Anime The mistake a lot of modern boomer shooters make

[Be Kind Rewind]

Beyond that, if Halo looks like a conceptual regression, that is because you are a bald reactionary retard incapable of recognising anything new.

The screeching begins, what's next, are you going to call me a nahtzee while continuing to say nothing of substance? The implication is also that you self-identify as a "progressive" and that's pretty retarded knowing where such ideology has led us. No, my problem is that I know when something is old.

When Bungie started developing Halo the company was in dire straits, their expansion with another team that made Oni was shitting the bed hard, and they themselves had massive issues churning out quality Myth games. Halo was their hail Mary for commercial success, the game was originally more of a sandbox based around contemporary pop culture, but after finding out they sucked at doing squad based combat they regressed back to a shooter, something tried and true, and less likely to fail than something more experimental like Myth was.

The story was something desperately slapped together late in development, mostly an inferior rehash of Marathon. You call it subtle or incidental, but that's because it's functionally the same porn plot that Doom had, and doesn't interface with the gameplay. Sure, it's funny that the story was so out of the way that 343 didn't realize the lore was that a bunch of literal monkeys and other diversities were squatting in the ruins of ancient human technology while unable to figure it out and made the precursor race a bunch of alien vampires in Halo 4. Ultimately though Halo was Hollywood, it was Call of Duty, something American soldiers played while murdering Iraqis, the big blockbuster slop. They were deserving since the game was made for them.

While it didn't matter to the game, what they tacked on was self-referential. Putting the Marathon logo everywhere. Do you remember the undead cyborg in green armor from Marathon, that grew a will of his own in the last game because that was all about the teleology of AIs and it fit thematically with us giving you, the player, map tools so you could exert agency of your own? Pretty cool huh? So we're doing the space marine in a green armor again, Master Chef Boyardee. When they weren't peeking at Greg Kirkpatrick's notebook in an attempt to give the game any sort of character beyond the military B-film schtick they helped establish cancerous future coventions. Storytelling is apparently some asshole talking your ear off while playing a rudimentary shooter. Bravo Kojima Jason Jones, you're really advancing the medium.

Soon catboy slim over here will try to sell you Destiny, the live-service looter shooter, as the obvious progressive future of video games, and if you don't like it you just don't get it. Because Bungie never stopped selling out, every shooter they made after Marathon was commercial slop first and then someone would retroactively go in and put breadcrumbs into it, so some youtuber lorefag can explain that achtually this is deep and shit. Hour long "explainer" videos for something that literally has no impact on the terrible games they talk about for bourgeoisie mouthbreathers. Bungie is so creatively dead they're resureccting Marathon for their Tarkov copy with MOBA Overwatch bing chungus soyfaced mascot heroes and that will be a real game-changer, don't you get it baldie? I fucking hate 4channers.

Real intelligence is seeing what is being put before you for what it is and not some cope being made about it.

The thing about Unreal is that it is truly a atmospheric shooter. Some of the levels are massive outdoor areas where you can see the sun of Na Pali (I think it has two suns), waterfalls, the clouds in the sky, the stars.
The stellar sound design and soundtrack also add to this atmosphere, feeling trapped on a dangerous but also beautiful alien world.

It's ironic that Hell Swarm would talk about skyboxes being the great innovation of Halo, because Marathon already did it and also better. One of the more memorable things from the second game was reading about this large tower in the distance, a citadel where the natives of the planet made their last stand against an invading force. You get to see it in the horizon before you get to it and connecting game spaces like this was rare for the time. Halo took this idea, placing a ringworld in the skybox because it looks kind of cool, and proceeded to do nothing with it.

Unreal is in many ways the inheritor of the Marathon mantle, because it does put you into this more realized game space, and just like in Marathon you'll climb that tower you see in the far off horizon, giving you a sense of space. Unlike Halo it was built from the ground up with a clear vision in mind, even if it didn't have the intent to fundamentally change the genre it was in. There was a single cutscene in the game at the end and what the game was about was presented in an entirely diegetic manner. The mythopoeia of the game is both explicit and understated, the themes and subcontext imbued into every part of the game. It's impossible to come away from the game without an impression of bitterwsweet tragic but ultimately beatiful struggle.

Knuckledraggers will play Halo as a dumb Starship Trooperish cinematic spectacle shooter because that's what it is, it's not in service of something else. Meanwhile Unreal manages to get creative within a conservative frame, without going Hollywood, and without compromises. It stays a game, never wrestling away control to "tell a story", but the story is told by you playing the game. It's not afraid of givng you something to read either, with the logs of the other survivors of the crash and alien inscriptions and computers giving you more than the game could otherwise, and they're important to the gameplay too.

I don't think I could get into what the game presents you with without sounding pretentious, but if you experience it you'll know even if you miss metaphysical context for the deep seated feelings within your psyche the game aims to poke. What I can say without sounding like some fag academic or game urinalist hooker is that it's not happenstance that you play as a prisoner, or that throughout the game you encounter the bodies of your fellow prisoners coming to gruesome ends, or the suffering of the Nali. It's a great game and it's a shame the developers never really followed it up.

 

[NecroLord]

It's a great game and it's a shame the developers never really followed it up.

Followed it up with Unreal 2

Not really though, those were different devs.

Return to Na Pali is also a pretty good expansion for what it's worth.
We never got the proper Unreal 2 experience...

 

[Hell Swarm]

I was just playing through, not trying to maximise my viability at any given moment.

You're looking at this like I'm a try hard forcing the optimal ways to play and nothing else. When it's far just much much easier to use the noob combo than anything else. It's not trying to be as viable as possible. It's using the obvious hammer to whack a nail in.

 

[GamerCat_]

Beyond that, if Halo looks like a conceptual regression, that is because you are a bald reactionary retard incapable of recognising anything new.

The screeching begins,

what's next, are you going to call me a nahtzee while continuing to say nothing of substance? The implication is also that you self-identify as a "progressive" and that's pretty retarded knowing where such ideology has led us. No, my problem is that I know when something is old.

I am a progressive because I believe in new things. This makes me a minority among minorities.

When Bungie started developing Halo the company was in dire straits, their expansion with another team that made Oni was shitting the bed hard, and they themselves had massive issues churning out quality Myth games. Halo was their hail Mary for commercial success, the game was originally more of a sandbox based around contemporary pop culture, but after finding out they sucked at doing squad based combat they regressed back to a shooter, something tried and true, and less likely to fail than something more experimental like Myth was. The story was something desperately slapped together late in development, mostly an inferior rehash of Marathon.

Even if this were all entirely true it wouldn't negate what is observable in the final released game. Highly elaborate interpretations of the game which seem beyond the picture of its origins you present here exist. What do you have to say to those?

You call it subtle or incidental, but that's because it's functionally the same porn plot that Doom had, and doesn't interface with the gameplay.

Functionally mean what what you see and what you see is simple because you are simple.

Sure, it's funny that the story was so out of the way that 343 didn't realize the lore was that a bunch of literal monkeys and other diversities were squatting in the ruins of ancient human technology while unable to figure it out and made the precursor race a bunch of alien vampires in Halo 4.

A lot of good detective work has been done by characters other than me here. The internal Bungie lore is that Frank O'Connor (who entered late from below) had radically different ideas to the rest of the writers to the point of wanting Halo to be something entirely different, started inserting these details in 3, and by 4 controlled the series and could make his OC headcanon official and real. With terrible, terrible results of course.

Interestingly, on his way out Joseph Staten wrote a prequel novel for Halo about the first contact between humanity and The Covenant. This came out after O'Connor had started altering the story. Staten's novel very explicitly affirms the old canon, overriding O'Connor on key points. It's plain to see that different members of the Halo team, even its writing team, had radically different ideas on what Halo was about, on both a thematic and narrative level.

As I said earlier in this thread, I suspect that if there was a particularly aware inner bungie (and this would explain a lot) Staten was a part of it.

As for your own interpretation of the lore, I don't know what you believe but it's probably wrong.

Ultimately though Halo was Hollywood, it was Call of Duty, something American soldiers played while murdering Iraqis, the big blockbuster slop. They were deserving since the game was made for them.

I have never seen an intelligent person using the hot new 's' word with glee. It's a dirty word for dirty minds who enjoy reveling in filth but also have the gall to consider themselves superior to fellow pigs.

Halo has a Hollywood element undeniably. It has a very broad appeal and was beloved on a very simple level by many simple people. It also is very beloved by a minority of very smart people, like myself. Bungie were great popular artists. They successfully made something with high and low appeal. It does not become boring if you try to look for more than the masses found in it to enjoy, it becomes very, very interesting. If you take it seriously and have eyes to see it will reward you richly.

While it didn't matter to the game, what they tacked on was self-referential. Putting the Marathon logo everywhere. Do you remember the undead cyborg in green armor from Marathon, that grew a will of his own in the last game because that was all about the teleology of AIs and it fit thematically with us giving you, the player, map tools so you could exert agency of your own? Pretty cool huh?

Very cool. Go tell Mister Norwood and maybe he'll be less ashamed of you for all the time you waste on video toys.

So we're doing the space marine in a green armor again, Master Chef Boyardee. When they weren't peeking at Greg Kirkpatrick's notebook in an attempt to give the game any sort of character beyond the military B-film schtick they helped establish cancerous future coventions. Storytelling is apparently some asshole talking your ear off while playing a rudimentary shooter. Bravo Kojima Jason Jones, you're really advancing the medium.

Again, the picture is simple because you are. My picture is far more complex because I am.

Soon catboy slim over here will try to sell you Destiny, the live-service looter shooter, as the obvious progressive future of video games, and if you don't like it you just don't get it.

Destiny bored me. The Bungie team was scattered and spent almost utterly by then. Mostly a Microsoft operation.

Because Bungie never stopped selling out, every shooter they made after Marathon was commercial slop

Pig.

first and then someone would retroactively go in and put breadcrumbs

We are talking about video games you fat fuck.

into it, so some youtuber lorefag can explain that achtually this is deep and shit.

There is not a single youtuber who shares my interpretation of Halo.

Hour long "explainer" videos for something that literally has no impact on the terrible games they talk about for bourgeoisie mouthbreathers.

"Bourgeoise" is speaking in received memes and citing recognised and sanctioned prestige elements of media to score points in internet fights because you have no ideas, opinions, or even passions of your own.

Bungie is so creatively dead they're resureccting Marathon for their Tarkov copy with MOBA Overwatch bing chungus soyfaced mascot heroes and that will be a real game-changer, don't you get it baldie? I fucking hate 4channers.

I am not attached to the name "Bungie". My respect is for the old creative team. "Bungie" is such a shitshow now because they're spent and scattered. That you would suggest that the current state of the company reflects upon the skill or integrity of the old artists I admire suggests that you are either so desperate and floundering for points that you haven't realised why this doesn't work, or you're not panicking and you're just genuinely that dumb. They've bled so much essential manpower and are working under such miserable circumstances now, they're not the same company. Jones and O'Donnell are (or were in the latter's case) basically kept pets of Microsoft, with the company transformed into an in-house studio for Bill Gates with a vestigial name.

And as for the old Bungie creative heart-team. I was very impressed with how Joseph Staten managed to show up, salvage Halo Infinite's botched production into something playable and fun, if still somewhat pointless, and then leave again.

Real intelligence is seeing what is being put before you for what it is and not some cope being made about it.

To deny Halo's rich and elaborate subtext one needs to suggest that a lot of accidents happened. A lot. The whole game top to bottom is working towards and serving a coherent vision.

The thing about Unreal is that it is truly a atmospheric shooter. Some of the levels are massive outdoor areas where you can see the sun of Na Pali (I think it has two suns), waterfalls, the clouds in the sky, the stars.
The stellar sound design and soundtrack also add to this atmosphere, feeling trapped on a dangerous but also beautiful alien world.

It's ironic that Hell Swarm would talk about skyboxes being the great innovation of Halo, because Marathon already did it and also better. One of the more memorable things from the second game was reading about this large tower in the distance, a citadel where the natives of the planet made their last stand against an invading force. You get to see it in the horizon before you get to it and connecting game spaces like this was rare for the time. Halo took this idea, placing a ringworld in the skybox because it looks kind of cool, and proceeded to do nothing with it.

Now if I look will I find that in a video essay? I suspect I might.

And beyond that what's your point? Have we worked out a formula in which games can be ranked in quality by how many skybox features are future levels?

Unreal is in many ways the inheritor of the Marathon mantle, because it does put you into this more realized game space, and just like in Marathon you'll climb that tower you see in the far off horizon, giving you a sense of space. Unlike Halo it was built from the ground up with a clear vision in mind, even if it didn't have the intent to fundamentally change the genre it was in. There was a single cutscene in the game at the end and what the game was about was presented in an entirely diegetic manner. The mythopoeia of the game is both explicit and understated, the themes and subcontext imbued into every part of the game. It's impossible to come away from the game without an impression of bitterwsweet tragic but ultimately beatiful struggle.

You're transparently drawing original criteria around conclusions you already hold. And again you're just asserting whatever you like about the production of Halo.

"Giving you a sense of space", your charge that I have a head full of video essay babble I think emerged from your own insecurity rather than anything you read in my posts.

"themes and subcontext" which are?

Again, what is outright revolting about you at this point is your clear lack of passion for anything you talk about. You genuinely disgust me to the point I may just leave the site.

Knuckledraggers will play Halo as a dumb Starship Trooperish cinematic spectacle shooter because that's what it is, it's not in service of something else. Meanwhile Unreal manages to get creative within a conservative frame, without going Hollywood, and without compromises. It stays a game, never wrestling away control to "tell a story", but the story is told by you playing the game. It's not afraid of givng you something to read either, with the logs of the other survivors of the crash and alien inscriptions and computers giving you more than the game could otherwise, and they're important to the gameplay too.

You obviously remembered the logs after writing about and attempting to play up "le diagetic" (notice me mister norwood) and naturalism as innate virtues. You're pulling criteria out of the air as it suits you because you hate me and hate Halo. You hate me for the same reason you hate Halo. I'm different and new and you suspect that despite the fact you can form a phalanx of retards to laugh at me from within I may actually be better than you on a level you'll never understand.

I don't think I could get into what the game presents you with without sounding pretentious,

You're a coward and probably also a spiritual nigger ashamed of expressing yourself in a fashion that suggests you might have a 3 digit IQ. Stay in the gutter then. It's where you belong. Stick to food analogies and things Mandalore told you.

but if you experience it you'll know even if you miss metaphysical context for the deep seated feelings within your psyche the game aims to poke. What I can say without sounding like some fag academic or game urinalist hooker is that it's not happenstance that you play as a prisoner, or that throughout the game you encounter the bodies of your fellow prisoners coming to gruesome ends, or the suffering of the Nali. It's a great game and it's a shame the developers never really followed it up.

You sound like a fag because you're afraid of passion, not because you're inching towards it. And you are a fag because you're afraid to give voice to what you believe you appreciate for fear of being found lacking. To yourself, me, or everyone else. Probably all.

 

[GamerCat_]

I was just playing through, not trying to maximise my viability at any given moment.

You're looking at this like I'm a try hard forcing the optimal ways to play and nothing else. When it's far just much much easier to use the noob combo than anything else. It's not trying to be as viable as possible. It's using the obvious hammer to whack a nail in.

Even in the later games I like less and kind of just wanted to get through I didn't find myself doing it a lot. I think the ease with which one can organically fall into relying on this is massively overblown.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

the great innovation of Halo

Couch co-op FPS, and it was great.

 

[Ash]

Duke Nukem 64 did that FOUR years prior, and was far more enjoyable. Gotta love normie insights.

Imagine the thought process, there is nearly a MILLION video games in existence and you choose to play Halo for its dull asf campaign.

Peak normie status is thinking Goldeneye, Halo, Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Skyrim and Chrono Trigger are the best games ever and not the retard-tier media they are in reality that is utterly destroyed by their competition or predecessors.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Duke Nukem 64 did that FOUR years prior, and was far more enjoyable. Gotta love normie insights.

Imagine the thought process, there is nearly a MILLION video games in existence and you choose to play Halo for its dull asf campaign.

Peak normie status is thinking Goldeneye, Halo, Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Skyrim and Chrono Trigger are the best games ever and not the retard-tier media they are in reality that is utterly destroyed by their competition or predecessors.

It just shows how insular console gaming was. As far as those people are concerned, PC games have never existed.

 

[NecroLord]

Duke Nukem 64 did that FOUR years prior, and was far more enjoyable. Gotta love normie insights.

Imagine the thought process, there is nearly a MILLION video games in existence and you choose to play Halo for its dull asf campaign.

Peak normie status is thinking Goldeneye, Halo, Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Skyrim and Chrono Trigger are the best games ever and not the retard-tier media they are in reality that is utterly destroyed by their competition or predecessors.

It just shows how insular console gaming was. As far as those people are concerned, PC games have never existed.

Quite frankly the console fags deserve all the trash that gets thrown their way.

 

[Ash]

Specifically, it's people that only played on the SNES -> N64 -> and then transitioned to the shitty Xbox and 360, which seemed to be a common gaming career path. Lowest standards possible. Meanwhile I was blessed and got to play everything that was on the market (PC, all consoles, all handheld), and I weren't rich. Boot sales, flea markets, hand-me downs...those were the days. Big family helps too, as when say your brother gets a new game, essentially so do you!

PC is almost as insular I'm afraid. PC is only a third of the gaming pie. You guys frustrate me almost as much as insular console cucks. Almost. Definitely higher standards generally for sure.

True gamer all platforms master race! These days I just play on PC though (and emulate). Absolutely ZERO point in modern consoles, while there was tons of benefit to it in the 90s.

 

[Lyric Suite]

PC is almost as insular I'm afraid.

I don't know about that. I never owned a console as a kid but i heard of console games and know what they are.

The reverse appears to be less common.

 

[Ash]

Very true. I'd hang out with the average PC gamer over console any day. It's why I am forced to be here if I want to discuss games.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Return to Na Pali is also a pretty good expansion for what it's worth.

Return to Na Pali wasn't bad, it was woven from the same cloth as the base game, being made out of mostly cut levels. What's weak about it is that it essentially a retread, sending you back to the planet and ending up in the same place. If there is a lesson to be learned, perhaps it is that some, be it a team or an individual, only have so many ideas within them before they start losing vitality. Conceivably this was done out of budget restraints in this case and not that they didn't have any notions for a proper sequel or continuation, but for many developers there is only the one truly great game they create and everything that comes after are footnotes to the same, as is the case for any creative type.

You can't do the same thing twice with the same effect, and at some point the snake starts eating its own tail. Better to quit while you're ahead if you have nothing more to say.

They've bled so much essential manpower and are working under such miserable circumstances now, they're not the same company.

This was already the case after the Marathon series. Sorry, not going to reply to the rest because I can't take it seriously. If you consider the eschatology of progressivism for more than five seconds you'll come to realize you're already bald, old, and clinging to the past, and that the geist of the shooter can only be realized to any extent at all in something that comes after live-service MOBA hero looter shooters and go beyond them in some Hegelian final synthesis. Whatever is to be found in Halo is some archaic tiny baby step in the way towards an yet unrealized totality.

I don't cogitate within those terms at all, but seek authentic spirit whatever the aeon, being a man against time, and so there is nothing much to be said. I thought you'd get the hint when I mostly talked past you for the last couple of posts, because I do have you pegged down, and I'm happy that I got on your nerves. But I think it's time for me to unsubscribe from your newsletter.

 

[Ash]

What's weak about Return to Na Pali is a lot of the terrible level design. Any of the levels that were restored cut content (levels made by EPIC) were typically good. Any that were new were shit (made by Legend Entertainment). This is because Legend were, prior to this, adventure game developers and thus had zero idea what constitutes good 3D action level design. Play with my mod (link in sig). Improving the level design was my primary focus with the expansion.

 

[Machocruz]

The virgin "boomer shooter" vs. the chad "old school fps" or "retro fps"

 

[GamerCat_]

Duke Nukem 64 did that FOUR years prior, and was far more enjoyable. Gotta love normie insights.

Imagine the thought process, there is nearly a MILLION video games in existence and you choose to play Halo for its dull asf campaign.

Peak normie status is thinking Goldeneye, Halo, Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Skyrim and Chrono Trigger are the best games ever and not the retard-tier media they are in reality that is utterly destroyed by their competition or predecessors.

Duke Nukem 64 handles terribly. Have you actually played that game? Halo is probably a victim of more pathological attacks than any other piece of media released in the 21st century, except for maybe the star wars prequels. But that trend at least fucking died by now (Gen Xers baldfaggotry lost there, and it will lose here too. You will share a grave with Mike Stoklasa).

This is such an absurd, grasping, completely divorced from experience and sensation attack. This is beyond petty. This is a kind of insanity. Halo is not worth playing because Duke Nukem 64 exists. Great. You got it. Gaming is solved. There's going to be a Duke Nukem 64 renaissance any day now and Halo will be discarded once people learn better.

Return to Na Pali is also a pretty good expansion for what it's worth.

Return to Na Pali wasn't bad, it was woven from the same cloth as the base game, being made out of mostly cut levels. What's weak about it is that it essentially a retread, sending you back to the planet and ending up in the same place. If there is a lesson to be learned, perhaps it is that some, be it a team or an individual, only have so many ideas within them before they start losing vitality. Conceivably this was done out of budget restraints in this case and not that they didn't have any notions for a proper sequel or continuation, but for many developers there is only the one truly great game they create and everything that comes after are footnotes to the same, as is the case for any creative type.

You can't do the same thing twice with the same effect, and at some point the snake starts eating its own tail. Better to quit while you're ahead if you have nothing more to say.

"My preferred artists lose vitality as they expend their excellence, yours sell out and retroactively prove they were hacks all along."

They've bled so much essential manpower and are working under such miserable circumstances now, they're not the same company.

This was already the case after the Marathon series. Sorry,

You are not sorry. Your faggot mannerisms do not excuse you from judgement here. You cannot affect disinterest after this many posts. You are losing hideously. You have lost. You are bald and retarded and your beliefs will continue dwindling to an ugly and despised minority of irrelevants before being completely forgotten, to the joy of mankind.

not going to reply to the rest because I can't take it seriously.

You can't because you're afraid of me. Everyone is sooner or later. You don't think I'm funny. You have to believe I am to maintain any kind of integrity in your self conception.

If you consider the eschatology of progressivism for more than five seconds you'll come to realize you're already bald, old, and clinging to the past, and that the geist of the shooter can only be realized to any extent at all in something that comes after live-service MOBA hero looter shooters and go beyond them in some Hegelian final synthesis. Whatever is to be found in Halo is some archaic tiny baby step in the way towards an yet unrealized totality.

Halo: Combat Evolved was a complete leap into a new form of "fps", completely realised and fulfilled in one effort. An outlier born from a nearly completely distinct creative genealogy. And it will again be alien creative genealogies which bring us the future of "fps". The future of "fps" is in the orient. Beginning in Ukraine, Finland, and Russia and moving East, finally to Japan. Bungie's strongest successor working right now is Doekuramori.

The "Western" continuity is sterile, pointless, devoid of higher appeal. It was able to degenerate to such miserable forms because it had no higher calling to draw it away. It's a dead end. Mechanical game-exercises that exist for the sake of being mechanical game exercises. Nobody seeking to do this has or will bring the future.

I don't cogitate within those terms at all, but seek authentic spirit whatever the aeon, being a man against time, and so there is nothing much to be said. I thought you'd get the hint when I mostly talked past you for the last couple of posts, because I do have you pegged down, and I'm happy that I got on your nerves. But I think it's time for me to unsubscribe from your newsletter.

You wouldn't know authenticity if it bit you. Or replied to your forum posts at length calling you a cowardly faggot.

 

[Ash]

This is such an absurd, grasping, completely divorced from experience and sensation attack. This is beyond petty. This is a kind of insanity. Halo is not worth playing because Duke Nukem 64 exists.

That's....not at all what I said. I pointed to DN64 as counter to false claims of "great innovation" (local co-op). No, Halo isn't not worth playing because DN64 exists, but rather because hundreds if not thousands of far better games exist. Or like 100 FPS. Yes, including DN64. Which controlled well enough, and control imperfection doesn't change the fact that Duke Nukem 3D >>>> Gaylo.

Halo: Combat Evolved was a complete leap into a new form of "fps"

Give us a bulleted list detailing exactly how this is so, focusing solely on gameplay, without all the extra fluff please. Note we're not going to be impressed by things like weapons on the ground being more realistic and "physical" than older methods. Realism is often antithetical to good, engaging game design, and it certainly was in this case alongside the two weapon limit.
The game doesnt really have much going for it at all besides somewhat impressive AI/enemy types here and there. Sure it has vehicles but they're not fun or interesting at all. Bad execution, such as mounted weapons with infinite ammo, and level design took little advantage of them besides saving you from walking forever.

Anyway, I suspect you're a dedicated troll with claims like "it's a more advanced shooter" and "Halo's story transcends literature".

 

[GamerCat_]

This is such an absurd, grasping, completely divorced from experience and sensation attack. This is beyond petty. This is a kind of insanity. Halo is not worth playing because Duke Nukem 64 exists.

That's....not at all what I said. I pointed to DN64 as counter to false claims of "great innovation" (local co-op). No, Halo isn't worth playing because DN64 exists, but rather because hundreds if not thousands of far better games exist. Or like 100 FPS. Yes, including DN64. Which controlled well enough, and control imperfection doesn't change the fact that Duke Nukem 3D >>>> Gaylo.

It's not what you said, it's what you meant. As you pointlessly elaborate upon immediately after your stupid faggot "eerrrmmm, you're being WEIRD" posture you contrived to work in here because apparently that's the kind of person you aspire to be in a discussion.

Halo: Combat Evolved was a complete leap into a new form of "fps"

Give us a bulleted list detailing exactly how this is so, focusing solely on gameplay, without all the extra fluff please.

I will happily elaborate upon my beliefs and explain why I appreciate a thing, something nobody else in this site is willing to do. But "focusing solely on gameplay" is an offensively retarded condition. You have to be a complete rube to believe that works can be divided into such clean parts. The nature of each element of the thing is informed by the rest of it, and can't be appreciated fully without consideration of that. But if you're a Mexican and you get your opinions from MexiloreGaming the idea of video games as pointless time-wasting novelties with meaningless and interchangeable atmosphere, story, and aesthetics layered on top probably makes sense to you and doesn't strike you as offensively retarded in the slightest. But of course, we're on an "RPG" site, practically a celebration of the idea that there's value in meaningless repetitions of pointless game form with new variations of context on top. So I shouldn't be so surprised that I'm surrounded by complete cretins.

Note we're not going to be impressed by things like weapons on the ground being more realistic and "physical" than older methods.

I wouldn't expect you to be impressed. It's not a questline about having to do jobs for the faction boss of the freeside gangs. Do you steal his key with your stealth skill? Or do you persuade him? Or do you go the morally grey route and bully the tavern keeper for him? This is so deep and mature. Consolesloppers would never understand... (when you are smart and sophisticated you apparently become completely enamoured with using words like "slop").

Realism is often antithetical to good, engaging game design, and it certainly was in this case alongside the two weapon limit.

Halo was not built around realism.

The game doesnt really have much going for it at all besides somewhat impressive AI/enemy types here and there.

How can you ever be sure that you've ever appreciated the full extent of anything? Where does this confidence come from? Who told you you're smart? Have you ever been called exceptionally smart by anybody? I have. And I still try to err on the side of overestimating things. Look how long I stayed civil with you animals for.

Sure it has vehicles but they're not fun or interesting at all. Bad execution, such as mounted weapons with infinite ammo, and level design took little advantage of them besides saving you from walking forever.

At a glance this looks like you're just declaring your opinions objective. Oh wait, but you said "level design". That sounds very formal and impressive. Surely there's some science to this that's lost on me. I will defer to your judgements.

Anyway, I suspect you're a dedicated troll with claims like "it's a more advanced shooter" and "Halo's story transcends literature".

I am the only one on this site who actually wants to appreciate video games. You're all clearly driven by personal hangups and a need to socially posture.

Now if you still care about those bullet points on Halo. I already covered much of this in writing but could repeat myself for the convenience of any good faith readers who would like some concise summary. I can even attempt to limit myself to mechanical distinctions if you want to be an asshole for no good reason:

Halo was a new form of fps, focusing on gameplay, bullet points:

• Game started out life as an RTS in the vein of Myth. As a result its engine, levels, and actors (AI) behave differently to all other "FPS".
• Exaggerated physics built to create elaborate reactions at scale which can be appreciated from a distance. "Wuxia" is a term I have used before to describe the impression they go for. Explosions knock things around with exaggerated force. The Master Chief isn't the only slow thing. Projectiles are also slow. Things thrown by explosions move slowly through the air. The weight and inertia of vehicles are all distorted and exaggerated to give them extreme airtime and physical reactivity with terrain. The motivation for doing this is more obvious when working in strategy, a bird's eye camera will miss more subtle reactions, and from a distance the battle scenes the game's parts could create might look mundane. Everything was built to be appreciated on the level of sensation, from further out. Appreciating scale from a distance.
• Then when they shifted the perspective down to the ground, they kept these elements, and the effect was still pleasing up close. Slower is actually a great innovation in action video games. In many games things happen too quickly and subtly to appreciate. The detonation of a grenade in Call of Duty catching an NPC can easily be missed. Between the visual clutter, the pace of the game, and the inconsequential reactions to being hit and dying of the NPCs it might as well not have happened. While in Halo you're in a large open space, enemy grenades glow, arc slowly through the air, marines scream in response to them, and will react in any number of slow enough to appreciate, attention-grabbing ways if a grenade lands near or on them.
• The trend is that every part of Halo was built to be autonomously interesting. Like Myth it was a game built first primarily to be looked at and observed. And the appeal would lie in conceptually advanced and thoroughly considered reactivity. Not in sheer technical detail. Halo has not been replicated because its nature is a result of decisions made, not mere implementation of basic technical possibilities.
• Halo's engine and elements were tailored for sensation. The game is built to put on a show in which the player participates. All games of course pay some regard for sensation, but Halo doesn't make confused concessions to realism or fps gamedesign. It is the only game of its kind built so thoughtfully built for elaborate received impressions.
• Yes I am just writing paragraphs in bullet points, these are fine ideas which don't lend themselves well to be expressed five words at a time. Go fuck yourself.
• If any part of this does not make sense or feels incomplete let me know and I will happily elaborate. Because unlike all of you I actually enjoy video games so this is a pleasure to me, not a fight to hold ill-gotten status.

 

[Ash]

I will happily elaborate upon my beliefs and explain why I appreciate a thing, something nobody else in this site is willing to do. But "focusing solely on gameplay" is an offensively retarded condition. You have to be a complete rube to believe that works can be divided into such clean parts.

Well you're tiresome aren't you...the reason I ask you to focus on gameplay is because the issue myself and others have with Halo is the utterly banal gameplay, stripping everything that was once conventional and replacing it with almost nothing. Well, I do have other issues too, of theme, art direction, the absence of music in the vein of Half-Life, but all that is secondary to gameplay. Of course.

• Game started out life as an RTS in the vein of Myth. As a result its engine, levels, and actors (AI) behave differently to all other "FPS".
• Exaggerated physics built to create elaborate reactions at scale which can be appreciated from a distance. "Wuxia" is a term I have used before to describe the impression they go for. Explosions knock things around with exaggerated force. The Master Chief isn't the only slow thing. Projectiles are also slow. Things thrown by explosions move slowly through the air. The weight and inertia of vehicles are all distorted and exaggerated to give them extreme airtime and physical reactivity with terrain. The motivation for doing this is more obvious when working in strategy, a bird's eye camera will miss more subtle reactions, and from a distance the battle scenes the game's parts could create might look mundane. Everything was built to be appreciated on the level of sensation, from further out. Appreciating scale from a distance.
• Then when they shifted the perspective down to the ground, they kept these elements, and the effect was still pleasing up close. Slower is actually a great innovation in action video games. In many games things happen too quickly and subtly to appreciate. The detonation of a grenade in Call of Duty catching an NPC can easily be missed. Between the visual clutter, the pace of the game, and the inconsequential reactions to being hit and dying of the NPCs it might as well not have happened. While in Halo you're in a large open space, enemy grenades glow, arc slowly through the air, marines scream in response to them, and will react in any number of slow enough to appreciate, attention-grabbing ways if a grenade lands near or on them.
• The trend is that every part of Halo was built to be autonomously interesting. Like Myth it was a game built first primarily to be looked at and observed. And the appeal would lie in conceptually advanced and thoroughly considered reactivity. Not in sheer technical detail. Halo has not been replicated because its nature is a result of decisions made, not mere implementation of basic technical possibilities.
• Halo's engine and elements were tailored for sensation. The game is built to put on a show in which the player participates. All games of course pay some regard for sensation, but Halo doesn't make confused concessions to realism or fps gamedesign. It is the only game of its kind built so thoughtfully built for elaborate received impressions.
• Yes I am just writing paragraphs in bullet points, these are fine ideas which don't lend themselves well to be expressed five words at a time. Go fuck yourself.
• If any part of this does not make sense or feels incomplete let me know and I will happily elaborate. Because unlike all of you I actually enjoy video games so this is a pleasure to me, not a fight to hold ill-gotten status.

So...mostly fluff. Cool.

"because unlike all of you I actually enjoy video games"

It's easy to enjoy anything when you have no standards! That's why kids, and only kids, enjoy Snakes & Ladders or Connect 4, but over time they crave more complexity and challenge. You made it to the next stage of development but stopped there I guess. Halo is so utterly simplistic and unengaging.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Duke Nukem 64 did that FOUR years prior, and was far more enjoyable. Gotta love normie insights.

I'm not reading off a wiki, I'm recalling my youth. Never had DN64 so I wouldn't know. Keep it up though

 

[GamerCat_]

I will happily elaborate upon my beliefs and explain why I appreciate a thing, something nobody else in this site is willing to do. But "focusing solely on gameplay" is an offensively retarded condition. You have to be a complete rube to believe that works can be divided into such clean parts.

Well you're tiresome aren't you...

You are not the adult in the room. I am. Efforts to affect otherwise are just going to make you look worse than you already do.

the reason I ask you to focus on gameplay is because the issue myself and others have with Halo is the utterly banal gameplay, stripping everything that was once conventional and replacing it with almost nothing. Well, I do have other issues too, of theme, art direction, the absence of music in the vein of Half-Life, but all that is secondary to gameplay. Of course.

I have explained several times that you are taking Halo for something that it's not. Plenty of people understand my proposed approach for appreciating the game. It's not exceptionally complex. You are being obstinate, because you have tied up your self worth and social standing in certain ideas and beliefs, which is very stupid. I will explain again for any who might be less lost among us. Not you, you're a write-off.

Halo does not have "banal gameplay", each part of it is built for impression, rather than maximal game complexity. Game in this context meaning contrived challenge. I've already said I consider RPGs awful, I also consider "gameplay" a waste of time divorced from other considerations. The pursuit of a purer and more demanding contrived challenge in the realm of "fps" leads to Ultrakill. Enjoy the company of retarded tranny posers, your equals and peers in sensibilities and neurosis.

Halo did not seek to be the most advanced "gameplay" oriented "fps". It aimed to be a unique class of experience. Would it help if I classified Halo as a multimedia work rather than a "video game"? Because that's what it is. "Game", like sound, scripting, staging, virtual architecture, is just another piece used to serve the whole. Discussing Halo as a work of "gameplay" to me is like discussing it as a work of virtual architecture. Why are its parts like that? To serve the whole. Can we appreciate these parts in isolation? Yes, to some extent. They can strike us as more or less pleasing. But to judge them as successes or failures, and to appreciate the human intent behind them (the most interesting part of any piece of art), we have to acknowledge and look for the whole.

And again, you and everyone else are just disregarding the actual history, story, and intentions of the work as far as they're known to suit yourselves over and over again. Halo did not emerge from a process of "stripping". They did not start from a more complex "fps" and refine down (though that would have been fine, of course). They started at a complex strategy game and built and grew that into an "fps". That is why it feels different to other "fps" games. It was convergent evolution. Different creative genealogies, as I have said several times.

When you have this little respect for the work what chance is there that there is any substance to the rest of your "issues"? Probably very little.

• Game started out life as an RTS in the vein of Myth. As a result its engine, levels, and actors (AI) behave differently to all other "FPS".
• Exaggerated physics built to create elaborate reactions at scale which can be appreciated from a distance. "Wuxia" is a term I have used before to describe the impression they go for. Explosions knock things around with exaggerated force. The Master Chief isn't the only slow thing. Projectiles are also slow. Things thrown by explosions move slowly through the air. The weight and inertia of vehicles are all distorted and exaggerated to give them extreme airtime and physical reactivity with terrain. The motivation for doing this is more obvious when working in strategy, a bird's eye camera will miss more subtle reactions, and from a distance the battle scenes the game's parts could create might look mundane. Everything was built to be appreciated on the level of sensation, from further out. Appreciating scale from a distance.
• Then when they shifted the perspective down to the ground, they kept these elements, and the effect was still pleasing up close. Slower is actually a great innovation in action video games. In many games things happen too quickly and subtly to appreciate. The detonation of a grenade in Call of Duty catching an NPC can easily be missed. Between the visual clutter, the pace of the game, and the inconsequential reactions to being hit and dying of the NPCs it might as well not have happened. While in Halo you're in a large open space, enemy grenades glow, arc slowly through the air, marines scream in response to them, and will react in any number of slow enough to appreciate, attention-grabbing ways if a grenade lands near or on them.
• The trend is that every part of Halo was built to be autonomously interesting. Like Myth it was a game built first primarily to be looked at and observed. And the appeal would lie in conceptually advanced and thoroughly considered reactivity. Not in sheer technical detail. Halo has not been replicated because its nature is a result of decisions made, not mere implementation of basic technical possibilities.
• Halo's engine and elements were tailored for sensation. The game is built to put on a show in which the player participates. All games of course pay some regard for sensation, but Halo doesn't make confused concessions to realism or fps gamedesign. It is the only game of its kind built so thoughtfully built for elaborate received impressions.
• Yes I am just writing paragraphs in bullet points, these are fine ideas which don't lend themselves well to be expressed five words at a time. Go fuck yourself.
• If any part of this does not make sense or feels incomplete let me know and I will happily elaborate. Because unlike all of you I actually enjoy video games so this is a pleasure to me, not a fight to hold ill-gotten status.

So...mostly fluff. Cool.

Woah... so many ellipses... I can see... how aloof... and above this... you are... How could I... compete... with someone... who is so... cool... as to... care... this... little...?

Answers like this don't look pithy. They make you look desperate and retarded.

"because unlike all of you I actually enjoy video games"

It's easy to enjoy anything when you have no standards! That's why kids, and only kids, enjoy Snakes & Ladders or Connect 4, but over time they crave more complexity and challenge. You made it to the next stage of development but stopped there I guess. Halo is so utterly simplistic and unengaging.

Do you really believe that an intelligent non-bald person will read this exchange and conclude that you are the one with standards? That you are the one with the complex picture of this issue? You still think this is about games. Contrived challenges.

Here's a question for you. Since Connect 4 has more complex gameplay than Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books, does that make it the more complex and challenging work?

 

[Ash]

Now if you still care about those bullet points on Halo. I already covered much of this in writing but could repeat myself for the convenience of any good faith readers who would like some concise summary.

You're right, I do not care and I was asking in bad faith: I already know what Halo is, that being trash and what we endearingly refer to here as "popamole", and I only asked to get you to condense your points into a clear-cut list and succinctly highlight the game for the shit it is, exposing yourself as a dullard in the process that derives mental stimulation from such utter mediocrity. Shit that perhaps singlehandedly destroyed gaming at large for allowing the Xbox to flourish, as well as proving that you do not actually need to make a good game to profit. But if not Halo it would have just been some other sellout PC dev game they dumped millions of dollars into marketing it to the unwashed masses.

 

[Ash]

Halo does not have "banal gameplay", each part of it is built for impression, rather than maximal game complexity. Game in this context meaning contrived challenge. I've already said I consider RPGs awful, I also consider "gameplay" a waste of time divorced from other considerations. The pursuit of a purer and more demanding contrived challenge in the realm of "fps" leads to Ultrakill. Enjoy the company of retarded tranny posers, your equals and peers in sensibilities and neurosis.

You DO realize that the vast majority of Halo is comprised of gameplay right? Gimped combat shooting and punching stupid comicalized aliens in bland empty repetitive hallways is of particular note. Sure leaves an impression alright. It occasionally offers some spectacle (as does almost every other game) and that is all you need to be engaged. Extremely pathetic.

Anyway, not sure why you're on a forum dedicated to RPGs, with an avatar depicting a character from an RPG game, if you find them to be awful. Nor why you are arguing with gamers that expect to be engaged when playing a game if you place such little value in gameplay. You just want Snakes and Ladders with a story, animation and spectacle when games can, should be and have been so much more than that. If only your mediocre type would leave my hobby alone, maybe I could have nice things again.

I'm not reading off a wiki, I'm recalling my youth. Never had DN64 so I wouldn't know. Keep it up though

I already know you know very little about video game history and the golden age. Less talk, more gaming. You have much catching up to do. Focus especially on late 90s PC and PS1 gaming. The majority of what came after to date was pure shit by comparison to that creative peak.

 

[GamerCat_]

Now if you still care about those bullet points on Halo. I already covered much of this in writing but could repeat myself for the convenience of any good faith readers who would like some concise summary.

You're right, I do not care and I was asking in bad faith: I already know what Halo is, that being trash and what we endearingly refer to here as "popamole", and I only asked to get you to condense your points into a clear-cut list and succinctly highlight the game for the shit it is, exposing yourself as a dullard in the process that derives mental stimulation from such utter mediocrity. Shit that perhaps singlehandedly destroyed gaming at large for allowing the Xbox to flourish, as well as proving that you do not actually need to make a good game to profit. But if not Halo it would have just been some other sellout PC dev game they dumped millions of dollars into marketing it to the unwashed masses.

I don't see how I'm exposed by repeating things I've been saying all thread. I think you're just scrambling and saying things without thinking, and then retroactively ascribing oh so clever intentions to yourself.

Halo does not have "banal gameplay", each part of it is built for impression, rather than maximal game complexity. Game in this context meaning contrived challenge. I've already said I consider RPGs awful, I also consider "gameplay" a waste of time divorced from other considerations. The pursuit of a purer and more demanding contrived challenge in the realm of "fps" leads to Ultrakill. Enjoy the company of retarded tranny posers, your equals and peers in sensibilities and neurosis.

You DO realize that the vast majority of Halo is comprised of gameplay right?

100% of the experience is visual. You are looking at things during "gameplay" and there are cutscenes in which the visuals carry on while gameplay ceases. I can also stop playing the game of "fps" "combat" and take as much time as I want to appreciate how the game looks. Halo is a more visual work than it is a game. Among other things.

Gimped combat shooting

Again, gimped suggests degeneration. Halo was built up from different foundations to other "fps" games, not stripped down from the same ones. You're either not reading my posts, not understanding them, or disregarding them. You look worse for your insistence for carrying on this way this any way you can be interpreted.

and punching stupid comicalized aliens in bland empty repetitive hallways is of particular note.

"Bland" is the closest thing to a serious point you actually raise. Because this is taste, not attempting to rules-lawyer things you don't like out of the running. And of course I disagree and can probably make a far more articulate case for how the game looks than you can against it.

Sure leaves an impression alright.

I wouldn't be here if it didn't.

It occasionally offers some spectacle (as does almost every other game) and that is all you need to be engaged. Extremely pathetic.

And why should we consider you the final measure of this thing, or any thing? You didn't answer my question. Have you ever in your life been personally singled out and praised as exceptionally intelligent?

Anyway, not sure why you're on a forum dedicated to RPGs, with an avatar depicting a character from an RPG game, if you find them to be awful.

As I've said elsewhere, "JRPGs" are their own tradition, and the only interesting branch from the root they share with the old "RPGs". I do not hate the letters R, P, and G. I hate boring mechanical contrivance with boring stock fiction layered on top of it.

Nor why you are arguing with gamers that expect to be engaged when playing a game if you place such little value in gameplay.

I've been understood before and will be again. I'm testing myself against you people. This is exercise.

You just want snakes and ladders with a story, animation and spectacle. When games can and have been so much more than that. If only your type would leave my hobby alone, I could have nice things again.

I don't like Snakes and Ladders. But I do like story, animation, and spectacle. Nothing else necessary. I'll even pass on the animation as optional.

You haven't seen the influence of my type yet. One day we will make the world nice and you will despair.

 

[Lemming42]

As I've said elsewhere, "JRPGs" are their own tradition, and the only interesting branch from the root they share with the old "RPGs". I do not hate the letters R, P, and G. I hate boring mechanical contrivance with boring stock fiction layered on top of it.

I have no opinion about the Halo stuff but no way are you getting away with saying you like JRPGs because you want to avoid "boring mechanical contrivance with boring stock fiction layered on top of it".