Halo Reach

[bcass]

Framerate in this can be, at time, horrendous.

I was disappointed to find its still jerky in MP too. Played a Lone Wolf match last night it what appeared to look like a level from Rainbow Six Vegas (inside a very orange looking building) and it was skipping frames all over the place.

Is it just me?

No, it isn't just you. The framerate is less than stellar during some sections of the game, especially on later levels.

[MJ]

I used to love playing Halo on Legendary, but I'm finding this one tedious and frustrating and it's not helped by the stupid friendly AI.

"They're over there, why aren't you shooting with the twin rocket launcher?! Get out the way I'll get them from here. No, I don't want you to drive me head first into them, so a Grunt can kill us both in the vehicle with a little Needler!"

[bcass]

Yeah, the friendly AI is as useless as ever. Perhaps even more useless than it's ever been before.

[Charlie]

In my experience Legendary's always frustrating but remains the only way to fully appreciate the enemy AI and acknowledge the level design intricacies and, like every game in the series, I'm looking forward to starting Reach on Legendary as much as I'm dreading it. I see frustration and glory ahead in equal measure.

[dvdx2]

I'm disappointed to say that this is not holding my attention. I booked today off to play through the campaign and keep finding myself wandering away from the 360.

i clocked it and thought it was ok - certainly not the dizzy heights of hype circulating.

Noticed a few ropey technical issues, including framerate dips and slow down and on one occasion a convenet craft just disapeared!

Some of the cut scenes will put you to sleep too (infact i ended up skipping most of them). Some of the really tasty weapons (like the air strike command) only appear in the early levels, (which is bit mean).

where is the dual wielding? you might as well be firing a spud gun in some cases without it.


Also when you have the 'run' power up, why is it you can only run forward and not back? Why no sidestep?; a double click of the bumper for a sidestep would really add to the strategy.

I also noticed some bizzare AI, with guys just sitting in vehicles at times and firing their machine guns like pistols single shot, instead of on automatic.

I think alittle bit more time in the bungie workshop would have really helped alot of the above

some marvellous bits in it though, i wont post because they are big spoilers.

Better than 3 and the poor ODST, still not as good as the 1st (which was groundbreaking)

[Jebus]

There's a wierd effect I'm seeing in places...almost like ghosting and/or slowdown...but not quite as I've seen it before...is that the framerate issues you guys are mentioning?

I thought it was intentional as I've only seen it in key moments so far, not really during big battles.

[Wools]

where is the dual wielding? you might as well be firing a spud gun in some cases without it.

I completely forgot that there has been no option to dual wield any weapons in Reach.

Although it was not something that ruined Halo games after Combat Evolved, it did remove some purity to the weapon selection. I loved the fairly small weapon selection in CE and to this day, some guns in games have no complexity or subtleties that the player has to learn. The dual wielding did add its own complexities but I thought it removed a lot of the purity of the weapon line up. That's not even taking into account the madness that caused in multiplayer where there were thousands of SMG's strewn all over the place.

I'm not sure if they're hidden in Reach somewhere, but I'm hoping they've been banished to the vaults.

[EvilBoris]

There's a wierd effect I'm seeing in places...almost like ghosting and/or slowdown...but not quite as I've seen it before...is that the framerate issues you guys are mentioning?

I thought it was intentional as I've only seen it in key moments so far, not really during big battles.

Is ir the motiin blur, which will be more visible to the eye if the frame rate is dipping?

[EvilBoris]

Its torturous reading this thread. Damn wifi!

[Jebus]

Is ir the motiin blur, which will be more visible to the eye if the frame rate is dipping?

It's really odd to describe...it's almost like a slow motion scene but one that is quite blurry on the screen.

[dvdx2]

It's really odd to describe...it's almost like a slow motion scene but one that is quite blurry on the screen.

its certainly a frame rate issue -

bungie defo bit of more than they can chew - unless running it in 720p makes a difference?

[Charlie]

On the penultimate level now and have no idea what's going on.

Every Halo game the same thing happens: from the offset I try my damndest to follow the series of events but the characters/narrative/story want so badly to be cool and try so hard to make you care that the whole thing comes off as contrived, cheesy and ultimately dull, to the point that when the cutscenes come on my eyes glaze over and my mind wanders to more interesting things. Seriously, it's like my brain refuses to even entertain paying attention to such immature drivel.

I wonder if developers will ever understand that coolness isn't something you can press. Either something is intrinsically cool or it isn't, and trying to force something to be cool renders it immediately rubbish.

[PeteJ]

Just finished it on Heroic coop (split screen), all done in one sitting as with every Halo release

In my opinion this is the best campaign in the series, beating out Halo CE as the final five levels aren't a repeat of the first five. The level design is very good throughout and the mission objectives are, for the most part, really engaging. There are several excellent battles which capture the magic of Attack on the Control Room (the highlight of Halo CE) and no part is a drag like from all previous campaigns.

The only downside to the level design is that they've blatently copy and pasted multiplayer spaces into the single player. They are litterally exactly the same. Normally I'd expect single player design to get carried across to multiplayer, but this was clearly done the other way around.

The story is average as always despite being set in a surprisingly enjoyable universe. It's a simple tale like Halo CE so it does hide Bungie's lack of narative skills (rather than exposing them, such as Halo 2). This allows them to focus on the epic set pieces, which they are very good at, but the script and characters are very weak. I couldn't tell you the names of half the squad even after finishing it.

Music is good, standard Bungie stuff however there was nothing that really stood out.

Graphics are miles ahead of Halo 3 and ODST, some of the cinematography in the cutscenes is really quite striking. Didn't notice any framerate hickups playing on split screen, but did see some objects strangely draw in in the distance.

Great stuff. Bungie delivers.

[EvilBoris]

How do you mean aboit the copy and pasting, the firefight maps?

[PeteJ]

Firefight and standard multiplayer maps. Apart from the forgeworld stuff, every map I've seen was in the campaign somewhere. Haven't seen many though I admit!