Halo:Reach

[Rod.H]

Ain't bad for what it is, the last hurrah prologue to a decent game series. I finally finished a normal play through of the campaign today, I've obviously spread it out since it came out to do other stuff - Civ V, work, sleep, etc - it's actually the first Halo game I've ever finished, H:CE I stopped somewhere in the first act, H2 never played, H3 did the first chapter, HW got frustrated with it by fourth mish or so, and ODST I'm still wandering 'round New Mombasa looking for the next vidclue and contemplating doing the third chapter.

I can see why people think the story's a bit meh, as it is a bit but its understandable for the endpoint was always set in stone. How we got there wasn't on the page.

Maybe everyone's looking at the games the wrong way, maybe one's the in-universe action movie version, ones the History Channel doco, ones the reality and so on. Which one is which has been left up to us to decide.

Still, one thing that happened during my play through that bugged me; repeatedly getting killed by a failed mongoose jump, it's the only way you can complete a level and it was like a 1 in 10 chance of it being successful! Yes, you could jump the gap yourself by a sprint-jump, but your AI buddy driving the mongoose kept on trying to get it over.

GAH!?!

I managed to record one fail & one success when I should've recorded all the fails & the one success for after I save quit to use the theater and save a flying off the map mongoose and resumed play. Fail loop restart!

--Rod.H
"Joy, now I've gotta do some of that all over again just to unlock some cosmetic items"

[Matrix Dragon]

... You let an AI DRIVE? Seriously, there's your problem. Bungie's never really been able to do that well with ally driving AI, leading to the old rule that it's better to let them take the gunners seat with their infinite ammunition and handle the driving personally.

[Rod.H]

Well, most of the time when a vehicle was present and required to be driven, the AI bots left it up to you to drive. Aside from the odd cut-scene. It just this one time that the AI bot insists to drive, it didn't do a bad job of it up until it needed to jump the gap.

[Rod.H]

And another AI glitch? I re-did the first campaign again because of this:

Harder than Some
Complete a Campaign mission on Heroic with Thunderstorm, Famine, and Tilt on.

Noble team mowed through Grunts & Jackals, then a squad of Sangheili Ultras stopped the Spartan train...dead. Well, mainly it was me that was dead. The rest of Noble team just kept on plunking away, going the wrong way & hiding.
I eventually got past that point by doing hit & runs on a selected Elite till it was dead. I so don't think I'm ready for heroic difficulty.

Oh people that think Team Fortress 2 has turned into a grindfest obviously haven't looked at Halo recently. You want to make your armour look different, well you need some in-game credits for that, how do ya get 'em? play the damn game & complete some Bungie daily challenges while your at it.
Okay but what 'bout those interesting bits of armour that cost 0Cr but won't let me get? Those are unlocked by using the Halo Waypoint xbox app, it scans your Halo achievements and unlocks bits if you've done enough to meet the requirements.

Ayep to unlock some of the shiny stuff for your armour in Reach, you've gotta go back to Halo 3 & OSDT, clear a stack of achievements and do another stack in Reach to build ya credits & rank up. Then again people went a bit nuts in trying to clear the Vidmaster challenge achievements to get the Recon armour variant for Halo 3.

[img]http://www.bungie.net/stats/reach/playermodel.ashx?rpis=6YqVmsc9s6Y%2BQJ8DR%2FDOfg%3D%3D">

--Rod.H (who's only cleared the simplest Vidmaster challenge)
"Right I've a six-pack of skulls here, any takers....."

[Morganite]

Somehow, I have a hard time taking the armor variations in this game seriously. After all, I work in a store that sells the "It comes with a freaking statue" edition, so I've seen a picture of the special armor variant it comes with, the "my super-soldier friend, your head is on fire" look. Which is just sort of... yeah.

I suppose, as someone completely disinterested in online play, it's meaningless to me anyway.

-Morgan.

[Rod.H]

I thought about getting that SKU, then thought again, cos I didn't want to drop another hundred on a statue & permaflames for my character. I picked up the "Ooh, look a book" edition instead.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops Prestige edition looks interesting, but I reckon if you look hard enough on the net the base form of that RC toy can be found.

--Rod.H