HALO

I just picked it up Thursday to keep me occupied between the release of The Orange Box and Assassin's Creed.

Can't say the graphics are amazing/ agree with the shiny plastic comments. The new weapons are awesome, the new vehicles rule, I love the inclusion of forge, but once again realize- I don't fall into the category of gamers that are excited to be some overly macho ape with guns. Not to offend, mind you.

I look at the story of Halo (which I have played since its first title, yet this is the first I've owned) and compare it to Half-Life. I use this comparison since I just recently trounced the Orange Box in its entirity (except TF2, still no net at my pad) and thoroughly enjoyed the storytelling that they use in game. Now I haven't gotten very far into Halo 3, but I know it isn't going to compare after I just played HL2,EP1 and EP2 all in a row.

Still, I have joined your ranks and MS has my money and in the end that is all that matters. Soon as I get on Live I wanna play some of you guys (or girls)

Yeah... Valve definitely knows a thing or two about pacing.

I have criticized some things about HL2 in the past but after playing some other similar games and mods (MINERVA for one), some of the things that I initially disliked really make sense when compared to the alternative.

One example is the use of music. In HL2 it is very sparse and when it comes on you get super pumped. I really used to hate how much time was music-less in the old one but after playing MINERVA where sometimes the "tense fight music" goes on for several minutes, I realized that it results in a lot less of a "rollercoaster ride".

I mean, there are several parts of HL2 that still get my adrenaline going even though I played through them several times.

Valve knows how to fine tune a game, and furthermore is willing to make unpopular decisions to improve gameplay. The TF2 beta forums were FULL with endless complaints about changes from TFC or QWTF to TF2. Valve made several huge changes and in the end made probably the best Multiplayer FPS in the last 5-10 years.

I've never been a master at shooters (especially in Multiplayer), I've usually received a 'proficient' stamp. I got over dying a lot years ago.

Bragging about being good at Halo is only slightly better than bragging about being good at SOCOM.

I've never played SOCOM on multi, and what I did play I didn't like very much. MGO kicked a lot of ass IMO, I was in a clan and everything. I was one of the best grenade lobbers most players had seen- and they hated it!

It is good but does not nearly deserve all the hype it gets. Plus I don't find the appeal as much as some people- I'm not overly fond of mobs of Marines shouting HOORAH! over the most pedestrian of achievements.

See I get the opposite feeling- HL series rubs me the right way, I wonder how you'd do with it. Call of Duty is also a good series, I enjoy the mission designs and 4 looks amazing.

I'm guessing that's because you were "raised" on it.

I'm not saying it sucks, I'm just saying if you are into multiplayer shooters, there are about a dozen other games that are much better.

Of course, most, if not all, are on the PC.

Well there's your problem.

No, the problem was shooters that have no story or depth- of course Halo looks better than them, it is like comparing apples to shit. What would you rather get your hands on?

Counterstrike, though a powerhouse of online gaming (at no charge!), is not incredibly good. It has a very fast paced addiction factor which came from an installed userbase ported over from Half Life. Valve took their success and ran with it, CS is just one of the lovechildren, as is TF & TF2 (which I think you'd love).

Conker is good for quips, not gameplay.

You are in no way allowed to slander or otherwise compare Goldeneye to any other shooter- if you were asked to compare Goldeneye, you would have to compare it to every other shooter that wasn't made by Rare and even then you still wouldn't have a full grasp of the greatness achieved in that time. Goldeneye aside, I never knew of Bond games preceding it and their is probably a reason- unless you meant the later Bond games which are all suckfests (except I relished each one, because the Bond-verse makes me happy inside). Still, not much to compare because Goldeneye is dated as hell.

Quake the original was more of a sleeper hit- most people remember the series starting at Quake II (which I still love that it had a soundtrack done mostly by Trent Reznor). Quake multiplayer seemed copycat to Unreal Tournament, in that it was called Quake Arena and had some of the same features. Comparatively, UT is like Godiva Chocolates and QA is Hershey's, they're both good but one is far superior to the other.

Doom is something whole other, like Wolfenstein, it changed the face of FPS in ways that have shaped the genre. It is another case of 'for its time', although many still love it, and what worked then seems redundant now. That was the downfall of Doom 3, it used the same formula as the original games hoping that it would still hold in this day and age. I think it was an epsiode of XPlay (I've always thought the 'X' in XPlay was fishy, like maybe it had something to do with Xbox, a built in bias perhaps?) that said it best, (quote not exact, or even close) "Monsters popping out of closets (meant to cover more than just 'closets' and including nooks, crannies and all other manner of dark tight space(ah, euphamism)) every 10 seconds begins to wear on your enjoyment rather quickly" then Adam cracked some non-sequiter about monsters coming out of the closet. All said and done Doom was better at its inception.

I smirk that you even made this comparison, but the Prime series was actually a far more story driven game than it looks. Retro studios did an amazing job, leaving nostalgia intact and adding in new faces and races to keep the action going. As far as your standard shooter goes, Metroid Prime blows, you can't compare it the same way you would normal shooters because that isn't what it is. That doesn't mean that you have to take it easy on Prime because it is a Nintendo IP, but really when you are playing it you aren't playing it to be wowed by the action sequences, you are exploring Samus's latest adventure (though chronologically speaking if Fusion was the most recent adventure then Prime 1-3 are all old adventures) which is a fanboy thing to be sure. (As pointed out earlier in the thread, Prime did the visor hud before Halo 3, but we aren't keeping score here are we?)

Which I've come to accept and expect of people in your generation of gamers. At this juncture it is only our hope to educate you and enlighten you to the greater things of this world of gaming.

A few more comparisons then I'm done:

You love Rowling, we offer you Tolkein.
You love Chappelle, we offer you Pryor.
You hate episodes 1-3, we assure you 4-6 don't suck.
You like something good, we offer you something great.

Except foil has already stated in the past that he doesn't play Halo for the campaign, so the storyline is irrelevant to him.

I'd be interested in knowing how much be played. CS has a high learning curve due to the fact that a lot of the players play it ALL THE TIME, and headshots are not that difficult.

Knowing foil's age, by the time he played the original CS he was either too young to be any good at it or he was playing against a general community that had already been playing for several years.

I know CS has a high entry barrier because its really easy to die, has a relatively high learning curve, and when you die you have to sit the whole round out which bores a lot of players.

I didn't like CS at first either but a lot of my friends played it so I stuck with it. After I stopped sucking ass at it I really enjoyed it.

Also, CS has a big "WTF!?!?!?!" factor whenever you get hit by some bullshit jumping fastswap awp shot through a door from across the map by some guy who's been playing it every day since it came out.

OTOH, I could play Halo or Halo2 (haven't tried 3 in multiplayer) with ZERO experience and do OK even though I really had no experience. It just has an easier learning curve which is a good thing initially but can often result in stale-ish gameplay that doesn't reward better players enough. Certainly, skilled players would beat my ass but in a full game I could still do ok on kills (although not win). However, in CS if you suck and everyone else is decent you are likely to spend 90% of the time either camping in fear of getting killed or waiting for the round to end after you die.

The rest of the titles foil named are either single player or console or both, which lends evidence to what I've said that he was "raised" on shooters more similar to halo. I'd be willing to wager a guess that halo 2 was the first online multiplayer shooter he played, at least for more than a couple of sittings at a friends house or something.

Didn't see anything about Quake series, HL2 mods, Battlefield series, CoD, UT series, original Rainbow Six, Tribes series etc. Of course, he has a mac so this isn't really unexpected.

For my money, there isn't a shooter out there today that is much better than Team Fortress 2.

Then Halo is most certainly NOT where its at.

Fucking Tribes! I forgot about Tribes! That game was ballsy.

The original Quake has a massive community, plus the original Quake also had its music done by Trent Reznor.

Oh no you didn't.

Unreal Tournament was released after Quake 3. Quake 3 had gameplay that was essentially a streamlined version of the deathmatch in Quake and Quake II. I don't know what crazy moon logic you must be using to say that Quake multiplayer copied UT. Also I would say that you have the chocolate analogies back to front there, UT is more like one of those crazy cheap chocolate blocks with tons of different flavoured fillings, Quake 3 is more like a good quality bar of plain milk chocolate.

Doom 3 had its flaws, but being a copy of the original Doom games was definitely not one of them. The gameplay was old fashioned but the slow paced nature was completely different to the fast run and gun of Doom.

Do tell!

I like Halo 1 and 3, also like Elite (286 vers), Master of orion 1&2, C&C Red alert, Unreal Tournament 2004, HL2/CSS, BF2, Subwar 2050, Syndicate.

Well there's your problem.

The whole POINT of CS at the time was the "accuracy" (actually the entire half-life family to some extent). It was a game that rewarded players for shooting in the head far more than other shooters of the day. Porting it over to some cludgey control sticks, several years after the original release pretty much removes anything that was dazzling about it to begin with.

No, it has to do with the release date... being a certain age doesn't matter but being born at a certain time does.

By the time you would have played it, you'd have been playing against almost all experienced players. When you play a game at release you are more likely to have fun since you don't get your ass kicked all the time.

And you use a Mac, not a PC. It's not suprising that you play your games on consoles.

Just ignore Pow he's one of those types who thinks hes better then everyone else.

Yeah, there is.

And if you had any reading skills you'd be able to see that when I say "there's your problem" you'd know it isn't referring to your opinion, but your sampling method.

Let me translate: You played the terrible Xbox version, no wonder you didn't like it.

You just said the first time you played it was on Xbox.

Did you make that up?

Better than everyone? Nah. Better than some though...