I have tried numerous times to get into Halo, mostly prompted by our friend George’s love of the series’ lore, but have failed to be excited by it, ever. The fact that most of the interesting lore is nowhere to be seen in the game is — to me, anyway — to the games’ detriment, as it leaves the games themselves as rather hollow-feeling experiences where you’re just another dude in heavy armour with a gun. Master Chief isn’t interesting as a character, I still have literally no idea why the Covenant and humanity are fighting and I don’t think I could name a single supporting character other than Cortana.

In short, I couldn’t care less about Halo 4, but given my general attitude towards triple-A now, that will probably come as no surprise. And I’m cool with that; I know the “mainstream” has absolutely no interest in School Days HQ and My Girlfriend is the President, both of which I’m playing at the moment. Makes them all the more special for those of us who do enjoy them. 🙂

My relationship with Halo is adverse, mainly because I didn’t get to play any of the games until 2010. I played through all four previous Halo games right before Reach came out. Right now the only ones I own are Reach and Anniversary and I honestly think that’s enough. I’m not really interested in Halo 4 at all.

I’m even less interested in the mythos. I really like certain parts of the setting – the way humanity’s futuristic military is depicted, and the feeling of fighting a war of attrition between entire advanced civilizations. I could give a damn about the halos, forerunners, and especially the flood. Plot-wise I like Reach the most because it cuts everything down to just “us versus the covenant”. I even like how in Reach you can’t understand covenant communication yet. The whole ting feels like “Black Hawk Down in Space.”

I’ve read bits at what Halo 4 does to the canon, and I just don’t care anymore. I personally don’t think any Halo campaign has been able to live up to Combat Evolved.

Hello all,

Sorry for the lack of posting – I haven’t had the time to really play much or really put anytime into gaming related news but that changes now (for at least this post anyway). I finally found some time today to get through my Game Access copy of Halo Reach.

I have been pretty “Meh” on the whole Halo series since Halo 3. I played ODST shortly after its release and frankly, other than the amazing soundtrack, wasn’t that wow-ed by the game. I think part of the issue is that I have nothing invested in the Halo mythology anymore. Reach is a fun ride especially since the Flood is nothing to be found. However, I could care less about anything that was actually going on plot-wise. The “emotional” moments rang completely hollow to me despite being well done and not laying it on ala Gears 2.

We’ll see what happens with Halo 4 but I’ll probably play it eventually because I do enjoy the gameplay even if I don”t care one lick about the story. Not exactly sure what that says about the game or me for that matter but there we go…

JRPG news: FFXII is awesome, and I’m sure Feen will back me up on this one. It’s an excellent experience, like playing an MMO with an actual story and other players who actually follow your instructions.

Stupid costumes, yes (Vaan looks particularly homosexual with his tiny waistcoat and waxed chest) but, shhhh, I always quite liked FF’s bizarre fashions. Gameplay-wise, FFXII is the anti-JRPG, aside from the bewilderingly inexplicable-in-a-realistic-context License Grid system.

On an unrelated note, I reacquired Reach for multiplayer purposes. Who’s in tonight?

Its too bad that Reach’s campaign has been rubbing some folks in an uncomfortable place. I got what I wanted from it. I guess I never really looked to the series for a sense of greater story or context. Its just pretty colours and rainbows and death for me, I guess that could also be a negative point for some. I have also been re-playing Fable 2 and finding a similar joy. I don’t really care about the overarching story, just the moment to moment scenarios are great. I beat Reach on normal the first time to keep the frustration minimal. I am not too elitist to admit: I don’t particularly enjoy the higher difficulties unless I am playing co-op. Playing with other people is a whole other beast in Halo. It drives me to play more efficiently, and to really get into it.
I like that experience in a completely different way.

@beige: The space level is AWESOME. Bungie should stop arsing around with men in armour and just make a whole game with that engine. I would buy it in a heartbeat.

@feenwager: YOU SHOULD TRY THE MULTIPLAYARRR

Hah. No, seriously. I think you’d enjoy it a lot more. Campaign is infuriating, particularly on Heroic or Legendary. It just stops being fun when you die over and over and over, which is what put me off the series in the first place. Same for Gears. But I persevered and completed it on Heroic, and I’m glad I did. I ended up enjoying it. Now I feel I can go back and help other people out with co-op, which is infinitely more fun than single-player, incidentally, for the simple reason that one person dying doesn’t mean restarting the whole section again.

Firefight, though, is super-fun. It keeps the good bits of the Halo shooting experience, strips out the indecipherable plot and gives you a good excuse to go wild with a variety of weapons. It’s also one of the most hugely customisable modes there is in the whole game, so you can make it as easy or as hard as you want. You can even make yourself invincible and provide yourselves with infinite-ammo fast-firing rocket launchers that you never have to reload, for example. So if you just want to blow shit up in a fit of rage… you can.

@Tolkoto: I was exactly the same. I actually beat Halo: CE in split-screen co-op and really enjoyed it. I tired of Halo 2 well before the ending and same with Halo 3. I never even tried ODST. Actually, though, I’ve found that with Reach, I’m now more inclined to go back and play the old ones. Perhaps I’ll still hate them. But I certainly like Reach a whole lot more than any previous Halo title.

@Beige: You’re quite right, we don’t need a Halo game every 2 years. As far as I’m concerned, the series is done. Bungie are setting it aside, the story is complete… I don’t need to play another Halo game unless they do something really significant with it, like make it into System Shock 2 or something. Which is never going to happen.

Hope everyone enjoyed/is enjoying/is about to enjoy the new SquadCast. Thanks for the props, Beige. I figured a musical episode should have at least a little music throughout it. For those who didn’t like the background music in past episodes, it’s at a much quieter level than before. Should be very subtle. The musical interludes are a little longer than usual, too, to celebrate its musical episode-ness. (Sorry, Feen. :))

@tolkoto You should try to finish Halo: CE (if you ever started it). Great ending that really brings the whole thing together—kinda like Half-Life 2.

I think CE’s plot is far more coherent than Reach’s. I actually have a sense of where you’re going and why I’m going there most of the time (though, that might just be because I’ve played it so many times). In Reach, there’s a wholllle lot of “We gotta help these guys over here! Now we gotta go to this place and help those guys! Now we have to go back and help the others again!” I found it a little hard to follow since it didn’t feel like there was much continuity between some missions.

Plus, CE has my favorite final level of any game ever.

George would back me up if he posted here. 😉

@feenwager @beige It bothers me how much I get caught up in the pre-launch ferver of every Halo game ever released knowing without a shadow of a doubt that the “love” will be short-lived. Sure, it’s purty and fixed a lot of futzy bits from the other games but it still feels empty.

I loved the Noble Team archetypes that they gave us but they didn’t give the characters enough back story or character-defining moments for us to feel their presence (and loss) enough for impact.

I dove into the multi-player and had fun for a bit but as soon as I realized that all I was really playing it for was to earn digital armor pieces, the chrome began to bubble.

Ok, guys…story time.

I bought an Xbox on launch day. I believe I picked up Halo, Dead or Alive, and perhaps one other game I can’t recall. I remember re-playing the opening sequence of Halo four or five times to show some of my friends what I called at the time “the greatest game I’ve ever played”.

I loved Halo: Combat Evolved. Some of my earliest chin-strokey conversations were about the moment The Flood arrived and the tone of the game completely changed. I still say not many games have managed to have a surprise that cool since.

When Halo 2 came out, I was obviously pretty excited. I received it on release day as an early Christmas gift from a friend. I’m pretty sure I made a 45 minute drive just so I could get started immediatedly that evening. I was one of the people that defended the “non-ending”, it seemed like the way a second act should end. Heck, didn’t Empire Strikes Back end in a very similar fashion?

Halo 3 I played through gritted teeth about 75% of the time. The graphics didn’t really impress me the way the “next-gen” Halo should have, and the story went so far into la-la land (sorry George) that the game was “go in this direction. shoot things. die. try again. get a little further. watch cut scene that doesn’t make any sense. go in that direction. shoot things. die. try again.” for me. I finished it, traded it in, and didn’t give it much thought, since it came out in a very packed season for games.

When ODST was announced, my brain stem said “oooh…I like Halo. This is another Halo! I will enjoy it”, even though my rational mind remembered that I really didn’t like 3 at all. Nevertheless, I purchased it and played it (on easy) because I was told that Bungie was doing some “exciting new things” with their story-telling. I guess they did a few mildly intersting things storytellilng-wise with ODST, but overall the game left me completely cold. It didn’t help that it turns out all of the interesting story bits were optional, buried in audio recordings you had to dig around to find. Yay.

Which brings me to Halo: Reach. I’m going to keep this simple.

I hate it. A lot.

The Bungie style of shooter simply is no longer fun for me, and the “story” isn’t enough to keep me going anymore. I’m thinking that I may have to file Halo in the GTA folder marked “Games that everyone agrees are awesome but don’t tickle my Elmo”.

And that makes me a little sad.

PS: please don’t respond with “the multiplayer is super sweet!”

A: you all know that’s not really my thing, although I may be tempted to try some just to see if I can get some of my money’s worth out of the game.

B: I know that already. That’s not the point.

I’m game for some reach, got it a few weeks ago and only got 4 missions in before life/work took over again.

Say when!

I’m in, any night this week actually. I’ve been looking to play. I’m a loser and played Firefight by myself the other night. That could be a fun one. Less 12 year old kids to scream about our affinity to the same sex.

@feenwager I would love to go to PAX East again. Not sure if finances will take it… or indeed if I will be gainfully employed by then. But I’m tempted to just register anyway.

Also: you just summed up why I usually hate Halo and Gears. I found that either I’ve got better at the game or those moments are less frequent in Reach.

The thing I do particularly like about Reach, though, is that if the campaign does drive you crazy, you can go off and do something else. There is SO MUCH stuff in that package that there’s always something else to do. As long as you like doing it from a first-person perspective armed with a gun.

We should do some Squad multi sometime. Some team play would be awesome. Who amongst us has got a copy?

Started Halo: Reach. I appreciate what they’re doing, but it’s reminding me why I don’t really love single player Halo. The whole “Figure out the right way to do each segment, while dying reapeatedly” style of gameplay makes for extremely short play sessions.

I have helped @zegolf understand Reach’s ending. Me! And now he thinks it’s awesome. Which it is.

Ok so…just completed Reach. Not really sure what to make of that last scene. Anyone want to take this offline, to avoid spoilers, and help me figure out what in the hell it meant?

Just hit me up whenever you see me on Reach. PensiveMuffin, if you don’t have my ‘tag.

I’m not doing random matchmaking in my first multiplayer Halo ever. Who’s on this weekend?

@unmanneddrone: Sorry I’ve been a bit out of the loop around here. Rather a lot of things on my mind what with the house move and all, yo.

Just read your Japan spiel, and let me add my thanks to you for a great, eye-opening read. Glad to have an “insider’s perspective” to call us out on things we have little way of knowing about!

In other news, you guys are awesome. While editing the last ‘cast, it struck me (as it frequently does) that we really do have something unique here. And I think Season 2 is going well so far. It’s only going to get better, too, as you’ll all see in the upcoming episodes.

In the meantime, keep the discussions flowing and the good times, they are a-rollin’.

It’s 1:30AM. I should probably sleep. But I’m half-tempted to play a couple of matches on Reach IKNOWIKNOWSHUTUPBEQUIETI’MEATINGWORDSIHAVEPROBABLYSAIDINTHEPAST BLAAARGH

Incidentally, I agree with what both @feenwager and @JeffGrubb said a little while back. There’s nothing wrong with the triple-A stuff. I know from a personal perspective I just give it shit because 1) a lot of those titles genuinely don’t appeal to me and 2) I know it provokes entertaining reactions. That said, Grubbles is definitely right about CoD’s technical prowess. Getting something that looks that good running at 60fps is nothing short of godlike. But, like he has no interest in Halo‘s subject matter, I have little interest in soldiers. I see them on the news every day.

Now, if they went and made a sci-fi shooter with a story that made sense using the CoD engine? Then I might get interested. Call of Duty: Future Warfare. Calling it now.

@A.J. @sinfony Didn’t it come out a few months/years/whatever ago that there was a game on Steam that was actually running with the No-CD executable already built into the file system? I can’t remember what the game was, but I remember hearing something along the lines of the crack’s developer playing it and finding his signature in the exe or something. Who knows.

Great show guys. I’m not really into a lot of Japanese gaming, so I don’t have a lot to say about these games. My attentions span, and current amount of free time, just don’t really mesh well with the Japanese style of gaming. I find myself with less and less time to log on to a game (as I’ve stated before) and, frankly, it makes me worried about my commitment to games like Fallout: New Vegas, and anything else remotely long in length.

By the way, I take back my previous comments about playing Halo: Reach under protest. Amazing game and I’m really glad I got it. I’m looking forward to squading up with anyone that wants to play AFTER I complete the single player story.

Also…FURAI MI TO DA MOONU…I see what you did there…

Another great show, guys! If any of you have heard me at all on EBP, you know I stand close to Jeff on the issue of Japanese games.

When Mass Effect 2 tells and entire, epic story with phenomenal gameplay, fantastic characters with actual relationships, and gorgeous graphics in the time that Final Fantasy XIII’s tutorial finishes, there’s a problem. Let’s take this into perspective. The Uncharted and Mass Effect games (that’s two games each) were created before Final Fantasy XIII. How does that happen? It’s not like Square Enix is some tiny little studio. I really believe the “Japanese” way of making games is in for a rude awakening. Clearly, something needs to change about the way things are done over there.

Pete talked about how Japanese games have you in the role of some super expert. From Cloud to Bayonetta, they’re already ass kickers. I like how in Dragon Age I went from a fairly typical son of a noble to the Commander of the Grey Wardens, slayer of the Archdemon. I loved going from a kid in Vault 101 to the savior of the Wasteland. Guy in a jail cell to hero of Tamriel. Even Commander Shepherd goes is technically just a commander. But (s)he gets shit done!

As my final point on the matter, I think I just hate melodrama. It’s why I can’t stand the way Samus has been characterized. As soon as what’s his name in The World Ends With You said “Nobody gets me” as his first words, I groaned. I want my character and the characters I’m with to be likable. Particularly since I’ll be spending anywhere from 30 to 100 hours with them.

Also to answer your question, Lord of the Rings: The Third Age was basically a western developed jRPG. It was FFX with a LotR skin. Actually wasn’t bad.

In other news, Halo: Reach! I spent the day playing the campaign, FFA multiplayer, and creating what I think is a really cool single flag CTF map in Forge World. Expect to hear me ramble about it all on this week’s EBP, but this is truly great stuff! I’ll be playing a lot this week, I’m sure. So look for me if you want to jump into a game.

Playing through the 2nd time on Easy is going a long way towards my enjoyment factor. This is about rebuilding my Shepard, not punishing myself.

As far as the Halo thing, I get the heebie-jeebies when this group ventures beyond the “we like playing games, and talking about them intelligently, and if we can unearth hidden gems all the better” and into the “we don’t like anything popular, hence we are insufferable nerds” territory.

Luckily, it’s rare we toe that line, but consider me the nerd police. (dah dah dah duh dum duh)

Oh, to have a 360 for Reach. I fell foul of the franchise after Halo 2, but that was more to do with coming back from overseas into the frenzy of the admittedly-awesome multiplayer aspect my housemates had honed their skills within to a keen edge. “All in on Lockout” was the call that brought a frustrated tear to my eye. But, the games are solid, the original some magical, clean and polished affair that I’ll treasure forever.

Those unmistakable, subtle sound effects. The hum of shields, the quiet crunch of boots on the ground, the superb sound design. And everyone has a fondness for the announcer’s voice. “SLAY-er.” “KING of the hill.” “TAKen the LEEEad.”

Just off the main topic at hand, and perhaps an interesting aside towards the war and video games discussion, Battlefront.com displayed a number of videos from their upcoming Combat Mission: Afghanistan title. Thing is, our generation tends to forget the blood already spilled on the sands prior to the current engagement. Indeed, this new tactical simulator charts the Soviet invasion of the ‘Ghan in the 80s, not the current conflict. Here’s some food for thought:

Material losses of the Soviet Union:

118 aircraft
333 helicopters
147 tanks
1,314 IFV/APCs
433 artillery guns and mortars
1,138 radio sets and command vehicles
510 engineering vehicles
11,369 trucks and petrol tankers

Casualties and losses

14,553 killed, 53,753 wounded

Afghan losses:

Estimated over 1 million people

One would imagine those helicopter losses on the Soviet side would’ve increased dramatically once the CIA started delivering Stinger missiles on the backs of donkeys. But it does raise the point that games are incredible teaching tools – or at least can be – when it comes to warfare. We can all experience our own Waterloo, our own Market Garden, our own Thermopylae. Right now in the wonderful RUSE, I’m finding out in wonderful abstraction the incredible doggedness of the Allies at the Battle of Kasserine Pass. Does this extend to FPS games? Well, it very well could – and has in some small if we’re to go by the strange Kuma War game…

“Kuma War is a series of playable recreations of real events in the War on Terror. Nearly 100 playable missions bring our soldiers’ heroic stories to life, and you can get them all right now, for free. Stop watching the news and get in the game!” – http://www.kumawar.com/

…which lacks any sort of subtlety or nuance. It seems like it’s catering to a fairly low denominator, but who really knows the target audience. Six Days In Fallujah another one that I’d be afraid would have missed the mark, but if there’s any place to start, a big budget title like Medal of Honor might be the safest way to go in doing a little more to engage young minds or shed light on situations currently surrounding the armed forces.

I am definitely jumping into Halo Reach ASAP. It took an incredible effort on my part, but over the years I forced myself to understand why the Halo series was worth the buzz. I felt I was missing something. Combat Evolved to me, initially felt like it lacked personality and it didn’t feel initially that more interesting than say : Half-Life, my go to FPS of the day. As I went on, I began to garner a kind of strange sentimentality to the world, and the presentation. Even when the story struck me as jibber jabber, it was always visually and auditorially interesting. There was also a sense of simplicity there. It didn’t ask much of you as a player. It was almost like a nice holiday on the beach, where you can feel free to have fun in the sun building sand castles. The multiplayer, even when I am getting my ass handed to me, doesn’t really stress me out. There is this aroma of shenanigans, like we are just dicking around teabagging each other, that I don’t always feel when I play other games. That said, I really didn’t like ODST. Something about the campaign just felt like it was forcing a bunch of scenario’s on me that I didn’t care about. I am unsure how Reach will fall, whether it will remind me more of my more laid back experiences, or whether it will be heavy handed in its delivery. Reviews seem good, so I am hopeful.

Just joined the Bungie group but there’s something you guys need to know that I’m gonna need some help with:

Reach will be my first multiplayer Halo. Ever.

I played through all four Halo campaigns for the first time just a couple months ago but didn’t have the time to touch multiplayer. I’m hoping some of you guys or some of my other friends will be able to set up and invite me to private games so I don’t spend the entirety of next week getting my ass kicked by the fabled screaming 13-year-olds I keep hearing about.

Well that decision was easy.

$60 in Amazon Gift Cards = $0 Halo Reach + $20 Game Credit

That’ll lead to me un-pre-ordering Fallout New Vegas, for $20 less, then getting the $10 credit from pre-ordering that.

Amazon is an amazing thing.

I would actually quite like to get Reach, I’ve decided, but lack of job and money are making it pretty much a 100% no-go. So I’ll be there in spirit, unless I 1) win the lottery or 2) score a free copy somehow. 🙂

@zegolf Might as well, dude. Halo’s one of those zeitgeist games that ALL of your friends will be playing so there will always be someone around to play with (and Halo simply demands it be played with friends). Fortunately, all signs are pointing to it being the best one yet.

Here at the Whittington Estate, we’re going all out. My son is a big fan and all of his friends play it together. He’s been saving up for his own 360 and guess which one he wants? Yup.

@Roc am I really going to have to get this? I’ve been putting off this decision for a few weeks now…

I guess Reach is gonna be hotshit. If so, there will probably be a lot of us playing it. The Squadron of Shame group has just been (re)created on Bungie.net:

http://www.bungie.net/fanclub/squadronofshame/Group/GroupHome.aspx

Join up and I’ll add you into the pool.