These days I've finished Halo:Reach. This is the last Halo game made by Bungie, although not the last in the series (that would be Halo 4). Spoilers ahead if you haven't played any Halo games.
I left it for last because I understood that it was not as good as the previous ones. This is kind of true, but still is a pretty awesome game. The graphics are better than previous versions, and the world feels quite richer, with heavily populated areas, cities, bases, etc. I'd say its weak parts are the characters. I didn't manage to connect with them much.
As Yahtzee explained in his review, a team called "Noble Team" is clearly competing to see who is more selfless and caring, and performs a better sacrifice. The only two characters that had some slight development, in my opinion, were Jorge (the first guy to die) and the female researcher(don't remember her exact name) that acts as the usual crazy scientist (usual, but interesting). The rest were quite...bland.
It didn't help that there were moments where the IA of the other characters made them look while 2 huge hunters were playing tennis with my character's corpse....that cannot be helped I guess, otherwise you wouldn't have a challenge (since the other team members are kind of immortal unless killed by the plot), but when all characters are supposed to be super-soldiers, it doesn't quite fit....
Anyway, the game is still good and fun to play. However, I liked more the other Halo games, including 4 (and I'm not counting Halo Wars among them).
Halo games got me addicted some time ago after one friend from university, Alex Urbano, introduced me to them. They have something special. The main character, even if he's not talkative and it may appear rather bland as well, has a certain sense of humor, maybe like stereotypical action heroes, but that puts more personality than all the Gears of War characters combined. Together with the second main character, the AI Cortana, it makes the game much more fun. They interact like some kind of couple, and they kind of are a couple, in their weird way.
The main games always have a feeling of greatness, of something epic going on. I think the music has a great influence on that, I already commented in other posts that it's awesome, transmitting the action of the game together with the awe of discovering new planets and technology. By the 3rd game, it even adds a melancholic touch, and the feeling that it's the end of the world. But it's not only the music...the graphics and the areas also give a special imprint. Instead of gritty realism, in these games everything is shiny, colorful, well illuminated (unless the are is supposed to be dark, of course). The different places are usually beautiful, in their modernity or their impossibility (a world in the shape of a ring, a huge structure with floating parts, an underground area that goes kilometers deep, etc.)
ODST, probably the weirdest game of the group, it's really great in making a simpler plot with new characters interesting. It centres more on the exploration of the city, and uses quite well the feeling of being completely alone, surrounded by enemies, trying to get help and get an idea of what has happened while you were unconscious.
It also has Malcolm Reynolds in it as the squad's leader, which is always a plus^^.
The gameplay for all Halos is quite simple,you need to explore different regions, gather useful weapons and kill everything to advance. In some exceptions, you can just try to run through enemy territories very fast. When you get hit, your shields take the damage. When you're out of shields, sometimes you have a life bar and sometimes health regeneration, but the effect is the same: Enough hits without shields, and you die. If you wait without getting hit again, shields recharge.
If you play in a difficulty harder than normal, the games are actually pretty hard. It's not easy to get out of places were you're heavily outnumbered and outflanked. Usually there will always be a group of small enemies together with a couple of big ones. The small ones are not a big danger by themselves, but they interrupt you if you try to concentrate on the big ones, and their added attack can easily kill you if you don't find some cover.
In these harder difficulties, an important part of gameplay is actually something closer to survival-horror style games, where you scavenge for ammunition, and where it's important to not miss and waste resources. Lots of times you need to use the normal rifle instead of the big huge laser, since no matter how good you are with the laser, in the end it can only kill 6 enemies before you need another weapon.
In the end, you learn to use whatever is at hand, you learn to use as few shots as possible, you learn how to use grenades....you learn how to play better and better. And it's done nicely together with the advance of the plot.
I'd like to finish talking about Halo 4, the start of a new trilogy created by a Microsoft department dedicated to make more Halo games, while Bungie dedicates itself to other ideas and games.
When you heard such a thing, it sounds like the usual big company crap, where they beat the corpse of any franchise as long as it expels a little bit more of money for them. Probably the managers that decided to do this had that in mind. However, it seems they selected for the job actual Halo fans and ex-members of Bungie.
The result is really great. This game has more plot than any of the older games, and it manages to develop some very interesting secondary characters, apart from giving new dimensions to the usual ones. Sure, there are plenty of things that still don't make much sense, but the care and detail that has been dedicated to it is clear.
There is this example, further in the game, where you meet some old lady scientist, where without saying much, her expression in the game says thousands of things. You're forcing her to get rid of something she is researching. Without saying much, the face shows the regret of wasting hours to throw it away, the regret of not being able to know more, that she doesn't want to do it at all, but she knows that there is no other option to save the station where they are situated. By this simple trick, they develop her into a likeable character, with an inner world.
And then they kill her in a gruesome way. And they manage to motivate you to kill the bastard responsible for this.
This is good storytelling using video games This is what they can offer. Sure, without good graphics they may have not been able to pull this off, but the idea of the whole scene, of all your efforts of all her efforts of the expression and tone of her voice, all that....that's storytelling when it approaches art.
Compare it with the stupid little kid in Mass Effect 3...I could not care less about him. He appeared once, he was a little bit annoying, maybe with reason, but with no nuances. We were supposed to feel bad because he was a kid. But the voice used, the face used, the situation, the dialogue....I could not care less. Specially because they force it on your character, who gets traumatized by it.
In Halo 4, they do nothing like that. They just show an interesting character, and kill it, and they do it in a way that you care...but even that is up to you to choose, in a way.
That shows that this game was made with care and respect, whatever the reason of its origin was. And that's why it's a great game.
I left it for last because I understood that it was not as good as the previous ones. This is kind of true, but still is a pretty awesome game. The graphics are better than previous versions, and the world feels quite richer, with heavily populated areas, cities, bases, etc. I'd say its weak parts are the characters. I didn't manage to connect with them much.
As Yahtzee explained in his review, a team called "Noble Team" is clearly competing to see who is more selfless and caring, and performs a better sacrifice. The only two characters that had some slight development, in my opinion, were Jorge (the first guy to die) and the female researcher(don't remember her exact name) that acts as the usual crazy scientist (usual, but interesting). The rest were quite...bland.
It didn't help that there were moments where the IA of the other characters made them look while 2 huge hunters were playing tennis with my character's corpse....that cannot be helped I guess, otherwise you wouldn't have a challenge (since the other team members are kind of immortal unless killed by the plot), but when all characters are supposed to be super-soldiers, it doesn't quite fit....
Anyway, the game is still good and fun to play. However, I liked more the other Halo games, including 4 (and I'm not counting Halo Wars among them).
Halo games got me addicted some time ago after one friend from university, Alex Urbano, introduced me to them. They have something special. The main character, even if he's not talkative and it may appear rather bland as well, has a certain sense of humor, maybe like stereotypical action heroes, but that puts more personality than all the Gears of War characters combined. Together with the second main character, the AI Cortana, it makes the game much more fun. They interact like some kind of couple, and they kind of are a couple, in their weird way.
The main games always have a feeling of greatness, of something epic going on. I think the music has a great influence on that, I already commented in other posts that it's awesome, transmitting the action of the game together with the awe of discovering new planets and technology. By the 3rd game, it even adds a melancholic touch, and the feeling that it's the end of the world. But it's not only the music...the graphics and the areas also give a special imprint. Instead of gritty realism, in these games everything is shiny, colorful, well illuminated (unless the are is supposed to be dark, of course). The different places are usually beautiful, in their modernity or their impossibility (a world in the shape of a ring, a huge structure with floating parts, an underground area that goes kilometers deep, etc.)
ODST, probably the weirdest game of the group, it's really great in making a simpler plot with new characters interesting. It centres more on the exploration of the city, and uses quite well the feeling of being completely alone, surrounded by enemies, trying to get help and get an idea of what has happened while you were unconscious.
It also has Malcolm Reynolds in it as the squad's leader, which is always a plus^^.
The gameplay for all Halos is quite simple,you need to explore different regions, gather useful weapons and kill everything to advance. In some exceptions, you can just try to run through enemy territories very fast. When you get hit, your shields take the damage. When you're out of shields, sometimes you have a life bar and sometimes health regeneration, but the effect is the same: Enough hits without shields, and you die. If you wait without getting hit again, shields recharge.
If you play in a difficulty harder than normal, the games are actually pretty hard. It's not easy to get out of places were you're heavily outnumbered and outflanked. Usually there will always be a group of small enemies together with a couple of big ones. The small ones are not a big danger by themselves, but they interrupt you if you try to concentrate on the big ones, and their added attack can easily kill you if you don't find some cover.
In these harder difficulties, an important part of gameplay is actually something closer to survival-horror style games, where you scavenge for ammunition, and where it's important to not miss and waste resources. Lots of times you need to use the normal rifle instead of the big huge laser, since no matter how good you are with the laser, in the end it can only kill 6 enemies before you need another weapon.
In the end, you learn to use whatever is at hand, you learn to use as few shots as possible, you learn how to use grenades....you learn how to play better and better. And it's done nicely together with the advance of the plot.
I'd like to finish talking about Halo 4, the start of a new trilogy created by a Microsoft department dedicated to make more Halo games, while Bungie dedicates itself to other ideas and games.
When you heard such a thing, it sounds like the usual big company crap, where they beat the corpse of any franchise as long as it expels a little bit more of money for them. Probably the managers that decided to do this had that in mind. However, it seems they selected for the job actual Halo fans and ex-members of Bungie.
The result is really great. This game has more plot than any of the older games, and it manages to develop some very interesting secondary characters, apart from giving new dimensions to the usual ones. Sure, there are plenty of things that still don't make much sense, but the care and detail that has been dedicated to it is clear.
There is this example, further in the game, where you meet some old lady scientist, where without saying much, her expression in the game says thousands of things. You're forcing her to get rid of something she is researching. Without saying much, the face shows the regret of wasting hours to throw it away, the regret of not being able to know more, that she doesn't want to do it at all, but she knows that there is no other option to save the station where they are situated. By this simple trick, they develop her into a likeable character, with an inner world.
And then they kill her in a gruesome way. And they manage to motivate you to kill the bastard responsible for this.
This is good storytelling using video games This is what they can offer. Sure, without good graphics they may have not been able to pull this off, but the idea of the whole scene, of all your efforts of all her efforts of the expression and tone of her voice, all that....that's storytelling when it approaches art.
Compare it with the stupid little kid in Mass Effect 3...I could not care less about him. He appeared once, he was a little bit annoying, maybe with reason, but with no nuances. We were supposed to feel bad because he was a kid. But the voice used, the face used, the situation, the dialogue....I could not care less. Specially because they force it on your character, who gets traumatized by it.
In Halo 4, they do nothing like that. They just show an interesting character, and kill it, and they do it in a way that you care...but even that is up to you to choose, in a way.
That shows that this game was made with care and respect, whatever the reason of its origin was. And that's why it's a great game.
