Halo Reach: Where's me washboard? Have you seen it?

[Iceglow]

Not had any problems with stupid AI in the campaign (completed the game solo on normal after my connection lagged so hard I got dumped out of campaign with Paul and Dan lol) At least nothing like the Arbiter kicking a crate in to my face which is what happened on Halo 3. Biggest gripe was the marine shooting the missile hog (which we only get to use in one level boo that was like awesome) shooting a rock point blank and killing me and the one time Jun actually sniped me as he sniped covies outside swordbase, then again she sniped me just as I failed to get an assasination takedown on a brute.

I really enjoyed the campaign on this one, certainly the looks of the characters and the voice acting (even though the cast list for ODST was better) seemed to be the best in any halo game so far. Though Bungie said in interviews they know players don't like to go back over previous territories again there was a fair amount of backtracking. Personally though I know I'm likely to do it or at least attempt it I don't fancy the final levels on legendary solo, they're going to prove a bitch lol especially when checkpoints seem quite few and far between.

[Psychotic]

Campaign is unbelievably . Gameplay, story and music. Don't get me wrong, we all know Halo games have the worst stories in video games, but the other two are usually sound. The absolute worst was the space battle. The music was generic mild outer space . What the smurf. Perfect moment for the Halo theme. Still, the one good thing was the Elites, great AI. And armour abilities in general.

Multi, on the whole, is pretty smurfing fantastic. Few ty maps and gametypes here and there but it is to be expected. Me and Dan have had some epic adventures, along with a JKTrix cameo, screenshots probably to come. Hologram is the best. The best.

[Aerith's Knight]

Are you smurfing kidding me? Good AI? Are you retarded? (not insulting you, but the game)

I was doing the fourth mission (after nightfall) on legendary just now, and the first thing I do is take a car, drive away from that little bitch kate and just solo it one bit at a time, driving and shooting.

Now here it comes, I come to a part where there are UNSC soldiers, one runs up to me from 200 m away...

...he gets in the car AND DRIVES OFF A CLIFF.

[Psychotic]

Dennis, I said the Elites have good AI.

The humans are pretty , yeah.

[Aerith's Knight]

Oh yeah, especially the silver ones. Legendary with invisible silver elites carrying snipers... you aint getting past them.

[DK]

Campaign is unbelievably . Gameplay, story and music. Don't get me wrong, we all know Halo games have the worst stories in video games, but the other two are usually sound. The absolute worst was the space battle. The music was generic mild outer space . What the smurf. Perfect moment for the Halo theme. Still, the one good thing was the Elites, great AI. And armour abilities in general.

Multi, on the whole, is pretty smurfing fantastic. Few ty maps and gametypes here and there but it is to be expected. Me and Dan have had some epic adventures, along with a JKTrix cameo, screenshots probably to come. Hologram is the best. The best.

Can endorse every sentiment in this post wholeheartedly, especially about the music, like he said you expect some parts of a Halo game to be utter e but their soundtracks are usually great. This one was absolutely terrible apart from two nice songs.

[Aerith's Knight]

Does anyone know how to get campaign footage edited and send to people? I really need to show people a few AI epic fails.

Oh, nice glitch btw. I'm driving on the back of a scooter while the AI is driving at 1/4 it's speed, somehow we don't die but ride the ramp waaay too slow, and the car just gets a glitch boost shooting me across the map.

[Madame Adequate]

I tend to rate Halo's campaigns better than Paul does, by some length at that. And I'm a shameless Halo fanboy, so.

The campaign is awful. It is by far the worst campaign in any Halo game. AI has nothing to do with it for me, I've not encountered anything to complain about; it's just bad. Lacking atmosphere, lacking tension, lacking any sense of scale, importance, or drama. Say what you will about the story, but the other Halo games at least had a sense of epicness and usually some measure of wonder. Combat Evolved sure as hell did. Reach sure as hell doesn't. I cared more about the disembodied voice of Echo 419 in CE than I did about any actual character in Reach. They are all bland, boring stereotypes who I don't give two s about (Jorge is the exception, he was actually likable and approached something in the same ballpark as interesting). "But Huxley", you might be saying, "that's not really a big deal, I never gave two s about anyone in Halo!" If that's you then fair enough, but I'm just making the point that I did, but I don't in Reach, except for a couple of cameos towards the end, where I only cared because other games had established it.

ODST worked with much less and provided something I liked much more; Halo 3 was a weird mish-mash which they clearly needed to double in size in order to do what they wanted, but I liked it more. Halo 2 was marred by technical shortcomings and the decision to have boss battles, but I liked it considerably more. Halo CE though. Oh man, that game sold me an XBox and I never regretted it. I don't even see how they could be part of the same series.

I'll write a more sensible, less rant-oriented opinion sometimes, I expect, but I've been building up pressure that I couldn't relieve by complaining on my favorite Internet forum so it all had to come out now

However - HOWEVER! - Multiplayer is glorious. Absolutely sublime.

[Psychotic]

Daily Challenge today: Get 150 kills in matchmaking. Just got 49 in one match, +33

[Aerith's Knight]

I tend to rate Halo's campaigns better than Paul does, by some length at that. And I'm a shameless Halo fanboy, so.

The campaign is awful. It is by far the worst campaign in any Halo game. AI has nothing to do with it for me, I've not encountered anything to complain about; it's just bad. Lacking atmosphere, lacking tension, lacking any sense of scale, importance, or drama. Say what you will about the story, but the other Halo games at least had a sense of epicness and usually some measure of wonder. Combat Evolved sure as hell did. Reach sure as hell doesn't. I cared more about the disembodied voice of Echo 419 in CE than I did about any actual character in Reach. They are all bland, boring stereotypes who I don't give two s about (Jorge is the exception, he was actually likable and approached something in the same ballpark as interesting). "But Huxley", you might be saying, "that's not really a big deal, I never gave two s about anyone in Halo!" If that's you then fair enough, but I'm just making the point that I did, but I don't in Reach, except for a couple of cameos towards the end, where I only cared because other games had established it.

ODST worked with much less and provided something I liked much more; Halo 3 was a weird mish-mash which they clearly needed to double in size in order to do what they wanted, but I liked it more. Halo 2 was marred by technical shortcomings and the decision to have boss battles, but I liked it considerably more. Halo CE though. Oh man, that game sold me an XBox and I never regretted it. I don't even see how they could be part of the same series.

I'll write a more sensible, less rant-oriented opinion sometimes, I expect, but I've been building up pressure that I couldn't relieve by complaining on my favorite Internet forum so it all had to come out now

However - HOWEVER! - Multiplayer is glorious. Absolutely sublime.

I'm gonna agree on that, Echo-419's death had a huge impact on me back then, the first time I played it. Here someone dies and you just shrug it off saying: "Meh, I hated them anyway."

Btw, final mission, can anyone say Final Fantasy: Crisis Core ending ripoff?

Although that ending actually had emotion in it.

[Ouch!]

Completed all the daily challenges today. Apparently playing the meta game or something screws with the "This is How We Do It" weekly challenge because despite having received the achievement for completing my Solo Legendary run, I'm short on levels completed for that one. I'm certainly enjoying the matchmaking, although I'm quite a bit out of practice. My K/D is positive at least, although just barely. Every good game I have seems to get all but negated because I play miserably the next. I think having consistently good teammates might help, since I find myself still losing the match even when I do well (going +10 in team slayer and losing is smurfing obnoxious).

I guess I'm perhaps one of the few people who didn't dislike the campaign. Certainly your ally AI is pretty smurfing awful, but that's always been the case, and I don't count on the AI to do much of anything anyway. I never really had the AI give me much trouble throughout my play.

I'll agree that the story was pretty disappointing. Like Huxley, I've actually enjoyed the main storyline of the Halo franchise, and I'll also agree that what the series always delivered was an epic scale. This was certainly something that Reach lacked, at least until the very end, which I thought, all things considered, was pretty good. I think what really disappointed me was that Bungie didn't really try to surprise us with anything, and ultimately it just make me wonder if it might have been better if they didn't try to tackle a storyline where the fate of all the characters is already known.

That said, I think the level design was by far the best in the series. The Halo games have slowly progressed from the horrible backtracking that was the latter half of Halo: CE's campaign to the samesy-level design that plagues Halo 2 and 3. ODST was a step in the right direction of giving us some varied environments, but it was limited by all taking place in New Mombasa. Traveling all over the different environments of Reach certainly provided a nice change of pace.

Legendary difficulty was significantly more difficult than it has been in the past, mostly because the Elite AI is pretty smurfing mean. I appreciate a good challenge, especially since I tend to like playing the campaign.

[Jiro]

Hologram is the best. The best.

Glad to see someone else agrees with me. Multi is smurfing amazing. I had good fun slaying people with JKTrix. I missed Paul by ONE SMURFING HOUR which was a pain. My free Live trial is run out but I'm going to have to get it legit just for Reach. But I am seriously sick of Boardwalk, that was the first 6 matches I played.

Invasion is pretty sweet too, I just wish it had more rounds or summat.

[Psychotic]

My favourite hologram trick is to have a sword and send out the hologram with the sword. People sometimes get wise to the hologram when it's got a gun, but when they see the giant glowing sword heading at them, they panic. I follow in behind with my DMR and at worst I get several free shots on them as they try to take down the sword-o-gram, but a lot of the time I actually kill them while they're still fighting it off.

[DK]

I find it pretty easy most of the time to tell what's a hologram and what isn't personally, which is pretty useful. I thought they were going to be horrible to deal with. Had some fun with a guy today on Reflection who absolutely spammed his hologram like it was the be all and end all tactic of Reach, if he saw me coming (I assume he was doing this to other people as well) he would frantically run backwards around a corner and then send his hologram out like it wasn't blatantly obvious what he was doing. The best part about it was even though he apparently abuses them like there's no tomorrow he had no clue what was a hologram and what wasn't. Whenever I saw him I'd let him go back round and send his hologram out, wait until it came past and then send mine running past it and he fell for it every single time. Easy kills.

Also think Reflection is probably my favourite multi map so far, thought I wouldn't like it at first but it's been pretty kind to me so far. Reminds me of Timesplitters.

[NorthernChaosGod]

So when are you all having the pleasure of tasting my ball sack?