Ozymandias

They did make sniping a little too easy, but my biggest gripe has to be the Needler, just the worst weapon to get stuck with.  Why is it so easy to dodge if it's meant to home in on you?

Haha, I'd have to say that some of the "over-ratedness" comes from the Microsoft PR juggernaut.

I also love the whole universe that Bungie has created for the Halo series and how throughout the game you're constantly being reminded that what you're doing is just one little piece in the entire war that's been raging for 20+ years now.

I'd suggest reading the transcripts that have been written up at H.B.O if you can't hear some of what is being said (http://halosm.bungie.org/story/news.html off to the left side.) I guess I haven't really noticed it as a problem, although Penitent Tangent essentially regurgitates one of 343's lines from Halo 1 where he says that a Reclaimer must activate the Halo so I guess you didn't miss much there.

I read it and am still confused.  What is a Dyson Sphere?  I'm glad the multi-player rocks!

The story woven into the single player (and coop) version of this game pretty high quality. But what else would you expect from Bungie (I loved them when I was playing Marathon on my Mac). Halo wasn't ground breaking either as an epic story, as an fps, or graphically, but what it did do was bring a quality fps into the hands of people that couldn't afford a high end pc, suddenly even if couldn't afford a $200 video card you could still play an fps that 'looked' as good.  And as a bonus, someone finally got the controls right for a controller, took out the twitch and made it possible to aim. I won't be playing H2 on a pc (lmao Vista), but I give a 'nod of the head' to H1 and H2, and will no doubt the final fight.

@chizgilla

I think of it as a Poke ball of sorts. Physically it's a very small ball of...something. But within it it's enormous. Right now it's just a theoretical idea but I guess in the Halo universe the Forerunner made it a reality.

@chigzilla:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

Basically, what it is is a big-ass tent covered in solar panels and stuff around a planet, the idea being to recapture all the energy the planet sheds, IIRC. Admittedly I haven't finished GoO yet, and so in Halo it might end up meaning something like the above post, but read the Wikipedia article if you want to know what one is (theoretically) in real life.

Care to comment on this? ;)

Vista-only game cracked

Shadowrun debuts on XP

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40538

Well, for one, it's the Inquirer, so I have some instant doubts. Beyond that, Shadowrun isn't a DX10 game (not sure where people got that idea), so who knows?

I can confirm Shadowrun running on XP. Got it to work firsthand.

Without Live and achievements it's not that big a deal, though. :-)

Seriously, I don't get why people are complaining about the ending of Halo 2. It's like you'd complain about the endings of a season of Lost. I'd rather call the Halo 2 ending a fantastic cliffhanger, especially because it was at the right moment, when you are really immersed in the game and before the game had a chance of getting boring. It created a feeling of "Oh shi~ now I really want to play part 3". Seriously, it's not that bad.

Well, I guess what people react to is why Halo 2 and Shadowrun are Vista exclusive. The talk has always been that they can't be done on XP. Personally, I value honesty. Of course Microsoft want to move us all to Vista, and I accept that. MS could've said that they're moving their attention to Vista, instead some bad excuse at PR-talk was given how these titles couldn't be done on XP. I could compare all this to the defense speech the publisher (I think it was the publisher) of Tenchu Z gave in one of Major Nelsons podcasts. The graphics look they way they do because of a certain "style". Either they're lying through their teeth, or they make some of the worst design decisions in the industry. I think people would be far more understanding if MS was honest and said what the motive was. Sure, people would still be angry, but the "only possible on Vista" excuse is just lame. Don't be Sony ;)

whether Halo 3 is a 10/10 or 0/10, it doesn't matter to me as my 13th 360 just died :mad: and i have 25 games, of which 22 of them were scratched WITHOUT moving the 360 console since launch day before turning on the console each time i got exchanges.

m$ sort out their reliability issues before softwares. no point having a console breaking down every 1.5 months :mad:

UK has 1500-2500 360s dying every day. FACT.

you like halo and never mentioned the novels. they are the best part of the franchise and give all sorts of insight to the story. i encourage any fan to read all the novels, including the graphic novel!

when my friend came up and started working up here, we were bored off our minds and so I picked up halo 1 and 2 from the company store and we plowed through them in a week.  this was probably the best co-op experieince we've enjoyed so far (Gears and GRAW2 are on-par too).

there is such a sharp skill level difference for multiplayer that we just didn't enjoy getting our butts whipped with no chance to survive.

we did not make our time.

It's a good thing they fixed all of that in Halo 3, eh? ;)

The way I see it is that Halo was a mediocre shooter that wasn't even fun to finish the first time (the world's worst controller might've had something to do with that), and Halo 2 was more of the same with more visual problems (like textures and bump maps popping in and out during cutscenes). Needless to say I didn't finish Halo 2 and don't recall any of the story of either games, so I'm far from a Halo fan.

Perhaps had the covenant been more threatening, less kiddy-style, brightly colored, high-pitched voiced and gnome-like I'd have gotten into the games a bit more.

I hope Halo 3 won't disappoint too much, but I'm definitely not picking it up until a couple months after its innitial release so patches will have been released, and used copies from disappointed buyers will be available all over the net. I'm through spending $80 on games only to find out they're not worth the money.

I am not a halo fan (I have both, but never played them much more than a couple hours each), and I was also on the Halo 3 beta.

I have to admit, while Halo 3 isn't all that great of a game IN MY OPINION, I don't think it's overhyped at all. There would be millions and millions of fans playing billions and billions of hours year after year if it was just hype.

It's quite evident that if there was any hype generated (which there was), the game has met the hype for the fans.

To me, that is far from being overhyped or overrated.

Odd how the Xbox 1 probably had the worlds worst controller (before the controllers S was released), and now the Xbox 360 probably has the best controller ever released for a console. MS listened there, that is for sure.

I really hope the Halo 3 campaign is the most epic campaign ever!  I agree: in big battles, some of Cortana's dialogue is difficult to hear, but aside from that, most of the audio is great.  After playing through Halo 1's campaign, Halo 2's doesn't seem too repetitive, but after playing through it, it's a bit repetitive, just not as bad as halo 1 was.  I really hope Halo 3 has online co-op.  It would be really cool to play campaign with a few friends online.

I can't take you serious. Halo has some of the best audio I've heard in a game. You need a sound system that can play it. Did you hear the beta, it sounded awesome. As for the single player, it did repeat but I think they are fixing that with big open spaces in Halo 3. As for the ending....not enough time comes to mind, but really we wouldn't be getting an HD M.C now would we??? so I'm not complaining. Halo 3 beta already match Halo 2 in most places and blew it away in others. can't wait for E3.

your bananas Halo is the greatest game I've ever played..(and the multiplayer in Halo2 is genius) halo3 I know for sure is going to blow both halo1 and halo 2 out of the water.!  BUNGIE FOR LIFE