- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: Dr Juggernaut
I've been a huge fan of the Halo series...well, up until I suffered through the Arbiter levels in the last game, sat through the game's "ending," and then moved on to XBL, only to be tormented by pre-teen gamesters who love to launch vicious invectives while openly cheating with modified software.
My point is this: I, for one, am going to need a LOT of convincing before I buy an X-Box 360 for Bungie's latest venture. Here are a list of things that will convince me NOT to buy this game.
1). Battle Rifle (in general). It sucks. Give me the assault rifle or the pistol.
2). Battle Rifle Combo. (Self-explanatory).
3). Playing the game as an elite, grunt, jackal, or whatever. Chief is more fun.
4). A cliff-hanger ending designed to make gamers salivate in anticipation of forking over another fifty bucks three years down the line for another cliff-hanger. Give me a definitive ending. It doesn't have to end the series, but it has to mean something.
5). X-Box Live modders who cheat and then shriek obscenities at me with no repercussion from Bungie.
Well first off, I don't know why people think that the battle rifle sucks... I mean it is one of the more balanced guns in either Halo games, and in my opinion it was the most realistic gun that they put in the game.
There's no arguing against the BR combo, it's the -blam!-est thing since Richard Simmons.
The playing as a different character wasn't anything spectacular, and I don't care either way really, but I didn't like playing the last level of the game as the Arbiter.
The ending was bad, we know it, bungie knows it, everyone knows it... it won't happen again, why because Microsoft is giving Bungie more time for this one, plus it is the last in the series and Bungie wouldn't do that twice.
Now the modders are relatively new to the Halo on Live world, I played for the first year without encountering a modder and the worst deal was the rampant standbying, but for the most part it wasn't a huge part of the game. You have to realize that Bungie was breaking new ground into X-box live and did a hellavu job in countering the cheating as it appeared. No other game had the X-box live following that Halo 2 created and Bungie got the heat for cheaters taking advantage of a realitively new system (Live). Of course now that they have dealt with cheaters for about a year and a half, Bungie knows a great deal more about how they do it and can implement better tools into Halo 3 to hopefully render cheating so difficult that no one would want to got through with it.
So, you have to realize, Bungie takes pride in what they put out the door, and the Halo 2 "disapointment" was largely because Microsoft wanted it out (and I would bet anything expected a launch title for the 360), and Bungie got caught in the middle, but still did a great job of getting us a very fun and playable game. I mean imagine if Bungie got one more level onto Halo 2 that gave us a little more closure, and was similar to the excitement of Halo: CE's Maw? I mean how many people would have changed sides to saying that Halo 2 was a fantastic game? It's all part of the gaming business. After all the "ranting" about Halo 2's campaign, I really doubt that Halo 3 will have a cliffhanger ending (especially since it's the last in a trilogy) and Bungie will probably deliver something spectacular.