HG131 said:
Uncompetative said:
Without Marines and Grunts, there is no way Bungie should have called this Reach.
Without properly integrated controls there is no way Bungie should have called this Halo.
I no longer feel empowered playing as a Spartan and the weapons are a load of crap too.
There is no way I will be playing this game for 1000+ hours.
They will be in campaign. The Spartans are weaker because you are an S-III, not an S-II.
Yes, I
know that... the point I was making was about the Halo: Reach multiplayer Beta - which is the topic of this thread.
Bungie should have put Marines and Grunts into multiplayer in order to create larger, more strategic, battles - deserving of the name 'Reach'.
Technically, this could have been done by having them be semi-autonomous 'bots' which could be given simple orders via the D-pad. This would not bog down the gameplay and make it like G.R.A.W. as these strategic commands would be completely optional and your squad would act sensibly and not cross your line of fire. They would know when to take cover and given the angles of oncoming fire, what cover to move to. They would also heal injured squad members automatically (and be the resource that you needed to keep alive in order to have health packs that were 'mobile', rather than be the fallen comrade that represented a static 'risk/reward' scenario). Your weapons could also be exchanged with them during the game, thereby boosting your effective inventory without you having to traipse all over the map looking for ordinance.
Practically, you could as a Spartan direct your squad to 'assault a target/capture an objective/move to intervening cover' by looking at it and pushing Up on the D-pad. Flanking manoeuvres could be obtained by pressing Left or Right. Pressing Down could make your squad regroup at your current position and you could hit the Back button to get them to all retreat from a major identified threat. Each player could control a Spartan directly and four Marines, or an Elite and their squad of Grunts. If that was 4 versus 4 you would have 40 characters to animate on the map - you could also make it so that there were only 2 Elites, but each had 9 Grunts (recreating some of the feel of the Halo: CE Campaign battles in Reach multiplayer). Network traffic would not be increased as you would only send the gamepad inputs of each player and each console would then make identical non-random decisions based on these inputs (and the state of play) for what the 'bots' should be doing without any need for cross-console communication. Depending on the quality of the graphics (which was fine in Halo 3 and in no way needed improvement), you could have even more 'boots on the ground' and therefore truly epic battles. Unfortunately Bungie have done none of this, squandering processor power on making Reach 'look nice', rather than putting that power into 'bots'. Even though every 'bot' would need to be animated and this is extra work, I still feel that this would have been worth exploring.
Now. Obviously, it is totally unfair of me to criticise something for "not being something else". After all, reviewers are always saying that they have to criticise something on the basis of "what it is", rather than "what it could be". However, I'm not reviewing it. I'm complaining about the false hype Bungie have cooked up around the erroneous use of the name 'Reach'.
If they called it something else, I would have had less of a problem with it.
Secondly, I am painfully aware that you are controlling Spartan IIIs and I frankly miss that sense of empowerment. Sure, they are part of the Halo universe, but as with the disappointing O.D.S.T. (which they were right to rename from Halo: Recon), they aren't fun to play as. FPSes are better suited to PCs due to the efficacy of 'mouse-look', so the best console FPS games have had to compensate for the disability of the gamepad interface by making their games easier. Take, for example, GoldenEye 007 on the N64 console which gives Bond a lot of health, makes all enemies deliberately miss with their first shot, etc. but then, having made your character almost too powerful, throws a ton of enemies at you (thereby making you feel super-skilled and like 007 when you kill them all on your own).
I'd have less of a problem if the weapons were more effective and the armour abilities both lasted longer and were easier to activate.
Why for example, should I have to hold (X) to get a pathetic thrust on my jet-pack (interfering with my much needed use of the right thumb stick) when it could have been made to hover when LB was held and thrust when RB was used when airborne? Surely, the EMP blast from the armor lock makes you potentially very unpopular with any team-mates that happen to be nearby, so it would make better sense if it only temporarily affected the avionics of jet-packs (causing everyone in the air to lose thrust completely and hurtle to the ground). The sprint could be activated by holding RB whilst on the ground and pushing forward on the left thumb stick - this would mean that you could then sprint into a melee attack. The fact of the matter is that Bungie haven't properly integrated the new behaviour anywhere near as well as they did with their much vaunted "golden triangle" of LT RT RB (i.e. Grenades Gunfire Melee); to which you can add LB (i.e. Jump) when using the superior Bumper Jumper control scheme - which wasn't available in the earlier games.
Finally, the new HUD is an unnecessary change that is entirely detrimental to the experience. The text is too small. I can only tell if I have a plasma grenade equipped by throwing it and I have absolutely no idea what my secondary weapon is based on the graphic.
