- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
In spite of the fact that we are only the audience and the real toil of developing Halo 2 cannot be fully understood by our passive reception of the demo, I have to agree with the original post on this topic.
1. I felt that homing rockets were unbalanced not in of themselves, but because they lock on in a split-second. I can see the function being fair and useful at long distnaces, but at long distances, given how easy it is to bead onto a target and stay on it, I think there should be a second of locking on time, at the very least, perhaps varying on distance. It would be lame to pull out a rocket launcher, zoom in and let loose, fully confident that without much in the way of skill, you're probably going to hit an unsuspecting target a hundred meters away. The problem is that in the first Halo, one had to predict the movement of the target and fire in anticipation of it, whereas the lock-on system works so that a player just points and shoots. There is no predicting involved--just put the reticule on the target and go. Of course, angles, distances, and the behavior of the rocket will complicate things a bit, not to mention the boosting ability of the warthog and ghost, but what since this can be done from long range, it's unfair to expect drivers to see rockets--even dumbfired ones--coming in from every direction, let only simply being fired at long distances. Furthermore, won't locked on rocket-launching simply defeat the use of tanks and any other vehicle that cannot boost?
On the other hand,I am certain Bungie will see these problems coming, and probably has already planned accordingly.
2. The plasma swords have been dowsed with buckets of sand and have become glass. Electric sparks running through the blades? That's crap--oh, I'm real sure that everyone, in the midst of the game with everything moving around, will zero in on the "electric sparks" in the fragile-looking crystal blades and not mistake them for simple light reflections along the blades. In any case, I think the original Halo plasma sword look was more intimidating, simpler and far cooler. At least the animations for player getting slapped around by the icicle seems alright. The control system seems pretty accessible, too.
These are the two main problems I had with the demo. The other quibbles I had I consider minor since I believe they will be improved upon before the game is shipped--the ghost's destructible parts look like they're simply disappearing when they're shot, not even rotting or melting or burning, more like a magic trick where poof something disappears--things like that.
All in all, I felt the demo was disappointing simply because not much was really SHOWN. Sure, new actions the player can perform were displayed but things looked kind of archaic, recycled--the models are quite nice, even if downgraded from the trailers before, but the animations were heavily lacking. The ANIMATIONS. I read a while back in an EGM magazine (I think it was) that elites will behave with a feline streak, that jackals will exhibit bird-like instincts, and so forth. From the demo, it looked like, from the static standing and movement patterns shown, that the animations have not moved up very far from the original Halo's example. I think that this far into development, with less than six months before release, it is too late to hope that the animations in the game will improve--there goes any hope I had for immersion. Despite whatever environments Halo 2 will take us on, I get the feeling that Halo 2's enemies will feel like robots rather than living beings. These animations were great for the first Halo's time, but I think games have moved on. Didn't Marcus Lehto exhalt animation as what makes our games live these days? What about those bungie weekly updates, where Frankie praised the improvements in animation over the first Halo? Maybe the improvements are there, and we just didn't have a chance to see them?
With letdowns like this year's demo, I fear for the rest of claims I've read about--larger levels that are less repetitive and involve a less horizontal scope over the first Halo? This had better be more than PR hot steam--reminds me of Killzone's cries of revolutionary graphics and gameplay, giving Halo a run for its money, and so forth.