Halo 3 Multiplayer - The Elephant in the Room

[frontier psychiatrist]

The game is for the hardcore kids now--

Repeat after me: Halo is not a hardcore game.

 

[ZakuII]

Actually by hardcore I was referring to that unusual group that covers Bungie/Halo fanboys, clans who see themselves as professional, and those whose involvement with the game makes the term secondary occupation appropriate.

I see what you mean now. Yes, i agree it seems to have been made mainly for them. Personally ever since Halo2 i've been feeling as if the series has become more about the multiplayer content. Co-op could potentially be classed as multiplayer, but that's a fallacy. If singleplayer is neglected in favour of deathmatch based multiplayer, co-op single player still suffers.

Halo 2 & 3 were severe dissapointments to me, to be honest. Much like the Matrix 2 & 3.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

The game is for the hardcore kids now--

Repeat after me: Halo is not a hardcore game.

Which is, of course, why MLG discussion forums explode whenever Bungie mentions an update.

Halo *can* be a hardcore game, if you want it to be one and set the match parameters accordingly. Or it can be a goofy-fun game. It's this flexibility that the "Halo iz 4 n00bs" crowd keep missing in their feeble diatribes.

-- Steve

 

[PxDn Ninja]

A game TYPICALLY is not hardcore, the crowd playing it are hardcore. Mario can be hardcore if you play for 50 hours straight and figure every little shortcut out and speed run through it hundreds of times to shave half a second off your time. Halo is the same way. It is a standard (substandard in my opinion, but that is a whole different argument) game that has a huge fanbase.

 

[Mistah Kurtz]

Your entire post was filled with spelling/grammar errors, and then you topped it off by mocking somebody's [sic]"Puncuations"?

Exactly how stupid are you and how much undeserved praise have you received from your deluded parents?

Actually, I was insinuating that he told just about the same yahtsee has said about halo, not that he didn't use punctuations. And I know that this isn't the best excuse but I don't speak English as my mother tongue and I live in Norway. And personally, I'm not a person who think grammar is that important when posting on forums.

I'm not really sure what you're saying, if i'm correct you're saying you were making some kind of reference? If you weren't seriously mocking his grammar then I apologize, I just hate to see people mocking the way someone writes if they don't write any better themselves. I wasn't mocking the fact that your English isn't perfect (though for a non foreign speaker it is good), I was doing a retaliation mock for the presumed preemptive mocking.

 

[Spartan Bannana]

I think that Halo is one of the best games out there, it doesn't live up to the hype it gets no, but it doesn't deserve the crap it gets from many on these forums.
I played it a lot more before I got COD4 but I still play it about once a day.

 

[frontier psychiatrist]

Which is, of course, why MLG discussion forums explode whenever Bungie mentions an update.

Halo *can* be a hardcore game, if you want it to be one and set the match parameters accordingly. Or it can be a goofy-fun game. It's this flexibility that the "Halo iz 4 n00bs" crowd keep missing in their feeble diatribes.

A game TYPICALLY is not hardcore, the crowd playing it are hardcore. Mario can be hardcore if you play for 50 hours straight and figure every little shortcut out and speed run through it hundreds of times to shave half a second off your time. Halo is the same way. It is a standard (substandard in my opinion, but that is a whole different argument) game that has a huge fanbase.

The point is that Halo is the sort of game played by stupid frat boys who call each other dude and bro. That's not hardcore.

 

[Space Spoons]

It didn't quite live up to the hype, no, but honestly, no game that heavily hyped would be able to. I still think it's a fun game, both as a single player experience and as a multiplayer experience. There's nothing quite as fun as getting together with three friends on a Sunday afternoon for a few good rounds on Valhalla with all vehicles turned on and overpowered weapons all over the place.

Then again, none of us play the game at hardcore level by any meaning of the word, so maybe I'm seeing it from a different angle than most.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

The point is that Halo is the sort of game played by stupid frat boys who call each other dude and bro. That's not hardcore.

Ah, the bitter tone of the exclusionist geek worried about his 1337-gaming credentials.

I'll save my time, and the time of those reading here, and not dignify this by wasting reason on a further response.

-- Steve

 

[Ares Tyr]

At University this year I've been living in a Pro Evo world. Not only am I football obsessed anyway, but it is my housemates' game of choice. We set up a community on Pro 2008 and the banter ensued. They aren't avid gamers, and to be honest I only bought two games over the last twelve months, and they only briefly interrupted the Pro madness, as good as they were.

One housemate, let's call him John for anonymity's sake, is probably the worst for it, the amount of times we started playing Pro Evo instead of working on something I lost count. But towards the end of the year he won a hundred pound bet with another housemate, and used it to fund a 360 purchase he'd wanted for a while. He got a deal at GAME with Pro Evo 2008 and Halo 3, which he'd seen me playing and I'd said it was good.

To celebrate we got some mates over and tried out his new machine. We started off, rather predictably, playing Pro Evo, at which I was surprisingly good ( I usually get tanked on their Playstation versions). But in the fullness of time Halo was put in and we began a four player deathmatch.

Three of us had a whale of a time, and while I did well I was pipped to the win by a jammy American. However, John was not happy. Despite a pause two minutes in, where I ran through the control system, demonstrated on screen how to kill people with the different guns and how to use grenades effectively, he was not enjoying it. Partly, this was because he was getting battered, and partly because he gets moody when he loses, he started picking holes in the game.

"I shot you in the head with a full round of the rifle, how did you kill me?"
"I was shooting you, and when I got close I hit you"
"But I shot you first, in the face! If I did that now you'd be dead"
"Yes, but in the game I've got a shield"
"Oh yeh, of course..."

Now you've probably seen/heard this before, and it does smack of sour grapes, but one of his biggest arguements really hit home, and that was that the hype didn't match the gameplay. He concluded that he understood the game, and that he shouldn't have to play the single player to improve, he should have a fair chance.

The american and I countered that we had played the trilogy, and so had an advantage. we removed ourselves from the next game, which was much closer as all four now had very little experience, but John maintained that it wasn't as good as had been advertised. And having heard that opinion several times I wonder if it's true, is Halo 3 simply for the hardcore kids?

I'm sure we can all agree that the single player has some absolutely hellish levels, and I know that within the first hour I was wracking my brains as to how I'd done similar situations in the first two games. When I subsequently went on Live, I was either slaughtering people for whom this was obviously their first Halo, or getting beasted by people with ridiculous skills and hundreds of hours of practice under their belts.

Thinking objectively, I can't help but wonder if we love something which we know in our hearts is not actually as wonderful as we make out, and then I ponder if that is such a bad thing. Perhaps something thta can only be enjoyed by a few should be treasured rather than villified. All I know is that all the Johns of this world can't be entirely wrong.

I know this is very long winded but your opinions would be appreciated...

I actually played about ZERO of any Halo's campaign modes. I loved the multiplayer because it was, for a while, the best FPS on consoles in that department. And on Halo 3, it was no different. But I do see where someone would get infuriated about the mechanics and "logic" of the game, because I have had screaming curse moments over this myself.

Then I graduated to Call of Duty 4, which is in my opinion, the best console FPS currently, and the most fun straight-forward FPS multiplayer around. Halo 3 does have vehicles and fantasy over it, but for people who want a slightly more "logical" take on FPS multiplayer games, CoD4 would be it. I never played any of the previous ones, and at first, I was terrible at CoD4, but got better, so I suppose I can also see where your friend is coming from.

As for me, I suppose I got tired of punching the ground in a rage due to Halo BS. Now I punch the ground in CoD4 fury, but it happens far less often.

 

[ImStarKiller]

My point wasn't to say Halo was a Hardcore fanboy game, just that for someone new to it has a very large learning curve. I said to be good didn't take much but quickly the table turns from fun to work (like World of Warcraft) if you like competition. I find fun at all times in the game but I feel it lacks in many areas.

 

[Crunchy English]

I know this isn't exactly on topic, but would people PLEASE stop using "Epic" to mean "Good", "Excellent", "Fantastic" "Great" "Stupendous" "Awesome" "Way-Past Cool"? There are lots of perfectly acceptable ways to show you like something with language, ranging from purist to just plain ridiculous and none of them necessarily steal a word that already has a meaning. And if you say the word "Jokes" instead of "funny" in my presence you are hereby revoked of the privlige of speaking my language.

Also, Master Chief was not an "epic" character. In Warhammer 40K he would be considered the average soldier. He is not particularly heroic, he's just very good. Staying well within your comfort zone doesn't make you hero.

Ok, those pet peeves out of the way,

Fairness on Xbox is more or less assured I think, but that doesn't make feel any better when a guy who just "fairly" shot me claims to be having sex with my mother that very instant. A different medium means different problems, that's all.

 

[frontier psychiatrist]

Ah, the bitter tone of the exclusionist geek worried about his 1337-gaming credentials.

I'm not a geek, and the reason why I don't like the Mr. Dudebros of the world is because they're dumbing down gaming.