Halo 3, Under the Red Pen of Criticism!

I’m breaking this up into two sections, campaign and multiplayer. First I’ll comment on the campaign.

As a single player game Halo 3 is a bit odd. The game has a fairly short length to it, as one play through takes less than ten hours, but never before have I seen a game like this that has such a re-playable single player mode. First of all the levels are very well designed, and that alone could bring a player back for a replay or two. Bungie went a bit farther though. They added two features that change the entire campaign.

The first feature is four player co-op play. This changes the dynamics of the campaign considerably. Most obviously it changes the single player aspect of the game into a multiplayer mode. With two player co-op the game works very closely to how it would with one person. There’s just more fire power and a chance to re-spawn with out starting over. With four people it’s almost like unleashing a small army onto Covenant forces. Four people can accomplish many tasks that one person can’t, and this makes searching for skulls easier, and finding neat tricks to do way more fun. Just exploring the levels and messing around with the environments and your team members is a really enjoyable experience that radically changes how the campaign is played.

And on that note the second big addition is the score based metagame. All kills become worth certain amounts of points, and special kills (melee, head-shots) earn the player(s) more points. Each level has a top score that will unlock an achievement, thus creating a motivation to keep on replaying stages. On a solo level that can only work for so long, again unleashing four people into the levels to compete for the highest score makes the game almost infinitely re-playable.

While it’s nice to see that Bungie made the campaign unique by adding these features to extend its replayablitily, on a narrative level the game falters quite a bit. I may be against popular opinion here, but I didn’t find story itself to be too impressive. It had some good moments, but much of the events happening went unexplained. Many scenes had the player assuming to many things. I’m not saying that the entire story should be spelled out completely, but this was to minimal. On top of that, Bungie had the chance for a real epic ending, and blew it completely. I’ll throw out the spoiler warning here: if you read the next few sentences Halo 3’sending will be ruined for you. At the end of the game, the Chief sets off the newly made ring, and you see the ships warp back to Earth, but the part the chief is on doesn’t quite make it through. Now I get that at that part you’re supposed to assume the worst, because the game picks up at a memorial honoring fallen soldiers, including the chief. What blew my mind is that this is labeled as an epic game, and through out the game there were explosions and action everywhere and the once chance they had to show some fucking destruction on a gargantuan scale, they fucking didn’t. I wanted to see that ring explode and shatter that place. I wanted it so bad. Nothing. I was heart broken. End Spoilers. I guess it’s a minor thing, but it still pissed me off. I had hoped for a better story, but all in all it was a worthy ending to the series. I just hope that it is the end.

The lack of boss fights disturbed me too. There were a lot of moments where I thought there would be some confrontation and there wasn’t any. There was one small boss fight, and it wasn’t all that thrilling. A lot of the ‘would be’ bosses appeared in the cut-scenes, and that’s all. It was disappointing on that front.

So, overall, for the campaign I was impressed by the replayablity it has to offer through great level design, four player co-op, and the score based meta game. I was let down by the story not being as fleshed out as it could be and the lack of bosses. Halo’s accomplishments in the campaign mode outshine it’s flaws though, and I’d say the campaign alone is well worth the purchase.

As for multiplayer, well that’s a bit easier to comment on. A lot of the mechanics are the same as the Halo 2. The entire control scheme for the game shifts a few buttons around, but playing the campaign first allows for easy adjustment. The addition of equipment adds an extra layer of depth, but like the weapons only a select few will be constantly used. As for the weapons a few guns revived a boost in power, while a few were actually downgraded. The Brute Shot, for example, is noticeably less powerful, while the Needler is the opposite. The new weapon balance will take some effort to get used to, but it ends up being similar to the other games. Bungie also added a few more weapons to the already lengthy list of guns, like the Spartan Laser, a flame thrower and and the mauler guns (which are essentially dual-wieldable shotguns). In addition to that, turrets of all kinds can be broken off and carried around the maps. All in all the basic multiplayer feels a lot like it did before, but in reality the new content like the extra weapons and equipment add enough new depth to make it fresh.

Forge also helps multiplayer get a fresh feel. I had once heard the comparison that forge was basically a console version of the infamous Half Life 2 mod: Gary’s Mod. Essentially it is. Forge lets one to eight players edit any of the maps in the game. Players can drop in guns, objects, vehicles, and even spawn points. Every bit of all that is customizable, including setting the time limit on weapon respawns. While it’s not a full fledged map editor, it’s still a nice editing tool that can be used to edit maps or to just have once hell of a death match. It’s a sound addition to the Halo series.

with all of that said Bungie did an excellent job on both the multiplayer and campaign modes. Halo 3 adds a lot of content to the Halo series and the game should be praised for that.

A Commentary on Fall 2007’s Nintendo Conference

Nintendo has been on an odd path since they launched the DS. They’ve been the subject of a bit of controversy, with their so called, “non-games” and their new target audience. Most hardcore fans, for the last year or s, have been a bit at odds with the choices Nintendo has been making. A lot of gamers were concerned that the company was abandoning them in favor of the casual market. The game selection and media coverage echoed that sentiment. Media outlets everywhere are covering the Wii and it’s casual games selection, from Wii Sports to Cooking Mama. There reports hardly ever feature people who would consider themselves long time gamers, instead they featured the elderly or soccer moms. That’s a troubling scene, becuase if Nintendo began to cater to these people would Mario, Zelda, Star Fox and the rest of Nintendo franchises disappear in favor of low development cost casual games? Well, Nintendo made sure to reassure the long time gamer crowd by hyping “the big three” (Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros Brawl). Sure, that’s three games, but what about the rest? When E3 2007 rolled around Nintendo spent very little time covering any of those games, and instead took the biggest chunk of their press conference to unveil Wii Fit, another casual focused game. For me that showed me it was time to invest in a second next-gen console. Nintendo would give me Mario, and then it’s over. Well, at least that’s how I felt then. Since then Nintendo has made me feel a little better about my purchase; espcially with the news rolling off the press from their mega press conference last night.Last night Nintendo showed their plans for the next year, and several of the ideas the company spoke about prior to launch are coming to fruition, including: a DS demo downloads channel. This is a nice surprise considering Nintendo mentioned the plans for it, and forgot to mention it completely for over a year. The channel will also allow for DS game demo downloads, as well as Wii game trailer downloads similar to the videos Nintendo showed in the Metroid Prime 3 demo channel. there’s also a Wii game ratings system, but the important part is the demos. It would have been nice for Wii demos, but that would require Nintendo to fulfill another forgotten idea they spoke of : adding external HDD support. I guess the few ideas they are implementing were taxing enough. Trailers and DS demos are nice though. The DS in store demo-stations always felt a little awkward to me. The game store experience, for me, has always been an awkward one. I’ve never been a fan of going into games stores unless I was going to make a purchase, becuase otherwise it’s a little high pressure. So for me, getting those demos at home will be a relief. Still, Wii demos would be more appreciated. Sony and Microsoft have demo services, and it really comes in handy. Plus, we all see the in store demos, but how many people want to trade their IDs to play a Wii game for a few minutes? It’s a damn hassle, just like hauling your DS everywhere. Maybe Xbox Live has spoiled me, but I’m kind of thinking it’s time to bring the downloadable demo to Wii. Hopefully at some point in the future Nintendo will expand on this channels functionality. At leats I’ll get more use out of this channel than I have the “Everybody Votes” Channel. What a waste of space.

Huh, that turned out to be a bit more angry toned than happy to own a Wii. Oh well. Next up, Nintendo announced it’s first few titles for it’s downloadable games service. First I’ll negatively add that by the time this service launches, in Japan, Xbox Live Arcade will be over two years old, and PSN will be over one year old, and it’s about fucking time Nintendo delivered, considering this too was mentioned six months before the wii was shipped to retail last year. But, the good news is that the titles seem promising. There are a few third party puzzle games, and Nintendo has a Pokemon game ready for it: Pokemon Farm. It’s not really a game, but a place to upload your Diamond Pearl Pokemon, and chillax with them using your Miis. Some people are going to pass this up, but strangely, I’m intrigued by the idea. For a few bucks I got a 3D Pokemon play ground. What the hell, right? Anyway, the big news was a new Dr. Mario, which is fucking awesome. Two player too. Nintendo has a lot of franchises, and I was waiting for some kind of new Dr. Mario game, and I’m not going to have to pay full price for it. Awesome. Square Enix has also pledged a Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles game for the service as well; you can build your own country

All of that Wii Ware stuff is nice, and Dr. Mario rules, but I think the service opens up many more possibilities than cheap Nintendo titles. A big thing Nintendo pushed to the media as far back as the unveiling of the Wii (revealed at E3 2005 under the name: Revolution) was that indie developers could afford to put their products on Wii for a much cheaper cost than on any other next gen system. Since then several publishes have cited that such a claim was true, it’s very affordable to develop on. In fact a major PS3 game, Monster Hunter 3, was moved to Wii (confirmed at the big conference on Oct. 10) for a variety of reasons including that the development costs were significantly cheaper. The point is that small time developers can afford to get a Wii development kit and make games for the system, and with Wii Ware they don’t have to go through many other costs as it’s a downloadable game. Sony and Microsoft’s downloadable game services boast a similar attraction point, but both have tougher certification standards. Not to mention the best chance of getting a game to the public right now is selling ti on Wii, considering it recently claimed the top spot on the market. The gateway has been unlocked, and with Nintendo’s Virtual Console and Wii Ware’s development community they might just have the best downloadable games content on the market.

Aside from the channel announcement Nintendo announced a bunch of software. All of it will please all kinds of people, but few of the titles interested me personally. Fire Emblems fans are getting another one for DS, Mario Sports fans are getting another Mario Baseball title (where, I assume, the player will use the Wii-mote as a bat (how fucking predictable)), there’s a new DS Advance Wars, a Kirby and so on. The real news was that Nintendo finally showed Disaster: Day of Crisis again. Yeah, I know, what the fuck is that?Well Nintendo announced it at E3 last year, but the title wasn’t ever show in playable form, and was completely forgotten (save one lonely screen a few months back) until now. I still have little knowledge of the title, but the basic concept is: use the Wii-rmote to get the fuck away from a ton of natural disasters. Doesn’t sound like anything special, but it could be neat, and it’s a little grittier than most Nintendo games. The real thing here is that Nintendo isn’t shifting all development to casual titles. The oter game announced at that E3 was Project H.A.M.M.E.R., a game where you literally swung a hammer around as a weapon. Again, it was much gritter than Nintendo’s titles, and almost had a God of War-ish vibe to it. It would have been cool, but the entire project was set aside in favor of a low development cost casual game, which remains unannounced. So many of the people who remebered that Day of Disaster even existed hypothesized that it was subject to a similar fate. It’s good to see that it wasn’t, and the bunch of titles that were announced weren’t overwhelmingly casual in nature (they did show Wii Music again, and even though that’s more of a casula game full of Mii interaction, it looks like a lot of fun, and it’s a four player music based game. Rock Band? Fuck that shit (kidding)). They may not all be my thing, but it’s awesome to see that Nintendo’s not going to forget me and all the other ‘hardcore’ gamers.

On a similar note Nintendo showed off Mario Kart Wii again, and I have to say that it was very disappointing. I’m a pretty big Mario Kart fan, and the new things they showed off were actually really lame. The trackes all look recycled, and they added was motorcycles. Motor cycles? It’s Mario Kart. Doesn’t that kind of go against the very idea of the game? And old tracks? Yawn, I’ll just fucking boot up Mario Kart DS and save fifty bucks. It’s a real bummer to because I was looking forward to that too. Maybe I’ll change my mind before it ships, but so far it just seems like they’re just cranking that game out, which is a real shame after what they’re releasing this year. Mario Galaxy and Brawl are finely polished, glorious games, and it just kind of sucks that Mario Kart might not be.

Speaking of Brawl, it brings me to my closing point. Some major, major, Brawl news was revealed last night. I’m finally going to be able to stage a fight between Mario and Sonic. Fuck yes, Sonic is in fucking Smash Bros Brawl. First Snake, now Sonic. How the hell am I going to put that game down?

This picture, oh god, nerdgasm.