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Re: Points on your H3 review (long)
Posted By: scarab	Date: 4/21/08 7:42 a.m.
In Response To: Points on your H3 review (long) (Rockslider) : This brings to mind a general point I've been meaning to raise. In quite a : few places, actions are artificially prevented until you've done a : particular task. For example, when you get up the first tower in The : Covenant, you can't operate the control panel at the far end until you've : killed all the Brutes. That's a complete nonsense of course, and I find it : very annoying. I remember the first time I tried it. I did something nifty : to get past the Brutes, but did the control work? Hell no. Fat lot of use : my nifty bypassing technique was! Artificial things like this weaken the : illusion of reality of course. I don't like that either, I hate gameisms. Did your cunning ploy involve using the active cammo found downstairs? : Care to comment on this shortcoming? I : can't remember how H2 fared in those respects, but how about H1? Nothing's : coming to mind; or at least, nothing as jarring as that H3 example (I'm : sure I've encountered others - maybe you can think of some). Halo did have conveniently locked doors that only opened after you had killed all the units in the hanger bays, grav lift chambers, etc. Also the T&R grav lift wont work until the Hunters are dispatched. But at least Cortan gives you an excuse for the hanger door holdup and maybe she was waiting for reinforcements to board the grav lift platform. A better excuse would have been to require that a technician fiddle with intricate hardware inside the grav lift base. That way it makes sense that you have to kill all the enemy before the poor chap has to stick his head into the workings for the minute or so that it takes to do his voodoo. I prefer to have a realistic reason for holdups. : I discussed death animations in my own article (see Alien animation ) but : there a matter I only noticed later, which I see that you also have not : commented on, despite it being a rather bad aspect. A few seconds after an : enemy has gone into an initial realistic-looking pose on the floor, : there's a tendency for the body to then sort of pop up into a far less : natural pose, which sometimes makes it look as if you'd toppled a fairly : rigid plastic figurine. They're not lying flat on the ground any more. The : realism has gone, and the pop itself is distracting and frequently : audible. I first started noticing this when slaying masses of enemies on : the ground floor of the first tower in The Covenant (as described in my : 'Battles in the first tower' piece). Why on earth does this happen? It : seems a terrible shortcoming. I think that the body may be replaced by a lower resolution dead version and the new model interacts with the geometry differently. Remember that the physics and collision engine will almost always be active and may push the new model's limbs into a different position. That might be a bitch to fix but would be worth it. Any attempted fix might cause more bugs but maybe Bungie could look at the probblem between games. A worse dead body crime is when you kill a blue Floodified Elite, he falls, and his armor turns red. Do they get posthumous promotions if they die in service? : Isn't it listed as the 'fuel rod gun' in the HUD? I thought that was the name : for it, not fuel rod cannon. But anyway, the main thing I wanted to say : was that I've noticed that when enemies use it on me, the shot exhibits : homing. And yet, I think I'm right in saying that when I fire it, there's : no homing at all. Not fair! They still home. Its fairly effective against Drones. Although the Drones jink slightly from side to side its not enough to fool the FRG :-) : But if you turn around and look up at where it's due to materialize, you'll : see it pop into view in somewhat unrealistic fashion! So, better keep : those eyes lookin' forward soldier! EEK! that's a bit clumsy Bungie. : Who could possibly have thought they would be a : good idea? Flares/flash-bangs have been requested numerous times by players over the years. As have knives or metal Human swords. I once asked for a Grunt-Rake-Bayonet but Bungie didn't put it in the game :-( Which is a pity because it would have made the game so much more awesome. : The rally points were a nice idea but I feel that their usefulness is greatly : reduced by the fact that you have no control over the weaponry you're : supplied with. Typically, you get relatively weak stuff, and almost : certainly not the combo you'd like to have. For that reason I've : scarcely used them for serious play. Also there seems to be a bug in : regard to the rally points in The Covenant. Namely, if you start at a : rally point, the game doesn't provide all the usual ambient sounds, and : that can make things sound rather dead. It's something I commented on in a : few of my articles: see Coastal hornet trick and Citadel hornet trick . : I'm not sure if there's a similar bug with any of the other levels. I noticed that too, it may also be present in the factory part of the Storm. I bet its something to do with the code that loads data from the CD, Halo 3 had to work on machines without a hard drive so it doesn't load the level entirely onto HD at the start, hence new code had to be written. Of course if you want to complain about it then you will have to tangle with Mr Noguchi! ;-) : Well, not quite suicidal , but I'm completely with you on the horrendous : overpowering of enemy vehicles (their resilience and weaponry), which was : one of my major complaints against H3. You can tackle them on foot, : which is something I'm pretty well versed in by now as an ardent : practitioner of foot-based soldiering, but it takes serious and careful : work that a lot of folk would probably have a hard time considering as : 'fun'. Grunt Ghosts are NOT fun. Do they ever die if you shoot off their methane tanks? Chopper Brutes are easier to kill and it gives great satisfaction to ditch your Mongoose and pummel them to death after 200,000 attempts to get your Rocket-Wielding passanger to shoot them. : Yet if you consider say AOTCR from H1, you could do that whole : glorious level on foot and it was lots of fun. I hardly ever do that : level using vehicles! It thoughtfully gave you a nice supply of rocket : lauchers to help - though you can even do without - and you thus had a : nice alternative to tackling things with vehicles. But the H3 designers : don't seem to have given any thought to the idea of tackling certain : sections on foot. And thus it feels much less flexible. If you do : attempt to tackle things on foot, there's a definite feeling of going : against the grain, and unless you're prepared for some serious dedication, : you're likely to end up very dead and very annoyed. I don't do it everywhere and I suspect that I'd still use the Warthog more (as a mobile gun turret). Bungie needs to do something next time to stop NPCs trying to drive when you don't want them to. My simplest advice is that they only start to drive under script control, for instance: at the start of levels or at chapter starts. And whats with marines flipping Warthogs? You can't even arrange to topple the Warthog to keep it for yourself. : But there's also that Woss factor I mentioned in my article (Marines giving : lines voiced by UK celebrity Johnathan Ross), which has continued to be a : serious downer for me. I eventually noticed something else about that, : which makes it even worse. Basically, it seems like almost any male : Marine is able to spontaneously deliver a Ross line. For example, one : moment you've got an Aussie next to you, next thing he pipes up with a : Ross line and completely blows his identity. That's just terrible, ruining : the atmosphere and realism. At least if only particular Marines were : programmed to deliver Ross lines, I could learn which ones to avoid. But : it's become clear that not only can I not avoid them, I'm also going to : have Marines suddenly breaking out of character like this. That's one for Marty I think. It is annoying when characters channel different spirits like that. Did it ever happen in Halo? The sound clips could be tagged with the identity of the speaker and identities could be assigned to characters when they spawn.

Message Index

My Halo 3 review (finally).	Gravemind	4/19/08 11:04 p.m.
It was a nice read.	BlueNinja	4/20/08 2:32 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	zethren	4/20/08 2:50 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	onebitrocket	4/23/08 2:10 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	scarab	4/23/08 8:08 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	onebitrocket	4/23/08 11:20 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	scarab	4/24/08 1:53 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Gravemind	4/25/08 12:58 a.m.
Comprehensive!	Jillybean	4/20/08 8:51 a.m.
I'll say...	stan	4/20/08 9:11 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Louis Wu	4/20/08 9:38 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	UrsusArctos	4/20/08 10:01 a.m.
Well written but,	Spec ops Grunt	4/20/08 12:37 p.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	serpx	4/20/08 3:06 p.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Vandle Valsher	4/20/08 3:16 p.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Gravemind	4/23/08 4:14 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Vandle Valsher	4/23/08 4:56 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Louis Wu	4/23/08 8:07 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Gravemind	4/23/08 10:21 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Louis Wu	4/23/08 11:15 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Cocopjojo	4/23/08 11:28 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	DiscipleN2k	4/23/08 11:13 p.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Gravemind	4/25/08 1:21 a.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	DiscipleN2k	4/25/08 1:14 p.m.
Re: My Halo 3 review (finally).	Ragashingo	4/25/08 2:15 p.m.
The Melee Isn't All That Different!	Ragashingo	4/23/08 11:59 a.m.
Points on your H3 review (long)	Rockslider	4/20/08 8:46 p.m.
Re: Points on your H3 review (long)	scarab	4/21/08 7:42 a.m.
Re: Points on your H3 review (long)	Rockslider	4/22/08 4:26 p.m.
Re: Points on your H3 review (long)	scarab	4/23/08 7:52 a.m.
Re: Points on your H3 review (long)	Gravemind	4/23/08 12:10 a.m.
Re: Points on your H3 review (long)	Captain Spark	4/23/08 8:50 a.m.
Re: Points on your H3 review (long)	Rockslider	4/23/08 5:41 p.m.
Re: Points on your H3 review (long)	Gravemind	4/25/08 2:58 a.m.
Comment on the Covenant in H3	reprobate	4/21/08 6:23 a.m.