: That weapon swapping was fiddly. Nowadays, couldn't they fix it so you can
: just bark "Soldier! Gimme that weapon!", and the person you're
: looking at would respond? Not that I do any gaming with voice
: recognition business, but if it worked like that, I don't think it would
: be a frustration any more.

The problem with that using the Kinect takes away ram from the graphics system. The game already has to reduce the number of pixels displayed in order to hit the, almost constant, 60fps target that 343 set for the game. I don't think they can afford to enable the kinect while the game is playing.

: I get the impression that you're not expecting to be playing H5 imminently,
: is that right?

That's right. I didn't want to pre-order, it doesn't seem to be healthy for game quality. They can ship a buggy game and it doesn't hit their bottom line as they already have your money.

Will I buy it? I'm not sure. I will wait to see what more people say about it.

: I know you got a response about that, but I would've thought you'd need more
: before you could be sure of the situation. Plus, maybe it could vary a lot
: according to difficulty level.

: Are you talking about the guys who run at you with plasmas fizzing? Because,
: they're in the game. I saw them in a video.

No, I should have been clearer. When you splatter a grunt with the hog, at the last second the grunt produces a sticky grenade and it usually gets stuck in a wheel arch. It will kill you. You can't jump out in time.

It could happen in the original game but seemed accidental. In later games it seemed to be a designed behaviour.

: About this reviving business. In the video I watched, they shine some kind of
: light. What's supposed to be going on there?

I suppose it's a game mechanism to make it clear that a revival is happening but it breaks immersion. It's hard to pretend that there is a real world thing going on.

: Also, what's 343's rationale
: for introducing reviving anyway? To me, thinking of single-player campaign
: as ever, it's looking like something of a bogus feature. I'm not sure
: exactly how things would go in practice, but the thought of lots of people
: running around shining lights at each other does not mesh well with my
: concept of Spartan soldiering!

Nor mine.

And it would be odd hearing the master Chief asking for help.

As I understand it, you can no longer just use the menu system to immediately revert to the last checkpoint. So if you can see that your team wont be able to get to you or if they die trying, one by one... you can't just foresee the inevitable and short circuit the wait. You have to watch the farce drag on to completion. That is almost as bad as having an unskippable cutscene immediately after a checkpoint.

Try not to go down anywhere that you have to mantle to reach. Apparently your allies wont mantle up to reach you. They will go the long way round, if it exists, and you will die before they get there.

Adding this mechanism it is an odd decision. They have added a new thing to the game - something that is very difficult for the AI to get right. So they have introduced a new way for the AI to fail, to show its incompetence.

I haven't been a fan of significant named AI companions. They either wont die and just get in the way or they have to be cared for. I don't mind being careful with ammo or weapon selection but I don't want to manage incompetents in a firefight.

It works fine in the Mass Effect games but AI companions have always been dreadful in Halo. (I'm not talking about expendable marines.)