Today’s game is some more Halo 5. Me and my friends were in voice call while playing this, and we finally nailed what feels so off about this one to us (at least on a personal level). It feels too much like Borderlands. It’s something about the art style, the fast pace, and the way missions are structured. It’s not bad, but it is far from what we want in a Halo game. Someone mentioned last time that 343 at the time were hiring a bunch of employees who weren’t invested in the franchise, and as a result basically had people redoing the game in a way that disregarded what Halo was. I’m not sure how factual this is, but if it’s the case I can totally see them taking bits from Borderlands with how big it was.

We got too this one section in specific where we have to hold off enemies from a gate. It has been giving us so much trouble. We’re playing on heroic and we’ve spent maybe an hour on this section. It doesn’t help that the enemies are able to hijack vehicles now. So now we have Knights, in all their Spongy Pain-in-the-assiness on the back of a Puma. I might be being a little harsh on the Knights, here. I just have some disdain for them after how spongy they were in Halo 4. They just don’t want to die.

There was also this section in the beginning of the level we were struggling with. Turns out, we needed to find a control panel to enable the turrets. The panel was hidden behind a shutter door we had to blast open. It took a few tries, but I really didn’t appreciate it being so hidden. I think that’s this game’s other biggest flaw, sometimes everything blends in. There’s nothing to discern what can be destroyed or shot at from the environment. Idk how Halo 3 and Reach solved it with their fidelity level, but it’s an issue here.

Besides all that though, I would say I’m enjoying it. I’m sure having friends on makes it a bit more of a fun time. But I’m enjoying playing it nonetheless. It does make me miss Halo 3 though. (Though, in this game’s defense I’m a fucking addict for Halo 3. I’ve legit gotten to the point where I can play through the campaign on legendary in a single day)

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    343 hired people that hate Halo when they were developing Halo 4. I believe it was Frank O’Connor that said this himself in a video interview around that time. 343 literally could not wait to make Halo into something it was not. They tried for three games and each failed spectacularly. They failed so badly that their studio reputation had become so bad they needed to rebrand as “Halo Studios” to trick consumers into buying their next game.

    Now that 343 has destroyed Halo’s future, theyre going to destroy its past. As George Orwell said “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” By remaking Combat Evolved and changing that game, they can distort the playerbase into thinking it was always supposed to be that way.

    343 is literally attempting to come in and add new additions to the Mona Lisa painting. Or chiseling new stuff onto the David sculpture. Literal vandalism. The original was already perfect, and only needed a visual upgrade. CE Anniversary did that so badly they need to do it again, but seem convinved it is impossible to make a new Halo game without sprint or other features that mean level geometry and bullet speeds need fundamental redesigns.

    In case you couldn’t tell, I have a lot of contempt for 343. They could not have mishandled such a monumental franchise any worse. They ruined one of my favorite franchises, and it was literally so easy for them not to.

      • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        In CE Anniversary, they reused a lot of Halo Reach assets and generally destroyed the art style of the original game.

        In what they have shown of Campaign Evolved (actually comically stupid name), they have added Sprint (which hilariously their own gameplay showcases that sprint causes the player to miss a music cue that Martin O’Donnell specifically placed), removed Health Packs in favor of recharging health, removed the tree that prevented the Warthog from being used to fight the two hunters completely trivializing the fight, and they reused a lot of assets from Halo Infinite as well, which I really hope are placeholders but I fear they are not. Also the forerunner tech is too clean and shiny.

        From just 13 minutes of gameplay, I already see a lot of problems.