The Escapist.

[FullAuto]

The Escapist

 

Ever since being introduced to this online gaming magazine (thank you, Gimli!), I've been an avid reader, and the articles continue to please me and piss me off in equal measure.

 

Crap article - Mario Smells of Mothballs

 

Good article - The Tao Of Pikachu

 

And the letters section, oy vey! Such tsuris.

[Gimli]

Indeed, some are very interesting, while some are... not very interesting. Lately I haven't been able to keep up, I'm at least 5-6 issues late, hopefully, I'll be able to catch up during the holidays.

 

Still the average quality of articles is leagues and miles ahead of mass gaming magazines. My favorite ones were the ones about Walmart and Death to the games industry. And after reading the article about the creator of Earthworm Jim, Doug Tennapel, I lost all respect for the guy. EWJ was great, but that guy has got to be one of the most egoistic people I've ever heard of.

[FullAuto]

Another issue, another mixed bag. Still excellent reading, though. Right up there with Edge, as far as I am concerned.

[FullAuto]

Good issue this time. Shabby letters page, though.

 

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/link/3307 - True 3D displays look like being some ways off, no surprise.

 

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/link/3306 - Interesting stuff! Incorporating it into modern gaming would be entertaining, at least.

 

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/link/3308 - Good article, I love Speedball. Only sour note is praising the film version of The Running Man over the book.

 

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/link/3309 - Brain training seems to have caught on big style. Can't say I enjoy the games myself, but their continued application in areas such as Alzheimers and dementia will no doubt be of great benefit to me in 40-50 years.

[Thorondor]

"Whether you preferred to run rings around the opponent with light-footed intellectuals or score points by brutalizing the opposing players with lumbering animals, (...)"

It's fun even just to read...

 

::

 

Speedball II was a rare (both ways I guess ), rather unexplainable, exception in my gaming diet during the 386SX days.

 

Though I spent considerably less time with it than with titles like Battle Isle 2 or, say, X-Com it's easy to corner why I can still remember having played it: grabbing a few blunt instruments of bludgeoning destruction and hammering past the wimps posing for opponents in quick succession it just felt great to shove a steel ball down the other team's bloodied throat.

 

Please insert the disk ? No, buddy - just ram it in, and let the fun begin...

[FullAuto]

Please insert the disk ? No, buddy - just ram it in

 

Genius, sir. I tip my hat to you.

[FullAuto]

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/81/9 - I had to go and hug all my original games for comfort after reading that. Depressing but accurate article.

[Thorondor]

I've only just noticed this...

 

::

 

[Knan]

Ooo. Good old Brutal Deluxe in a modern wrapping... promising.

[FullAuto]

Apparently, they're re-doing The Chaos Engine, too.

 

Bagsy the Navvy!

[Knan]

For PC, do you think? This would seem to be perfect for the various consoles...

[FullAuto]

I hate the redesign of The Escapist. That is all.

[Slaughter]

Video review of Bioshock - WATCH IT!

[Space Voyager]

I did. Phenomenal review.

[Knan]

*chuckle*

[Slaughter]

Halo 3 Review....LOVELY!

[Space Voyager]

Ok, no Halo3 for me. I knew that already because my comp. wouldn't be able to run it but now I also know I wouldn't get it even if I could. Complicated, but I'm more content now than I was before.

[Azrael Strife]

Not surprising, haven't played Halo 2 yet (going to, eventually), but playing Halo: Combat Evolved and I honestly can't see what the big fuss about Halo is. The game doesn't even have an interesting story, a bunch of aliens in war with Humans for no apparent reason, gee, that's original. They find ancient alien ruins that eventually turn out to be ancient super weapons, nothing TOO new over there but decent enough. The Flood stuff is interesting, dunno if they are present in Halo 2 and 3, but ok, found them quite an annoying enemy anyway, not annoying in the sense it was hard to kill them, but in the way that it was boring, repetitive, and not challenging but simply ANNOYING to kill most of them.

 

So, why is everyone so crazy about Halo? it's not even an interesting read! and let's not talk about characters, those are as uninteresting and generic as they can be.

[FullAuto]

Enjoying Shoot Club, as always, but little else.

[Strong Bob]

Being a Halo fan, I will stand in it's defense. Unfortunately, I'm not fan enough to read the material outside the games, so I suppose this makes me just the right kind of fan. (Not biased by information outside the actual source, yet biased enough that I won't change my opinion based on a review of any kind. >_< )

 

1 - Gameplay. The original Halo was 'good' because it had features previously unexplored by other games at the time. Mostly having to do with the vehicles and a very efficient AI. (Now, unfortunately, by today's standards, the AI is sub-par. Mostly because allied AI will not use vehicles in the first Halo, and enemies seem to be a bit tunnel visioned until Halo 3.)

 

But the crowning achievement is that it is well-rounded. The game possesses an interface that is extremely easy to manipulate, in all of it's games. A flaw I found to be rather abundant in most games of the time (And still do...). It's very "average" to the hardcore FPS player because it doesn't have these advanced schemes and about 10+ weapons to carry at any given moment. You had two guns to alternate between with a single button, in Halo, and two sets of grenades to alternate between also with a single button.

 

Be aware, at the time Combat Evolved came out, every FPS game I ever played had some a much more needlessly complicated weapon interface. This streamlined tactic has even started a coming trend in modern FPS games (See: F.E.A.R.) that allows both advanced and beginner shooters to take advantage of without any learning curve.

 

This was made even better in Halo 2, where more complicated maneuvers could be pulled off (Jumping onto an enemy vehicle, throwing them out/latching a grenade inside/punching the crap out of the driver and run, and then commandeering it, for example.) and more complicated weapons were created. The greater variety of guns allowed a broader play style. Thus, once again, both veteran FPS gamers and beginner gamers could play with whatever style they were used to. (Something that is absent from... Well... Almost every FPS game from then, before, and currently. The only games I've noticed come close has been the Unreal Tournament series, and even they have got some linearity issues.)

 

Now in Halo 3, it was improved slightly more, but only in regards to ergonomics.

 

The Halo series are built so everyone can get a taste. Frankly, I think it pulls off the ease of play better than anything in the Half-Life series.

 

However, game difficulty is one thing I find weird that some people criticize... Every game, ever, that I've played have always had a very incoherent difficulty rating as they went from beginning to end. Can anyone here, either for or against Halo, name a game that has such a smooth difficulty increase? I certainly cannot. In fact, it's more realistic to me that some parts are going to be harder/easier than others. Life isn't always a steady increase in difficulty. Yes, Halo has an incoherent difficulty rating... Some parts are going to be hard, others won't. I don't see this as a flaw, as opposed to something we've been seeing in games since the 80s.

 

The game doesn't even have an interesting story, a bunch of aliens in war with Humans for no apparent reason, gee, that's original.

 

Um... There is a reason explained in Halo 1. Did you finish the game? Or did you miss that part?

 

As for how long the game lasts... Unfortunately, you will find a lot of varied opinions. For Halo 1, I finished it in about 4 days. Halo 2, I think it was about a week... Halo 3, I finished it in about 10 consecutive hours of play. So it can be pretty short if you are the type to skip cutscenes and not pay much attention to other details in the game. But it was still fulfilling to me.

 

2 - Story. Admittedly, the first Halo had a generic storyline. But it's "generic" value was it's own blessing. There were a good number of sub-stories to build from, ranging from the aliens, to the characters, to the cliff hangar in the end. If anyone here can remember, didn't Star Wars: A New Hope have a pretty generic and silly storyline for it's time? It got better as time went on.

 

So yeah, Halo 1 = A story about a cyborg soldier with a mysterious past, fighting alongside fellow marines against a mysterious alien foe, on a mysterious ring-shaped world, only to find the world is a super weapon designed to fight another mysterious alien species. With mysteries abound, one can only hope to see the answers some day.

 

Halo 2 pulled off a much more advanced story, telling it from the perspective of the enemies in the first game, explaining portions of their history and their reasons for fighting the humans and finding more Halos. With two different perspectives on the same war, along with another war clearly brewing, the story in this case gets much more complicated and much much more intense.

 

Halo 3 ends it all off by uniting the humans with a former enemy (Cliche, but I believe it was pulled off well.) against all the original foes from the first two games, plus another. Throughout Halo 3, there are terminals and hidden radios where you can read logs and historical documents that further explain the existance of Halo ring-worlds and their purpose.

 

The story to Halo is a very good one, so long as you enjoy sci-fi stories of a military variety. However, this is also a problem in regards to Halo 3. Halo 1 and 2, you can start playing without knowing the background and still enjoy it very much. Halo 3 you genuinely need to know the plot from the first two games or you will be lost.

 

Characters...

and let's not talk about characters, those are as uninteresting and generic as they can be.

 

Admittedly, there are only 4 notable characters in Halo 1. Being the Captain of the ship, Sergeant Johnson, the AI Cortana, and Master Chief (The character you play). Another one appears later that is also an AI (343 Guilty Spark) but, personally, I found them all pretty interesting. Although at the time, they were linear, once again... Was this linearity not present in many other classic stories?

 

The list of characters expands exponentially in both sequels. Complete with past histories, grudges, and arguments that occur in and out of gameplay.

 

3 - Multiplayer. I agree with the guy in the video. I don't give a rats ass about multiplayer gaming of any kind. Whether or not it makes Halo any better is unknown to me, because I only ever played multiplayer once, last year, for about a couple hours, and never again. I only play single player.

 

4 - Hype and popularity. Halo was originally popular because it was finely tuned and streamlined for anyone to play. A simple shooter in it's infant stages with wonderful potential, that a lot of people noticed. It was originally anticipated because it was the gateway onto the X-BOX and was the first decent console shooter that didn't require total ambidexterity to play.

 

But it grew, like any new franchise. And now, not only is the X-BOX 360 selling so hotly, Halo 3 broke a few release records itself. Hundreds of thousands play on X-BOX live, Halo 3. Even Japan is starting to glow a bit on the "Gamers Online" map, as my brother chooses game matches on live.

 

So, why is everyone so crazy about Halo?

 

To answer your question... It's because the game makes revolutionary breaks in streamlining it's features. People keep claiming it does nothing that other games do better... But I've never seen such a game that managed to combine all those features into one game so well.

 

I'm not crazy assed about the game myself. It is not going to be for everyone... But both casual and hardcore gamers seem to be crazy assed about it... If you don't like it, it doesn't fit your tastes. But if a game breaks records in sales, and is currently the most popular game played... I'm sorry, can you define that as "average"?