Halo 4, kinda suck tbh. This is coming from someone who play the MMC so i basically marathon it and is able to compare it back to back, and it peaked at Reach. The gun play is wonky and no dual wield, Covenant somehow become the bad guy again after the event in 3, and none of the one that help human defeat Gravemind came back as an ally.
But it doesn’t ruin the franchise for me though, to me canonically there’s only 5 Halo game. The rest is fan fic.
It’s explained in the game that the Covenant faction you fight is a splinter faction. There’s more details in the books, I didn’t have problems when I played it.
Right, the books that also seem to constantly have continuity errors with the games. :P
Reading the books has actually taught me to not take Halo’s plot so seriously and instead just try to enjoy whichever piece of the story I’m currently engrossed in.
I never really worried to much about continuity errors. The worse is Halsey being in two different places during the events of Fall of Reach book and the game Reach. The Forerunner books actually smoothed that stuff out by explaining when huge amounts of materials pass though Slipspace or go far too fast through Slipspace(remember that crystal?), temporal errors build up and you get a timeline split. Unlike most scifi timeline splits though, in Halo, the lines can reconverge and Reconcile without most people realizing it happen. Halo 5 made a little nod to that with Halsey’s “Casual Reconciliation” line. Somewhere in the Halo universe, some bookkeep is pulling their hair out trying to figure out how Halsey departed Reach twice.
4 felt like such a cash grab to me. No deep lore or story telling like with 1 through reach. Exposition was just spoon fed to us rather than a great mystery. Still, I plugged through, hoping maybe it’d turn around.
Then 5 came out and I gave up all hope on the franchise. Spent more time playing as Locke than we did Chief, story was more compelling than 4 but the storytelling and pacing were clunky, and it was completely disconnected from 4.
Infinite just got worse. “We lost, chief” (but we have no frame of reference, we have no idea what that means , we don’t know how the rest of the world has been affected, and then we’re put against some no name character when we really just want to know what the hell is happening off world)
The only good thing about Infinite was its return to the classic art style. After whatever the art team was doing in 4 and 5, I am glad at least the art team finally got a clue.
Agreed. It could have been such an interesting concept if it was literally any other place. Zeta halo could have been so cool, but it felt so detached from the universe
4 and 5 didn’t ruin anything for me. There’s stuff I genuinely like about them that got me excited for the next game. Plenty I didn’t like about them too.
Then there’s Infinite… it feels like the DLC or post-game content to a game we never got. And the multiplayer was unplayable last I saw. It made me no longer excited for the next game.
I still do Halo game nights a couple times a year though.
How much baggage do you have to address? Evil Cortana, Guardians, and Prometheans. The rest can be managed around.
If Infinite didn’t have to wrap up the previous games, it wouldn’t have that stink on it. But then it would have had even less substance. And the shitty open world wouldn’t have been any better.
It would have been better if they just used Cortana and the Guardians to wrap up the Promethean saga. But then they’d still have to write a decent story, which apparently they are incapable of.
It’s more that they wrote themselves into a corner with Cortana’s state/loss, all the forerunner lore being out in the open now, the weird Guardians stuff…
Infinite could have been a much more subtle expansion on the forerunners, keeping them enigmatic like the trilogy, and kept Cortana. That’s much more straightforward and “Halo”
The open world stuff wasn’t awful. I loved the marine encounters. But yeah, it felt half baked.
Watched a recent video on magic and writing and it applies for scifi too. Every time you add to the lore you now have to remember and support it forever. 4 just added so much that they clearly didn’t think through like that. Bungie dishes out lore in small bits from 1-3, and it was so exciting when you got just the small tiny bit of backstory. 4 and 5 then just dumped in on your plate in healing portions.
Librarian, Didact, people they didn’t even take the time to introduce well and we were supposed to just jump on board with it. Buck was literally the only saving grace for Halo 5 in my opinion - and they introduced him in ODST
To be fair, they probably had a mandate to go for a mainline chief story. That could’ve worked.
I guess the fundamental issue was they read the novels and such but didn’t “understand” the Halo trilogy’s feel (going for operatic sci fi drama instead of the quieter feel), and quickly wrote themselves into a corner.
Everything after 3 is poorly written fan fiction to me. It still is one of my favorite franchises of all time, but it’s never going to be the same again. Halo Wars 2 was all right though.
It’s okay but Halo 5 makes the whole story worthless and fighting the promethean enemies in 4 is horrible. All of them are bullet sponges and there isn’t enough ammo to kill them.
I don’t think 5 ruined 4. By the end of 5 it’s established that this Cortana is not the same Cortana. For all intents and purposes, the old Cortana is gone.
Infinite however, gave her a sympathetic send-off which undid that.
CE, Reach, and ODST are my top 3 games in the franchise. I think i have a special appreciation for the self-contained stories.
Actually, I had REALLY hoped Infinite would use ODST as a template for their open world. Because IMO, Infinite implemented it terribly in just about every way they could.
Another vote for Assetto Corsa. Ultimate is not the lowest price it’s ever been but still worthy of the price IMO considering how many hundreds (cough thousands) of hours I’ve gotten out of it. If you do get AC, I’d highly recommend a few things:
Content Manager: AC is great because of all of the mods it has built up over the years, but everything starts with Ilja’s (x4fab’s) Content Manager (now referring to as CM). This is an alternate (better) launcher and enables the use of the Custom Shaders Patch (included with CM).
Custom Shaders Patch: CSP brings a whole bunch of advanced settings and capabilities for everything from visuals to physics to how your driver reacts as you drive, weather and more. Both CM and CSP have free and paid versions so you can try them and if you like it you can pay a few bucks (literally) and unlock a whole bunch of additional features. I highly recommend both of these at the very least. The previous CM link has instructions on getting a full CM license through Itch.io. Paid CSP can be obtained via the linked Patreon.
Pure: This is an advanced weather controller from Peter Boese that utilizes CSP’s capabilities to bring fantastic dynamic weather, scheduled conditions, and absolutely beautiful skydomes. I also highly recommend this not only because Peter is awesome, but it’s also incredibly cheap. Peter also made an earlier weather controller known as Sol, but that is now outdated and completely outclassed by Pure. Don’t forget, in game rain comes from paid CSP, not Pure! Lots of people mix the two up since this is a weather controller.
Beyond that, you will find tons and tons of free and paid mods for cars, tracks, track skins and extensions, post-processing (PP) filters (to make the game look even better), sounds, etc. If you want it, it probably exists.
Edit: decipher_jeanne brought up a good point. Default controller support is pretty bad and can really ruin the AC experience. Thankfully, with CM and CSP, we have GamepadFX and custom controller scripts! For controller play I highly recommend Akeyroid7’s Advanced Gamepad Assist script.
Civ 3? Outside of introducing strategic resources, it is difficult to think of what innovation Civ3 brought to the franchise. Civ 2? Absolutely. Civ 4? I can totally see it. What makes Civ 3 stand out?
If anything, Civ1 should be the milestone for creating a genre.
There are some fun ways to complete some Hitman missions “without killing anyone”, just by fiddling with the environment so that the target coincidentally dies “by accident” later on. You can even get one of your targets in Hitman 3 to commit suicide.
It’s mainly just talking to people, but if you want to fight as few times as possible, you probably need to know the game or tons of save-scumming. You’ll also have to be ok with just missing a bunch of stuff, or pick and choose your fights, which again, needs prior knowledge.
I don’t think it’s a good way for a first playthrough.
IIRC there are six fights you always need to do (two of those in the tutorial and another shortly after, although technically you can use glitches to skip these). But if you only wanted to do these fights, you’d basically do an evil playthrough and miss most of the game, especially Act 1 and 3. And if you’re not talking to people, save-reload the correct dialogue choice, you would just sneak around everywhere, trying to avoid enemies, constantly saving and reloading, because you were spotted.
If you add a handful of boss fights, a good run is possible, but still, there’s going to be a lot of sneaking around and save-scumming.
Guild wars 2, it’s free to start and B2P for every season and expansion with no FOMO or P2W mechanics, only convenience. I see a lot of recommendations for FF14, but one thing most people don’t tell you is that the vanilla game is absolutely terrible. The main story quest (MSQ) for vanilla is just bad and boring, to the point where they actually cut some content out of it because that content was unnecessary. It’s still long and boring though, and I really wish they would just give people the option to freely skip the vanilla game with a recap video and go straight into Heavensward because that’s when the game gets really good. If you can power through the vanilla story of FF14, then I guess try it out, but my vote is GW2.
I did finish vanilla, but then there’s another like 5-10 hours of pre patch content, THEN you get into Heavensward, and frankly I just didn’t have the time to deal with that much filler.
Okay, yeah, you are hitting me right in the feels with the nostalgia. The Pokémon trading game was my jam growing up! I conned more than a few 6 year olds out of their holographic mew and Charizard cards by convincing them my cards were rarer…im not proud of it…well, maybe a little.
Edit: Okay, chill ya’ll I did this like once when I was 11. The whole coment was a joke. Do you really think im actually proud of something dumb I did almost 25 years ago? Really think about that for a second. And if you answer yes, this dude is actually proud of that, then your social skills aren’t that great.
I was like 11, and it was mostly a joke, chill man. We weren’t allowed to trade Pokémon cards anymore after than. And also, people did it to me, which is the only reason I did it to someone else.
Are you still 11? Cause current you is the one bragging about it. And continuing the cycle of shitiness does fuck all to justify it. If you really regretted it, you could actually show remorse instead of making a “joke” about all the kids you scammed and making endless excuses about it.
It was one time, like 24 years ago dude… and it was like two kids. Like, damn man, whatever happened to you must have really scarred you to be arguing with a stranger on the internet over it.
Are you for really trying to tell me that something i did when I was 11 is some moral failing of mine? Gtfo of here with that shit. If you keep this up imma just block you.
I’m saying what you’re doing currently is a problem. And I’m “still going” because you’re still attempting to normalize it and you keep trying to paint me as mentally damaged because I dare to point that out.
every time games let you do things like this for “quality of life” it’s basically dead to me, at that point why the fuck are you even playing the game? hey all of this running around on the football field is annoying, let’s just roll a dice to decide who scores a goal
I second the general sentiment but…if it’s look wise, I don’t have such a hard feeling. Transmog is a bit much, but there are ways around like at least two sets of armor slots.
But overall yeah. People kinda seem hating playing games today. But also I too would be tired if 90% of games is grind…
Ah no I love rare, almost non existant battle gear vs casual gear mode easily swappable.
To be fair there’s probably a big unexplored gap in games when it comes to stats and gear, there’s something to be said about the fact you don’t wear the same clothes all the time, and you don’t do errands in full armour.
I’m not talking going full simulation there, but it’s objectively silly and disconnected to have a grounded world, like the witcher, and accepting that wearing a certain hat makes you fisically stronger.
If you don’t like it just don’t use this feature, it doesn’t even give an unfair advantage. It’s like complaining that Arthur Morgan can go get a haircut in RDR2
It doesn’t make quests easier, your analogy is bad.
I like when gear selection has impact and choice in my roleplaying games.
If you choose to value aesthetically pleasing characters you should just accept you’ll be playing with the non-optimal stats.
The ability to bypass this by transferring stats between items so you can have optimal build does make the game easier.
Ideally game developers and artists should be including ways to have balanced gear stats and aesthetics, but transmog and the like is just lazy on their part.
The ability to bypass this by transferring stats between items so you can have optimal build does make the game easier.
I could use those items either way but they are unaesthetic. I cannot comprehend your POV on this. It doesn’t hurt you, doesn’t make your game worse it just gives an option to the people who want it.
I agree with you, if equipment is just cosmetic, then at the end of the day why even bother with equipment at all? Just have cosmetics without stats and leave it at that.
I think fallout does a good job of this with having hazmat suits that help with rad, or “cool” attire that helps with bartering. The idea is that the design should complement the stats.
I’m a member of a Discord server like that. It’s named Past Gen. This is the server’s own introduction:
Welcome to Past Gen Gaming! We’re a community of generally older, but mainly patient and relaxed gamers. There is no age requirement to join us, just the mindset. We won’t tolerate elitism, toxicity, nor any form of hatred. A lot of us don’t have a lot of free time, so when we do, we like it to be a good time. So sit back, relax, and let’s play some games together.
Just let me know if you’d like an invitation link. If so, I would DM it to you instead of posting it publicly.
bin.pol.social
Ważne