[360] Halo Reach: Ghosts of GFF

You can get the HD version on the Live market place now.

I can just see the veto-rage against jet-pack matches already. "HAY GUYS, EVERYONE VETO, THIS IS GAY, I WANNA PLAY BR'S ON BLOOD GULTCH".

The set-pieces in ODST were pretty epic, even if the mincing around the city bit was slightly pointless so this has the capacity for a pretty great single player mode. I'm assuming the larger scale battles will work something like the Battlefront games with rolling spawns and AI characters, unless Bungie have managed to seriously tweak their net-code. Bigger battles would be cool though, I've still yet to experience an online FPS on console to match the fun of 50 player Frontlines matches.

Also, the assasination thing looks like a way to nerf the power of from-behind melee attacks by slowing them down, dressed up as a new feature.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

From the video of Headhunter and from the name, I'd guess it was a mode where you collect skulls for scoring headshots. Notice the guy gets plugged in the face before dropping a load of skulls so it would seem logical that you score skulls for getting headshots and lose them when you're killed by one. Perhaps with one team as the headhunters and the others trying to steal their skulls.

Also, agreed that the assasinations look like they can be done from the front. One of the first things you see in the video is a dude getting gut-punched. One of my major lacking Halo skills was the timing for melee attacks, I generally lose when going head to head with someone and closing to quick punch range so whether or not this will improve things for me will be interesting.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by OmagnusPrime

Oh of course I will, I just don't necessarily know if it'll hold my attention for long once people start going back to playing other things just because I've never been into the Halo MP all that much.

Go back to playing other things? MW2 was the first game to pass Halo 3 in terms of online games played on a month by month basis and I think Halo 3 came back out on top recently.

Unless youmean people here, in which case fair point.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I wouldn't have thought the Elites get jetpacks either.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

They'll probably give Charlie invisibilty and that gay roll move from the video, leave the proper cool shit like flying around to the Spartans who can properly handle the awesome.

I was speaking idiomatically.

So the new system either means I'll get credit for being the only person on a lot of big team matches who's actually capturing flags and shit or I'll find it even harder to get beyond level 10, seeing as how I'm essentially shit at Halo.

Either way, avoiding teams full of no nonsense general types can only be a good thing.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I think they should only allow rage-quitters to play other rage-quitters and apply auto-overshields and shit to the losing team in order to ensure that nearly every match ends in a draw.

I'm either getting better at Halo or all the decent players have stopped playing it, I did quite well in a few matches the other night including one big-team slayer match where we won by 25 kills with only three players on our team.

I'm not sure about the point of banning no-mics from games. Literally nobody uses mics in Halo except for screamy kids these days. I generally mute anyone with a mic symbol straight from the pre-game lobby.

FELIPE NO

Oh I see. I thought you meant that you could specify to only allow people with a mic into a game because silent players are annoying. To be fair, banning people without mics would be a good feature in games like Rainbow Six, but the opposite is certainly true in Halo.

I'd like to see a feature in Halo where you can specify an age range of players to play against. Either that or a range of geographical lobbies like you used to get in Burnout so you could mainly play against people from your own countries, both for lag reasons and because no offence to most of you guys but I find playing against or with random Brits far more enjoyable than random Americans (Although those of you here I play with aren't exactly random Americans). Given the likely online population in a new Halo game, I think they can afford to introduce more filter options for who you play with online without making it impossible to ever find a match.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I hope the challenges whatever they are are in their own playlist to keep weird boosting behaviour out of matches. Nothing used to ruin a game of Battlefield 2 more than having half your team trying to get the medic medal by running into barbed wire over and over and healing their friends. Unless the challenges are helpful things like "Cover a flag carrier all the way back to the base without shooting him so you can score the points" or "Get in a Warthog and wait for two other people to get in before driving off in it" or even "Stay near the base to defend it on single flag games rather than running halfway across the map to grab a sniper rifle you'll never get to use because the other team already grabbed the flag when they rushed the lone guy defending and are now halfway back in their Warthog".

Not that I'm bitter or anything, although I played with some real twats yesterday.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yay about getting credits for being a driver, driving Warthogs is one of the things I'm actually not bad at in Halo and I'll get behind the wheel of a Hog or on a Mongoose every chance I get.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So it looks like they've "borrowed" a few ideas here and there, mainly the Battlefield-esque kit selection on a respawn. Not that that's a bad thing by any means of course, being able to pick a different set-up suitable to beat what just killed you when you pop back in is a great thing.

I'm not convinced how useful a temporary invulnerability is that doesn't let you move at all, except of course for returning flags and planting bombs, where I guess it'll become essential to an extent, or at least popular. I imagine that the instant the Armour Lock wears off you'll get head-shotted though.

How ya doing, buddy?

It wouldn't surprise me if it did make it into the final game somewhere.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'm definitely up for some Halo 2, I'll re-install all the shit later today.

Edit: Holy shit these maps download slowly.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Sorry I didn't stop to play with you a bit Tails, I got an emergency call to go to the pub.

I had a blast playing some old school H2 though, once I got my bearings on the maps again. I got an 8 kill streak on a big team dual slayer game on Midship, Halo needs more smaller maps. I mean, fun though driving around Blood Gultch or Containment in a 'Hog is, you can often go several minutes without seeing anyone on those maps.

I did like the updated "Did you know?" facts though.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by SailorDaravon

(again very similar to Battlefield).

Who borrowed it from Frontlines, where respawning on a squadmate's position was all but essential once people started dropping sentry guns next to spawn points. If nothing else that'll hopefully reduce the problem of playing big team games and after the initial rush, respawning back at the base then attacking in dribs and drabs, running across the map alone and getting murdered by a numerically superior defence force. I'm surprised they dropped dual wielding but maybe they needed the extra button for the armour thingy, unless they're dropping tools as well (Bubble shields and grav lifts etc.).

I didn't mind the flag dropping too much as it gave away the location of the flag carrier if nobody could see them, improving your chances of stopping them. Maybe an icon rather than the announcement would have helped as surely the flag carrier being the same speed as eveyone else will make it much easier to steal flags?

I really hope that if you air to air assasinate someone you do a massive piledriver on them, that would be the actual best thing ever.

Awesome OP by the way, really well done mate.

Most amazing jew boots

It's available all over the internet for fuck all money, I picked up my copy for £15 and that was before christmas, they shipped waaaaaay more copies of ODST than they sold.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I think no, on beta day you stick in the ODST multiplayer disk and launch from there as I understand it. Make sure you get both disks of course!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I didn't realise that the DMR had changing accuracy like the sniper. I guess they liked how longer ranged weapons work in Tom Clancy games (And in fact most other FPS games these days), assuming that running lowers the accuracy of the DMR as well as rapid firing. I like what they're saying about dropping your Spartan into campaign mode so there's less detachment, whereas before you were either Master Chief (Or the smelly alien dude) or playing multiplayer. Again, this is just like Rainbow Six (I've just been playing that, hence all the comparissons) where even in story mode when you're a named character he still looks how you set him up. When does the beta launch exactly? I'm hoping it's before the Opera season starts and I start working every hour ever.

How ya doing, buddy?

Two weeks after launch it'll probably be about £10 on eBay too.

Most amazing jew boots

How did so many of you get into the beta early?

How ya doing, buddy?

The video on ODST isn't that misleading, it says VIDEO on it in massive letters and the description tells you it's some bird talking about the beta. I downloaded it to have a look and it's basically shit, especially comparde to all the stuff on Waypoint at the moment.

Odd that the maximum number of players is so limited. In my opinion, Halo's bigger maps have always seemed too big for the max team size you're allowed. With no flagpoint system like you get in Battlefield keeping peoeple choked at certain points, there's more of a tendancy to spread out and you can go for ages never seeing more than two other players at once. I had hoped that Bungie would manage at least 16 a side for this game, seeing as how they're clearly going to have massive servers for it anyway and the Battlefield games can manage that many with Frontlines going up to 25 a side, although admittedly you can only talk to people in your four man squad or who you're sharing a vehicle with in that, it's the VOIP that use up the majority of bandwidth apparently. I'd be happy to play Halo in total silence if they could shoehorn 25 people a side into matches.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well why can't they manage 16 a side? It's not like there's that much more going on in a Halo match than in a game of Battlefield and given that the whole theme of Reach is bigger, epic battles rather than just one dude against whole armies, it would make sense to have bigger MP games, no? I've just personally never seen the point of having maps as big as Containment was or even Blood Gulch when there are so few people running around in them. When one fully loaded 'Hog represents half your team, the game just feels really empty.

I guess with the new game style choosing thingy I'll just be able to avoid the bigger maps from now on but I just don't see why they can't manage more than 16 players in total.

Am I wrong in thinking that there will be dedicated servers running all the Reach traffic then? It's pretty much guaranteed to be the most played game on Live so I would have thought someone somewhere would set something up, rather than running over the general Live ones.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I always assumed Halo had it's own servers, my bad.

I'm not saying why not Battlefield:Reach, although there aren't many ideas left for them to steal from Battlefield except destructible scenery, I'm saying why keep making monstrously huge maps then putting hardly any people in is all. I'm expressing a personal preference to have busier maps. Even in games that are all about long range combat and sniping like Ghost Recon they don't use maps nearly as big as some of Halo's, plus they have ten a side (Or at least GR2 did back on the oldbox).

I've read nothing on the subject save for what Daravon has posted here so if there's a perfectly reasonable explanation why Bungie think big, empty maps is a good idea then that's fine, it's just not something I personally enjoy and I think upping the team size limit would be fun. I remember having a blast playing 32 a side Quake 1 back in the day although you did have to turn off all the textures and in fact most of the character models to get a reasonable ping but that was over dial-up.

FELIPE NO

Well the lag wouldn't be an issue if they had their own servers but I digress, each to their own and all that. Some of the most fun I've ever had playing Halo has been 16 people in Midships in Halo 2, I enjoy there being more people packed in together, you obviously don't.

I guess when I heard that the new game was based on a big, epic battle, I expected the game to feature big, epic battles. I shall live in hope that the final game will feature a playlist that's big team games on smaller maps.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I think it would certainly translate ok to larger teams. Like I said, even Quake worked with 64 people in the match if the level was designed right and that was based around power weapon and map domination even more than Halo is. Certainly the game might play a bit different with more people but part of the longevity of Halo is the mix of ways you can play it, it's not just the same slayer games over and over. I love playing Griff Ball, I probably prefer Rocket Race to any other game type and a no shields, pistols only, 16 man King of the Hill match on a tiny map is great fun. A bit of variety in weapon placement would allow the game to still play like it does with smaller teams (Double the power weapons for example) and building maps designed for everyone tooling about in Warthogs would facilitate that as a gametype. Just because it doesn't play like "classic" Halo, doesn't mean it wouldn't be fun.

I just think that snatching a flag on Blood Gulch and making a run for it in a Warthog would be more fun if once you'd escaped the base defenders, there were still enough people around to make the rest of the drive back more tense, rather than the current, frequently unopposed jaunts across a needlessly empty and large stretch of countryside.

It is just my opinion but I think that Halo multiplayer works really well on tighter maps but is a bit dull on the bigger ones as it stands.

Jam it back in, in the dark.