- Evil Johnny
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- Exalted Heroic Member
Posted by: PLUT0NIUM 235
Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
I didn't see Reach's campaign as bad...
+1 to that, infact I think Halo: Reach has the most complete, mature and well realised campaign out of all the games, its taken everything learned from previous games and came up with a fun, frantic, well rounded campaign that didn't really break the whole universe as much as some people claim.
I don't think any Halo game is really an ultimate one in every aspect, but as far as gameplay/level design goes, I (half-) give that honour to Halo 3. Just look the 3 (!) scarab fights, if that's not pushing up the ante in vehicular combat. Even the hornet segment in the mission The Covenant was more impressive and fun than the falcon bit of Reach. It was basically the same thing except you had to drop at different places, why not try to do something really special? In that respect alone, Reach is almost the worse. The pacing was all over the place and the levels felt too contrived for their own good. It's like they tried to condensate as much as possible the Halo formula, so they had to streamline it as much as possible, resulting in an experience that felt lacking, that felt like big chunks of missions were deleted for some reason. In other words, you feel like running through the whole thing. I think Halo CE is the one that got it best, followed by Halo 2 (which even had 3 missions taking the cutting room, but all the others were complete). While some moments felt brief and rushed in Halo 3, some moments were very well paced.
To me, Reach's campaign feels like the most dumbed down one of the whole franchise. On the other hand, it is the most polished one, giving some pretty good gameplay (but then it had several flaws compared to the other games on certain aspects). But at the end of the day, I just think they tried to make it too much as an Halo game, barely adding anything new, not scaling things up. The art design is top notch, the music and all this, but I just feel there's quite a bit missing so Reach would've realized its full potential. Longer, more carefully paced levels, more different environments, bigger scale encounters, more developped, open level design, etc... I really hope Frankie means it by saying he wants to make the gameplay deeper. Make us REAL sandbox levels, not just circular areas connected by corridors, rince and repeat. What's the point of trying to make relatively open areas if there's only one exit anyway, if there's no way to use the level design to its advantage?
[Edited on 03.24.2011 5:04 PM PDT]