Long story short, I have a 22 game backlog between Xbox and Xbox 360. 2 games for Xbox and 20 for Xbox 360. Anyway, currently playing Halo CE via the Halo MCC.
Up to the third mission and so far so good. Like a 7-8 game for me as of now. I can obviously see the potential of the game and the franchise but playing it for the first time ever 23 years later, it’s definitely outdated. Very limited way-points, can’t aim down sights, can’t run/sprint, Chief will stand up when moving despite me pressing B to crouch as you have to move the left analog stick very slowly for him to stay crouched, otherwise, he automatically stands up and holy hell, the Warthog controls like trash. I would rather walk which I have already done. lol
But still a good game. Obviously, everyone knows it now but you can see that the foundation was there with Halo CE.
From my memory crouch is really bad in Halo CE-3,I never played Reach so I don’t know if it was ever properly implemented by Bungie. I also don’t remember ODST.
I think ADS is Sniper rifle only until 2 when they add the BR and other weapons later on.
Sprint I think was added to Reach first, as I want to say an ability that we can pick up. With 343 implenting it from Halo 4 onwards.
I don’t think the worthog controls ever got any better, tank too.
Well, it finally happened. I’m playing something other than Starfield. In addition to Starfield, I mean.
That other game is Baldur’s Gate III. My wife and I are doing it co-op, and so far impressions are mixed. We’ve done three sessions, six-ish hours in total. We’ll put many more hours in I’m sure, but it has yet to grab either of us.
The biggest good: the split screen co-op lets us do whatever we want and don’t force us to stay tethered. Very cool.
Completed Halo: Combat Evolved campaign via MCC on Xbox Series X.
Let me get the issues out of the way -
No way point outside of critical moments. Add in that the interior corridors all literally look the same and you get lost way too many times.
Can’t aim down sights. To be honest, im pretty certain you can aim down sights in Infinite but it’s been three years so I can definitely be wrong on this. Either way, don’t like.
No sprinting/running. Seriously, you’ve gotta be kidding me. UGH. SMFH.
Can’t climb. Yeah, you can jump but you can’t climb anything. Sometimes I would want to go over but can’t and instead, have to go around. Very annoying.
Played on easy but the last two missions have HUGE difficulty spikes not just in terms of how many more enemies come after you but how much more damage they can take before killing them.
No map of any kind. The radar in the bottom left is basically useless outside of knowing when enemies are coming.
Not enough ammo. Assault rifle and shotgun were my weapons of choice for the vast majority of the game. Loved the shotgun but ammo mainly for the assault rifle at times was barren.
While im listing this last, it’s probably my biggest complaint. The Warthog controls like total shit, period. And whoever designed the ending sequence which requires you to use the Warthog should never ever design anything again. It’s literally the worst ending sequence I have ever played through and not because of the sequence itself which is actually good but because of how shitty the Warthog controls. I went nuts as this took me over 10+ attempts (time limit WTF?) and over an over an hour to finally complete. And when you reach the part where Cortana tells you to wait (I did the first time but after that, kept driving), you would think that you would restart from there if killed/time expires but nope, you have to do the entire level.
I switched to the old visuals a few times just to see how it looked in 2001 and overall, not horrible or anything. Back then, probably looked pretty good especially on the Xbox hardware. Remastered and upgraded, looks really good. Some areas like the rain forest and snowy area stood out to me.
Music is top tier. Really great from beginning to end. Sound effects are good as well. Voice acting is good as well. Only issue was the voice acting was recorded very low. Had my TV set to 12 and in game music volume set to 50 while voices was maxed out at 100 and at times, were low.
Story and characters were pretty good. Really enjoyed it and yeah, looks like a massive war between a bunch of different factions in future games (I have no idea obviously as I only completed Infinite until today). Only issue was with cut scenes and the screen being white and the subtitle being white to where you couldn’t even see it. Add in the low volume and not a good combination.
Gameplay/combat, already posted as that’s where all my negatives were but still a solid first person shooter. Probably better in 2001 especially since it’s a first person shooter and people always said that you couldn’t do them on console even though I would have sworn that Super Nintendo and Genesis had Doom and others that were first person but that was a long ass time ago and I never played them so I could easily be wrong in this regard.
Overall, a great 8.0/10 game that set the foundation for the franchise. Will be starting Halo 2 campaign literally in 10 minutes.
Just about done with the base game for Morrowind. One thing I noticed that the Es fan ase takes issue with in Skyrim but not Morrowind(could be wrong maybe they didn’t like it) is that we can become the head of every organization in Morrowind, or so high up that no one in Vvanderfell can be considered our boss.
Anyway finished up with the Temple and Imperial Cult questlines, have finished my house in the Redoran questline and just need to do quest for one person before I’m done.
I also forgot the Imperial Legion questline, which I will start as soon as Redoran is finished. Afterwards going to Mournhold to meet the ex and her machinations.
Or trying to get ghosts or warthogs where they don’t belong
Still remember the first videos I saw of grenading a warthog above the map in Silent Cartographer, and the tricks for getting down the side of the ridge in Assault on the Control Room. That was eye opening.
It’s refreshing to see opinion from someone who never played it, I remember having many of those opinions when I first played, but I’ve played that game SOOO many times now I’m just used to a lot of it and know tricks that help. Just rewatched a speed run recently, still love it.
I used two different weapons at times but the main two were the shotgun and assault rifle. Both of which are usually my go to weapons in every shooter. Shotgun up close and powerful with the assault rifle being for distance and less reloads.
Already on mission 8 in Halo 2 in less than four hours. Going pretty quick. My issues from Halo are still present here and I can see it’s probably going to be a franchise thing so im very happy that these games are linear as opposed to a massive open world. Wasn’t a fan of playing as the Arbiter but I assume there’s a reason for that at some point story wise.
Hahaha. That’s not happening. I just want to experience the game and the story/characters. Every game in my backlog is being played on easy and one time only.
But that is the experience everyone who played the game at the time had, back when everyone just had to do highest difficulty.
As for recent games, yeah, they’re on easy or story mode for me now. Some of them I will go back and go through on higher difficulty now, like the Gears series I’ll replay several times. For co-op we’re playing on at least Heroic at least once. If its just for memories then we’ll probably drop down to normal. Co-op doesnt seem as fun on Easy(iest) setting.
I’ll play some new games on hard but it depends on the game. For older games, I just want to play through the game and enjoy the story/characters while not having the game become a grind or taking forever to complete since it’s short and linear. After Halo 2, I still have 5 more games in the franchise to go and want to get through as many as possible before September.
The shotgun is really nice for the flood levels. I even like the Library that way when Master Chief turns into Doom Guy. But i never heard somebody say “the assault rifle for distance”. This thing is shit for distance. Imo the pistol is way better for that in Halo 1 and battle rifle/dmr in the other Halos.
Oh and Brit is right of course. The only way to enjoy* Halo 2 is on Legendary.
Well, since it’s my first time playing through the Halo games, if you and others are saying the assault rifle is shit for distance then I will take your word for it. I’m used to using it in shooters in general. Division, Outriders, Starfield, etc. Never had an issue with assault rifles in those games or really any others that I can think of.
Of course, up close, the assault rifle is just a barrage of bullets into enemies. I’m halfway through Halo 2 so I will see if I change it up or not. One benefit of assault rifles in general is that you usually can carry/hold a lot of ammo. Granted, it uses it up at a faster rate but more bullets in the clip and less reloads has always been a good thing for me and one I always go for in games.
Legendary? Fuck that. I’m not moving past easy difficulty. I already had one close call where I was literally ready to uninstall MCC because of that ending sequence in Halo CE as that was simply pissing me off to no end so im not looking for any other moments like that because I do want to get through them all, experience them and most of all, just relax and enjoy the story/characters as im playing through them.
