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I've a bit of a complicated relationship with Halo. When I was in target audience age, I didn't care about the XBox and in fact didn't know anything about Halo, never played or saw anything related to the games. I became "exposed" when a good buddy of mine wanted, for nostalgia reasons, play Halo co-op with me, so he lugged his OG XBox over to my house and we played the campaign over a few weekends. I was not impressed by the game at all, for a few reasons: - unfamiliarity with the XBox controller - unused to console FPS games at all (this game broke my previous preference for inverted cameras, but it took a while to adjust) - it's very easy to get lost, the game imo has massive issues with player guidance - my buddy had played it a billion times before so I was mostly stuck wandering around super lost maybe sniping a few grunts until he hit a loading zone and yanked me with him Still, we had a great time just drinking beers and shooting the poo poo while mostly he shot the enemies, and I did get better gradually, then we played Halo 2 and it was ofc way the hell better. Then we bought a used 360 together (Reach branded even), played Reach and Halo 3, and I started to really enjoy the games as games. We also played 4 but it sucks rear end in our opinion. We've now gotten the MCC on Steam and are currently playing Halo 2 on co-op, having finished Reach and CE already, both on Legendary because I can now finally hit things properly and we are, after all, both used to the games now. They are still a blast as co-op games. However, I was never impressed by the story and am a little baffled by how much emphasis from-the-start fans put on the lore; my buddy as well read a bunch of the novels. I'm not above pulp and especially sci-fi writing (I read almost all the Star Wars EU books and a lot of MtG ones), but the story just from playing seemed to bare-bones to me that it never gripped me at all. You mentioning that there's a lot of it pre-loaded in the manual makes it a little easier to understand - if the game is not meant to deliver its story on its own, then I can't really expect it to impress me with it. It might also not have helped that we honestly rushed a lot in our first Halo 1 playthrough, and that I was so confused with the controls. To illustrate that, it took me until...dunno, sometime during our Reach playthrough to realize that the second mission takes place on the Halo. You have already pointed out that nobody on the Pillar of Autumn* makes a big deal out of this gigantic alien structure, I just assumed that this is a relatively normal occurance and the biggest issue is that it's in the way of the lifepods. You see the planet in the background of the cutscene and it cuts out as they approach the Halo. Then, spoilers for the setting of the second mission, there's plants and rocks and a beach so why would I assume that's on the Halo itself?! *this is a great and evocative name by the way, but it took me until the end of the playthrough as well to understand that it's the name of the ship in the intro. OG Halo has no cutscene subtitles so there was a lot of me going ??????? which pillar? There's seasons in space?
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Jan 15, 2021 13:03
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I'd also like to add that the MCC is making our co-op re-play very pretty and, well, possible half a country apart now, but also incredibly, bafflingly frustrating because we keep losing connection halfway through a mission, or the anti-cheat decides that I'm fishy and have to go, and for some reason the game does not save checkpoint progress, you have to beat the entire mission in one sitting. Added superfun: at least for me as the invitee, the MCC very often does not save progress at all, which is not that big of a deal for our playthrough because Mission Select is unlocked from the start, but it does feel great that after two hours of slogging through a Legendary mission, finally conquering it, the game boots me to menu and is like "oh yeah you never played this in co-op", I don't get an Achievement for it, nothing. Even on single player it only works half of the time. I got a few point goals and par times and it just does not save them, it's insane to me that there is such a severe and obvious issue and nothing is done to fix it. Researching it shows tons of people having the same problem and it's just the way it is.
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Jan 15, 2021 13:08
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:This is great because so much of it exactly mirrors my experiences. Even down to not knowing what "The Pillar of Autumn" was and not realizing the inside of the ring was habitable. For this level, I got lost very hard a lot and teleported everywhere after my buddy. It had been a while for him so he also got lost, but not quite as hard as me. We both found our way a lot better on the recent replay. My biggest "oh, okay" moment was actually in the bridge room, though. For anyone not aware, co-op on the XBox was of course split screen on a CRT, so you had half a comparatively tiny screen to work with, that didn't help at all, and so very often I was just huuuuh???-ing around and my buddy ticked off the objectives. In said bridge room, I had absolutely no clue what was happening, and looking at his screen helped very little. On the replay, I actually found the ramp first and hit the button, that made me a little proud, haha. I do think that it's moments like this however that show how Halo bridges old-school and newer FPSs: in Doom, Unreal etc., there's a fuckload of buttons. Just, go somewhere, hit a button, then you can continue. And finding that button, and often what the button does is part of the game. You're supposed to just explore the level and click on things that look suspicious, that can be a puzzle, or a challenge (button hidden behind enemies), or a way to gate level segments (door hides tougher enemies), but the buttons are ubiquitous. So sometimes, Halo does buttons. But because that's actually rather rare, you often don't realize that you need a button. The environments do look great, even on the original graphics as you showed. They had a very good designer for that, everything fits well together, has a defined aesthetic. Problem: the buttons blend into that. You do have that hologram of course, but there's a lot of shiny decoration. It's not super obvious. And the same goes for the ramp up to the button. It's just somewhere on the side. The room also has a left side, but there's no ramp there (or maybe there is, with goodies on top?!) - it's just very clunky, imo. There's no indication that the ramp even exists, it's behind scenery. Stuff like this is where Halo's level design fails in its awkward middle ground. Speaking of goodies: you mentioned the even then anachronistic feeling powerups. Also something that feels tacked on because it was the style at the time, and they weren't quite confident in their ability to make an entirely new kind of FPS to let go. Like the buttons, there's barely any. They'll get quietly dropped as the series progresses, and that's for the best. Random thoughts: - the Needler has a great niche on Legendary, because if you manage to fill an Elite with needles, it's fucken dead, no matter the shield status. IF, because they're jumpy motherfuckers, but it's still a great thing to have when there's This One Fucker Around The Corner. Btw, are you going to show the higher difficulties, or can/should we talk in the thread about it? I think they did those really well and there's lots to analyze. - it's tough to show but the Warthog controls like garbage imo. Not so much the driving itself or the ridiculous physics, I think especially the latter are wonderful, it's a perfect video game fun having vehicle, but how you actually steer. For anyone not in the know, it drives where the camera points. There's no steering with the left stick, you control left and right entirely with the right, and on MCC, with the mouse. This means that you cannot ever take a look around you while driving - someone shoots you from behind, and you'd like to know who, or how many? No dice, you'll veer wildly out of control. I got kind of good at it because I was designated driver (buddy was and is a way better shot, I'm actually garbage at FPSs), but it's still the weirdest thing, completely different from how any other modern videogame vehicles drive. It actually makes a lot of sense when you're driving Ghosts, mind, because of the front-facing cannon, but it's absurd for the Warthog. - if the Master Chief took one of the last lifeboats off the Pillar of Autumn, how are more arriving after his crashed? - it took me quite a while to piece together that Cortana piloted the PoA until she got put into MC's head, only then did her "I disabled the Covenant ship" make sense, I thought she was, like, hacking or something. Nope! Giant ship cannons!
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Jan 15, 2021 19:54
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Kadorhal posted:I never had much trouble navigating as a kid, but on replaying the first level with the Master Chief Collection a couple months back, I somehow got stuck in the hallways immediately before the escape pod at the end of the level for like fifteen minutes because they all look the same and there's no indication where the still-docked pod even is.  As for the "we vs. aliens" debate, I think it's a running theme in many sci-fi settings like this that the aliens are constantly underestimating humans. The Covenant especially have united all of these alien races under a banner of shared fanaticism, they probably are used to other species either becoming assimilated or getting steamrolled out of existence. The humans of Halo at least say "no we won't" at a level of fierceness and tenacity that the Covenant are completely unused to, and that seems to be the one thing allowing the humans to hold their own. The Covenant think "oh they would have to sacrifice four of their ships to take down even one of hours, surely they won't" and the humans go OOH-RAH and do just that.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:43
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Yeah I know some more definite answers from what I picked up of the Halo 2 story, but I'm keeping to what we know already to avoid spoilers.
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Jan 20, 2021 22:42
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White Coke posted:Do you only carry one type of grenade at a time? In fact, the UI is so minimalistic that I find it hard to see stuff in it sometimes. While most games opt for a big red health bar and, dunno, green for the shields, Halo has the same pale blue somewhere in a corner, and not one you'd think. I'm eternally grateful for the danger sound indicator, or I'd never know when to start hiding, especially on Legendary. My biggest gripe with Halo 1's UI in particular is the "pick up weapon?" dialogue. It's semi-transparent, super pale blue like the rest, tucked in a tiny corner of the screen, just terrible. I don't notice half the weapons that are lying around. Later Halos make that way clearer, I'm a bit sad they didn't back-port that. Sure, there's not that many weapons, but it really takes conscious effort for me to see that there is a new Plasma Pistol for me to pick up, tyvm
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Jan 23, 2021 18:44
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The fact that you can kill the Hunters with a single pistol shot is so wild to me. It works even on Legendary, they really hard-coded that weakness in. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's obviously way harder to aim on original XBox than it's with a mouse + KB. I don't think I could do Legendary on console, I'm simply not good and practiced enough for that (my buddy maybe, who played the game as a teenager to death) - also, I'm left-handed, so aiming with the right stick is always a bit more difficult for me. Clicking on heads is way simpler than aligning the crosshairs, and the same goes for weak points. Hunters do get way harder to kill as the series continues, tho. In Reach on Legendary, whoo boy those are some nasty encounters.
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Feb 4, 2021 18:01
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Hoo boy, this level. We had a hell of a time with it on Legendary co-op. I think I've already mentioned itt that the co-op system in the MCC does Checkpoints very badly, and even worse, it does not save them between sessions: you have to beat the entire thing in one go. With a level of this length, that's a big ask, considering that you'll die a LOT - y'all weren't kidding wrt the difficulty of the double bridges, but the open areas with Wraiths also are no slouch. Also, because the MCC has poo poo servers and netcode or whatever, the game crashed once about two thirds through the level, erasing our progress, and once more about a third through I got dinged by the anti-cheat protection for no reason. We got quite familiar with these rooms. However, there was one nice thing: when we first played this in the original version, I had no loving idea how to navigate. We kept repeating the same rooms, then there was an open field I got utterly lost in, and I just kept getting ported along with my buddy who did know the way, but then I wouldn't know which way to even go, and sometimes walk backwards, and then port him backwards, total mess. No, I did not notice the arrows on the floor, and he didn't tell me about them. This time around, I noticed the arrows, and suddenly, I was the one who knew where to go. It had been a while for him, so he went off shoddy memories, but I just followed the path the game drew. I've gotten way better at orientation both irl and in videogames since my first playthrough, and it really showed. Cool little proud moment. Speaking of the open snow field: it's a really weird part of the level, where the obvious path just breaks down completely for a bit, mostly owing to there being a central structure which you can sometimes enter, sometimes not (if the enemies open the doors for you), and then inside there's a way up to a balcony, and you emerge...somewhere, and it's so, so confusing and easy to get turned around. And the building is almost completely useless! There's, like, active camo and that's it. It's such a weird level design element. And finally, I strongly agree that the first time you encounter the building that houses the control center is extremely badly done. I've said it before, but Halo has a very hard time directing the player's attention to its setpieces. Which is baffling, as they obviously spent a lot of time making them. They got better with it as the series progressed, but I still think one of my biggest issues with the games is that cool poo poo keeps happening, but you often almost only see it by accident!
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Feb 6, 2021 22:18
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Fascinating stuff, thanks for taking the time to collect those videos! I love how candid the developers in the first video are. "We wanted to have like 30 guns, but Microsoft told us we had 5 months to finish the game." "Yeah the E3 demo was entirely scripted, all smoke and mirrors." And my favorite quote: "Halo used to be cool." It's also nice to see their priorities for the Macworld demo, as what's already finished is: - main theme - logo Rest is optional. Finally, wow the voice acting for Master Chief was always the worst of the bunch, huh
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Feb 13, 2021 15:57
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Ablative posted:I have a confession to make. Then your co-op partner teleports you somewhere, which might be its own version of "backwards" 
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Feb 21, 2021 11:11
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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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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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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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We finished this level yesterday in Legendary co-op. And let me tell you: it is an absolute gently caress. All these rooms you walked into where you instantly ate poo poo and saw three sniper shots pass you by? Yeah, all of those would instantly and perfectly hit on Legendary. We had to very carefully lure sword Elites out, memorize every single sniper position, have a terrible time with Drones... And that wasn't even the worst part. No, either: - being stuck on the second gondola with four shots on the rocket launcher, as two Banshees spawn that can shred you within a second of plasma barrage, and you have about 30 seconds to not miss a single shot (they take two rockets each!) before the other gondola shows up and flying Elites spawn on there that are at least as damaging as the Banshees. And you have to kill the Banshees - perfectly - every time you try to attempt surviving that. or: - the Regret fight, where he takes at least four full punch cycles to finally go down, his blasts can instant-kill, the sword honor guards ofc as well, but sometimes plasma gunners spawn who can do almost the same (but ranged), and infinite of them spawn and Grunts swarm you...we died probably 30 times until we decided to just run in circles and hope that one of us would get a chance to safely jump on Regret, upon which the other did his best to make sure the puncher wouldn't land amongst three sword dudes when Regret teleported But no, the ACTUAL worst part was when I discovered the Lore Terminal in the second big room, activated it, saw a cutscene but my buddy got killed during it (because I was just standing there slack-jawed, and the game doesn't pause for both people), and then I respawned without being able to control Master Chief, nothing worked, so we had to abandon that whole run and do it all over again. Those Terminals are absolute shits of coding anyway. Often, he couldn't even see them despite me activating them - and I'm always playing second fiddle, so I'm invited to his game-world, in a sense. He doesn't get informed that I found one, the game doesn't pause, we both can be killed while the cutscene plays...frankly, they should just be disabled in Multiplayer.
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Jun 12, 2021 16:50
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Woo, caught up on Reach videos! I stopped following the LP when you started ODST - because I hadn't played that in co-op with my eternal Halo co-op buddy yet - but now we did it, and I started watching your vids on that game too, but being current with Reach is so good. I love Reach. I'm lukewarm on Halo overall - I might have talked about it itt how I started playing it on OG XBox with my buddy who was super into it, so I kept dying over and over while he basically ran ahead, and I couldn't see anything and barely could control it - but Reach is really good as a game overall. What most impressed me was this last mission, the space part specifically - I had played a bit of Planetside 2 with a group of buddies containing also the Halo friend a bit before we started Reach, and man, the flight controls in Planetside are just insanely bad and super unintuitive. I was designated flier because I had the best grasp on them, and still routinely killed all of us just by holding the liftoff button down for too long. Also, Warthog with mouselook are a goddamn nightmare, so I wasn't in high hopes for a Halo spaceflight level. But man, the Sabers work so well. They control absolutely perfectly and the dogfighting is tons of fun. Also insanely difficult on Legendary, but that goes without saying  .
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Jan 11, 2024 14:17
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Two things I noticed in comparison to our recent Legendary playthrough: We were stuck for half an hour getting owned by those turrets covering the door, and you tell me there's been a balcony overlooking them all this time? fffff And during the flight segment, I was wondering if you weren't, like, in trouble. Then you looked back...  ...yeah you can't ignore even one of those on Legendary. It was pretty tough to get through the railshooter even with two people manning the guns, crazy that you can just go "oh Banshees? Whatever"
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Jan 16, 2024 09:00
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bman in 2288 posted:I don't remember this level at all. I only borrowed Reach, must have given it back before I got here. Neat to see how the game starts to tie into Halo 1.
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Jan 27, 2024 15:43
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Excellent LP for an excellent game, looking forward to the bonus video. It's really weird that there are not plans to bring Halo 5 to the PC. Even with its lukewarm reception (and 4 is terrible, so I get it), I'd still play it with my co-op buddy. Easily worth 30-40 bucks. I guess they figure they can't charge full price and then it's not worth it? Guess I'll just have to watch your eventual LP. 4 first, though, I guess...
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Feb 3, 2024 16:33
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Optimus_Rhyme posted:So, they're glassing the planet and yet they're still sending troops down for ground attacks?
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Feb 3, 2024 19:58
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Halo 4 asks the important question of "what if the Flood had their own weapons and what if they all sucked infinite rear end"
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Feb 3, 2024 22:59
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I'm replaying the games right now because Halo is fresh on my mind from this and another LP I'm watching. This time, I'm also getting all the collectibles, and I don't know if I missed a discussion about it itt (didn't follow for Halo 3-Wars-ODST) but boy are some of those skulls stupid as hell to get lol
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Feb 6, 2024 11:53
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