, it's rediculesly easy to aim, you don't have to fight with the controls, throwing grenades is easy to do because they are on seperate triggers, the guns are awesome. I mean, what fps games could match Halo, everybody liked it. How about Marathon, I didn't even know that existed, if they released Marathon 2 I bet just as many people would have no idea what the game is, nobody would play it. Actually, that's probably because it came out for the mac only, what an awful gaming machine.

Zantalos wrote:Halo's gameplay is awesome. The vehicle combat is perfectly intergrated into the game, you have rechargable shields, it's rediculesly easy to aim, you don't have to fight with the controls, throwing grenades is easy to do because they are on seperate triggers, the guns are awesome. I mean, what fps games could match Halo, everybody liked it.

Basically, it's PATHETICALLY EASY, so everyone enjoyed it, to sum up your statements. Nice.

Zantalos wrote:How about Marathon, I didn't even know that existed, if they released Marathon 2 I bet just as many people would have no idea what the game is, nobody would play it. Actually, that's probably because it came out for the mac only, what an awful gaming machine.

In order...
A: Marathon indeed existed, and pwned.
B: Marathon 2 was also released, as was Marathon Infinity. Marathon 2 was the best.
C: Plenty of people know what the game is. Just because you don't doesn't make you everybody.
D: Die.

lol, dude nobody knows about marathon. The only people who might know are like 20% of mac gamers and as gamers as a whole they only make up about 1% of the gaming sphere. Thus, only .6% of gamers actually know about marathon, at least before Halo came out. Halo is the only reason Marathon is at all known to gamers now.


And why would having a fun and easy to operate control system be bad? By making it easy? Would the game be alot better because you'd have to switch to grenades in order to throw them, if the sensitivity on your weapon aim was awful, if you had to run around for armor packs everytime you got shot, and if the guns were not awesome? I mean, that's the opposite of what I said and apparently having all that stuff made the game too easy and thus, stupid.

I guess Marathon gameplay was awesome because the guns were retarded and the controls were terrible.
Booyah, I like your taste.

Actually, yes, it would. If you had to switch to grenades in order to throw them, it might make them slightly less stupidly overpowered. If your enemies had any decent dodging ability so that a retarded nubcake couldn't just shoot blindly in their general direction and kill them all, it would be much more fun. If your shield didn't recharge so damn fast, it might be almost a challenge. And those "awesome guns" you love so much are based, once more, on Marathon's guns -- even the Mjolnir suit is based on the Mjolnir cyborgs, one of whom is the player character of the Marathon series.

Zantalos, how many people know about Lugaru? Does that make it a bad game? Hardly. Think before you make fatally flawed syllogisms, please.

Dude, I never said that Marathon was bad, I said that nobody played it even though Halo is awesome. Unlike you, I wouldn't diss a sequel, simply because it improves on it's predecessor. I would not diss Lugaru 2 just because combat is made easier, if the controls were more smooth or if the health was fully recoverable, without the use of map ends or med packs (I realize there are no med packs in Lugaru, I'm joking about how med-packs would make the game cool).
Oh, and "syllogisms" is not a word for me, I have to look it up now, thanks.


Well ok bright eyes, I guess the perfect game for you, where aiming is terrible, the grenades must be "equiped" to throw, where you have to scavange the map for health and armor, and where enemies flail rediculessly in and out of cover so as not to get hit by your "blind fire," would be Medal Of Honor. Goodluck with that.

Personally, I enjoyed the Marathon games much more than Halo, primarily because of the writing and puzzle-solving. However, many of the criticisms of Halo here are not fair. On Legendary mode, Halo is about as difficult as Marathon was on Total Carnage mode. The difficulty of online play has very little to do with the game itself, that is all about who you are playing with. If you are very experienced with FPS games and you are competing against novice players, obviously it will be very easy.

Here is my list of some of the pros and cons of Halo:

Pros:
- Grenades and melee attacks can be used 'offhand', without having to manually switch to them and then fire. Eliminating unnecessary key presses is always a good thing.
- Automatic vehicle steering makes them easy to control even on rugged terrain
- Varied voice acting makes AI characters engaging (like in Marathon)
- Shield system makes combat less frustrating by discouraging the 'quicksave crawl'
- Two-weapon system simplifies interface and forces tactical decisions

Cons:
- Story and interface "dumbed down" for console; I wish there had been more optional background information for the world and characters (like terminals in Marathon)
- Due to lack of puzzles of any kind, developers had to resort to repeating rooms in order to stretch out the game length.
- Mac and PC versions have very poorly optimized rendering and networking code

Dude, I'm playing Marathon 2 right now, the demo, and let me tell you, there is no side step key. What the hell is that? Halo has a side step key. I mean I guess Ultimatum will say something like "Basically, side stepping makes the game lame easy, I don't like that." But yeah, anyways, game is totally unplayable without side step key, thumbs down.

David wrote:On Legendary mode, Halo is about as difficult as Marathon was on Total Carnage mode.

I really must disagree with that. If you're not trying to use only melee attacks on all reachable enemies, the overpowered weapons of Halo, like the Needler, make it rather pitifully easy. Playing through Marathon with only your fists is comparable to playing through Halo with only "pistol-whipping" (in quotes because you're not really "pistol"-whipping when you swing a rocket launcher at an enemy, yet it does the SAME DAMAGE NO MATTER THE SIZE OF THE WEAPON), but I'd rank Marathon as slightly more difficult in that regard.

David wrote:The difficulty of online play has very little to do with the game itself, that is all about who you are playing with. If you are very experienced with FPS games and you are competing against novice players, obviously it will be very easy.

I never said that, although I'm not at all an FPS master. All I said about multiplayer was that my only experience with Halo before doing singleplayer on Legendary using melee attacks was a bit of playing against some nubs.

David wrote:- Grenades and melee attacks can be used 'offhand', without having to manually switch to them and then fire. Eliminating unnecessary key presses is always a good thing.

Again, that tends to make the game pitifully easy if you use weapons, because grenades are extremely overpowered in Halo.

David wrote:- Shield system makes combat less frustrating by discouraging the 'quicksave crawl'

The shield system is by far the worst reason that Halo is so easy. That damned suit recharges WAY too quickly. In Marathon you had to _earn_ a shield recharge.

David wrote:- Two-weapon system simplifies interface and forces tactical decisions

That's the only part of Halo's gameplay I like -- and, considering you put it in Lugaru, I'm sure you know from where it came: Oni, my favorite game ever (tied with Descent 3). It was cooler there.

David wrote:- Story and interface "dumbed down" for console; I wish there had been more optional background information for the world and characters (like terminals in Marathon)

Halo's plot was annoyingly predictable, I thought. And yes, the terminals in Marathon are the best part of the game.

David wrote:- Due to lack of puzzles of any kind, developers had to resort to repeating rooms in order to stretch out the game length.

Even when the rooms are different, the enemies are beaten the same way, so it hardly matters. Once you've killed an enemy, you can kill all others of its type with the same methods; terrain isn't important when playing Halo, which makes everything extremely repetitive.

David wrote:- Mac and PC versions have very poorly optimized rendering and networking code

Wouldn't know. I just played it through that one time at someone's birthday party on Xbox some years back.

Ultimatum479 doesn't like halo, and while I disagree, I respect his opinion. So here are my thoughts on halo and halo 2.

Halo
Good storyline.
Good weapons.
Good online play.
Good vechile control.
Good characters.
And a "race against the clock" to finish the story.

Predictable fights.
While there was some stealth it wasn't implemented very well.

Oh, and while Ultim says halo and halo 2 are repetetive, even though it's just running round shooting things it's still fun.

Halo 2
Play as elites
Energy sword (my fav weapon)
More weapons.
More vechiles.
More enemies.
They didn't mess with it too much

Cheap dual weild.
Most human weapons and vechiles made redundant by covenant tech.
Bad storyline.
Brutes weren't implemented properly, they were just like a cross between a hunter and an elite.

Already commented on everything you said about Halo, I think. As for Halo 2, I've never played it, since people said Halo 1 was somehow better.

Going back a bit..

Ultimatum479 wrote:You're saying the GAMEPLAY is fun? Are you joking? It's about the least challenging FPS I've _ever_ played, and I'm no FPS master.

You want an easy FPS? What about quake 3? There, rocket launchers are standard issue! And machine guns are rarely used since the other weapons are so overpowered. The BFG can kill in a single shot, you can jump about 2x your size and you can still use a gun while carrying a flag.

But thats getting a little bit off topic.

I actually know alot of the history of halo, as in info about the other spartans, the covenant, and the huge war that won't seem to stop. I also know, that 2 spartans are not confirmed to be dead. One of which is a female spartan, ther other sided with the covenant and betrayed mankind.

Quake 3 _is_ easy. But it doesn't pretend that the single-player game isn't a joke, as Halo does.

How is Quake 3 easy because there's rocket-launchers and BFGs?
How can a multiplayer game be easy at all?

It's laughably easy. There is no real skill, you just jump around shooting randomly.