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dismas posted:Man I completely forgot about this level. In my head the game starts on Earth. How on earth did you forget giving the covenant back their bomb? It's so cheesy and good
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Apr 24, 2021 19:58
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FoolyCharged posted:How on earth did you forget giving the covenant back their bomb? It's so cheesy and good I just replayed this and I had forgotten about half the levels. The ones I did remember were some of my favorites though.
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Apr 24, 2021 20:04
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FoolyCharged posted:How on earth did you forget giving the covenant back their bomb? It's so cheesy and good I think I just had so much fun exploring the first Earth level also it's been 17 years since I played the game Frog and Toad fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Apr 25, 2021 |
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Apr 24, 2021 20:33
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Ablative posted:It's entirely possible to have a geosynchronous orbit that isn't based around the equator, it just won't be geostationary. Ah poo poo, you're totally right. I was thinking stationary because presumably you wouldn't want your defensive network moving around constantly, but yeah they could be syncronous and stay in the same general area as a cluster. Also, "geosync" is way more fun to say than "geostat" FoolyCharged posted:So we mentioned Sgt Johnson surviving the first game, but there's also the covenant commander now. "We're alone," huh Cortana? Yeah I think even at the beginning of First Strike, they mention that there's a bunch of Covenant ships still hanging around. You sorta have to take Cortana's line to mean no other humans around instead of no one at all. AriadneThread posted:halo 2 is the one game in the series i missed out on the first time around, and yet it's also the one i was most excited for. the ilovebees ARG that hyped up the release really captured my imagination as a high schooler ilovebees was so cool, I remember following it really closely and being so mad that they weren't including Canada. Also, the story about how a guy answered a payphone during a hurricane, and the actor on the phone broke character to say "ok dude, you did it, get inside and get safe!" Kibayasu posted:Those cutscenes are extremely shiny but they certainly went all out on them. Yeah they got the same studio who did the Halo Wars cutscenes, and I think they did the animated version of Fall of Reach as well.
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Apr 25, 2021 19:35
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Love the voice cast they assembled. Keith David, Kevin Michael Richardson and Ron Perlman are all A+++ voice talent. God I love the battle rifle. It feels so good to use, and made Halo 2 feel like a huge step up from the first game right out of the gate. To this day I always look for anything in a shooter that handles similarly and make it my mainstay weapon if possible. And maybe I missed you talking about it, but alongside the weapon updates they also changed the health system. No health bars or health pickups anymore. I know there was a small contingent of people really bothered by regenerating health but I always thought it was a good change: simplified the UI a bit and gave you one less thing to keep track of so you could focus on the combat, and it means that the designers always know exactly how much the health the player has at the start of a fight and can build encounters around it.
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Apr 26, 2021 03:44
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Ok, a station built around a single gun, yeah that's cool. But, uh... Shouldn't it be moving from side-to-side in order to hit targets? The Covenant ships aren't staying still.
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Apr 26, 2021 16:44
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Samovar posted:Ok, a station built around a single gun, yeah that's cool. It was originally supposed to, but I think it gave playtesters motion sickness.
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Apr 26, 2021 17:13
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Loxbourne posted:Probably because Bungie have learned the hard way that their storylines will be experienced by both hardcore lore fans and the itchy trigger finger crowd, who are bored and repelled by long stretches of story or dialogue. There are more of the latter than the former, they have money, and they are surprisingly easy to offend and drive off. I want to keep dredging into the Bungie storytelling because I grew up on Marathon and Myth and I dig that stuff. Pathways -> Marathon -> Halo and the change (I wouldn't necessarily say drop) in the quality and complexity of their storytelling. My uneducated guess as to why they got away with such a detailed story in the whole Marathon series was that the majority of it was conveyed via text, in terminals that paused the action, and could be accessed at said terminals during the natural pauses in the action. The pacing of the game supported that sort of interaction, and they made the most of it. Contrast that with Halo where the story is conveyed via speech, where it's just not reasonable to have a long digression into medieval poetry, or even a long discussion about the immediate situation. Get the key information out and get moving. For all that Bungie writes stuff by the seat of their pants they do a really good job at it. I do find it rather endearing how hard they lean into callbacks to their previous games, something that they really were doing nearly all the way at their beginning. Marathon has a lot of references to Pathways, Pathways references Minotaur and Gnop!. I don't know how much Myth tries to squeeze in direct callbacks to their other games, nothing immediately comes to mind beyond thematic things, but drat if it wasn't one of their best stories. Plus, the format of the inter-mission briefings being journal entries from the soldiers involved was so neat. I know that every so often some folks talk about a re-release or re-mastering of Marathon in a modern engine or something, but at the end of the day it's a goodish FPS along with so many other FPSs. I can't think of another game that has quite the same format as Myth, and that's a game that I wouldn't mind seeing re-imagined in some way. Aleph One and Project Magma keep those old flames alive, but while Marathon is in the family of FPS I can't quite think of another game that has the small-unit real-time tactics style that Myth had.
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Apr 26, 2021 20:23
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El Spamo posted:I know that every so often some folks talk about a re-release or re-mastering of Marathon in a modern engine or something, but at the end of the day it's a goodish FPS along with so many other FPSs. I can't think of another game that has quite the same format as Myth, and that's a game that I wouldn't mind seeing re-imagined in some way. Aleph One and Project Magma keep those old flames alive, but while Marathon is in the family of FPS I can't quite think of another game that has the small-unit real-time tactics style that Myth had. Ground Control.
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Apr 26, 2021 20:49
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The terminals very much did not pause the action, leading to a lot of story getting mashed through as quickly as possible to escape the level before whatever was behind you caught up. Strong agreement on the rest. http://marathon.bungie.org/story/ for anyone looking to go down the rabbit hole.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:26
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This level was a bit of a rude awakening in me and my buddy's "co-op replay all the Halos" undertaking. We had already finished Reach and 1 on Legendary each, so this improvement on the latter with much more options should be smooth sailing, right? Oh boy. We got our asses handed to us in this first level so many times I can't even begin to guess at a number. Legendary is always unfair in Halo games, but in this, it's utterly merciless. Let me just say two things in which it differs severely from what we've had before: 1) Way less actual health. Shields regenerate, yes, but the total capacity seems lower. Three plasma hits and you are defenseless. That includes individual shots by a plasma rifle. Any Elite can murder you in half a second. It's fully absurd. 2) Contrary to Reach and Halo 1, if one co-op partner dies on Legendary, both of you get reset to the last checkpoint. This used to be an extra hard Skull to activate, now it's always on. We used to be able to do suicide runs (with the tradeoff that afterwards, we only had half the firepower until the room was clear, so that was fair), stock up on ammo using the other guy's corpse, have one guy get killed by a surprise enemy (invisible dudes for example???) and call that out to the other one, and so on. All of that, gone. One Elite getting the drop on one of us, Plasma barrage, boom, restart. It's super frustrating. We did manage to go through about half the game, but boy oh boy is every checkpoint a hard-earned victory. And I don't know if I bitched about that itt or just in the PYF thread focusing on bitching, but the checkpoints are awful. They don't activate half the time, making stretches between them unreasonably long. Overall, kinda marring the experience of what I remember being my favorite after Reach (God, Reach is so good). I missed all of those cool moments like the Malta blowing up because I kept getting killed just trying to get to those Plasma Grenades in that room. Ridiculous.
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Apr 26, 2021 23:36
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Wicked Them Beats posted:And maybe I missed you talking about it, but alongside the weapon updates they also changed the health system. No health bars or health pickups anymore. I know there was a small contingent of people really bothered by regenerating health but I always thought it was a good change: simplified the UI a bit and gave you one less thing to keep track of so you could focus on the combat, and it means that the designers always know exactly how much the health the player has at the start of a fight and can build encounters around it. Haha no along all the other new stuff I totally forgot to mention the new health system. It's so standard nowadays that I honestly didn't even remember that it was different by the time we did commentary. Samovar posted:Ok, a station built around a single gun, yeah that's cool. Ablative posted:It was originally supposed to, but I think it gave playtesters motion sickness. I do always think this when I play the level, "how can they even be aiming?" But yeah if the moon and earth were constantly rotating around the exterior I think that would be rough. Simply Simon posted:I missed all of those cool moments like the Malta blowing up because I kept getting killed just trying to get to those Plasma Grenades in that room. Ridiculous. I really wanted to address this part of your post because your point about set pieces is kinda interesting. There's a lot of them in this level and they weirdly bounce between being very good about drawing your attention to them, and having them be so hidden that you need to go looking. So good examples would be the door the Covenant cut through at the beginning (which isn't very original but it's very effective) and the view of the gun as you go down the inclinator and Cortana starts opening fire. And then like you say, missing the other space stations blowing up is easy to do if you aren't playing with subtitles Halo 2 doesn't have subtitles and you don't quite understand what the Marines are saying. They give you two chances at that one, but still. I showed off the first carrier that buzzes the station and pointed out that you have to rush stupidly into enemy fire in order to see it, but then here's the kicker: in the 17 years since this game came out, I never knew that you can see the second carrier (the one MC blows up in the final cutscene) buzz the station too. In the final room, when Cortana says "you might need to get creative", the carrier flies past the window at the far end of the room. Same story in that you would need to stupidly rush the enemy in order to see it, and they are specifically placed to open fire and force you into cover. I found this out by accident while looking up other completely unrelated details of the level.
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Apr 27, 2021 03:08
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Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty is absolutely hosed. It remains the only Halo game I've never beat Legendary solo besides 5, which I don't own. I won't mention any specifics unless Frenzy & co. want to talk about it, but it's absolutely nightmarish.
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Apr 27, 2021 06:14
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 02 - Outskirts Time to head to the surface, repel the Covenant invaders, and figure out what it is they want on Earth. SoggyBobcat posted:Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty is absolutely hosed. It remains the only Halo game I've never beat Legendary solo besides 5, which I don't own. I won't mention any specifics unless Frenzy & co. want to talk about it, but it's absolutely nightmarish. I don't remember it being that bad, but that was also 15 years ago and I still had my youthful coordination and reaction time. But yeah feel free to talk about it, we aren't going to be talking about it too much other than the odd mention.
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Apr 30, 2021 20:32
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Hungary is another nation that gets mentioned a lot in Halo, from what I've gathered. One of the books notes that the planet Reach was mainly settled by Hungarians. Halo in general seems to go with the idea that most colonies were established by one particular nation or other, which I've noticed is an increasingly common thing in sci-fi settings. I do think this game (or at least this level) being set in Africa is an interesting touch. You don't see future Africa much in sci-fi stuff. I have my suspicious as to why, between reading The Fall of Reach and the LP of Halo 1, but I'll hold off on my speculation for the moment. Even if this game is a clear case of the trend for games in the 90s and early 00s towards a washed out brown and grey palette. Also, regarding the needler and beam rifle - Fall of Reach mentions the largest Covenant capital ships having a naval version of the needler that can take out multiple ships in one shot. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 21:15
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Ah yes, good old Jackal Alley. I've honestly lost track of how many times that section kicked my rear end on the higher difficulties. There is a special place in hell for whoever at Bungie came up with the idea for Jackal snipers. Although, it seems that the MCC lost the instrumental version of Blow Me Away for when the Hunters appear. I'm going to guess dumb stupid licensing issues?
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Apr 30, 2021 21:17
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AradoBalanga posted:Although, it seems that the MCC lost the instrumental version of Blow Me Away for when the Hunters appear. I'm going to guess dumb stupid licensing issues? They did lose the license, but it didn't play there to begin with. You're thinking of something pretty far down the line.
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Apr 30, 2021 21:48
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There are solid plot reasons for using Mombasa, but it's nice to see an African city get the SF "gleaming spires" treatment and be shown as a decent place with modern infrastructure. Maybe they're on the next level, but I seem to remember announcements and radio traffic actually in Swahili.Cythereal posted:Halo in general seems to go with the idea that most colonies were established by one particular nation or other, which I've noticed is an increasingly common thing in sci-fi settings. It's been a long-running staple of MilSF all the way back to the 70s. Fits certain worldviews, and also lets authors justify "country X in space" faction design. It does avoid some issues with utopian mixes or ethnic blends being accused of cultural imperialism. Now if only the actual human troops looked and sounded like they came from Africa...
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Apr 30, 2021 22:01
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Loxbourne posted:Now if only the actual human troops looked and sounded like they came from Africa... I mean, the ones you're rolling with aren't, they're deployed from In Amber Clad.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:05
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Ablative posted:They did lose the license, but it didn't play there to begin with. You're thinking of something pretty far down the line.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:18
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I think it's a reasonable guess that even if the colonising is done by a multicultural UNSC, the general populace would keep grouping together, at least loosely, based on national identity. It's how colonisation and immigration have tended to work in real life. It's definitely a conscious decision to pack the series with people from all over the world, including a lot of places that don't normally get much mention in sci-fi. It's nice to have a setting which goes out of its way to demonstrate that the united earth really is people from over, and not just the US or China or Western Europe.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:54
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Halo always seemed to have a thing for vehicle sections in tunnels and Halo 2 is no different.
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May 1, 2021 03:53
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:
Hello Mr. Legendary Jackal Sniper I see that I am dead.
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May 1, 2021 04:34
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Cythereal posted:Halo in general seems to go with the idea that most colonies were established by one particular nation or other, which I've noticed is an increasingly common thing in sci-fi settings. As Loxbourne said, the sort of homogenous colony thing is very common. I find in all fiction it's sort of a granular resolution thing, the setting one level down from your overall setting is generally described as being homogenous. So if the story takes place in one city, it has culturally distinct neighborhoods; if it's in a country or state, you get cities; if it's a global story, it's countries; and if it's interstellar, you get whole planets. You can even see it as far back as the original Star Wars/Trek. And as far as the giant needler goes, we even saw in the opening cutscene that that big walker thing took down Pelicans with one. AradoBalanga posted:Ah yes, good old Jackal Alley. I've honestly lost track of how many times that section kicked my rear end on the higher difficulties. There is a special place in hell for whoever at Bungie came up with the idea for Jackal snipers. McTimmy posted:Hello Mr. Legendary Jackal Sniper I see that I am dead. This video is a little meme-y, but I think it gets the feeling across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKX-aI1TQXM
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May 1, 2021 18:03
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Two things I just want to note some appreciation for: First, the title of that initial section: "They'll regret that too" after Johnson mocking Regret's name/message, and then getting shot down. Second, that little tapping sound when Cortana's telling Chief to wake up, as if she's tapping on your visor, despite the fact that she is in fact an AI that is plugged into your armor.
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May 1, 2021 21:21
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:
Those fuckers don't even need to be looking at you to kill you on Legendary. They will shoot behind themselves, full 180 to their facing angle. And they show up on the rooftops in the holding section on Legendary, too. If you needed more reason to just go roof hopping. Also the Scarab doesn't have a super needler, its secondaries are just fuckoff huge plasma cannons.
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May 1, 2021 22:29
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Ablative posted:Those fuckers don't even need to be looking at you to kill you on Legendary. They will shoot behind themselves, full 180 to their facing angle. The updated graphics do seem to change the lighting a bit to make them slightly more visible, but even then, the ones on the upper floors in Jackal Alley are still far enough back/obstructed by other objects that they're hard to see.
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May 2, 2021 00:56
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The talk about multiplayer in this episode reminded me of my Multi adventures. Back when this first came out XBOX was ahead of the curve on "online" multiplayer as the system was built with a built-in ethernet port. Which would eventually lead you to being able to play online as broadband became more wide spread. But for young people living in rural Wisconsin in the early 2000s, that wasn't an option yet. But, what you could do is get a length of cross over ethernet cable and plug two XBOXs into each other and do small LAN parties. Which was great, because you could have two teams of four, one running on each box, and then it didn't matter if you were screen looking, because you were all on the same team. I remember long long nights that went deep into morning the next day, where we had two rooms about 50 feet apart, connected with one long cable between the rooms, and just hammering away on ever multiplayer game type we could get our hands on I might be mistaken, but I think with a simple switch you could have networked even more XBOXs together, with regular network cable. I don't remember if we ever got that far, but that was so much fun. AradoBalanga posted:The other issue with Jackals is that, especially in the original engine, they could very easily blend into the background because of their tan skin color. So, your only notification that there was a Jackal sniper in the immediate area was either the beam rifle shot killing you, or you getting lucky because the Jackal missed you on their first shot. The bright purple glowing eye pieces help too, but yeah, on harder difficulties, that is just not going to be enough.
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May 2, 2021 01:08
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CzarChasm posted:I might be mistaken, but I think with a simple switch you could have networked even more XBOXs together, with regular network cable. I don't remember if we ever got that far, but that was so much fun. Yup, you could have full 16-player matches via local network so long as you had enough consoles. I worked at Circuit City back in like 2006 and we'd occasionally set up a LAN party after closing.
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May 2, 2021 04:56
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:This video is a little meme-y, but I think it gets the feeling across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKX-aI1TQXM  We, after playing this level on Legendary
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May 3, 2021 09:21
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Ablative posted:Also the Scarab doesn't have a super needler, its secondaries are just fuckoff huge plasma cannons. I feel like half of my life is a lie. I have thought for 17 years that the Scarab had a big needler, but I guess thinking about it, the way it impacts the Pelican doesn't make any sense for a giant flying crystal.
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May 3, 2021 22:53
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:I feel like half of my life is a lie. I have thought for 17 years that the Scarab had a big needler, but I guess thinking about it, the way it impacts the Pelican doesn't make any sense for a giant flying crystal. It’s always fun revisiting your childhood.
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May 4, 2021 02:21
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I played the first two levels solo yesterday, this time on Heroic, to see a bit more of them without a constant frenzy of "I DIED, gently caress, ANOTHER ONE TOP LEFT FOR NEXT TIME". First one was absolutely fine, it's great to finally be able to kill an Elite just with gunfire and actually be able to go face-to-face with one for long enough to win, it's really a huge difference. In the second, jackal sniper alley is still a bitch, but crucially: - you can survive a shot, leaving you with no shields, but alive - they actually sometimes miss Both are very much not true on Legendary, making it almost unplayable. Had a good time alone and on Heroic, can recommend. Until I tabbed out of the game to answer a message, and the window just vanished, while the game sounds continue playing in the background. Had to kill the process. Absolutely par for the course. Great gaem 343
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May 4, 2021 13:09
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 03 - Metropolis With the help of some heavy armor and heavy weapons, the Chief continues to push through obstacles on his way to the Prophet of Regret.
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May 7, 2021 21:27
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So, here we have some of the new voice talent for Halo 2. If memory serves, the female marine at the start is a young Michelle Rodriguez, while Sgt. Banks is Orlando Jones. Although, I am saddened that the MCC removed one of the sillier things from the Scarab destruction cutscene. In the original, you'd walk out of the wreckage with whatever weapon you had equipped when you finish the level, so you could walk out while holding the rocket launcher or the sniper rifle. And in the case of the latter, it'd clip through the ground since Master Chief's model is (presumably) designed around him holding the much shorter battle rifle or SMG.
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May 7, 2021 22:48
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CzarChasm posted:But, what you could do is get a length of cross over ethernet cable and plug two XBOXs into each other and do small LAN parties. In my first year of college, I was the only person in my dorm to own a crossover ethernet cable. It got invited to more parties than I did.
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May 7, 2021 23:27
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Metropolis always feels like one of the bigger levels, even though it's just like... the bridge, a bit of highway tunnel, a couple parks, a plaza, and the Scarab. Like, that's all there is to it. It's actually quite short. Some of the later levels, that are actually massive in terms of space, feel tiny compared to this one.
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May 8, 2021 00:39
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For as intimidating as the Scarab looked in cutscenes, it was quite the derpy little spider tank in the game proper.
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May 8, 2021 00:52
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Huh, I thought I was misremembering Johnson's quippy speech from the opening cutscene but I went back and yeah, they changed everything between "Listen up" and "What about that Scarab". Did they change that for MCC or Anniversary? Not that the new lines are bad, but it's a weird change.
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May 8, 2021 01:58
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SteelMentor posted:Huh, I thought I was misremembering Johnson's quippy speech from the opening cutscene but I went back and yeah, they changed everything between "Listen up" and "What about that Scarab". Did they change that for MCC or Anniversary?
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May 8, 2021 02:43
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