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This thread has been linked to the game 'Halo'.
Forget the Tango advert; forget everything else because 'I've been 'Halo'ed'! Still wondering what I am talking about? My results should speak for themselves:
Single Player:
5 Times on Easy
5 Times on Normal
1 Time on Heroic
1 Time on Legendary
Co-Op:
1 Time on Normal
1 Time on Legendary
My completion stats are above and that's not mentioning the Multi-Player mayhem I have had with friends and family, but what kept me coming back for more? Overall I have clocked around 300 hours playing Halo yet after playing 'Timespliters 2' for 10 minutes I couldn't wait to put the pad down and walk away. Bridging the gap between superb graphics and superb gameplay is a very rare thing in the gaming industry, yet a small company known as Bungie and a very small company known as Microsoft managed to do something which you don't see every day or for that matter, every year!
I still feel hungry to go back and take out a hoard of Covenant grunts or wipe out an entourage of the Flood! Is it the Surround Sound? The graphics or the gameplay? Or is just the sheer thrill factor I get from blasting my way through the Library mission whilst my ears dance to some of the most ambient and creative music ever programmed into a video-game.
The Xbox is hailed as a system without 'The appeal' that the Playstation 2 console has yet however many times you play GTA3 the same things happen over and over, but strangely enough every time I play Halo I see something new or I play the game in a completely different way.
By far the biggest challenge I have gotten out of my Xbox system or any other for that matter was playing through the main game on legendary difficulty. Some enemies regenerate their power, they attack in groups and the intelligence displayed from the covenant as you try to get the 'Master Chief' out of the action is something of a whole new level. Earlier on this year I completed the game on legendary difficulty whilst playing through with brother, but nothing could compare me for the single player action! 'Halo' isn't short game so don't get that impression from my completion stats, in fact it has taken me 3 months to complete the game on Legendary whilst juggling between 'coursework' for my GCSE's and trying to fight may way through to rescue 'Captain Keys' from the Brigg.
The question on the minds of those who don't own an Xbox, YES it is worth getting an Xbox just to play this game! With that one over I will get back to discussing what else lies between the depths of Earth, The Moon and Halo!
For those who are lucky enough to own a Home Cinema system will probably agree with me in saying that Halo contains the best Sound Effects and Music yet seen on any console. The music rotates around the room in full 360 degree delight as bullets travel from speaker to speaker as you fight your way through each mission. As ships fly over you the Subwoofer grows like an angry dog and the floor shakes like a naked man in the snow (Don't look any further into that ;)! Reloading your weapon in giant structures creates an echo feeling around the room where as out-doors it sounds flat as if the sound waves are struggling to find anything to refract off. At stages in the game I felt as though I was on Halo and that 'Cortana' was only a few feet away from me, to understand what I am saying would require you to play the game in Dolby Digital 5.1!
Anticipating Halo 2 isn't going to be that easy as near the release of that there will be 3 other first person shooters released for the Xbox going by the names:
Perfect Dark 2
Doom 3
Quake 4
Microsoft and Bungie have promised that Halo 2 will be twice as good as the first Halo; the question on my mind is how can they manage that? Better graphics, better sounds and better gameplay, yet I would be very happy with more of the same.
Some say that Halo is just an addition to the First Person Shooter family, I think otherwise, I believe that Halo has revolutionised the First Person shooter genre in more ways than one and in ways that you have to experience to understand. I had my doubts early on as to whether it was better than Deus EX, Half Life or Unreal but 300 gameplay hours on from that I can safely say that Halo is my favourite first person shooter of all time and in my opinion the greatest. As we speak Master-Chief is orbiting earth in the ship he escaped from Halo with (he is in the Bungie programming office anyway), but where will his journey take him?
After watching the Halo 2 trailer around 20 times I have been looking at which planet or structure lies beneath him as he throws himself out of the ship?! Is it earth? Will he land on the ship passing by underneath him only to find that a new breed of alien has taken over it and he is just going to have to travel wherever it takes him? Will he miss the ship and land in the middle of the war going on below? All these questions are going through my mind as I try to figure out what Halo 2 is going to feature and what the game is going to be about.
I think that on behalf of all Xbox owners I can safely say that Halo 2 is going to be bigger than the release of the first Halo as we now know what to expect in terms of style, controls and usage of the Xbox hardware. Halo didn't push the Xbox system to the point of crashing, but from what I have seen and read of Halo 2 so far it looks like it is going to take these foundations and create a game which will surpass all others in its genre and become possibly the greatest game ever made.
One question you can ask yourselves in the mean time is, "Have you been 'Halo'ed?" If you haven't then isn't it time you were?!
Halo UK 'March 14th 2002'!
Thankyou for Reading
~Alastair~
Single Player:
5 Times on Easy
5 Times on Normal
1 Time on Heroic
1 Time on Legendary
Co-Op:
1 Time on Normal
1 Time on Legendary
My completion stats are above and that's not mentioning the Multi-Player mayhem I have had with friends and family, but what kept me coming back for more? Overall I have clocked around 300 hours playing Halo yet after playing 'Timespliters 2' for 10 minutes I couldn't wait to put the pad down and walk away. Bridging the gap between superb graphics and superb gameplay is a very rare thing in the gaming industry, yet a small company known as Bungie and a very small company known as Microsoft managed to do something which you don't see every day or for that matter, every year!
I still feel hungry to go back and take out a hoard of Covenant grunts or wipe out an entourage of the Flood! Is it the Surround Sound? The graphics or the gameplay? Or is just the sheer thrill factor I get from blasting my way through the Library mission whilst my ears dance to some of the most ambient and creative music ever programmed into a video-game.
The Xbox is hailed as a system without 'The appeal' that the Playstation 2 console has yet however many times you play GTA3 the same things happen over and over, but strangely enough every time I play Halo I see something new or I play the game in a completely different way.
By far the biggest challenge I have gotten out of my Xbox system or any other for that matter was playing through the main game on legendary difficulty. Some enemies regenerate their power, they attack in groups and the intelligence displayed from the covenant as you try to get the 'Master Chief' out of the action is something of a whole new level. Earlier on this year I completed the game on legendary difficulty whilst playing through with brother, but nothing could compare me for the single player action! 'Halo' isn't short game so don't get that impression from my completion stats, in fact it has taken me 3 months to complete the game on Legendary whilst juggling between 'coursework' for my GCSE's and trying to fight may way through to rescue 'Captain Keys' from the Brigg.
The question on the minds of those who don't own an Xbox, YES it is worth getting an Xbox just to play this game! With that one over I will get back to discussing what else lies between the depths of Earth, The Moon and Halo!
For those who are lucky enough to own a Home Cinema system will probably agree with me in saying that Halo contains the best Sound Effects and Music yet seen on any console. The music rotates around the room in full 360 degree delight as bullets travel from speaker to speaker as you fight your way through each mission. As ships fly over you the Subwoofer grows like an angry dog and the floor shakes like a naked man in the snow (Don't look any further into that ;)! Reloading your weapon in giant structures creates an echo feeling around the room where as out-doors it sounds flat as if the sound waves are struggling to find anything to refract off. At stages in the game I felt as though I was on Halo and that 'Cortana' was only a few feet away from me, to understand what I am saying would require you to play the game in Dolby Digital 5.1!
Anticipating Halo 2 isn't going to be that easy as near the release of that there will be 3 other first person shooters released for the Xbox going by the names:
Perfect Dark 2
Doom 3
Quake 4
Microsoft and Bungie have promised that Halo 2 will be twice as good as the first Halo; the question on my mind is how can they manage that? Better graphics, better sounds and better gameplay, yet I would be very happy with more of the same.
Some say that Halo is just an addition to the First Person Shooter family, I think otherwise, I believe that Halo has revolutionised the First Person shooter genre in more ways than one and in ways that you have to experience to understand. I had my doubts early on as to whether it was better than Deus EX, Half Life or Unreal but 300 gameplay hours on from that I can safely say that Halo is my favourite first person shooter of all time and in my opinion the greatest. As we speak Master-Chief is orbiting earth in the ship he escaped from Halo with (he is in the Bungie programming office anyway), but where will his journey take him?
After watching the Halo 2 trailer around 20 times I have been looking at which planet or structure lies beneath him as he throws himself out of the ship?! Is it earth? Will he land on the ship passing by underneath him only to find that a new breed of alien has taken over it and he is just going to have to travel wherever it takes him? Will he miss the ship and land in the middle of the war going on below? All these questions are going through my mind as I try to figure out what Halo 2 is going to feature and what the game is going to be about.
I think that on behalf of all Xbox owners I can safely say that Halo 2 is going to be bigger than the release of the first Halo as we now know what to expect in terms of style, controls and usage of the Xbox hardware. Halo didn't push the Xbox system to the point of crashing, but from what I have seen and read of Halo 2 so far it looks like it is going to take these foundations and create a game which will surpass all others in its genre and become possibly the greatest game ever made.
One question you can ask yourselves in the mean time is, "Have you been 'Halo'ed?" If you haven't then isn't it time you were?!
Halo UK 'March 14th 2002'!
Thankyou for Reading
~Alastair~
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Get out of here you morong, flock your gurly cooob and then we'll think about lettin you in..
Hm.. I dont like Halo.. its good and that but I dont really like it that much :o)
Im fussy.
Im fussy.
The Multi-player might not be but the single player (the only mode which I judge a game by) wipes its feet on TimeSplitters 2 before stamping across it to sit down! Think of TimeSplitters 2 as Trish Stratus and Nightfire as The Rock (in WWE terms), you have a good comparison there :)
ÂLŠ†ÂÎR wrote:
> Timesplitters 2 is no-where near the quality of Halo and no-where near
> the quality of 007 Nightfire, you only have to play the two to realise
> that.
You think Nightfire's better than TSP2?
*tries to hold back the laughter*
.....if you say so..
> Timesplitters 2 is no-where near the quality of Halo and no-where near
> the quality of 007 Nightfire, you only have to play the two to realise
> that.
You think Nightfire's better than TSP2?
*tries to hold back the laughter*
.....if you say so..
Timesplitters 2 is one of the worst games I have ever played and I aren't exhaggerating. I don't class multi-players as keeping the value of the game alive unless you play them every day which I don't. The single player in Timesplitters 2 is poorly done and within an afternoon it can be completed without any dificulty.
One thing Mav said earlier was that Halo is good but not great. Now to be honest I left it at the time because it wasn't really worth defending as everyone who has played the game through at least once will know that Halo is a bench mark FPS title and one that Metroid Prime has benefited from. After reading a few reviews of Metroid Prime I noticed how much they compared Halo to what was in Prime and how Halo had already used this and Prime has imporved on what Halo did.
Timesplitters 2 is no-where near the quality of Halo and no-where near the quality of 007 Nightfire, you only have to play the two to realise that. Where Metorid Prime benefited from elemnets of Halo Microsoft will use elements from both Prime and Halo to create Halo 2 and this is why I believe that Halo 2 will pip the title of best FPS game come this time next year. Halo is a bench mark and as Peter Molyneux (co-owner of Lionhead studios and creater of Fable and Black and White) said, Halo has revolutionised the FPS genre and as we enter 2003 Xbox owners have a lot of FPS quality appearing on their console and thats not mentioning GameCube owners who should have pre-ordered Metorid Prime by now ;)
One thing Mav said earlier was that Halo is good but not great. Now to be honest I left it at the time because it wasn't really worth defending as everyone who has played the game through at least once will know that Halo is a bench mark FPS title and one that Metroid Prime has benefited from. After reading a few reviews of Metroid Prime I noticed how much they compared Halo to what was in Prime and how Halo had already used this and Prime has imporved on what Halo did.
Timesplitters 2 is no-where near the quality of Halo and no-where near the quality of 007 Nightfire, you only have to play the two to realise that. Where Metorid Prime benefited from elemnets of Halo Microsoft will use elements from both Prime and Halo to create Halo 2 and this is why I believe that Halo 2 will pip the title of best FPS game come this time next year. Halo is a bench mark and as Peter Molyneux (co-owner of Lionhead studios and creater of Fable and Black and White) said, Halo has revolutionised the FPS genre and as we enter 2003 Xbox owners have a lot of FPS quality appearing on their console and thats not mentioning GameCube owners who should have pre-ordered Metorid Prime by now ;)
Maverick, how wrong have you got it all.
I own Timesplitters 2 and Halo, and Halo is in another league. Graphics in both games the same? Are you blind?
Timesplitters 2 looks smooth enough but everythings angular and bland. Halos torch effect looks lovlier than anything in TS 2. Textures are crap in TS2- but annimations are excelent. Halo has style, beautiful textures, bump maping and lovely lighting effects. Halo looks Alot better, trust me.
TS2 better in single player? Ahem, it takes longer to complete Assault on the Control room on Legendary than the entrie TS2 story mode on easy(if your quick mind). Halos much better, interms of cinematics, set pieces, enjoyment and variety. And enjoyment.
TS2 has alot of multiplayer options, and bots, which is something Halo misses. Halo has a wealth of Multiplaer option too mind.
Now, I have 4 pads, and my friends and I play multiplayer- alot. But theres something which TS2 lacks that Halos got. The "X factor" if you excuse the pun. The same X factor which Goldeneye had- something you couldnt pin, but it was there, and made it great. TS2 just lacks that something in multiplayer for my friends and I and we get bored despite the options. My friend got an Xbox for Christmas, and last night we indulged in our very first link up game with 2 xboxes on Halo- and it was amazing. Seven player Blood Gulch with Tanks and warthogs beats TS2 in my- and my friends opinion.
TS2 is good- after all I bought it and i only buy good games. :P However it won't stand the test of time. Halo has- 9 months since I got it and we're still enjoying the multiplayer. In years to come, TS2 won't be regarded as a milestone in FPS gaming. Halo will.
I own Timesplitters 2 and Halo, and Halo is in another league. Graphics in both games the same? Are you blind?
Timesplitters 2 looks smooth enough but everythings angular and bland. Halos torch effect looks lovlier than anything in TS 2. Textures are crap in TS2- but annimations are excelent. Halo has style, beautiful textures, bump maping and lovely lighting effects. Halo looks Alot better, trust me.
TS2 better in single player? Ahem, it takes longer to complete Assault on the Control room on Legendary than the entrie TS2 story mode on easy(if your quick mind). Halos much better, interms of cinematics, set pieces, enjoyment and variety. And enjoyment.
TS2 has alot of multiplayer options, and bots, which is something Halo misses. Halo has a wealth of Multiplaer option too mind.
Now, I have 4 pads, and my friends and I play multiplayer- alot. But theres something which TS2 lacks that Halos got. The "X factor" if you excuse the pun. The same X factor which Goldeneye had- something you couldnt pin, but it was there, and made it great. TS2 just lacks that something in multiplayer for my friends and I and we get bored despite the options. My friend got an Xbox for Christmas, and last night we indulged in our very first link up game with 2 xboxes on Halo- and it was amazing. Seven player Blood Gulch with Tanks and warthogs beats TS2 in my- and my friends opinion.
TS2 is good- after all I bought it and i only buy good games. :P However it won't stand the test of time. Halo has- 9 months since I got it and we're still enjoying the multiplayer. In years to come, TS2 won't be regarded as a milestone in FPS gaming. Halo will.
Yes but aren't they using the game engine from the first game and modifying it to utilise the Xbox Hardware? I know that many Nintendo fans were hailing this as the best game ever when it was scheduled for the GameCube yet now it is scheduled for the Xbox (and that the Rare team hasn't changed a lot since the purchase) the game is no longer a great significance! This could be down to two reasons:
1. There are too many other amazin Xbox game due out that GameCube owners have taken a liking to.
OR
2. Its the Xbox and they are Anti-Microsoft!
Personally I would go for option 2 as the main reason but as previews are released we will see which is set to be the biggest FPS game of next year. Even though I am looking forward to Deus EX 2, Quake 4, Operation Flashpoint and Unreal 2 I think the competition will be between:
Halo 2
Perfect Dark 2
Doom 3
Metorid Prime
I just can't wait to get a proper job so that I can afford to get a GameCube for Prime and enough money to purchase the rest for my Xbox :)
1. There are too many other amazin Xbox game due out that GameCube owners have taken a liking to.
OR
2. Its the Xbox and they are Anti-Microsoft!
Personally I would go for option 2 as the main reason but as previews are released we will see which is set to be the biggest FPS game of next year. Even though I am looking forward to Deus EX 2, Quake 4, Operation Flashpoint and Unreal 2 I think the competition will be between:
Halo 2
Perfect Dark 2
Doom 3
Metorid Prime
I just can't wait to get a proper job so that I can afford to get a GameCube for Prime and enough money to purchase the rest for my Xbox :)
ÂLŠ†ÂÎR wrote:
> Even with Metorid Prime and Deus EX 2 I still believe that Halo 2 and
> Perfect Dark 2 will be up there
Not too sure with PD2...
Most of the people that made Goldeneye and PD such good games have now left Rare...
We'll have to see..
> Even with Metorid Prime and Deus EX 2 I still believe that Halo 2 and
> Perfect Dark 2 will be up there
Not too sure with PD2...
Most of the people that made Goldeneye and PD such good games have now left Rare...
We'll have to see..
I'm just looking forward to Halo 2, Metroid Prime and Doom 3 at the moment to forfill my FPS needs for next year, unless there is any others around that I have'nt heard of.
I hope it gets a GameCube release, which isn't unlikely, seeing as Hitman 2's coming out soon.
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