1887 replies to this topic

[Frost]

Sneaky Snake, on 09 August 2012 - 12:46 PM, said:

there was recall in the mobo in your MacBook Pro. You can most likely get it replaced for free.

As I said, not the one in my profile. That one's fine.

But the one that failed was also covered by the recall, however Apple won't cover it for some weird reason because they couldn't find the serial number (the hell?).

EDIT: Got the prepaid shipping box in today. PS3 on its way back to Sony via FedEx. Hopefully the new one makes it past two weeks!

[The Liberator]

Frost, on 09 August 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

As I said, not the one in my profile. That one's fine.

But the one that failed was also covered by the recall, however Apple won't cover it for some weird reason because they couldn't find the serial number (the hell?).

That sounds pretty bad of them.

Lib.

[XxtraLarGe]

There's a review for the Walking Dead game on the front page. If you have Playstation Plus, the first two episodes are available as a free download. Just got them last night, haven't had a chance to check them out yet.  

[AussieMacGamer]

Yikes! Halo 4 looks incredible, really wishing i had a 360 right about now!

From Polygon "Halo 4 gets what made Halo: Combat Evolved special."

Thats the key to my heart

[Sneaky Snake]

AussieMacGamer, on 01 November 2012 - 02:14 AM, said:

Yikes! Halo 4 looks incredible, really wishing i had a 360 right about now!

From Polygon "Halo 4 gets what made Halo: Combat Evolved special."

Thats the key to my heart

I read a couple reviews. Currently browsing my local classifieds for an xbox 360

[Frost]

I pre-ordered it when that last Newegg $47 pre-order special came up. Can't wait to play it as soon as I get back from Florida (but not too soon, the real spaceships here are cooler than the computer-generated spaceships in Halo).

[Janichsan]

On that matter: the live-action webseries Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn isn't half-bad. The plot is pretty predictable, but it definitely shows the potential of a Halo movie.

[AussieMacGamer]

AAAAAAAAWWWWWESSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMME!

[Tetsuya]

Having finished Halo 4....

i dont understand what kind of drugs most of the reviewers ive been reading have been on.  The game is god-awful.  i mean, freaking terrible, not worth wasting 20 bucks on let alone 60, awful. And this is even knowing that most game reviewers are on the take, even the ones ive come to find relatively credible (Forbes, of all places) are bending over and giving service to this POS.  

The sound is jarring and terrible.  NONE of the weapons sound right. (The covenant weapons are particularly awful; they sound like someone re-recorded them by playing the Halo 1 sounds under water + static and used an iPhone to take the new samples). The Warthog sounds like a dirtbike.  The Covie voices are all wrong.  The voice acting from everyone except Jen Taylor (Cortana) is terrible at best and unlivable at worst.  The story is convoluted mess of outright ret-con trash that is incoherent and unbelievable at the best of times and utter drek the rest of the time.  Huge plot holes are never sewn up, things that require exposition are left totally unanswered (Like.. why the hell are we fighting the Covenant? -

Spoiler

why to these Covenant go to work for the bad guy within seconds of him being revealed?  How is the villain (The Didact) imprisoned in Requiem when we KNOW FOR A FACT he was the one that fired the Halo array? (I.E. how the crap is he in two places at once?)

.  It feels like 343 went out of their way to crap on the story that Bungie crafted (well, given that they hired Karen Traviss to be the creative director of their universe, that was bound to happen) and make as little sense as possible.  And then there are the "Forerunner" weapons - all of which are exact duplicates of the human weapons with glowy 'hard-light' skins (except the pistol, which is a duplicate of the plasma pistol).  So lame.

The gameplay isn't difficult - it's just frustrating.  Entire areas are filled with instant-death zones that you basically have to "survive" by dying over and over to learn where they are.  That isn't fun or interesting, just annoying.  It feels like every step forward Bungie took with their last two Halo releases (ODST and Reach), after realizing their mistakes in 2 and 3, was thrown out the window and everything terrible about Halo 3 (other than dual-wielding, thank the gods) was AMPLIFIED.  

And then there is the Multiplayer.  It was really nice of 343 to let Infinity Ward design the Multiplayer, so that all of the CoD fanboys could have their Halo-skinned Call of Duty.  Level-based, unlockable, game-changing perqs, crappy armor abilities that mimic CoD (a freaking RIOT SHIELD?! - oh, wait, "Hard Light" Shield) and remapped controls to more closely mimic Call of Fail (press down on the movement stick to sprint?  UGGGHHH).  It felt nothing like Halo (and since i just finished Halo CE - A, i might have some idea what that feels like), and feels everything like a blatant attempt to cash in on Call of Duty fanboys.  

I had some  hope that Spartan Ops would be decent, but then threw that away - im not paying for a Gold live account just to play that after how god-awful the rest of the game was.  

I feel sorta bad for the friend who bought it for me; Dont waste your money.

[the Battle Cat]

Other than that what do you think of it?

[dojoboy]

Tetsuya, on 15 November 2012 - 04:49 PM, said:

i dont understand what kind of drugs most of the reviewers ive been reading have been on.  The game is god-awful.  i mean, freaking terrible, not worth wasting 20 bucks on let alone 60, awful. And this is even knowing that most game reviewers are on the take, even the ones ive come to find relatively credible (Forbes, of all places) are bending over and giving service to this POS.

Well, "Santa" was thinking of surprising the boys w/ an Xbox 360 + Halo 4 this Christmas. Nice work, Tetsuya.

[Tetsuya]

the Battle Cat, on 15 November 2012 - 07:26 PM, said:

Other than that what do you think of it?

uhhh.. it's pretty.  I guess.  Certainly seems to actually be 1080p instead of 720p upscaled like 90% of 360 games.  Of course, the color pallette is a lot darker than the other games, meaning that in some of the dimmer places in the game, you can be standing on top of a bad guy, and not be able to see him because he blends in with the terrain so well.  

But the models are well done, high-rez, and look good.  

Too bad about the rest of it, though

edit:  i cant really say much more about how bad it is without writing a spoiler-laden post.  The ret-conning and story are really, really awful.

[Frost]

I'm not very far into it yet but I'm already rapidly approaching agreeing with Tetsuya.

Halo 4's got its good moments, and it does look very pretty, but... Bungie's no longer in charge and boy does it show. I agree the sounds are awful, Covenant no longer sound like Covenant but like some kind of Japanglish pidgin, the Warthog's awesome hydrogen turbine engine has been replaced with a gas-powered ATV engine, AI's had a significant downgrade, and grenades were always an awesome part of Halo but now are basically pop rocks with a 3 foot kill radius. Ridiculous considering grenade/gun synergy is a core part of Halo gameplay.

While I'm okay with the story so far (I'm only 3 missions in) in the campaign, oh my God the Spartan Ops part is atrocious. It's like a bad sci-fi novel written by a teenaged boy. Non-stop hardass egos wisecracking and engaging in endless pointless puffery in the middle of combat until you want to exit the battlefield, go to HQ, and machinegun them all in the face and find a real soldier to take over for these buffoons. Playing Legendary, I was more annoyed by the radio chatter than by the enemy.

"Yeeeah, I'm tougher than you!" "No, you suck, I'm tougher!" "You all suck, I'm the Commander and I'm a tough girl and I'm badasser than that!" "Nu-uh!"

SHUT. THE FRAK. UP.

If I was a Spartan aboard the UNSC Infinity I'd mutiny. That tardfest ain't Captain Keyes' boat.

Which is another thing, Halo has gone to great lengths to set Spartans up as tough, professional, highly efficient killers; the type epitomized by John-117, or Carter-A259. In Halo 4 they're a bunch of unprofessional, oversexed, 90 IQ frat boy idiots. They went from being Delta Force blended with SEALs to being the rejects who wash out of boot camp.


I don't know what I was thinking getting excited for this considering 343 took the magnificent state that Bungie left Halo: Reach's multiplayer in and COMPLETELY frakked it up beyond all possible recognition. My online gaming life post-Reach was basically, playing Reach. Shortly after 343 took over and started tweaking it, I quit competitive altogether. I had big gripes with it but it was still the most fun I'd had in Halo multiplayer since Halo 1, especially once Bungie got it where they wanted it after a few months. I went to just playing Firefight, which was still lots of fun, but then 343 ruined that too by eliminating regular Firefight and making it "Firefight Arcade" where everyone has infinite lives and infinite ammo power weapons and nobody was playing except to farm credits. Now I haven't played Reach in forever except to occasionally play the campaign or a custom Firefight.

Somehow, I was expecting Halo 4 was gonna be great though.

I guess I was really happy over the job they did with Halo: Anniversary, but then I should have remembered they didn't actually do that, they contracted it out. They just did the multiplayer portion, which they screwed up shortly after launch.

My Halo 4 career is likely going to be occasionally playing Spartan Ops with friends and that's it. If I want to play CoD I'll freaking buy Call of Duty or one of its legion of clones. I bought Halo. I want to play Halo, not a Halo-skinned CoD. Every multiplayer game is turning into a CoD clone to one degree or another, and interestingly, I've all but stopped playing multiplayer games. For heaven's sake developers, do something interesting and original with your games and stop ruining what you've got in a vain attempt to cash in on Activision's cash cow.

EDIT: More detail.

[Tetsuya]

Frost, on 15 November 2012 - 10:24 PM, said:

While I'm okay with the story so far (I'm only 3 missions in) in the campaign,

Spoilerfest ahoy.  I mean it, this will ruin Halo 4 for you if you read it and care.  You've been warned.  

Spoiler

Give it another chapter or two, Frost.  Right about when..... you find out that Humans were an advanced, star-faring race that were contemporaries of the Forerunners; that we fought, and beat, the Flood in this time (before the Forerunner even knew they existed) and that to relocate our population away from the nuclear and biological wastelands we created while defeated the Flood, we moved into Forerunner space and kicked their asses right the eff out of a big chunk of our arm of the galaxy and took it for our own.  We then fought a long, losing war with the Forerunner (primarily because we'd just finished beating the flood), and they bombed us back to the stone age (though not before arguing amongst themselves about wether or not to test fire the Halo rings on us...).  And then, just to be angsty humans... when the Forerunner idiots stumbled upon the few worlds that held a few of the flood microbes.. we decided not to tell them how we beat them, and let the Flood devour the galaxy.  'Cause we're like that.  And the Flood are the Precursors.  

Follow all of that?  No?  Not a problem, it's lame as popsnizzle anyway.  Retcon retcon retcon! (How about the fun part that our story's main villain, the Forerunner known as The Didact... was somehow imprisoned inside of Requiem (a shield world) .... for a few hundred years.... BEFORE he personally fired the Halo Array at the end of the Forerunner/Flood war.  So.. yeah, two places at once.  GREAT JORB, 343!  Aren't you glad you hired Karen Traviss?!

Quote

Carter-A259.

nitpick nitpick nitpick...

That's Carter S259.  While the novels say that Spartan-IIIs use their company prefix, nothing else supports this, and Reach outright contradicts this.  In both the trailers for Reach that feature the Spartans (Deliver Hope and the E3 reveal) they use the S-prefix, as well as in-game.  

E3 Reveal features both Kat and Carter ("This Sierra-320 prepped for combat insertion" - Kat; and Carter "This is Sierra-259, you've got Spartans on the ground sir; we're not going anywhere") and Deliver Hope's helmet view of Kat clearly shows that she is S320.  (shown as S-320 [KAT]), and Jun is S266.  When you're choosing a Firefight voice, all of Noble Team is shown with the S prefix.  In addition, the first page of the instruction manual is an in-character congratulations email from Colonel Holland welcoming you to Noble; Noble-Six's name is given as [Classified] S-312.

The novels have always (well, at least when Bungie was in charge) been second-tier canon; the games always trump everything else (not to mention the giant continuity errors the novels inject - such as the Fall of Reach novel not jiving with Halo: Reach at all.  

If i had to form a hypothesis, it would be either that:

1 - there are no "comapnies" of Spartan IIIs - after all, we never see them in the games, merely a handful of Spartan IIIs and mention of two more teams during Reach ("being wasted evactuating civilians").  All Spartans use the S-prefix.  

2 - after being removed from their throwaway companies (which are super top secret and are going to be sent on suicide missions anyway), any Spartan-III is assigned an S-prefix to make them indistinguishable from "normal" Spartans to the UNSC personnel they interract with.  Since all of the Spartan-IIIs in Reach would have to have been removed from their companies (as both Alpha and Beta companies were wiped out completely in suicide missions years before Reach takes place) this seems quite likely.  After all, the UNSC keeps information on the Spartans very secret, and would want to reinforce the appearance that there are a LOT of Spartans (even if there arent) and wouldn't want people asking questions about why some Spartans use the S/Sierra prefix and some use other alphanumerics.  

I know, a nitpick, but i got into a giant argument about it on the Bungie forums before they walked away from Reach.

[Sneaky Snake]

Tetsuya, on 15 November 2012 - 04:49 PM, said:

...im not paying for a Gold live account just to play that after how god-awful the rest of the game was...  

Wondering how you tested out the multiplayer then?

[Tetsuya]

Sneaky Snake, on 16 November 2012 - 09:46 AM, said:

Wondering how you tested out the multiplayer then?

With other people in the same room?  Shocking, i know.

[Ichigo27]

Tetsuya, on 15 November 2012 - 04:49 PM, said:

Having finished Halo 4....

i dont understand what kind of drugs most of the reviewers ive been reading have been on.  The game is god-awful.  i mean, freaking terrible, not worth wasting 20 bucks on let alone 60, awful. And this is even knowing that most game reviewers are on the take, even the ones ive come to find relatively credible (Forbes, of all places) are bending over and giving service to this POS.

The impression I get is that it's close to the amount of enjoyment as halo 3. And that isn't saying much. Just to be sure, is it required that the game needs to be installed, even for single player. If so, how much space?

[Tetsuya]

Ichigo27, on 16 November 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

The impression I get is that is it's close to the amount of enjoyment as halo 3. And that isn't really saying much. Just to be sure, is it required that the game needs to be installed, even for single player. And so how much space?

i do not recall it wanting to install for single player; for multiplayer, it does.

[Frost]

Yeah, SP can be played right off the disc, but to play Spartan Ops I had to do an install from the second disc.

[Frost]

Well, maybe I was too kneejerkingly harsh on the multiplayer to start. It's still not Halo 1 or Reach, but I decided to give it more of a chance and play it more extensively, and while I still don't like the COD crap of multiple perks and selecting starting weapons and unlocking advantages over other players by leveling up, I nonetheless still had a good time with it this weekend. The core of what made Halo MP fun is still in there, it's just been wrapped up in COD foil.