In the loop: how Halo defined a new decade of first-person shooters The glint of alien sunlight on green body armour; the spark of purple crystal shards arcing their way across the battlefield; the roar of a Warthog’s engine as it bounces across uneven terrain; and the dull thud as the butt of Master Chief’s gun impacts Covenant skull… familiar enough occurrences these days given the impact Halo …
Presumably you mean the huge open environments in the Mac/PC version which Bungie originally demoed, rather than the manky constrained walled off environments that MS launched after they had spent a year crippling the game to fit on a manky little console with a clumsy controller?
The pre-xbox Halo was one of the most ambitious and groundbreaking games ever - if they had managed to pull it off it would have been something like Battlefield2 but five years earlier and with a lot more style.
Have finally played it, you can crouch (in the smallest actual crouch ever). You can't have paired weapons. There is the obligatory death defying racing chase on a dangerous circuit against the clock, early on.
My review, well I won't give spoilers but it is halo 2 meets halo wars for plot so far with some nice twists, only with some very nice new guns and 'nades, new baddies and the scenery is from Rage (so not really ground breaking). Only you lose paired weapons and nothing else has changed. Burn through ammo and move onto next encounter, large open space, small tunnel, large open space, small tunnel - cut scene. You run out of ammo too easily so end up punching everything. It still doesn't keep your chosen weapons between levels, it defaults to two human guns you can't possibly have found (a pistol and rifle on a plant no human has ever been to???). Oh and close combat brings on the oddest finishing move - cut scene things that defy logic, but someone will like them no doubt. Upgrades are again only one, you get a nice big shield or invisibility so far, the former is cool, the latter doesn't work as the AI can see you and it makes sound go all funny.
It will make money because half of the kids will buy it. And I just spent £40 for the pleasure of replaying halo 2, or to be more precise an FPS of halo wars. So who is the more foolish?
Some Bungie employee summed up Halo in terms of creating thirty seconds of perfect action, then getting the player to play that same thirty seconds over, and over, and over, and over again.
It worked on me.
And yes, Installation Zero 4 was quite clearly an Orbital, in the Banks' Culture style, rather than a Niven Ringworld.
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