Halo 4 criticized for not having iron sights...wut?

[hazabaza1]

People don't like change, and we've spent so long with Ironsight aiming it's become the norm.

'We' as in a big chunk of gamers who loved FPS before iron sights became mandatory for shooting something two feet away from you tend to disagree.

Fuckin' hell, why do people seem to take offence to that?
I edited my post. I didn't mean to pick on your precious FPS or whatever the fuck.

 

[neverarine]

good, halo has never had iron sights, and i dont think it should ya know makes the game more like a classic (lol) since there was a time in gaming when the only guns that could be sighted down where sniper rifles...

 

[GamingAwesome1]

So, I've been reading the reviewer's Twitter and have found accusations of having "no credibility".

Anyone else think this sort of thing is exactly the problem with modern game reviewing? Man gives opinion on a video game, when it is his job to give an opinion about a videogame, because his opinion doesn't sync with what people want it to be, he gets accused of having no credibility.

There is something very very wrong here.

And his criticisms of the game do not boil down solely to "it's not CoD so it sucks". Did any of you read the review? Sure, his point about not having iron sights is fairly dumb. But his criticisms include complaining about a stilted method of storytelling through gameplay, the game itself being a repetitive slog, the campaign feeling empty and the combat being slow and tedious. All fairly valid complaints and all fair to say. But everyone is too busy latching onto the one fairly stupid thing he said to actually look at the rest of the review.

So while everyone is busy bashing the guy for daring to give Halo 4 a 7/10 because of "not having ironsights and not being exactly like CoD", an accusation by the way, that is patently untrue and only shows people didn't bother reading past the sentence where he mentions ironsights. I will applaud the guy for giving his honest opinion on the game and I hope he weathers the shitstorm that this brings.

It's a fairly sorry state of affairs where daring to be even slightly critical (his conclusion came down to, not bad, not amazing, kind of boilerplate) of a immensely popular game gets him completely shat on. I thought you guys wanted game reviews to be more honest?

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I hate iron sight aiming in games. Mainly because to give it purpose firing from the hip becomes inaccurate as fuck. I can see why it's in call of duty but I dont find call of duty particularly fun. I haven't played halo 4 so I couldn't say if their other points ring true or not, but that's just stupid.

 

[PurePareidolia]

I wonder what would happen if critics had a basic understanding of game design so they could understand why certain mechanics were or weren't included, and how it applies to the overall experience. That's a perspective you rarely see - most just want to review it like a movie. I suppose the medium's still young-ish, but I'd like to see actual developers making reviews, and how they'd differ from regular journalists.

Well, aside from Extra Credits I mean.

 

[tehroc]

Halo fanboys rage over a review, "OMG You didn't give Halo 4 a 15/10, fuck you gaming magazine!". No iron sights suck, using left trigger for grenade is the lamest controller scheme when EVERY other FPS uses left trigger to hard aim.

To the guy that says ironsights isnt realistic, let's see your accuracy remain the same while running.

 

[F'Angus]

"Halo 4 feels as empty as it's strong, silent protagonist." - Has he actually played the game because I'm pretty sure Master Chief isn't silent...faceless, maybe, but not silent.

 

[Thyunda]

Halo fanboys rage over a review, "OMG You didn't give Halo 4 a 15/10, fuck you gaming magazine!". No iron sights suck, using left trigger for grenade is the lamest controller scheme when EVERY other FPS uses left trigger to hard aim.

To the guy that says ironsights isnt realistic, let's see your accuracy remain the same while running.

Good thing I have this power armour to keep my gun steady, and an integrated targeting system in my helmet.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

I like iron sights in first person shooters. For example Fallout: New Vegas added iron sights when Fallout 3 didn't have them. I saw it as a really good improvement.

Also he gave it a 7. A 7. 7 is a positive review for fuck sake.

I hate number scoring for reviews.

 

[WindKnight]

"It seems like fun! I hate it!"

Graa. People hate change too much.

But it isn't change for Halo! Halo has never had iron sights on its guns. I don't get why Halo 4 is being criticized for being Halo.

I think the thing that bugs me more is 'resetting' the story to give the players their comfort blanket.

'Oh hey, the covenant war is over... uh... uh... RENEGADE COVENANT! comfort blanket achieved!'

Yay. Totally take the story forward by keeping it exactly the same.

 

[Korten12]

"It seems like fun! I hate it!"

Graa. People hate change too much.

But it isn't change for Halo! Halo has never had iron sights on its guns. I don't get why Halo 4 is being criticized for being Halo.

I think the thing that bugs me more is 'resetting' the story to give the players their comfort blanket.

'Oh hey, the covenant war is over... uh... uh... RENEGADE COVENANT! comfort blanket achieved!'

Yay. Totally take the story forward by keeping it exactly the same.

Or more like realistic. If the Covenant had been all happy after the war that would be the most unrealistic thing ever. That's not how sentient beings work, there are always those who beliefs will stay and the Sangheili being part of a 2000+ year old Religion, if they had all given it up after the great Schism, then that would have been wholly unrealistic and made no sense.

Hence internal struggle in the race between those who now don't believe and those who still believe.

If they had just done.

Covenant: "Wars over, we cool right?"

UNSC: "Yeah we cool."

That would have made zero sense from both sides, after a 27 year war you don't just forget what your enemies done to you.

Where did Reach break canon?

1) Spartan-III's, they had never been on Reach and noble team with MJOLNIR armor had never been mentioned before but apparently were a big deal.

2) Jorge, Kurt was the only Spartan-II, it never mentioned him working with any other Spartan-II's, just with Mendenz, but then they bring in Jorge, another II, who had apparently also been brought into the III program to train them.

3) Covenant finding Reach way earlier then described and making the fall of Reach go from 3 days to a whole month.

4) Cortana being on Reach, she was up with the Chief the whole time, they did explain it as: "Antoher copy of here," that would combine with the full copy with Chief as AI's can do, but never once was this mentioned and which leads to my next point:

5) The Pillar of Autumn landing on Reach, this makes ZERO sense, as it was up in battle above the Planet and the Master Chief had landed with his team on a station above to activate the Cole Protocol and they got their from the Autumn but now they couldn't have been up there if the Autumn had landed.

6) Brutes, they were never on Reach, two books had major parts on Reach, never once were Brutes mentioned, only Elites and the standard enemies, but now they were also big in on the planet.

7) Halsey meeting the III's, this makes zero sense as well. In the book the first time she encountered III's were on Onyx. Now they say that in the game she thought they were II's, but this doesn't make sense as she knows every single Spartan-II and the only one she knew was Jorge.

Now all of these were explained but in all half-ass reasons 343i was left with to explain once Bungie jumped ship.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Halo fanboys rage over a review, "OMG You didn't give Halo 4 a 15/10, fuck you gaming magazine!". No iron sights suck, using left trigger for grenade is the lamest controller scheme when EVERY other FPS uses left trigger to hard aim.

To the guy that says ironsights isnt realistic, let's see your accuracy remain the same while running.

As far as I'm aware no one in this thread has complained about the score. So that's half your post invalidated.

As for the other half it's totally a matter of personal preference. There are two main types of FPSs, the twitch shooters a la COD, with aim down sights, slower movement, and less health. And the no iron sights, better mobility, more health games popularised by Quake/Unreal Tournament and now only really surviving in Halo and Tribes Ascended.

Both have strengths and weaknesses. Iron sights are more 'realistic' and provide a neat mobility vs. deadliness compromise, combined with low health it means positioning is key to survival, but it also means you can easily be killed before you even realise you were being shot, campers who sit and wait at entrances are a big problem, and in online matches someone with a better connection or hosting the match will have a distinctly unfair advantage over others.
No iron sights and fast movement allow you to still be able to dodge while shooting, combined with better speed and mobility allows for much more dynamic and flowing gameplay, you aren't as likely to be hit if you break from cover and you have more time to react to fire. The advantage of who spots who first is much less, and campers aren't as much of a problem because you have the chance to counter them. But the gameplay can be seen as less realistic, and simpler than having to stop to ADS.

As you said, "EVERY other FPS uses left trigger to hard aim" Halo is different, it is possibly the last big budget AAA FPS that still uses that Quake style, and people still enjoy playing it! Should it homogenise into line and become just like every other game on the market, or should it keep the features that set it apart from other games and provide a unique gameplay experience that many people still really enjoy playing?

There are more than enough games to choose from if you want to play a new FPS with iron sights that runs off all the core mechanics present in COD Modern Warfare. If you want a Quake style game there's Halo and... Half Life 3, if it ever gets released.

 

[sextus the crazy]

I agree with the guy. Every game should be like every other game, that way it's easier for journalists.

I know right ? It also makes the transition from game to game easier . Why people feel the need to be different is beyond me .

"It's like every other game! 10/10!"

 

[Korten12]

I've never played any of those ultra-realistic FPS's. I don't even know what iron sights are.

It's when you bring up the gun to the camera so it hides half of the screen and reduces your FOV. It's a bit like looking at your gun while trying to kill someone. Derps call it realistic and love it.

While aiming down the sights in games does reduce your FOV, the idea of aiming down your sight is realistic. Guns in real life do have sights and soldiers do aim down them or they won't hit their target. Obviously in real life though your FOV doesn't change for obvious reasons.

 

[eternal-chaplain]

Yeah, you pretty much said it, OP: Wallstreet Journal Review of Borderlands 2.

Having read their criticism myself, I almost want to say that they reviewer went into the game trying to find anything that was wrong with it so he could write a bad review. That's really all I can find. No sensible person would come to any of his ludicrous conclusions, but honestly just look at the 'EGM Now' bar in which games like Assassin's Creed 3 and Halo 4 (though I don't exactly have an opinion of the latter to begin with) have to share a spot with Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Battlefield 3, and ES 5: Skyrim.

 

[an annoyed writer]

Then thank you, that context was seriously needed in your first post. However, you still go and say that "It only really makes sense to use such a feature when you've got a scope or you've got a third-person shooter", which is entirely untrue, and ignores FPS that are NOT Halo. What is left is a false dichotomy between Halo and TPS.

Again, we're talking about Halo here, so in a Halo-related thread, it should be assumed that we're talking about Halo. The context should be obvious. The dichotomy is meant to illustrate a game that would be considerably lesser without such a feature. Halo, being a first person shooter, has lived without an ironsights system save for its scopes. Its a game that shows that an ADS system is non-essential.

This either means that most games with iron sights do the system all wrong, or you do not know how they work yourself. The existence of iron sights does not and should not reduce the basic accuracy of any gun. Iron sights are not magical insta-sniper-switches, I should know. I can only hit a target at 150 meters with an RK 95 TP assault rifle, while lying down on the ground, 8 times out of 12 when I take my time to aim. And that's to generally hit, my chances of headshotting are around 10% if even that.

You claim that I do not know how they work, but in what context do you mean? In real life, yes, you are correct that iron sights do not make the gun more accurate, and do not affect things like bullet spread and drop. However, video games often handle bullet-based weaponry differently. In Halo as well as many other modern shooters, hit detection in bullet-based weapons are (mostly) done through a system called hitscan. When the trigger is pulled, and the gun fires, hit detection is calculated simply by determining a yes or a no in whether you hit the target. No bullet is actually fired, and thus no bullet physics are actually simulated. Hitscan weapons fire at the speed of light, meaning that the effect is instantaneous. Because of this, hitscan weapons only fire in a straight line, negating bullet drop and velocity. To simulate velocity, a firing delay is made between the trigger pull and the initiation of the hitscan. To simulate spread of bullets, the designers artificially reduce the accuracy of a weapon. With this in mind, shooters with ironsights systems that use hitscan weapons reduce accuracy further when the "Aim down sights"(ADS) button is not depressed, therefore making the ADS button the "Magical-insta-sniper-switch" that you mentioned, meaning that yes, in video game design, the ADS button increases accuracy. I know that more and more modern games are finally starting to simulate bullet physics more realistically, but in a game like Halo, the hitscan system is still used widely to save computing power.

I repeat, ironsights don't simply make the gun itself more accurate. Sure, it might decrease recoil, as now your face is also holding the gun steady, but the general bullet spread is still as reliable or unreliable as before. Looking down SMG ironsights should not make the bullet spread any less close-range oriented as regularly shooting with it.

Again, you're using real-world logic regarding firearms to make sense out of a simulation, whose methods of simulating the concepts are at best a show of smoke and mirrors.

For example, in STALKER, even though I can look down the barrel of my SMG, I'd still not use it outside urban enviroment, as there I can keep enemies at under 30-meter range.

The part where your argument falls apart here is that you're assuming that Halo and STALKER are using the same methods to calculate their bullet physics. This is incorrect. You see, STALKER is one of those games I mentioned earlier that actually simulates bullet physics for individual rounds. Each bullet is actually generated from the weapon as it fires, and the laws of physics apply to each one, meaning that bullet drop, spread, wind flow and environmental factors affect them. Your SMG is more accurately simulated than a comparable weapon from Halo or COD.

This system ignores the existence of "jack-of-all-trades" guns, which assault rifles are. Now, I've not played Halo in years, but I'm positive there are automatic weapons with rather nice effective range, but spread that suffers in longer ranges.

This was an intentional design choice. Halo is a game where no weapon is supposed to be a "jack of all trades" weapon. Everything is designed to have a purpose, so no weapon feels entirely useless.

Plus, the role of each gun does not suddenly turn immensely harder to convey if you give players limited amount of better aiming when they look at the sights of a short-range weapon.
Pistols have simplistic ironsights. Why? Because putting more elaborate sights, or heaven forbid, a scope, is often wasted effort and resources, as the gun will still be inaccurate as hell.

What adding such a system to this though is artificially reduce the weapon's capabilities through the method outlined above. The idea in the current design is to keep it simple: it it zooms: use it for long range. If it doesn't, use it for close range. The mechanics tell you what the weapon does. If every weapon had the exact same model, the guns would still be distinct in what they do because the designers use the mechanics as metaphor. We're talking game design, not gun design here.

Because DMR is innately more accurate thanks to longer barrel (less spread), scope (helps you make use of the afore-mentioned accuracy), and bipod (significantly less recoil)

Let's take a look at the holes in this argument. First of all, Figure 1:

This is Halo Reach's M392 DMR. Yes, you're correct that it has a longer barrel and a scope, but I'm not seeing any bipod. Now, let's replace this with a squirt gun model in game. How do you tell that it functions as a DMR? The answer is the mechanics. Halo uses zoom exclusively on longer-range weapons, so by zooming in, you can tell that it's a long-range gun. Mechanics as metaphor.

CQC??? Either we have completely other definitions of that or you ignore that this is one of the things that defines an assault rifle :

And it should at least have a firing range of 300 meters (1000 feet)

Now this, I'll admit, is where the term "Assault Rifle" is often played fast and loose in many modern games, and Halo is no exception. If we were to classify Halo's weapons by their ballistics, the assault rifles would really classify as PDWs or Sub-machine guns more than anything.

What you must realize is that Halo is a simulation, and the logic of a simulation is the best lens to look at it from. It's clear that you're well-versed in gun design and function, but the concepts that you've come to know as fact cannot always be effectively simulated, and by design, are occasionally thrown out. As a person who enjoys games most when they don't always try to pull off a 100% realistic simulation, I'd like Halo to stay as gamey as it is. Why? Because it's good fun, and trying to make it more realistic could cost it quite a bit of that.

 

[The White Hunter]

People don't like change, and we've spent so long with Ironsight aiming it's become the norm.

EDIT: By this I mean in recent years it's become so common.
Jesus fuck you guys will pick at anything.

What's the big deal with having iron sights or not? So long as the shooting is functional within the games rules it shouldn't matter.

Also, I'll admit I did once complain about not having iron sigths and that was in Resistance 2. Where you aim down the sights. And every gun has a scope or iron sight. But you don't do that. No. It's a crosshair a little bit above the iron sight you're aiming down.

In such situation a designer sdhould be slapped but otherwise why is it a big deal?