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General Gaming / Re: Halo Reach
« on: September 11, 2010, 02:15:06 PM »From the previews I have seen and read, probably not. The game appears to be largely the same (in regards to control, gameplay, graphics, story, etc.) as Halo 3.
Maybe if you're reading previews from people who don't know what they're talking about. Halo Reach is causing a stir in gaming circles for a couple different reasons, mainly the fact that hardcore Halo players are finding that "their game" has been completely turned on its head, and the fact that people who never cared about Halo before are now finding that they're interested in the game.
It's really a completely different ball game from all the previous Halo titles. Like I said earlier in the thread, I don't care for the older games. Halo 1-3 are essentially the same thing with a new coat of paint and some minor balance tweaks. Halo Reach is Bungie really stepping up to the plate to send one out of the park before they move on to new things. The armor abilities change up the way every single encounter in the game plays out, both on the individual level, as well as the level of the entire match. Now literally everybody on the battlefield has some kind of way of approaching, exiting, or handling a fight that is different than Halo's general "run around the corner, start shooting" strategies.
Not to mention how much Bungie is improving the capabilities of the Forge. I don't know if building or customization is your thing, but honestly Forge 2.0 is probably the easiest to use level editor for a first-person shooter, but also powerful enough to be able to create really complex and interesting levels with it. So much so that Bungie is actually including a couple maps that they created in Forge (including a remake of an older level) on the disc itself, ready to be played in matchmaking right off the bat. Check this out to get a better idea of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnoUGULIPyc
On top of that, there's also the theater functionality, which really makes me wonder why Bungie was the first one to do it. Basically, Bungie saves replays of your last fifty matches (or somewhere around there), and you can go into the theater, and watch the matches play out from the beginning, either following yourself around, following somebody else around, or just using the free camera to wander around the map. From there you can save sections of video to either show people the cool stuff that happened, or maybe just for your own reminder. I would like to say that one thing that Bungie is fantastic at is creating animations, so when you're looking at all the stuff in theater, most of it looks really awesome. That also leads to to some really excellent screenshots, which can also be taken in theater mode. Some are funny, some are intense, some are dramatic, but almost all of them look like promo shots, and honestly it's just really cool to be able to see that come from your own work, both in the game and in the theater.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/Shralla/Reach/reach_1130143_Full.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/Shralla/Reach/reach_1130142_Full.jpg
And theeeeeeeeen there's Firefight. Most common reference for Firefight is Gears of War's Horde mode, but really Firefight is a lot more fun. It was already a lot more fun when just the barebones functionality of it was in ODST, but in Halo Reach they're making it so you can customize pretty much every aspect of Firefight. You want unlimited jetpacks and nothing but rocket launchers? Go for it. Do you want endless swarms of grunts and nothing else (I think this is already in matchmaking, called Gruntocalpyse)? Do it. You want unlimited ammo and no reloads? Sure!
Really, if you didn't care about Halo before, you have every reason to at least consider it now. Halo Reach is really the ultimate culmination of everything Halo was about, with a ridiculous amount of improvements and new content to both change up the game for older players as well as draw new players in. I'm picking mine up at midnight.
