Halo 3 Gone Gold

[Llyranor]

Regardless of your thoughts on Halo, this is a pretty cool marketing campaign http://halo3.com/believe/

 

Though, if the game itself ends up disappointing, one would argue that they should have poured that budget into actual game development. Halo1 was an unexpected hit and 2 was rushed, but 3 has no excuse to be a letdown in terms of pure game design.

 

On a brief aside, I have Blue Dragon. Still going through the first disc. The game is pretty solid so far. Traditional design throughout for the most part, but the combat system is fresh enough (though it doesn't necessarily break any major ground), and the job system is good fun. Music is very nice so far. Graphically, I'm pretty impressive by the environmental art. Character-wise, it really depends on how tolerant you are of Akira Toriyama. Story isn't anything to write home about; it's pretty lacking, but at least it doesn't try too hard like in some other JRPGs.

 

I'll be picking up Eternal Sonata next week as well. Can't go wrong with good old co-op.

[theslug]

Regardless of your thoughts on Halo, this is a pretty cool marketing campaign http://halo3.com/believe/

 

Though, if the game itself ends up disappointing, one would argue that they should have poured that budget into actual game development. Halo1 was an unexpected hit and 2 was rushed, but 3 has no excuse to be a letdown in terms of pure game design.

 

On a brief aside, I have Blue Dragon. Still going through the first disc. The game is pretty solid so far. Traditional design throughout for the most part, but the combat system is fresh enough (though it doesn't necessarily break any major ground), and the job system is good fun. Music is very nice so far. Graphically, I'm pretty impressive by the environmental art. Character-wise, it really depends on how tolerant you are of Akira Toriyama. Story isn't anything to write home about; it's pretty lacking, but at least it doesn't try too hard like in some other JRPGs.

 

I'll be picking up Eternal Sonata next week as well. Can't go wrong with good old co-op.

Glad to hear a good account of blue dragon. I heard the first third of the game is almost excruciatingly slow but later on it gets really good. My friend is going to let me borrow some of his games like rainbow six las vegas and dead rising. I'll need to get an extra controller and set it up on my internets and wait to mug someone who got a copy of halo 3.

[Llyranor]

Story-wise, disc 1 *has* been fairly slow. Still, I've been enjoying it, as the gameplay compensates pretty well. What makes it for me, though, is the hard difficulty. The default game is very easy, apparently. You'd have to download the hard mode DLC (for which you'd have to make a HK account - why MS hasn't made it available 'overseas', I don't know; they've had months). The battles for the most part have been pretty challenging, especially since there are no random battles, so you can avoid them as you want, and exploration has been more fun since you don't run into compulsory battles at a set interval.

 

Dead Rising is pretty cool. For Rainbow Six Vegas, make sure you play it co-op if you're into that. It's awesome.

[Meshugger]

Penny-arcade have the same sentiments about Halo 3-marketing as Ctrl-Alt-Del

 

[Meshugger]

UPDATE: Our pirate mateys have gotten the game and verdict so far is: "Meh, im on the second chapter and it feels like Halo 2 again, little open terrain and alot of fighting alone. So far, there's nothing like the first one with big open battles, a sense of emergency and larger battles with other team-mates.

 

Maybe Heavenly Sword is more fulfilling.

Edited September 21, 2007 by Meshugger

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Meh, I'm not gonna argue whether it sucks or nto until I play it, and so far the intro already looks promising.

[Calax]

...

 

you have no idea what the back room at gamestop looks like right now with a skillion copies of halo sitting there

[Pop]

The ending has been leaked, or so they say (Microsoft's aggressive attempts to quell its spread seem to point to authenticity) and from the looks of it it was just as maudlin and ham-fisted as the straight-out-of-Pearl Harbor commercials suggested. Audio's a little garbled, but there may or may not be another "give us more money" cliffhanger.

[Musopticon?]

Supposedly, there's two endings, another for Legendary difficulty.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Legendary sometimes has a small extra to the ending, but essentially the cutscene at the end of the credits (classic halo thing) is for all the difficulties.

[Llyranor]

I'm halfway through Halo 2 on co-op Legendary (the lack of respawning is killing us, but it actually makes it more awesome). I wonder whether that remains for 3. 4p co-op with no respawn will be insane ("did you just fall down that cliff AGAIN?" "oops").

[Krookie]

I'll get Halo 3 post release probably, mainly for 4player co-op.

[Bokishi]

I'm up for some Halo 3 co-op!

[lurchman]

I'm afraid I lost my interest in Halo when it became a Vista only game. I really like Halo, but I don't like the idea of being forced to buy Vista to play it.

[Hurlshort]

I'm afraid I lost my interest in Halo when it became a Vista only game. I really like Halo, but I don't like the idea of being forced to buy Vista to play it.

 

You play Halo on the PC? I thought people like you were just urban legends!

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Who the hell waits for a 360 title to come out on PC? It can take years!

[lurchman]

You play Halo on the PC? I thought people like you were just urban legends!

 

Wouldn't have it any other way. Gave the consoles to my children.

 

But if Gates keeps doing business like this, I may have to. lol

Edited September 23, 2007 by lurchman

[Llyranor]

(psst, you're missing out on the co-op)

[karka]

Gamespot's Review

 

Ign's Review

 

Eurogamer's Review

[lurchman]

Well gentlemen, I am too old and too involved with the PC gaming platform to start playing consoles. Besides, my time is pretty much taken up either running sites or moderating, besides playing. And I'm not about to get into a debate over which is better. The reason for my post really was to take another shot at Gates and his DX10 via Vista only BS. For those of us who do choose to play on the PC, it's really a slap in the face from Microsoft and game developers, for the years of loyalty we've shown. I'm sure none of you, no matter what you play on, would not like to be forced to buy something you don't want just to keep playing. XBox might be his next target.

[Pop]

Tricky tricky of Microsoft to put a gag order on reviews till today. 2 days between review and release ensures that the deafening hype will overtake any bad press that might accrue. Not that there's any bad press, but SW:EIII was a steaming piece of **** and critics were more than willing to cuddle with it on account of its being the last of a legendary series.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

10/10?

 

Weird how they keep hovering between "We've seen it before" and "It's insanely fun" but still give near perfect scores...

[Pidesco]

Game reviewers are about as trustworthy as someone not trustworthy at all.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

That was an... original... comparison. It's like saying Fat Albert is about as big as someone who's really fat...

 

 

And I've found Reviewers are usually honest about the game's problems or strong points, but sometimes get a score too big or too low.

Edited September 23, 2007 by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Wow, reviewers are confused arn't they.

 

I found an irony in reading that Halo 3 STILL suffers from a major flaw that dogged the original, poor ass level design. Still, despite the trend of bad level design through all of the Halo games it seems, they still awarded it 10/10 at eurogamer, didn't bother to look at the others.... I expect they'll all be licking Halo's almighty bottom and quoting it as being the dogs dangley bits for some time to come, but like most games on the 360, like GoW it'll just be an average game thats probably too short and rather boring.

 

I also felt offended by the reviewer in his suggestion that if you're a hardcore FPS fan, then you love halo by default, which isn't true.