Mercurius on 2/10/2007 at 07:20
Well I can imagine that a lot of you might hate the Halo series for being 'lowbrow' and have therefore never played it.
However the most recent installment, 3, came out recently and during one portion of the game, your character has to traverse a ship that has been infested by a sentient parasitic hive race (The Flood) not at all unlike The Many. It made me immediately think of the Body of the Many and I got a sudden craving for SS2 done current-gen style.
Ah well, wishful thinking but it was nostalgic in its own way. SS2 and The Many are of course far superior to H3 and The Flood. Though I think I'd take a Master Chief over Goggles any day...
I'd suggest some of you give it a try if you haven't. Halo is actually quite an enjoyable series for its single player campaign, and the backstory in terms of more serious military sci-fi reminds me a bit of System Shock 2 quite often. It even comes with rampant female AIs.
Screenshot Links (Don't do it justice):
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D'Arcy on 2/10/2007 at 08:45
I played only the first Halo, and the Flood was already there. Unfortunately, this first Halo was also enough to convince me that I wasn't very interested in these games. Obviously, the idiotic Library levels were what did the trick for me.
As for Halo 3, since I refuse to buy an X-Box, it might take a while before I even check it out. I actually just found out that there was a PC edition of Halo 2, which I've never bothered to try.
Jeshibu on 2/10/2007 at 10:09
Halo 2 for the PC is Vista-only unless you apply a third-party hack.
Anyway, the demo for Halo for the PC was enough to convince me that I wasn't interested.
catbarf on 2/10/2007 at 10:30
I played it, and while the singleplayer isn't great the multiplayer is just awesome.... The Flood levels were rather difficult in H3, there were new and much more dangerous enemies. If you have Halo PC, I could send you the Flood Gulch map that makes you a marine on Blood Gulch, spawns a dozen other marines in front of red base, and then spawns a crapload (100+) of flood at blue base.
William Dojinn on 2/10/2007 at 14:31
Its not great by any streach. However it isn't the horrid pile of crap that every 'cultured' gamer keeps going on and on about. However the pinnicle of storytelling it is not and please don't try reaching so much to connect shock2 to something, it just ends up looking sad(about as sad as tron fans going gonzo over a generic tron dvd case in some animated thing on comedy central).
Trance on 2/10/2007 at 22:49
Halo 3 got boring really fast. But I guess I should have already realized that Bungie was going for the widest target audience and therefore needed to make the game as basic and easy as possible without angering the "1337" players.
I know it's just an FPS and nothing else, but even then there's not much "shooter" in it either. It's more like "First-person trigger-pulling", since the game largely aims FOR you. It's the console version of point-and-click.
I'm probably just biased as hell against this franchise, though, after seeing Halo 3 Mountain Dew in the supermarket a while back.
catbarf on 2/10/2007 at 23:06
Quote Posted by Trance
Halo 3 got boring really fast. But I guess I should have already realized that Bungie was going for the widest target audience and therefore needed to make the game as basic and easy as possible without angering the "1337" players.
I know it's just an FPS and nothing else, but even then there's not much "shooter" in it either. It's more like "First-person trigger-pulling", since the game largely aims FOR you. It's the console version of point-and-click.
I'm probably just biased as hell against this franchise, though, after seeing Halo 3 Mountain Dew in the supermarket a while back.
Did you play multiplayer? That's really the game's strength.
Mercurius on 3/10/2007 at 04:18
Quote:
However the pinnicle of storytelling it is not and please don't try reaching so much to connect shock2 to something, it just ends up looking sad(about as sad as tron fans going gonzo over a generic tron dvd case in some animated thing on comedy central).
Really now, have you actually played the game? Sounds like you're the one reaching to connect my original post to the odd little scenario you mentioned.
The Halo (and earlier Marathon) series have quite a bit of very obvious parallel with System Shock. Both are based around rampant AIs (AIs which have violently attained self-awareness), star a military transhuman who is as much a machine as man, deal with a voracious hive-minded alien infection. Even the setting and general level of technology bear more similarity than any other game out there. Like Shock, it deals quite a bit with the intimate relationship between AI and the main character, particularly in Marathon where a megalomaniacal AI named Durandel compels and coerces you into doing its convoluted bidding throughout the entire game.
Despite catering to the unwashed masses, Halo has a great amount of detailed backstory which I'm sure a lot of Shockers would enjoy.
I for one enjoy new forays into sci-fi territory that may never be revisited in subsequent generations of the Shock franchise unless EA decides to stop sitting on the license which isn't all that likely.
I realize nowadays, particularly on the internet, its cool to hate popular stuff but Halo has a lot to offer if you're willing to give it a chance.
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Added screenshot links to my original post for those who want to see what the Body of the Many might resemble were it current-gen.
Trance on 3/10/2007 at 06:23
Quote Posted by catbarf
Did you play multiplayer? That's really the game's strength.
Actually I did, and that's what bored me so much. To me, Halo 3 was Halo 2, multiplayer-wise. Although they did fix some of the glaring imbalances in the weapons, they just piled new weapons and vehicles on top of that to bring them pretty much back where they started.
If I was at all interested in making a Halo 3 machinima, however, it's good to see how easy Bungie's made it for machinimakers this time around.
William Dojinn on 3/10/2007 at 14:30
Gee...ya think?
Wonder what the folks at roosterteeth are gonna do with this(seeing as RvB is supposedly done).
Oh and, could somebody please move this to the gaming forum? It kinda feels out of place in the shock2 section.
