- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
All points taken from http://freespace.virgin.net/bad.cyborg/Annoyances.html
Lack of widescreen support
Halo doesn't seem to support 16:9 properly. A circle such as the pistol scope comes out squashed, suggesting that the 16:9 picture is merely being obtained by squashing the Y axis from a standard 4:3 output. That's utterly unwatchable to me. I'm sure this is nothing to do with my TV, because DOA3 and Sega GT2002 fill 16:9 with no such image distortion.
This major flaw has meant that the best I can do (if I want an image going right across my widescreen) is use a manual 'zooming' mode my TV happens to have. But that still leave some squashing, and also cuts off the top and bottom which includes part of the ammo display and motion tracker. Also, that zooming mode is not even available when using the RGB scart, hence I have to use S-VHS or something. All in all then, my standard Halo viewing experience is some way below what it could so easily have been.
Am I the only one who cares about having an unsquashed widescreen experience? Or do developers think "Oh hell, we needn't bother with that, just squash the 4:3 output and they'll be happy enough". Judging from the demos I regularly stick into my XBox, it seems to me that the majority of games fail to support widescreen properly, yet DOA3 and a few others seem to demonstrate that it's perfectly possible. So PLEASE Bungie, for Halo 2 can you fix this?
Auto-aiming can't be fully turned off
In Halo, even with auto-aiming set to 'off', there's still a tendency of the gun to be auto-jiggled to some degree, which is really annoying. It disturbs my aim, breaks the realism (because I'm inexplicably having to fight to control the gun), and makes it harder to pistol-snipe a particular enemy within a distant group. You notice the auto-jiggling most when an enemy is moving across your line of fire. Their motion tends to take your aim with it.
I can't think why Bungie did this, unless it's simply a bug nobody noticed. But how could they possibly have missed it after all that testing? Bizarre.
Gap between Heroic and Lengendary is too big
There's such a huge gap between Heroic and Legendary. With the latter, the alien rate of fire jumps to 'murderous' and although I can cope with it on a good day, it's generally not much fun because I have to spend half my time hiding and waiting for my shields to recover. This means that there isn't a difficulty level where I can properly optimize my enjoyment. Instead, it's more a case of choosing between "too easy" or "too hard and/or unenjoyable".
For Halo 2, I wish they'd add a level in between, simply by reducing the alien rate of fire you get on Legendary.
Enemy placements and timings are predictable
Although Bungie excellently dispensed with many 'standard' FPS traits, thereby making for a much more intelligent experience, there's at least one bad old aspect that's still with us. Namely, you soon get to know where and when to expect things, and as such, you can prepare in advance (weapon choice, avenue of approach etc.). This works against realism and suspense. I don't WANT to be able to learn a 'pattern'. I'd like to see things made things less predictable, and hence more replayable.
For example, when the alien dropships land in the first section of level 2, you know exactly where they're going to land, which potentially means that you can easily dispatch the entire enemy contingent by running around to the landing spots ready to blast the Elites before they've even had time to hit the ground. Now think how much more interesting and replayable things would be if those ships came down in randomized locations and with more randomized timing. Each play would be much more like that first time, when you didn't know what was coming next. That's what I want.
Driving is in third person
A big reason I like the first-person nature of an FPS game is that I can really feel like I'm there. You get engrossed in the action. So in Halo, it's annoying that when you jump into a vehicle, the illusion gets broken as you're rudely jerked into a third-person perspective. Third-person also makes for less engaging action. Imagine how much more fun it would be in the Banshee or Warthog, to have a proper first-person view.
Lack of option to turn music off
Although I think Halo's music is superb and not at all the irritant I usually fear from a game, I'd still like the option of silence during normal play, which for me adds to the realism and feeling of isolation in another world.
I may be some sort of mutant purist, but I generally wouldn't even buy a game unless I knew you could turn the music off. And no, I'm not against music; you can hit me with some Joy Division or Comsat Angels any day of the week ta very much (ok those names might date me, but you can't stay young hip and funky forever). But if I'm soldiering out on alien worlds and my life hangs in the balance, do I really want the equivalent of a Walkman blaring into my earpiece, obscuring the sounds of the enemy? No, I do not.
Unintentionally getting into Warthog
A major annoyance during fighting is that if you happen to be too close to the Warthog when you hit the Reload button, you instead end up getting into the Warthog. At which point the Covenant shoots you to ribbons as you sit dumbly in the passenger seat, waiting for what seems like an eternity before you can get out again. The correct reaction at this point is: "Arrrggh!" Thus far I've managed to refrain from kicking my TV screen in, but it can only be a matter of time.
This flaw also means that you can't easily use the Warthog for cover. But why wasn't this spotted during testing? It wouldn't have been hard to fix. Bungie could have simply arranged that to get into the Warthog, you'd have to keep the button down for longer than normal, or something.
Unwelcome twist
In the second half of the game we're pretty much robbed of the initial promise of getting to whup the Covenant. Instead it becomes primarily a fight against the far less interesting Flood, with the Covenant only appearing intermittently from then on. This was quite a let down for me. Admittedly the storyline was imaginative and everything, but it was hard to take much joy in whupping the mindless Flood. They were just getting in the way of the original fight. It was a twist I could've done without.
So I say to Bungie: enough with the the infernal zombies already! If I see any gurgling green mutants in Halo 2, I'll scream.
Silly stunt drive at the end
For me, the culmination of the game was spoilt by the inclusion of a silly stunt-course Warthog drive at the end. It's as if all the intelligence of design was thrown out of the window at the last moment. Let's face it, you'd have a pretty hard time explaining away what amounts to a Warthog stunt course on board the ship. It's just too unrealistic.
As well as that, towards the end you have to take a huge leap across a chasm, and it's a fickle business whether you happen to land right side up, or flip and die. Sometimes you die even if you do land the right way up. But random chance is no test of skill; it's just an annoyance.
Marines aren't that bright
Don't get me wrong, I think the Marines add tremendously to the game, and their speech programming is superb. But they're also pretty hopeless in various ways, making talk of 'Marine AI' seem wildly over the top. So let's take a look at the flipside.
For one thing, and perhaps the most annoying, they let themselves get run over at the drop of a hat. When you're pulling up to them in the Warthog, sometimes they'll rediculously dive for cover when you're not even heading for them, and other times they'll actually dive into the Warthog's path. It's often hard to pull away in the Warthog, because Marines don't stand clear. Brush them and they crumple. And then some bozo will say "What were you thinking?" or something. Arrrgh! What I was thinking was "Get out of the way, dummy!"
As for combat skills, on any level above Normal a Marine is barely a match even for a Grunt. They rarely fire in any sort of aggressive manner, or get around to actually putting down an enemy (which is agonizing when you're waiting to reload and you can quite plainly see that an Elite only needs one more bullet). Nor do they grasp the concept of cover. In fact, it seems to me that they spend half of their time rolling around like Chinese acrobats, rather than doing anything useful, like firing. As the Elites close in, you want to shout to your Marines "Use the trigger, dammit!"; but no, they just fire the occasional burst and proceed to get annihilated.
And when they do get around to firing, they're just as likely to shoot fellow Marines in the back. You can see this at first hand, up on the plateau in the rockslide megabattle. Just stand at the back and watch your Marines cut each other to pieces. And it's no wonder, the way they keep moving in and out of each other's lines of fire. But it's not just single shots in the back; it can be whole bursts, one after another, as if the shooter is clinically blind. It would be quite amusing, if you weren't putting your life on the line to save these bozos.
And then there's the grenade reaction business. If they react at all to an incoming glowing blue ball, they'll probably still hang around inside the blast radius, even the guy who raised the alert! And why do they dive to the ground when it's just Master Chief lobbing a grenade at the enemy? Heck, I'm not that bad, surely.
Marines also sometimes run around making a racket or shooting, when you're trying to be stealthy. Now that's really annoying.
[Edited on 5/29/2004 1:15:56 PM]