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| Re: My Thoughts on the Halo Series | |
| Posted By: ubersaurus | Date: 9/12/06 5:02 p.m. |
In Response To: My Thoughts on the Halo Series (Gravemind) A few thoughts on your writings: I'll have to disagree on your motion tracker thoughts. I usually ended up turning it off in Halo 1, due to the fact that it's range and sensitivity made finding targets pitifully easy. The reduced range, coupled with crouch walking, gave it a sort of strategic dynamic that offset it's potential power. On an aside, referring to crouch walking as "cheap" hurts your piece as a whole by making you seem like someone who just doesn't want to play by the game's rules. Further, making it impossible to see while scoped forces you to take time out from sniping to be more aware of your immediate surroundings, and how that can be a bad thing is beyond me. I will agree that the motion tracker should be removed completely when turned off instead of just sitting there, inert. The fall damage, if I recall, was taken out because the sword lunge was causing the sword user to die from the speed and impact on the ground. If memory serves, it was taken out because they didn't have the development time to fix it, and thus had to sacrifice fall damage or the sword. Personally I'd say they made the better choice, but I really expect fall damage will return in 3. And I have to disagree entirely on your thoughts with the health bar. You say it's unrealistic to regenerate health; I say it's unrealistic to go from nearly dead to fully healed just by walking over a little white box. Camping health packs was a viable strategy in Halo 1, and their removal made the game a bit more fluid, in my opinion. It doesn't take much thought to oneself to realize "well, my shield was down and I got shot a lot, I'm probably weaker than I'd prefer right now" and to thus play more carefully without having it spelled out for you in little boxes. Combat is no ballet. Combat is chaos, and as a result I'd argue that jumping, melee lunges, and the like do help to create that illusion of a real fight. I do agree that the melee lunges aren't very reliable, considering how many times I've whiffed with the person standing right in front of me, or the losing track of them entirely. However, Halo 1's rare close quarters combat fights always did come down to the same concept of "charge guns a blazing until you reach melee range". Halo 2 is a more close-combat oriented game, and thus you see it more often than Halo 1's rare melees. As for ladders vs grav lifts, I'd take the lifts vs the crappy ladders any day. At least I can defend myself on a lift. Ladders forced you to look upwards towards the wall to move, and to fight back, you were really limited in your approaches. And on the powerups, fighting cloaked people in multiplayer is still a pain in the ass, it's just more doable. The overshield's glow is a really nice touch, and it really lets the opposing players know who they should concentrate their fire on to take down. If you're telling me a bit of balance like that is bad, I'm just confused. The power weapons respawn continuously on a few Halo 2 maps. On Ascension, they tend to unbalance the map completely, as a team who can secure the first two snipers can cover the level until they respawn, allowing two more teammates to grab them and demolish the opposing team. Similar occurances abound on Waterworks, but as a larger map it's not as big a deal. The halo 1 pistol was not "balanced" for all around combat. It was far and away the best choice in all but the most extreme of distances-in your face combat was bested by the shotgun, and long long range was bested by the sniper. In mid range, closeish range, and longish range, it dominated everything else, and although that may make for a good competitive game, it hurt the game badly for the rest of it's audience. I don't accept the rocket as an effective mid-range weapon against the pistol simply because it had a low rate of fire, slow reload, and in general would fail against a pistol unless it hit on the first shot. By turning the BR into a large pistol you're just creating that same balance issue all over again. The only real difference between the two weapons as it stands is that the BR takes one more burst, and that it takes longer between bursts to fire than it did bullets on the old pistol. As it stands it makes it deadly effective without any cover, and undereffective against snipers. The halo 2 plasma pistol is also very effective on it's own as a close range surrogate to the shotgun-an overcharge followed by a melee will drop ANYONE. Since I have to go back to work now, I shall finish this later. : My Thoughts on the Halo Series: An Open Letter to Bungie : This letter contains all my opinions on the Halo series thus far. It is one
: If you wish to comment, well, that's why I put it here. If you agree with all
: If you disagree, which I'm sure some of you will, then feel free to offer
: Regards, : Gravemind
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