Xbox Live Official Topic

Ordered Halo: Reach. Haven't really touched the series since Halo 2. Getting serious CODwebs, so I thought I'd give the Halo universe a go. Anyone else getting this and going to be playing it online?

Gamertag = Mart7n

Martin_ said:
Ordered Halo: Reach. Haven't really touched the series since Halo 2. Getting serious CODwebs, so I thought I'd give the Halo universe a go. Anyone else getting this and going to be playing it online?

Gamertag = Mart7n

Hey i'm Ferris Bueller and I have a day off.
Nah it's just me James2t3/Blade2t3(dunno my pasword for my old account) I sent you an invite, should be getting reach soonish (as soon as live gold account arrives from amazon) so I should be ready to play sometime next week if you want.

Ferris Bueller said:

Martin_ said:
Ordered Halo: Reach. Haven't really touched the series since Halo 2. Getting serious CODwebs, so I thought I'd give the Halo universe a go. Anyone else getting this and going to be playing it online?

Gamertag = Mart7n

Hey i'm Ferris Bueller and I have a day off.
Nah it's just me James2t3/Blade2t3(dunno my pasword for my old account) I sent you an invite, should be getting reach soonish (as soon as live gold account arrives from amazon) so I should be ready to play sometime next week if you want.

I got my Copy today,

Online I'll most likely be playing the multiplayer most of the time, I never had much luck with the campaign when I took it online in halo3, always laged and went really slowly unless things have changed in this.

But I look forward to some capture the flag, team slayer and messing around in forge

Hopefully I won't end up a staff captain this time around

I'm getting it as well, but I won't be playing until the weekend. Too many tests this week. :/

Tag = JacoBAMM

I've ordered it and should arrive by Wednesday so add me if ya fancy playing.

Completed the campaign on Normal mode, was pretty brilliant all round I have to say. Now to jump into online as well as tackle Heroic and Legendary modes

Gamertag = kyuubi RICKYssj

It'll be pretty cool having C3 members on one team.

Really tempted... to resub and get reach... but I really shouldn't.

I suck because I didn't actually place my pre-order until Saturday. It hasn't come yet. Probably tomorrow, maybe Thursday. Does it have all the awesome storyline and cinematics and music that I remember Halo having?

Ferris Bueller said:
Hey i'm Ferris Bueller and I have a day off.
Nah it's just me James2t3/Blade2t3(dunno my pasword for my old account) I sent you an invite, should be getting reach soonish (as soon as live gold account arrives from amazon) so I should be ready to play sometime next week if you want.

Sure!

Halo: Reach just came! This one!

Waiting for my pre-order Spartan armour recon whatever bonus code thingy to be mailed to me, then I'll be on! Probably gonna dive straight into the online, maybe I'll play the campaign later.

( Edited 15.09.2010 14:25 by Martin_ )

Good game but had to quit Martin. Getting too angry

Just completed Reach on Heroic, pretty challenging/slower going in some parts but felt like a decent balance. You can't fly through it at that level. Got the acheivement for the weekly challenge too! as well some others such as "If they came to hear me beg".

Going to attempt legendary sometime soon, that will be hellish, its nice to see however that they give you more ammo, just started a game to see what it was like and your regular assult rifle has 600 rounds and the pistol has 75. This is going to be a real challenge, want to do it by myself as well for the funz and uber gamerscore points! (Yes, I am an achievement whore for games I enjoy )

I've gotten up to level 5 on Heroic so far. For me the campaign when playing solo is super-boring. About the only thing I enjoy is looking at some of the awesome matte painting backdrops. It's like something from an old film, and I've always loved how they did that in Halo. Some lovely painted vistas of scenery and moons and planets and stars and warships, etc.

Obviously I haven't gone through the entire storyline yet, but I'm over half way and am yet to give a shit about any of the characters or planet Reach. I just do not give a fuck that they're all dying. I find it a bit much how it's all been built up as some horrible human holocaust, and that we should all feel really bad for these people. The advertising campaign for the game almost always made me cringe.

Gameplay in the campaign thus far has been typical Halo-fare. Lots of big battle scenes, warthogs and such. I like how they haven't improved the driving AI whatsoever. If you want to get somewhere in a vehicle, for fuck sake drive there yourself. An AI driver will try going up vertical walls, going round in circles, getting stuck in corners and on rocks. They did that shit in Halo 2, and they're still doing it in Reach.

This only applies to friendly AI. Enemy AI is some of the best I've seen. Especially Elites. I don't remember Elites ever being this difficult. Ultimately you do outsmart them because you're human and they're just AI, but it's often pretty impressive how the Elites fuck you over. Friendly AI is inbred, for some reason. Enemy AI is not.

I don't find the graphics to be all that. It just looks like a cleaner, more colourful version of Killzone. Where it differs is that Guerilla would do anything and everything to mask visual shortcomings in Killzone, where as Bungie don't really seem to care as much about that. I mean, they do and it's obvious a lot of effort went into Reach's visuals, Bungie just seem to put gameplay as a higher priority.

There's some really nice things about the visuals, and some things which seem straight from Halo 1. Character models and texturing is ace. There's still some of that texture popping on characters in cut-scenes, but much reduced. Texturing in general is very very good, and most textures do seem to stand up to pretty close inspection, unless you go right up to an object and then zoom in down to a microscopic level with a sniper rifle.

The modelling of most of the environments doesn't really do much for me. Trees look like garbage even from far away (do not inspect them up close! ), rocks and such are extremely boxy. It's very easy to see the polygons. However, there's some nice grass effects, and it has the motion-blur from Killzone (without the greyscale filter that game has to hide the lack of detail).

It certainly plays better than Killzone, as it doesn't feature the horrible input lag that Killzone has. The multiplayer in Reach is probably the most robust, feature-rich multiplayer that I have ever seen. You can even have four people on one console, and then go online and join all the usual slayer matches etc as if you were by yourself! That's a really awesome feature. Get a few buddies round like back in the day in GoldenEye, but you can play with 12 other people who are online!

About the only thing it seems to 'lack' online-wise is that it's probably not quite as addictive as COD. It's not because it's worse in any way, I simply feel that COD's structure of aggressively rewarding the player constantly for anything and everything, all the challenges, weapon unlocks, etc etc, make it something of a narcotic in video game form.

Whereas in Halo, guns are scattered around the levels for anyone to pick up, and unlocks are limited to new pieces of armour and such. While cool, this has no real bearing on gameplay as it's just visual customization of your spartan, to make your one at least a little more individual to you. I want the armour thing that makes confetti spray everywhere while children scream "Yaaaaaaay!" every time you are killed.

I think this could be seen as a good thing. Halo is a little less restrictive to beginners, since there's really nothing to 'earn' that will help you in any way (like better guns and such). It's really just a silly game where primary coloured gladiators shoot ridiculous guns at each other.

Forge is cool, but for my money it's not nearly as cool as Far Cry 2's actual level-creation tool (where you create your own topography and everything). Overall I'm happy since I got an awesome multiplayer shooter which is a world apart from COD.

Ferris Bueller said:
Good game but had to quit Martin. Getting too angry

T'was! Why were you getting angry? I thought it was hilarious. Floating in mid-air in some obsidian-like structure, just a bunch of red and blue spartans fucking each other over. Good times! I've had some more joy testing out some of the other armours.

Active camo is a gooden. It means I get to camp like a bitch. Unfortunately I've yet to have anyone scream at me or send me a snotty message for camping. Hopefully that good stuff will come soon.

And bro - use a mic next time! I wana be able to talk to my compadres!

Echoes221 said:
want to do it by myself as well for the funz and uber gamerscore points! (Yes, I am an achievement whore for games I enjoy )

The amount of enemies is increased the more players there are. There's absolutely no reason to not do co-op, unless you don't have a buddy to play with and can't be arsed to play with a random person on XBL. Add 'Mart7n', it's me!

( Edited 17.09.2010 00:55 by Martin_ )

T'was! Why were you getting angry? I thought it was hilarious. Floating in mid-air in some obsidian-like structure, just a bunch of red and blue spartans fucking each other over. Good times! I've had some more joy testing out some of the other armours.

Active camo is a gooden. It means I get to camp like a bitch. Unfortunately I've yet to have anyone scream at me or send me a snotty message for camping. Hopefully that good stuff will come soon.

And bro - use a mic next time! I wana be able to talk to my compadres!

Ah I wasn't really angry, just kind of frustrated as I was constantly fucking things up thinking it was halo 3, pressing wrong buttons.
Plus everytime I go to play online, the phone rings, someone comes into the room to say bla bla fucking bla it was getting annoying.
I'll try to find my head set, my ones broken but I think my bro has one.

Heres me nerding out in forge, had to use my crappy phone camera because I cant file share on a silver account so these will have to do for now.

Looks dope! How are you on a Silver account? You were in my party last night playing with us? I've thought about trying to do remakes of popular maps from other games, but I doubt many of them would be practical to even do in Forge, and also that they might be shit maps with Halo rules.

Added you Martin, found you through James

I spent about 50 mins blowing the shit out of elites last night on Firefight with bottomless rocket launcher amo. Was really fun and made it to 1mil points (Legendary, invincibility obvs) deffo something to do if your bored/ill etc

Trying to get better at online as it is very different tactics to say COD or Battlefield. But I'm enjoying it immensely, its nice to know that I suck at a form of online shooter Wanna get much better

Martin_ said:
Looks dope! How are you on a Silver account? You were in my party last night playing with us? I've thought about trying to do remakes of popular maps from other games, but I doubt many of them would be practical to even do in Forge, and also that they might be shit maps with Halo rules.

Was using a 48 hour code thing, think XBL is free for the weekend as well.

There's an actual honest to god good deal for a year subscription to gold on the dash board now if anyone is interested. Think it's ��£25 for the year.

Still trying to get used to the gamestyle, the beatdowns work different now and I only just realised there is a health bar with medkits around the level. guessing thats why it seems harder to *shoot, disable shield, beat down* in close battles now.
The DMR is pretty similer to the battle rifle so moving to that isn't that much of a big deal, you just have to be careful with the accuracy decreasing as you shoot in rapid succession.

The powerups are pretty interesting too, I quite like the Hologram, sending out the dummy and luring people out or allowing you to see a snipers vantage point when he tries to pick it off is quite cool.

Trying to get better at online as it is very different tactics to say COD or Battlefield. But I'm enjoying it immensely, its nice to know that I suck at a form of online shooter Wanna get much better

Try and get good at the DMR, it one of the most common weapons and has a good range and is good at close quarters as well.
And just try your best to aim at the head!

( Edited 17.09.2010 15:46 by Ferris Bueller )

And just try your best to aim at the head!

Ferris Bueller said:
The powerups are pretty interesting too, I quite like the Hologram, sending out the dummy and luring people out or allowing you to see a snipers vantage point when he tries to pick it off is quite cool.

Same! I think armour lock is perhaps the worst of the armours. Certainly, if you're any distance away from your team-mates, I personally think it just staves off the inevitable for a couple seconds. You deploy it, and you cannot move until it finishes.

This gives whoever is shooting you a chance to reload and train a really good shot at your head, and just wait for the armour lock to finish. Once you get used to how long the lock can be, you can often time a grenade to explode just as they come out of it.

Echoes221 said:
After playing Heroic and a bit of legendary, thats the only place I can aim with that weapon . I'm still finding it a difficult change from COD/BF as it takes SO long to kill someone. I also haven't found a sensitivity I'm comfortable with either :/ I'm bouncing between 2-5.

It is really, really different to those war games. I'd say that, gameplay-wise, Halo is probably closer to Quake than it is to COD. It's much more of an 'arcade' style game than something that pretends to be realistic. About the only thing COD borrowed from Halo was the two weapon system.

Remember also that it takes your opponents a lot longer to kill you than it does in COD. If someone has fucked your shield and you don't think you can take them before you die, run away! Shield recharges, and hopefully you'll find a medpack somewhere to top up your base health.

One tactic I used to use in Halo 2 was that if you get the drop on someone (you can see them, they cannot see you), 'nade them first. The grenade will pop their shield in one blast, making your job a lot easier! I reckon this would work just the same in Reach. Here's a thing I watched before I got the game. It's from the beta, but it helped me out.

Added in a klingon ship, you can now play neutral assalt on the map! You gotta beam down get the bomb and beam onto the enemy ship!

Theres a video here as well you can download to your xbox, had to use my bros file share as he has gold

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/FileShare.aspx?player=JohnKH

I'll try and get the map online soon, still have to layout more weapons and tidy up some stuff on the map.

( Edited 21.09.2010 19:16 by Ferris Bueller )

Add me on the other one if you like, and I'll help you out with the map! I fucking love your sculptures. I was making a map with some American kids and James comes along and randomly builds the Starship Enterprise above our map. Awesome!

One of them kept wanting to delete everything I made to save money, well I guess I can forgive him or wanting to delete that giant statue with a penis.

Thanks for sticking up for the enterprise

I just found out they're giving away 800 free points when you spend 2400 this month.

I have already spent 1600 this month, and so would basically get an 800 point game/2 400 point games free.

Anyone recommend some good games worth a look at?

Yo. Get fable 2 free

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d5307f1/?p=1&of=6&bt=0&sb=1&did=00000001-0000-4000-8000-00004d5307f1

Log in to your profile and add to to your xbox que.

Cock up on MS part so get it while it's hot. It clocks in at 7GB so it's a hefty download.

( Edited 16.10.2010 01:18 by Jimmy2000 )