- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Hey guys! It's my first post! How ya'll doing?
Me and my flatmates actually sent this to Bungie... thought you might have a bit of a laugh reading it. It's a bit long, but it should make you giggle! Enjoy!
Dear Bungie Team,
Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are a group of four students living together in Portsmouth in our fresher's year at university, and Halo is like the glue that holds us together - we have two- to four-player sessions pretty much every day, often for hours at a time. We don't want to sound big-headed, but we're pretty damn good, and consider ourselves to be the Halo-playing elite! If anybody else plays Halo as much as us then we would be very surprised.
Sadly, in-game victory crosses over to real life, with "killtaculars" and frantic 15-14 endings being the subject of conversation for days afterwards! Yes, we know we're a bit sad, but we don't care - we're having fun due to your creative genius and the near-perfect phenomenon that is... Halo.
That's right, we did say "near-perfect". Although we love Halo dearly, we have some suggestions for Halo 2 that we feel would improve both the gameplay and longevity of the game. We have outlined these suggestions in the dossier below (and yes, it is a dossier) and we hope that you will give them some serious consideration for the benefit of the Halo community. We ask you to pay particular attention to point 1a - it may only be a small point, but if we managed to get this feature added to Halo 2 then we would feel a sense of geeky pride! Without further adieu, Brad, Robbie, Paul and Tom present to you the collective wisdom of our Halo gameplaying minds.
VOCABULARY LIST
Over the course of our long and established Halo careers we have developed a bespoke vocabulary to describe some aspects of the Halo world. We have outlined these words below:
Assets: used to describe the pivotal items in the game - the rocket launcher, overshield and active camoflauge
Primary Asset: Rocket Launcher (also referred to as the "Rocky-L")
OS: Overshirld
AC: Active Camoflauge
Hurting your ankle: Falling from a height and losing some health
Breaking your ankle: Falling from a height and losing loads of health
Shattering your ankle: Falling from a height and dying (seems to most on Damnation!)
1. GENERAL FEATURES
1a. If you manage to physically hit somebody with a frag grenade, the tiniest bit of health should be taken off. We only suggest this because we thought it would be really embarrasing to be killed this way! We suggest that a small amount of shield, or 1 bar of health be taken off.
1b. We would like a scoreboard/stat system to be implemented. By this we mean a screen which displays statistics for each player, such as total kills and percentage of games won. This would add a real competitive element to the game for Halo geeks like us, as we could compare stats and find out who is the best player amongst us. Here are our ideas for such a system:
Overall stats: total games played on this console, total kills for all players, leaderboard (rank all players on the console), etc.
Player stats: kills, assists, deaths, killing sprees, running riots, double kills, triple kills, killtaculars, percentage of games won, headshots, suicides, favoured weapon, number of games played, best level, etc.
1c. The ability to throw grenades behind you. This would be useful if you are running away from somebody. We suggest mapping this to D-Pad down, as the D-Pad is currently not put to good use.
1d. Stealth powerup. This would make you invisible on people's radars, but still visible in the game. If used in conjunction with the active camoflauge then you can imagine the results.
1e. EMP powerup. Disables the use of other people's plasma-based weapons and radars within a short radius around you. As this is a powerful powerup it would have to be quite hard to find and have a long respawn time.
1f. Medal system. After achieving a certain number of kills (say, 500) your character recieves a medal which is displayed in-game upon his breast for all to see during a batlle situation. After achieving more kills the medal is upgraded to a different design or colour. This would please the Halo fanatics like us, as character customisation has been neglected somewhat in the original Halo. Any other character customisation features would also go down a treat!
2. CUSTOM GAMETYPES
Adding more features to the custom gametypes screen would add longevity to the game. Here are a few of our ideas:
2a. Random placement of assets. This would, predictably, place the assets (rocket launcher, OS, AC) randomly on the map each respawn cycle. This would increase the element of surprise, and make it harder for experienced players to capitalise. Remember, like all the other suggestions in section 2, this is only a custom gametype selection - we would not want this to be a permanent thing, merely a selectable option to extend the life of the game.
2b. Ability to change the respawn time cycle of assets. For example, you could set one respawn cycle to be 30, 60 or 120 seconds.
2c. Ability to change the number of respawn cycles per asset. For example, you could set the rocket launcher to respawn every 3 cycles, the OS every 2 cycles, and the AC every 1 cycle. If the respawn time cycle (as in point 2b) was set to 30 seconds then they would take 90, 60 and 30 seconds respectively to respawn.
2d. Ability to turn off assets. Self explanatory - enough said.
3. MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES
3a. Rocket launcher aiming glitch. We're sure that you're aware of this already, but if you decide to rotate whilst airborn and shoot a rocket (or indeed a plasma rifle - probably any weapon in fact) then the projectile will shoot off in its previous direction. This can be very annoying and even suicidal at times!
3b. Grenades should do more damage. We have determined that if you are caught in the epicentre of a frag grenade with full health and shield, then you will be left with 3 bars of health. We think that this should kill you, as experienced players can usually dodge the epicentre with ease.
3c. Allow us to explain the Dying Star Theorem. When a star dies, the light emitted from its surface still travels towards the Earth, even though the star itself is dead. This is much like firing a rocket a fraction of a second before you die; the rocket still travels towards its destination even though the source is dead. This is fine, but unfortunately the Dying Star Theorem also applies to melee attacks - it is possible to melee somebody from beyond the grave. This should not be so - although it may not happen that often, due to our large amount of game time we have experienced this phenomenon many times. So...
4. CONCLUSION
On behalf of our little Bateson Hall Halo group, and the many millions of Halo fans worldwide, we would like to thank you for creating such a masterpiece. It has provided us with countless hours of entertainment and has proved to be excellent value for money - it was definitely the best £39.99 we have spent! It keeps us sane during our extended periods of boredom, and for this we salute you! We would love to hear back from you, even if you slate us completely.
Cheers, and all the best.
From the Bateson Hall Cru:
Brad "Jimmy" Abrahams
Robbie "Rabs" Smith
Paul "Argwee" Arguelles
Tom "Genders" Genders