Having completed the Campaign of Halo Reach on both Heroic and Legendary (and thanks to MitchyD for the co-op invite), the only emotion I have left for this game is disappointment.
Taking place chronologically prior to Halo: Combat Evolved, H:R follows a six man team of Spartans, (Noble team) based on the planet Reach, home of the Spartan program. Investigating what sounds like a simple act of piracy leads them into a discovery of a full-on invasion of the planet by the Covenant. What is clear from playing this short 8-10 hour game is that Bungie has made some massive assumptions about the audience in crafting what can loosely be called a narrative. It is assumed the audience already know what Reach is, what it represents and why the invasion is occurring. It is assumed that the relationships between the Spartans and those others within the Spartan program itself are well known. It assumes the backbone of the story is ingrained into those playing the game, so the developers could paint with the lightest of strokes. Finally, it assumes we will care about these characters and their eventual sacrifices because we already know all of the above. Bungie is relying on the audience to do the heavy lifting, and given the game is a prequel destined to lead directly to the events of Halo:CE, these are all erroneous assumptions.
It is also clear Bungie lost interest in Halo some time ago and while they have made a superb multiplayer experience, the single player campaign is bolted onto repurposed MP maps and tied together with unclear and underwhelming cutscenes. Essentially abandoning the mythology they created Bungie told what could be the greatest story of the Halo universe in the worst possible way and in direct competition/contrast to their own novelization "The Fall of Reach".
Though the prettiest of the Halo games to date, Reach owes a great deal to Halo 3:ODST in its structure. The appearance of open environments are actually simply massive corridors populated with waves of enemies sporting weapons and tech that never again appear in the Halo universe. The most compelling and only original mission of the game is a launch into space aboard a Sabre fighter, where the battle becomes a thrilling zero-gee ballet against waves of enemy craft. It concludes with a Halo 2 "homage" fight in vacuum as the Covenant ship is breached and boarded, and returns to repetitive form.
A late game section has Noble flying from sky-scraper to sky-scraper as the strangely empty city around them burns. Unlike the far too short urban combat of Halo 2, Reach again follows the ODST model of battles set in an empty area, after the city has already fallen. While Halo 2 had constant chatter of wounded civilians and soldiers in its urban environments, Reach peppers random civilians and soldiers as window dressing, with corpses ending up being just part of the window dressing rather than reflecting the actual impact of a global invasion. Perhaps a victim of an aging engine unable to keep up with the ambition of the developers it ends up having little impact.
As a multiplayer experience, Bungie continues to have virtually no competition, with MP integration built deep into the experience starting right from the main menu. Designed to give the player the experience of progress without awarding game unbalancing perks a la the "Activision method", Reach has deep customization of the player character appearance and sound. Though the minefield of Xbox Live is wrought with obnoxious homophobes/racists, the ability to drop in and out of both campaign and multiplayer with friends is almost effortless (unless you are trying to tie two separate 360 on the same home network to an internet session apparently).
Halo: Reach is the end of Bungie's stewardship of the franchise and their exhaustion shows. Mining their own back-story while framing it in the template of the previous games allowed them to capitalize on their strength as a multiplayer developer while paying lip service to a single player experience. Reach is at best a mediocre SP game and a disappointing end to one of the defining franchises of modern gaming.
Showing posts with label Halo 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halo 3. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Expansion of IP: Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars & Dead Space: Extraction
Original Intellectual Properties are the holy grail of any media endeavor. At their best, they allow the IP holders the opportunity to continue to expand on the concepts originally presented while hopefully growing the value of the franchise. At their worst, they are annually exploited revenue streams that devalue the brand and eventually saturate the market, leading to diminishing returns.
As a launch title for the original Xbox, Halo immediately established itself as the hardware’s killer application, with tight (for a console) FPS controls, a compelling and enigmatic main character and an epic battle to be fought. Two sequels would follow, pulling the franchise across into the new console generation with Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 and driving massive revenue. Halo has truly become Microsoft’s golden goose for their hardware, and though developer Bungie would eventually buy back their independence, more Halo games appear to inevitable, with or without them.
Halo Wars is the first non-Bungie developed title in the franchise expansion. No tentative first step, the game takes the iconography and back story of the original trilogy of games to flesh out a solid Real Time Strategy experience. Sporting the best RTS controls for a console ever, the game leverages the mythology to great effect, pushing the narrative forward while maintaining enough RTS gameplay staples to comfort the non-Halo player. Technical issues amount to unit pathfinding problems at best, which is negligible given the terrific presentation and unending polish.
Set five years before the original Halo, the war with the Covenant is fresh, and armies of Spartans still populate the galaxy. The proliferation of the Spartans leads to some memorable cinematics and allows for their use as “hero” units in the game but it also serves to dilute to power of the first three games. As the last of his genetically engineered kind, the Master Chief was the stoic bad-ass main character that has long been the staple of action games. However his relationship to the A.I. Cortana provides a human vulnerability that lends the character some depth and sympathy usually lost in FPS games. This prototypical dynamic relationship is also explored cinematically in the story moments of Halo Wars but to lesser effect. The wise-cracking ass-kicking Forge is a reject from the cast of Predator as is his hard-bitten but soft on the inside lady scientist side-kick. To add insult to injury, the Spartans are presented in a late game cinematic as a group of unstoppable fighting machines, executing maneuvers one could only dream of doing while playing as the Master Chief. Not only does the game make him one of a crowd, he is no longer even the best, he is now just the one who survived.
Halo 3: ODST sidesteps the issue entirely. By removing the Spartans and the Master Chief from the game it attempts to create a new look at a familiar setting. Unfolding during the events of Halo 2, a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers are flung into the battle for New Mombasa, an African city devastated by Covenant attack. Separated during the insertion drop into the city the shockwave generated from a Covenant warship jumping into slip-space (don’t ask), the game opens with the player taking on the role of the Rookie. Waking hours after impact, the player must navigate the ostensibly open-world of the city, searching the night for his team. No longer playing as the Master Chief, the player quickly becomes accustomed to being an under-powered under-protected soldier facing the same enemies fought in previously games. As each team-mate is located, playable chapters unlock, allowing each character to be played in turn through daylight missions. Essentially a well-meaning attempt to expand the franchise, Halo: ODST is an experiment gone wrong. The single biggest flaw is also its initial selling point: this is a Halo game, so much so that is looks and feels like dropped levels from previous releases circling the noir-ish core. With only the patina of the new splattered on the game, it feels like Halo Lite and that is just not satisfying.
Halo Wars is a far more compelling and evolutionary step for the franchise, taking the concepts in the new and different directions while staying true to the mythology, much as Dead Space: Extraction does with this nascent IP.
Unlike its progenitor which debuted on Ps3 and XB360, Extraction is Wii-exclusive prequel to the events of the first game, Dead Space. A third-person action horror game set on a massive planet cracking spaceship ravaged by monster creating infection, Dead Space tread new ground in its visuals, but had a hoary and tired story. To crack the nut of emulating the spectacular visuals of the next-gen consoles on the under-powered Wii, Extraction is a first-person “rail shooter”. Like a light-gun game, the player uses the Wii-mote to controls the aim and firing of weapons, while all else is scripted in the game engine. This was a bold and wise move on the part of developer Visceral, as this is the easily the best looking Wii game in a long time, if not since launch. The only graphical flaw I found was the lack of anti-aliasing, something not as noticeable in standard def but grossly irritating on an HD display.
Telling the story of the infection overtaking the planet’s colony as well as the ship itself, the narrative plays like an interactive movie, filling in the pieces left out of the first film. The gameplay is tightly paced, the writing sharp, and the narrative supremely executed.
Gory and violent, Extraction is a text-book example of expanding an IP without diluting the original concept.
As a launch title for the original Xbox, Halo immediately established itself as the hardware’s killer application, with tight (for a console) FPS controls, a compelling and enigmatic main character and an epic battle to be fought. Two sequels would follow, pulling the franchise across into the new console generation with Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 and driving massive revenue. Halo has truly become Microsoft’s golden goose for their hardware, and though developer Bungie would eventually buy back their independence, more Halo games appear to inevitable, with or without them.
Halo Wars is the first non-Bungie developed title in the franchise expansion. No tentative first step, the game takes the iconography and back story of the original trilogy of games to flesh out a solid Real Time Strategy experience. Sporting the best RTS controls for a console ever, the game leverages the mythology to great effect, pushing the narrative forward while maintaining enough RTS gameplay staples to comfort the non-Halo player. Technical issues amount to unit pathfinding problems at best, which is negligible given the terrific presentation and unending polish.
Set five years before the original Halo, the war with the Covenant is fresh, and armies of Spartans still populate the galaxy. The proliferation of the Spartans leads to some memorable cinematics and allows for their use as “hero” units in the game but it also serves to dilute to power of the first three games. As the last of his genetically engineered kind, the Master Chief was the stoic bad-ass main character that has long been the staple of action games. However his relationship to the A.I. Cortana provides a human vulnerability that lends the character some depth and sympathy usually lost in FPS games. This prototypical dynamic relationship is also explored cinematically in the story moments of Halo Wars but to lesser effect. The wise-cracking ass-kicking Forge is a reject from the cast of Predator as is his hard-bitten but soft on the inside lady scientist side-kick. To add insult to injury, the Spartans are presented in a late game cinematic as a group of unstoppable fighting machines, executing maneuvers one could only dream of doing while playing as the Master Chief. Not only does the game make him one of a crowd, he is no longer even the best, he is now just the one who survived.
Halo 3: ODST sidesteps the issue entirely. By removing the Spartans and the Master Chief from the game it attempts to create a new look at a familiar setting. Unfolding during the events of Halo 2, a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers are flung into the battle for New Mombasa, an African city devastated by Covenant attack. Separated during the insertion drop into the city the shockwave generated from a Covenant warship jumping into slip-space (don’t ask), the game opens with the player taking on the role of the Rookie. Waking hours after impact, the player must navigate the ostensibly open-world of the city, searching the night for his team. No longer playing as the Master Chief, the player quickly becomes accustomed to being an under-powered under-protected soldier facing the same enemies fought in previously games. As each team-mate is located, playable chapters unlock, allowing each character to be played in turn through daylight missions. Essentially a well-meaning attempt to expand the franchise, Halo: ODST is an experiment gone wrong. The single biggest flaw is also its initial selling point: this is a Halo game, so much so that is looks and feels like dropped levels from previous releases circling the noir-ish core. With only the patina of the new splattered on the game, it feels like Halo Lite and that is just not satisfying.
Halo Wars is a far more compelling and evolutionary step for the franchise, taking the concepts in the new and different directions while staying true to the mythology, much as Dead Space: Extraction does with this nascent IP.
Unlike its progenitor which debuted on Ps3 and XB360, Extraction is Wii-exclusive prequel to the events of the first game, Dead Space. A third-person action horror game set on a massive planet cracking spaceship ravaged by monster creating infection, Dead Space tread new ground in its visuals, but had a hoary and tired story. To crack the nut of emulating the spectacular visuals of the next-gen consoles on the under-powered Wii, Extraction is a first-person “rail shooter”. Like a light-gun game, the player uses the Wii-mote to controls the aim and firing of weapons, while all else is scripted in the game engine. This was a bold and wise move on the part of developer Visceral, as this is the easily the best looking Wii game in a long time, if not since launch. The only graphical flaw I found was the lack of anti-aliasing, something not as noticeable in standard def but grossly irritating on an HD display.
Telling the story of the infection overtaking the planet’s colony as well as the ship itself, the narrative plays like an interactive movie, filling in the pieces left out of the first film. The gameplay is tightly paced, the writing sharp, and the narrative supremely executed.
Gory and violent, Extraction is a text-book example of expanding an IP without diluting the original concept.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
I play a hell of a lot of games it seems--
so I figured I would compile a list of the games I have played, beaten, loved and hated for this year. Please note, this does not necessarily mean games released this year as I have a tendency to walk away from games that frustrate me until the itch to play them starts again...
GAMES I HAVE BEATEN IN 2007 (for the first time)
Easily the best game I have beaten for pure entertainment value has been Bioshock. Despite a mediocre tacked on ending, this is the first game that for me has displayed the true potential of games as an artform. The painterly art direction combined with thematic depth and subtext of the story make this a true masterpiece, topped off with a real emotional punch.
The Darkness and Mass Effect also demonstrate the power of the next(current?) gen hardware when combined with real storytelling and a commitment to quality, especially in voice-acting. While Mass Effect delivers a ridiculous amount of value in its 25+ hours of gameplay it does suffer from tech issues, such as slowdowns and framerate drops. It is also not as revolutionary as hoped, with an overall feel of Knights of the Old Republic redux. The Darkness delivers top quality writing and performance with a story and delivers a real emotional gut punch early on. While it never again reaches that level of immersion, the graphics and gameplay are excellent.
God of War I & II deliver visceral intensity and pitch-perfect gameplay-the third in this series will be the only reason I buy a PS3 (to date)
VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE:BLOODLINES is one of the rare FPS/RPG's works. Despite the game developer going under and the game being under-cooked at release, a thriving mod community has continued to patch and upgrade the game past the official releases. While the staples of RPG's (grinding, leveling up) are present, the content which explores a mature rating in the best possible way (i.e. not gratuitously) provides massive game play value and entertainment. Like many games of this type, (Mass Effect, Dark Messiah) the combat is nowhere near as tight as one would expect from an FPS/action game but not a deal breaker.
F.E.A.R-FPS action combined with Asian-horror scares makes for a good but short time. The A.I. in this game is unparalleled and even with the visuals scaled down for a low-end machine, it is extremely playable and looks good too. Repetitive level design drag down the imaginative story but the intensity of the action keeps the heart pumping.
GEARS OF WAR & HALO 3 led the action assault in the past 12 months on the Xbox360, each dropping in time for the holidays of 2006 & 2007 respectively. While I originally derided Gears for its repetitive "stop & pop" game play and paper thin story, in the end, the pure intensity of the combat and gorgeous visuals won me over. Halo 3's story is not only thin, but launches itself past ambiguity to incomprehensibility. It is still the perfect FPS for the xbox, with tight responsive controls and well-executed (pun intended) enemy A.I. The graphics are strangely variable from drop dead gorgeous to placeholder matte art that seems to have been missed. The finale (post credits) is a satisfying wrapup to the storyline (such as it is) and solidify the emotional resonance between the Master Chief and Cortana.
CALL OF DUTY 4 was a non-stop thrill-ride from start to finish, with stunning visuals, good (if not original)storytelling and even some resonance. It hides the linear aspect of the game with the intensity of the firefight, though the players squad often take on more than they should, leaving me less the leader of the fight than a follower. Fantastic game.
CRACKDOWN is one of the hidden gems of this year, a game many people only to access the Halo 3 beta unfotunately. Much like Hulk:Ultimate destruction, the open world aspect of the game is fantastic, as is the vertical play, with towering skylines to ascend. Grand Theft Superhero is the best description to apply, though I skipped the driving aspect entirely. A very entertaining way to spend some time shooting things and leaping from tall buildings.
Prince of Perisa:The Sands of Time: After finally reading the manual I figured out how to beat the elevating room sequence and then game....years later. A fantastic entry, improved upon by the second sequel The Two Thrones, which I still haven't beat. The Warrior Within was acquired recently and thought it is a much prettier game visually, it is not as good as the 1st nor the last.
When I have time I will post the games I am still playing, and those I played and ditched.
GAMES I HAVE BEATEN IN 2007 (for the first time)
Easily the best game I have beaten for pure entertainment value has been Bioshock. Despite a mediocre tacked on ending, this is the first game that for me has displayed the true potential of games as an artform. The painterly art direction combined with thematic depth and subtext of the story make this a true masterpiece, topped off with a real emotional punch.
The Darkness and Mass Effect also demonstrate the power of the next(current?) gen hardware when combined with real storytelling and a commitment to quality, especially in voice-acting. While Mass Effect delivers a ridiculous amount of value in its 25+ hours of gameplay it does suffer from tech issues, such as slowdowns and framerate drops. It is also not as revolutionary as hoped, with an overall feel of Knights of the Old Republic redux. The Darkness delivers top quality writing and performance with a story and delivers a real emotional gut punch early on. While it never again reaches that level of immersion, the graphics and gameplay are excellent.
God of War I & II deliver visceral intensity and pitch-perfect gameplay-the third in this series will be the only reason I buy a PS3 (to date)
VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE:BLOODLINES is one of the rare FPS/RPG's works. Despite the game developer going under and the game being under-cooked at release, a thriving mod community has continued to patch and upgrade the game past the official releases. While the staples of RPG's (grinding, leveling up) are present, the content which explores a mature rating in the best possible way (i.e. not gratuitously) provides massive game play value and entertainment. Like many games of this type, (Mass Effect, Dark Messiah) the combat is nowhere near as tight as one would expect from an FPS/action game but not a deal breaker.
F.E.A.R-FPS action combined with Asian-horror scares makes for a good but short time. The A.I. in this game is unparalleled and even with the visuals scaled down for a low-end machine, it is extremely playable and looks good too. Repetitive level design drag down the imaginative story but the intensity of the action keeps the heart pumping.
GEARS OF WAR & HALO 3 led the action assault in the past 12 months on the Xbox360, each dropping in time for the holidays of 2006 & 2007 respectively. While I originally derided Gears for its repetitive "stop & pop" game play and paper thin story, in the end, the pure intensity of the combat and gorgeous visuals won me over. Halo 3's story is not only thin, but launches itself past ambiguity to incomprehensibility. It is still the perfect FPS for the xbox, with tight responsive controls and well-executed (pun intended) enemy A.I. The graphics are strangely variable from drop dead gorgeous to placeholder matte art that seems to have been missed. The finale (post credits) is a satisfying wrapup to the storyline (such as it is) and solidify the emotional resonance between the Master Chief and Cortana.
CALL OF DUTY 4 was a non-stop thrill-ride from start to finish, with stunning visuals, good (if not original)storytelling and even some resonance. It hides the linear aspect of the game with the intensity of the firefight, though the players squad often take on more than they should, leaving me less the leader of the fight than a follower. Fantastic game.
CRACKDOWN is one of the hidden gems of this year, a game many people only to access the Halo 3 beta unfotunately. Much like Hulk:Ultimate destruction, the open world aspect of the game is fantastic, as is the vertical play, with towering skylines to ascend. Grand Theft Superhero is the best description to apply, though I skipped the driving aspect entirely. A very entertaining way to spend some time shooting things and leaping from tall buildings.
Prince of Perisa:The Sands of Time: After finally reading the manual I figured out how to beat the elevating room sequence and then game....years later. A fantastic entry, improved upon by the second sequel The Two Thrones, which I still haven't beat. The Warrior Within was acquired recently and thought it is a much prettier game visually, it is not as good as the 1st nor the last.
When I have time I will post the games I am still playing, and those I played and ditched.
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