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Re: On Halo, experience, and nostalgia
By:Ragashingo
Date: 8/1/13 1:39 am
In Response To: On Halo, experience, and nostalgia (Avateur)

I too have been enjoying the heck out of these gaming nights, but my perspective on the Halos is a bit different.

Halo 3: I feel like I suck at Halo 3. I think if you looked through my stats and compared them to Reach or Halo 4 you'd find I'm not much worse when playing Halo 3, but that's not my perception. It starts with the BR. There's something with Halo 3's BR that just doesn't click with me. In Reach or Halo 4 I can use the DMR or BR (Halo 4 only of course) and be fairly good with them. At least competitive. But in Halo 3 I feel like I have a decent chance of losing a straight up BR battle even if I get a decent drop on somebody. And the frustrating part is I don't really know why even after all these years. I think it's some strange combination of the reticule not changing color at range, plus Halo 3's shield shimmer effect not being as pronounced, plus maybe some subtle difference with the aiming magnetism or something. Whatever it is the gun just doesn't feel effective to me, and especially not when I'm trying to use it across a map. I feel like I get pinged a ton at range but can't really deal damage back. So yeah, losing BR battles is the main source of my frustration.

Beyond that, I hadn't played Halo 3 multiplayer in years, and it's funny the things I noticed. The near game ending lags of doom and general jankiness that minor bit of lag would cause did a good job of showing off the netcode improvements in Reach and Halo 4. Then there was the pistol. I pulled it out for the first time and zoomed, then laughed. "Who designs a Halo pistol without a zoom?!" I said to myself. Yes, Halo 2 didn't have it either, but I never played Halo 2 online and it had been so long since I played 3 that I'd forgotten about the lack of zoom. Also that sword lunge range seemed like a bit much. In the end I actually had a good time despite these "flaws" but I was constantly wishing for my DMR. Speaking of…

Reach: I'm sure not everyone shares my opinion, I suspect I might be in the slight minority, but Reach is my top pick for Halo multiplayer. The movement is slower than Halo 3 or 4. I really liked the bloom because it DID allow me to time the shots and beat people who fired too fast at me while also allowing me to get some cool desperation kills by spamming the pistol up close as fast as I could at a guy charging with an energy sword. In Reach it felt to me that two evenly matched people could have something more like a one on one duel. With AR's especially you could run out of a clip without killing the other guy then it was a fun battle to see who would win and how. One person might try and stay the course and reload their AR while the other might switch to their pistol and try for the head shot. But whatever way it went it always felt more fair and more deliberate to me. I don't know, I feel like I'm not listing enough reason why I like Reach. I guess it just comes down to the way its multiplayer clicked with me more than any other Halo game. Oh and Invasion was awesome.

Then there's Halo 4. Weirdly, after getting to play 3, Reach, and 4 all within three weeks I now feel that Halo 4 is a strange mixture of Reach and Halo 3. It's weapons, gunplay, and armor abilities definitely feel more like Reach to me, in that the feel effective in my hands, but the quicker pace, and faster kill times remind me a lot of Halo 3. In general Halo 4 feels overly frantic to me. Like there's never a moment to rest during a match. It's all four burst kills and sprinting around corners and dying near instantaneously to someone with a SAW. Or something like that. I actually like Halo 4's armor abilities a bit better than Reach's, except maybe they nerfed Jet Pack a bit too much, but most everything else seemed to be a step in the wrong direction. Especially the things like perks that let you reload faster than the other guy or make your grenades do more damage than his. Halo, to me at least, was about being the other gun on equal ground assuming you had equal weapons. Halo 4 changed that and gave me way too much ugly anime / power ranger inspired Spartan 4 armor.

But yes, getting to play with a good, friendly, non-jerk community of people is several hundred times better than random matchmaking. And it is indeed fun to play the older games again. I'd forgotten how much I liked The Pit on Halo 3 for instance. Anyway, great post! Getting to read it and respond to it is yet another joy I don't get with randoms. :)


Messages In This Thread

On Halo, experience, and nostalgiaAvateur7/31/13 11:22 pm
     Re: On Halo, experience, and nostalgiaXenos8/1/13 12:07 am
     Re: On Halo, experience, and nostalgiaRagashingo8/1/13 1:39 am
           Re: On Halo, experience, and nostalgiaXenos8/1/13 11:56 am
     A miracle happenedpadraig088/1/13 11:04 am

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