Halo series

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I've continued replaying Halo Anniversary on Heroic. The Silent Cartographer was a particularly fun level to go through this time, with the exception of the first third of it which wasn't necessarily bad, but was a bit frustrating for me to go through since I had extremely low health the whole time and had to play through really carefully. I never realized until now just how scarce health-packs are in the first half of that level.

One interesting thing to note is that I actually found a hidden skull on that level, and I wasn't even particularly looking for it, but rather I just decided to explore the level and happened to stumble across it. I have to say, I never would have found that thing on purpose. Some of these skulls are so ridiculously well-hidden that it puts the level design of the first game into perspective, because there are so many good hiding places to put things that you would never think of. I wonder why Bungie never did that with the first game. The level terrain has even more potential than a DOOM game for hidden items and secrets, and that's saying a lot.

One of the many things that I love about the first game is how you can kill Hunters in just one shot with the pistol. I really missed that feature in the sequels, and I downright hated how Hunters felt nearly invincible in Reach. Seriously, even with really strong weapons they took forever to kill. I usually like to clear out entire rooms of enemies in Halo games, but in Reach I often just downright skip fighting Hunter since they feel so long and tedious to have to fight. In Combat Evolved, they go down faster than Grunts if you know how to handle them, which is something ironic that I always loved once I discovered it for myself.

Currently I'm on the level Assault on the Control Room, and this is probably my favorite level in the game along with Two Betrayals (which uses the exact same level lay-out, only in reverse, but I just love the environment, so its no surprise that both are my favorite). This is also the level where I feel the difficulty starts getting serious. Its not extremely hard or anything, but it is more challenging than any of the previous levels, and I feel a lot of that has to do with how they use the Elites in this level as well as the level lay-out in general. The tougher Elites are more plentiful in this level, and the Grunts and Jackals are strategically positioned to make your life a living hell if you don't know how to properly take them out with some good weapon strategy. This level also introduces the other Covenant vehicles for the very first time. Earlier on you only got a glimpse of the Banshee in the 2nd level, but in this level you get to see the Ghost and the Wraith, and you even get a chance to pilot the Ghost as well as the Banshee (if you are quick enough to grab the latter, which allows you to take a shortcut and skip about 10 minutes of the entire level). Vehicle combat is another great aspect of this game and this is the first level that allows you to truly explore its capabilities, which is another reason for why its so great. Unfortunately, while the game is still mostly good afterward (with the exception of The Library, of course), it never reaches the heights of this level again except for Two Betrayals, which basically takes place in the same level, but other than that its just not as good as it is here.

Anyways, I may honestly just skip The Library on this replay, as well as if I replay the game on Legendary. I honestly don't care about getting the achievements (those don't really appeal to me all that much, anyways), so just for the sake of enjoyment I'll replay all of the other levels since they can actually be fun. The Library just feels like torture to have to play through.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I got up to 343 Guilty Spark on Heroic in Halo Anniversary. I honestly don't mind this level too much since its relatively short, but honestly I think I'm going to end up skipping The Library after I beat this level. I honestly don't care about getting the achievement for beating the game on Heroic (and subsequently Legendary, if I ever decide to tackle that by myself). I just fucking hate that level and its not worth putting up with the torture of it just for a stupid achievement. Its just downright not fun to play through.

Also, I was playing around in Halo: Reach a little bit, and I just realized that the Thunderstorm Skull upgrades all of the enemies. It essentially does what NGB does on harder difficulties (minus adding in new enemies), and upgrades each enemy type to their more powerful versions earlier on in the game. That's great and even further increases the difficulty of the game. I think I'll do a Legendary play-through with that skull turned on. It sounds like the ultimate challenge without tackling something as masochistic as Mythic difficulty (Legendary with all skulls turned on), which to me is just overkill.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I still need to pick it up. I'm hoping I can co-op with my buddy through it like we did the original Halo back on the original Xbox. That was one of my favorite co-op experiences.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, I kind of wish I had someone to co-op Halo Anniversary with on Legendary. Its a shit-ton of fun and the game is actually built to support co-op really well (teamwork is key on Legendary).

I also remember that me and my brother used to have so much fun with vehicles in that game. We used to race each other with Warthogs and also fight each other with them by ramming into each other. That game gave you so much freedom that it puts most current-gen FPS games to shame, including its own sequels.

As for Reach, I actually did beat it both solo and co-op on Legendary, but its been about a year since I've last played it so I think I'll go back to it after I finish with this run through of Halo Anniversary.

[Foggle]

I'd play it with you if I owned the game.

...And had Xbox Live...

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I got a free-month of XBOX Live Gold from some Toys R' Us gift card that offered it as a bonus, which my mom used to buy something for my little sister a few months ago (I only activated it a week ago, though, when my summer started). My mom was about to throw it away until I noticed that it had a 1-month subscription code on it and then she gave it to me since I could at least get a little bit of use out of it.

Honestly, though, I've only used it twice to play Halo: Reach's multiplayer, which I still find to be significantly weaker than Halo 3's. That said, ironically I care far more about the campaign mode, which is why I still say that Reach is a much better game for me, personally.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I went through 343 Guilty Spark and got 2 achievements upon completing it that I wasn't even specifically trying to get (in fact I wasn't even aware that they were achievements). One was for killing 50 Flood combat forms on Heroic difficulty or higher, which you kind of almost have to do since at least that many get in your way and you might as well put that shotgun of yours to good use, and the other was called Breaking Quarantine and the achievement was unlocked escaping the forerunner facility in under 21 minutes, which is basically the equivalent of me getting an achievement for me playing through the level the way I prefer to, since I always just try to run through Flood-infested segments of the game since I hate fighting them. That's why I didn't specifically bother fighting all of them. I just rushed through the level so I could get done with it. I would like to do that with The Library, as well, but unfortunately in that level most of the Flood combat forms have guns, which makes it near impossible to skip most fights since they'll quickly and easily gun you down before you can manage to outrun them, which practically forces you to fight you way through the level. I did see a speed-run of the level which somehow managed to cut down its hour-long length into just under 15 minutes, which is pretty impressive and is probably the most "fun" way to play the level in general by default, since it involves the least amount of torture of having to fight repeated waves of the Flood.

Anyways, the next time I pop-in the game I'll just skip to Two Betrayals, since that's the point where the game gets good again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I beat the game on Heroic, and I also found all of the hidden skulls in the process. The Bandanna skull was by far the biggest pain in the ass to get, but it was worth it considering that its one of the few skulls that actually helps you (it basically gives you infinite ammo and grenades). The AI is notably better on Heroic, but after a while it just begins to feel more like Normal mode, again, once you get used to the adjusted difficulty. I played the first level again on Legendary and that was definitely as big of a jump in difficulty as I remember. All of a sudden Elites start spamming the hell out of their plasma rifles and you're own shields go down extremely fast. Of course, its only the first level so it still gave me the advantage in most situations and I was able to make my way through the level just fine, with only a few deaths here and there. After that, though, I remember that I could never get past the fire major fight on the 2nd level, which is itself a fairly long and difficult level on Legendary, but I was able to do it on co-op with my older brother. I kind of wish I had someone else to play this game on co-op with on Legendary as that's one of the most fun ways for me to experience the game, but none of my friends play this game, and I don't have anyone to play it online with, either (plus my gold membership will be expiring in a little over a week, anyways). That said, I had a lot of fun with the game and I was glad to have got it again. I may dabble around in Legendary here or there, but its probably going to be more tedious than fun if I do it by myself since I'm not that good and usually have to play it extremely safe on this difficulty.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, when you've played a game to death, you tend to notice a lot of things about it and find ways to exploit it going against the intentions of the designers and really having fun finding different ways to play levels. Most traditionally, after you play a game enough times, you attempt to speed-run levels. So, while replaying the game through on Legendary, I was on the level The Silent Cartographer and was basically playing recklessly for a while since I was frustrated at one particular part in the level where I kept getting killed by a large group of enemies as I attempted to run them over with my Warthog. After playing around with it for a while, I just rushed through them and got to the part where you reach the door you're supposed to go through but the Covenant seal it shut, which is a scripted event that's supposed to happen, except I ended up crashing into the door in a weird sort of way and then got forcefully ejected from my Warthog as it flipped over, except then I noticed that I had landed out on the other side of the door as it was closing, and thus ended up skipping past an entire section of the level in which you had to unlock the door from a remote location.

I just find moments like this so rewarding and memorable, especially with a game that I have known for an entire decade, which makes finding secrets like this so surprising since you already feel like you know all that there is to know about a game. For as advanced as modern shooters are supposed to be (as game journalists would tell you), I honestly can't think of any from this gen that have such rich level design that they could be crammed with so many secrets and fun ways to exploit them.

Of course, I found this out myself by accident, but it got me interested in checking out other ways to exploit the levels in this game that I never knew about, and then I happened to come across a video using the same trick that I had discovered by accident and realized that something like this had been done by players a long time back for speed-runs, but that's not all I found out. The video I saw basically ended up cutting down a rather long level by getting through it from start to finish in under 5 minutes, WITHOUT using any glitches or really obscure methods. The player also hardly ever had to fire a shot.

Anyways, here is the video that I'm referring to. I know this seems like such a small deal, and it is, but I suppose that playing a last-gen game like this after having gotten so used to current-gen games has really put into perspective for me how much more fun some games could be to play and explore before everything had to get so tight and restrictive for the sake of being more cinematic.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Wow, you managed to sequence-break Halo. If only more games these days outside of Metroidvania's let you do that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Wow, you managed to sequence-break Halo. If only more games these days outside of Metroidvania's let you do that.

Its also funny if you notice that the dialogue doesn't match-up with the scenario at the end of the level. The dialogue being used is meant for the beginning of the level after you storm the beach, but since the player skipped that part and went completely out of sequence, the game wasn't aware how far he was an just played the first audio track according to its pre-programmed order. Once again, just a small thing that's really funny if you notice it.

Anyways, I've heard that there's supposedly a few more ways you can sequence-break certain levels in this game. I'm going to read about them and try them myself, if I can.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I finally got back to playing more Halo. I picked up on my Legendary campaign from where I last left off, and thankfully I haven't gotten that rusty with the game after having taken a 2 month hiatus from it.

Another dynamic that's so unique about this game which I love is the AI versus AI battles. I don't mean between your ally marines and the Covenant, but between the Covenant and the Flood (and occasionally the Sentinels, but they don't really last very long against either faction of enemy types). Did you guys know that you can actually use it to your advantage on Legendary mode? You see, knowing when certain enemy spawns trigger, you can get the AI o 2 different enemy factions to fight each other if you trigger them in the same battle. If you are fighting against a strong wave of Covenant, for example, you can always try and run ahead a little and trigger the next wave of Flood, and while a few may come after you, the majority of them will immediately prioritize the larger threat, which is the Covenant. In this way you can create a distraction and either skip the entire battle or allow both sides to wear each other down, and then when one side stands victorious, you can wipe out its survivors. The same works vice versa as well, and in some cases (like how I did in one particular battle), you can fight the Covenant from a distance with ranged weapons and take out a few of the weaker enemies, then you can close in a little bit and trigger a wave of Flood. This is beneficial because if you just left all of the Covenant alive and trigger the Flood right away, the Covenant would usually win pretty easily in that particular battle and you'd still have to get past most of them. If you weaken them a little bit, though, then it'll be a fair fight between them and the Flood and then you can easily wipe out whichever enemies are left over.

In this case I weakened the Covenant forces well enough that by the end of their skirmish with The Flood, only one Jackel was left standing, which I quickly dispatched myself with a Shotgun (along with a few Flood that I had taken out myself since they came straight after me instead of after the Covenant). This is an element that's really only unique to the first Halo game (and in one level of Halo 2), but its such a brilliance concept that I wish more games would explore. It leads to some truly unpredictable but completely fun to experiment with strategic elements.

[gunswordfist]

I hate it when enemies go straight after you. I remember in one game I can't remember when an enemy ran right past like 2 AI allies of mine to come and attack me. I think it was Bulletstorm. Hmmm...

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I recently came across this article.

Now, while I'm still highly skeptical about this game, if 343 has got anything right, then I'd say its that they at least have the right idea of how to make enemies for a Halo game. Over here they clearly get that people like the relatively intelligent enemy AI that the game has always had to offer, and apparently their new enemy class is supposed to bring that element to a whole new level by making the Covenant AI look primitive in comparison. They seemed to have been stressing strategy and tactics quite a lot regarding this game's campaign mode, which is something that I've been practically begging for other FPS games to do since F.E.A.R., and while I still have no idea how this game will turn out, what I've heard and seen of it so far is at least enough to hold my interest in checking out how this game turns out when it finally releases. If its high on what I like about the series in regards to the campaign mode (with open levels and intelligent and challenging enemies), then I may end up playing this game after all. If I do, though, I'm still starting on Heroic. I haven't started a Halo game on Normal difficulty since Halo 2, and I don't plan to go back to that if I indeed happen to pick this game up.

[Foggle]

So, there's ample evidence pointing to an imminent PC release of Halo 3.

Uh... what.