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Halo Anniversary |OT| It All Comes Full Circle

FyreWulff

Member
Reach's Hunters are the smartest ones yet, although I liked the twist of fighting them in actual urban environments in ODST (the first time one follows you into the buildings in Buck's mission threw me for a loop). Halo 1's are glass midgets that are more of "oh, here's some hunters now" than threatening or anything. Bungie didn't really start to attempt modeling everything to scale until Halo 2.
 

blamite

Member
How awesome would it have been if Bungie actually went through with making all the heretics in Halo 2 be hunters?

so awesome
 

Trey

Member
I thought Reach Hunters were pretty good, perhaps the best in the series since I had no strong feelings over the ones from 2, 3, or ODST's versions.

CE's Elites are king of the crop. Nothing else in the series has touched them, although 2's Elites early on were still enjoyable. Dealt with many circumstances of flanking and tricks by them near the Zanzibar hotel in Outskirts. Fun times.

PP + headshot weapon is still too effective against them, and you will never run out of PP ammo to deal with them considering all the Grunts/Jackals/Drones that carry them relative to Elites.
 

Dreaver

Member
Bought Halo CE:A a few weeks ago. Playing it casually co-op with a friend on legendary.
Feels great playing it. It feels really refreshing with the new engine. The graphics and effects are pretty good. 343 did a great job. The switch engine feature is cool as well.

For a 10 year old game Halo CE is pretty damn great. Even in the old engine it still looks decent and playable.

Level design is pretty terrible though. The Library.. THE FUCK, it's the same part copied and pasted over and over. I could cry all day about it. So terrible. Worst Halo level ever.

Oh and the Soundtrack is phenomenal. Halo certainly has one of the best soundtracks ever.

Probably my favorite campaign after Halo 3's.
 
Nicely timed bump, I'm playing it too.

For the most part I'm liking it a lot. I beat it back in the day but I dont remember a lot of it, but at the same time remembering cool parts as you come upon them is fun.

I put this up there with Reach, I'm not sure which is better, I think I'd go with this. I wasn't a big fan of 2 or 3, while I thought ODST started to get the series back on track.

To this day it does a lot of cool things that the series and other FPS dont. The balance between elites and grunts and hunters is great, no other game in the series hits it just right. When you come across a group of grunts with a Elite, you go for the Elite right away the balance causes it to be so natural rather than forced.The squad is done great too, in Reach theyre characters so invincible, which means you dont really care. Here they can die, so I often find myself trying to save them even though it doesnt effect the game.

It's fun thinking back to how revolutionary a lot of this stuff was to console audiences too. When you come into a huge arena with enemy pods for hundreds of yards and aircraft in the air, that you can hijack no less, and you can approach the arena any way you want, that stuff was amazing for back in the day. I mean FPS werent popular on console before this.

I hear people bitching about the library all the time, but I dont recall hating any part of CE on my ten years ago playthrough, in fact if it's what I'm thinking of I loved it, because 343 guilty spark was such a psychotic character. I'm just to it so we'll see how I feel this time.

I popped in Halo 3 afterwards for fun, and as I suspected the graphics are terrible compared to even CE (which I believe is a slight cut below Reach, likely due to the 64 MB of RAM required to carry the original engine in RAM for instant switching). Reenforcing my believe that graphically H3 was just a horrible effort from Bungie. Truly a last gen game in HD, inexcusable given the dev time they had.
 

Slightly Live

Dirty tag dodger
I popped in Halo 3 afterwards for fun, and as I suspected the graphics are terrible compared to even CE (which I believe is a slight cut below Reach, likely due to the 64 MB of RAM required to carry the original engine in RAM for instant switching). Reenforcing my believe that graphically H3 was just a horrible effort from Bungie. Truly a last gen game in HD, inexcusable given the dev time they had.

Your beliefs are wrong. Halo 3 a last gen game in HD?
KuGsj.gif
 

FyreWulff

Member
There's still people that try to say Halo 3 looked no better than Halo 2?

I mean shit, don't even have to use campaign. Load up Zanzibar in Halo 2, then load up Last Resort in Halo 3. Last Resort makes Zanzibar looks like a level from the N64 era. Halo 2 looked great for the day but it really doesn't hold up to Halo 3, not even in lighting.
 

CrunchinJelly

formerly cjelly
There's still people that try to say Halo 3 looked no better than Halo 2?

I mean shit, don't even have to use campaign. Load up Zanzibar in Halo 2, then load up Last Resort in Halo 3. Last Resort makes Zanzibar looks like a level from the N64 era. Halo 2 looked great for the day but it really doesn't hold up to Halo 3, not even in lighting.

This is what people forget about older games. The lighting always looks so flat to what we have today.

Halo3 looked rough around the edges, sure, but the lighting was just awesome.
 
There's still people that try to say Halo 3 looked no better than Halo 2?

I mean shit, don't even have to use campaign. Load up Zanzibar in Halo 2, then load up Last Resort in Halo 3. Last Resort makes Zanzibar looks like a level from the N64 era. Halo 2 looked great for the day but it really doesn't hold up to Halo 3, not even in lighting.

Graphically, Halo 3 is one the best looking games this console generation for me. Sierra 117 = wow
 
I couldn't stand the hunters in Halo 3 or Halo: Reach. I thought they were perfectly balanced in Halo 1. Sure they were easier to take down, but on the other hand there were many more hunters in CE's campaign than in any of the subsequent games.

I didn't really make any difference how many of them you encounter, they were pretty much always on their own or they pop up after all other enemies have died. They weren't balanced at all, the only time I had trouble with a hunter in Halo CE was when I ran out of pistol ammo in the hangar on Truth & Reconciliation :\

If they threw them at you with a fuck tonne of other enemies then yeah, they'd be a challenge.
 
There's still people that try to say Halo 3 looked no better than Halo 2?

I mean shit, don't even have to use campaign. Load up Zanzibar in Halo 2, then load up Last Resort in Halo 3. Last Resort makes Zanzibar looks like a level from the N64 era. Halo 2 looked great for the day but it really doesn't hold up to Halo 3, not even in lighting.

No, there's no way I would say it doesn't look better than a Xbox game. Not even close.

But, it's the epitome of the old criticism of "last gen assets just in high res" imo. Even that of course I'm sure isn't accurate, but is the overall feeling I get.

Sure, it looks a lot better than a Xbox game, but it looks terrible next to Reach/CE.

Even the vaunted lighting isn't really very impressive, and I recall Bungie made a ton of sacrifices to get that "HDR" (it was some weird really demanding method, double framebuffer or something). Heck if anything the lighting is garish and unnatural. I believe they ditched that method from Reach forward, and thank goodness.

The weapon models too, are really substandard. And thats a huge aspect of any FPS. Just compare the sniper weapon models Reach/Anniversary vs 3.

But no, there's no way I'd say it's a last gen game, it's just a poor effort for this gen.
 

FyreWulff

Member
HDR always requires multiple buffers, and wasn't a weird method at all. You render the scene for the low range, the high range, then the combined image.

Halo 3's HDR has a super wide range, at the cost of resolution (640p). They dropped the HDR accuracy for Reach to get to 720p, which results in explosions and etc blowing out the image much sooner than in Halo 3. They're still using the same method though. That's due more to the limited 360 RAM than Bungie's technical prowess. All the 640p complainers got their 720p in the end.

The weapon models do look better, but that's because they overhauled the engine between 3 and Reach. Reach's Assault Rifle has more polys than a marine in Halo 3. But that's more usual engine upgrades, and Halo 3's weapon detail level is still multiple factors above 2's.
 

OverHeat

« generous god »
HDR always requires multiple buffers, and wasn't a weird method at all. You render the scene for the low range, the high range, then the combined image.

Halo 3's HDR has a super wide range, at the cost of resolution (640p). They dropped the HDR accuracy for Reach to get to 720p, which results in explosions and etc blowing out the image much sooner than in Halo 3. They're still using the same method though.

That's due more to the limited 360 RAM than Bungie's technical prowess. All the 640p complainers got their 720p in the end.

Reach is NOT 720p.
 

Slightly Live

Dirty tag dodger
But no, there's no way I'd say it's a last gen game, it's just a poor effort for this gen.

How is it a poor effort? You're comparing first 360 games with their second. No shit the second one looks better but that's generally accepted when developers become more intimately familiar with the hardware. And Anniversary borrows a considerable amount of Reach art assets and the developers were simply remaking a game, not creating a game from scratch so could cut a lot of development corners.

Halo 3 looked good for it's time considering what the engine was doing and when it was made. It's absurd to compare to later generational offerings in the same hardware cycle.

Halo 3 was a bigger undertaking than Reach and it shows.
 
I dunno if Bungie had to sacrifice the visual qualities for some of the bigger battles we got, but there aren't encounters in Reach as big as the biggest in Halo 3.

If they had to sacrifice the visuals for bigger, more versatile battles? ...Eh. I'll take it.
 
How is it a poor effort? You're comparing first 360 games with their second. No shit the second one looks better but that's generally accepted when developers become more intimately familiar with the hardware. And Anniversary borrows a considerable amount of Reach art assets and the developers were simply remaking a game, not creating a game from scratch so could cut a lot of development corners.

Halo 3 looked good for it's time considering what the engine was doing and when it was made. It's absurd to compare to later generational offerings in the same hardware cycle.

Halo 3 was a bigger undertaking than Reach and it shows.

Dat Forerunner architecture
 

voltron

Member
notice the date above me? The date of the last post mean...... Jan 17. 117.

Too bad I fucked it up hey. Would have been a cool synchronicity. Especially with my ridiculously wordy and unnecessarily long post. I tend to do that when Im in a good mood.


So naturally when a Halo remake was announced I was frothing to get my hands on it and replay one of my favourite games of all time in HD with an updated graphics engine. Super excited I was.

However cut to late last year when it arrived in my mailbox from play-asia. A couple hours spent with the game and impressed as I was I just couldnt maintain the enthusiasm for replaying Halo again with a (IMO) gorgeous new graphics engine. I think I played a couple hours before going to work that day, then sporadically after that in the weeks following. A few listless sessions here and there until I finally tired of i it. The disc hadnt been back in the xbox since November (although it was still sitting face up on the game case in that transitory state of limbo that so many games find themselves in these days... ;))

Anyway I guess when it really came down to it it was still just Halo (quite uber-literally, as pressing the back button will prove), and I - as well as Im sure everyone in this thread besides the trolls - have played through that game so many times back in the day - that fresh coat of paint or not - there was really nothing new to be had here.

However. That said. Yesterday me and a buddy decided to have a quick game of coop. Do a few levels for nostalgias sake (this dude was actually my roommate during the peak of our Halo playing days and split screen Halo coop was as common a part of out daily routine as eating, showering and skipping Uni)....... anyway playing on Legendary yesterday we reached silent cartographer and had a hell of a good time just rocking that "30 secs of fun" (yeah its basically a cliche at this point, but if the shoe fits:/) and unsurprisingly - 10 years old or not - we discovered that Halo is still a really fucking fun game.

That was yesterday. Probably a few hours worth before bed. Today however, Ive just emerged from a 10hr session. I finished work at 12 today and from about 12:30 until 10:30 it was nothing but Halo coop. We just reached the end of the Library (a level I still enjoy despite its apparent shortcomings). But man, 10hrs in one session.... Im 30 fucking years old! An immature 30, Ill admit that, but still, I was quite shocked when I checked the clock and did the math.

So whats the point of this unnecessarily wordy post? Nothin'! Halo rocks is all.

Im still on a game high and all I wanna do now is kick back and go mop up a few skulls that we couldnt manage to grenade jump to on legendary (easy mode leaves much more room for error obviously).

So.... my parting statement..... Halo (Original/Remake/the first one!) coop is still, IMO, the best (best is kinda a silly word right... I mean what does 'best' really mean?), most enjoyable, potentially rewarding and most definitely satisfying coop FPS experience you can have. Id even go as far as to scratch 'FPS' out of that statement and say its the most superior cooperative gaming experience out there. Still. 10 year later.
 

NOKYARD

Member
Im still on a game high and all I wanna do now is kick back and go mop up a few skulls that we couldnt manage to grenade jump to on legendary (easy mode leaves much more room for error obviously).
Due to the extra damage you can take, and the increased blast radius, grenade jumps are more effective on Legendary. Some of the jumps we (speed runners/trickers) do are impossible on easier difficulties.

If you are talking about the Silent cartographer skull,
remember to use the Overshield and get a checkpoint. You can run past the Hunters and even use them to launch you to the skull ledge.

I agree that 2 player co-op is where this game shines. Thankfully it now features on-line co-op. 10 years ago my co-op partners and i lived in the same house. Now the nearest is 200 km away.
 

Marco1

Member
I was re-playing H3 yesterday and I still amaze at the first moment you take control of MC.
Following those marines with the lighting and fantastic textures of the trees and ground was wonderful.
I agree with what bungie did with the game and love every moment of it.
 

voltron

Member
I think our problem was we were using the skull that increases the 'nade blast radius. I thought this would assist in the jump but it was just killing us every time. Only clicked after we gave up in frustration.

Nade jumps are usually fun and I can pull them off easy enough without much trouble.
 

Snowballo

Member
How does the SAVE&QUIT feature work exactly?

I'm in trouble.
I started the game a Legendary level. Beated level 1.
In the mid of level 2 (on Halo) I pressed Save and Quit on the menu and then I turned off.
When back, my "instant save" was lost.
Reading around it seems that if you Save & Quit you can only resume if you DON'T turn the console off.

Does it make any sense to you?
Can you confirm?

Thanks.
 
How does the SAVE&QUIT feature work exactly?

I'm in trouble.
I started the game a Legendary level. Beated level 1.
In the mid of level 2 (on Halo) I pressed Save and Quit on the menu and then I turned off.
When back, my "instant save" was lost.
Reading around it seems that if you Save & Quit you can only resume if you DON'T turn the console off.

Does it make any sense to you?
Can you confirm?

Thanks.
Wouldn't be much point in saving if you couldn't turn off the console. In my experience with both Halo CE and Anniversary, that shouldn't happen and you can turn off your console and resume your progress later. Perhaps you turned off the console before it had finished saving?
 

Snowballo

Member
Wouldn't be much point in saving if you couldn't turn off the console. In my experience with both Halo CE and Anniversary, that shouldn't happen and you can turn off your console and resume your progress later. Perhaps you turned off the console before it had finished saving?

Thanks for your reply.
It doenn't make here too.
Anwyay, nope, I saved and went back to the title screen.
Then I turned off and as you see I lost everything.

I can say this: my console was offline untill yesterday.
Then I installed a patch (I don't know what it does) and didn't try with the patch installed yet.

Last thing, please read this post.
http://halo.xbox.com/Forums/yaf_postst55059_Resuming-Saved-session-in-Holo-anniversary.aspx
 
A quick question. I got to the point in the game where you get your first warthog and you are supposed to go in the cave and make a jump. The problem is that I managed to destroy that warthog. What do I do now? Any help would be appreciated.
 
A quick question. I got to the point in the game where you get your first warthog and you are supposed to go in the cave and make a jump. The problem is that I managed to destroy that warthog. What do I do now? Any help would be appreciated.
Warthogs are indestructible in this game, and there's no bottomless pit you could've purposely thrown it off of. If it flipped over, you can just flip it back with the button prompt when you get near.
 
Thanks for your reply.
It doenn't make here too.
Anwyay, nope, I saved and went back to the title screen.
Then I turned off and as you see I lost everything.

I can say this: my console was offline untill yesterday.
Then I installed a patch (I don't know what it does) and didn't try with the patch installed yet.

Last thing, please read this post.
http://halo.xbox.com/Forums/yaf_postst55059_Resuming-Saved-session-in-Holo-anniversary.aspx
Well, the Save & Quit function in Anniversary has always performed exactly like it did in CE for me. Sorry, can't help you.
 

Snowballo

Member
I'd like you guys that are playing this game confirm me the following.

If you are playing and in the middle of a level and then you SAVE AND QUIT, you turn the console off and later you turn on, start the game and RESUME your game, will you start in the exact point where you left the game or you start at the beginning of level?

Note: yesterday I beated level 2. After the cutscene a save error (it was not possible to save the game) message was displayed. I don't know if this is related to my problem and how to solve it.
 
Warthogs are indestructible in this game, and there's no bottomless pit you could've purposely thrown it off of. If it flipped over, you can just flip it back with the button prompt when you get near.

It looked like it was on fire. I must be the first one that destroyed it. :) I will look for it again, but I couldn't find it before...
 

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
I'd like you guys that are playing this game confirm me the following.

If you are playing and in the middle of a level and then you SAVE AND QUIT, you turn the console off and later you turn on, start the game and RESUME your game, will you start in the exact point where you left the game or you start at the beginning of level?

Note: yesterday I beated level 2. After the cutscene a save error (it was not possible to save the game) message was displayed. I don't know if this is related to my problem and how to solve it.

I have a solution - play till the end of a level when you want to stop. easy :p Or play the whole game in one sitting, obviously.

for the record, I've never had a problem save/quitting and resuming later. You won't start in the exact spot though, it will usually start you from your last checkpoint.

Never had a save error either. Sounds like something is wrong with your xbox maybe?
 

Snowballo

Member
Thanks for the hint :)

Sadly I'm playing it at Ledendary level and it is a nightmare.
So, considering what happens to you, it seems something related to a problem that I have, not the game.

I will try cleaning the cache, reinstalling the game on the HDD and saving on memory card eventually.

Anyway you told me that it resumes, not in the very exact point but in the same "segment".
 

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Thanks for the hint :)

Sadly I'm playing it at Ledendary level and it is a nightmare.
So, considering what happens to you, it seems something related to a problem that I have, not the game.

I will try cleaning the cache, reinstalling the game on the HDD and saving on memory card eventually.

Anyway you told me that it resumes, not in the very exact point but in the same "segment".

Yeah, it's never the same point but it should be the same checkpoint at least.
 
A quick question. I got to the point in the game where you get your first warthog and you are supposed to go in the cave and make a jump. The problem is that I managed to destroy that warthog. What do I do now? Any help would be appreciated.

Warthogs are indestructible in this game, and there's no bottomless pit you could've purposely thrown it off of. If it flipped over, you can just flip it back with the button prompt when you get near.
There's an achievement for doing this level on foot, so you're going to have to know how to grenade jump over that aforementioned jump. Took me a few tries, but it's pretty simple. Achievement Hunter has it posted if you can't figure it out (sorry, can't post youtube clips from work).
 
There's an achievement for doing this level on foot, so you're going to have to know how to grenade jump over that aforementioned jump. Took me a few tries, but it's pretty simple. Achievement Hunter has it posted if you can't figure it out (sorry, can't post youtube clips from work).

I already drove that vehichle off the cliff so achievement thing will not work for me, right? Plus I only have plasma grenade on me ...
 

erpg

GAF parliamentarian
I already drove that vehichle off the cliff so achievement thing will not work for me, right? Plus I only have plasma grenade on me ...
The achievement is for never stepping foot in a vehicle. And what cliff? There's no cliff.

Unless you've already made the small jump and are talking about the light bridge room?
 
I already drove that vehichle off the cliff so achievement thing will not work for me, right? Plus I only have plasma grenade on me ...
You'll have to restart the level if you want the achievement and do the whole thing on foot. Other than that, you'll hit a checkpoint once you're inside the Forerunner 'cave', and if you don't make the jump you'll die from fall damage and automatically restart at that checkpoint.
 
The achievement is for never stepping foot in a vehicle. And what cliff? There's no cliff.

Unless you've already made the small jump and are talking about the light bridge room?

There is a cliff right in front of the cave. Are we talking about the same part of the game?
 
You'll have to restart the level if you want the achievement and do the whole thing on foot. Other than that, you'll hit a checkpoint once you're inside the Forerunner 'cave', and if you don't make the jump you'll die from fall damage and automatically restart at that checkpoint.

Not sure if it's worth it but i might try. I wonder if there's a way to get my vehicle back :)
 

CorrisD

badchoiceboobies
To bump the seemingly at this point dead thread, how well does the co-op through Live run?
A friend and I always play the Halo games together so we were thinking of picking this up and going through it as Halo1/2 are the only ones we haven't been able to do over Live.
 

stephen08

Member
To bump the seemingly at this point dead thread, how well does the co-op through Live run?
A friend and I always play the Halo games together so we were thinking of picking this up and going through it as Halo1/2 are the only ones we haven't been able to do over Live.

It is absolutely terrible over Live. Unless you live extremely close to each other or have a really good connection to one another expect the host to play normally and the off-host player to have the most miserable online experience possible.
 

CorrisD

badchoiceboobies
It is absolutely terrible over Live. Unless you live extremely close to each other or have a really good connection to one another expect the host to play normally and the off-host player to have the most miserable online experience possible.

Damn, I had heard it wasn't great when it released but I guess they never tried to fix it, well that's rather lame, maybe it isn't worth picking up as we don't really get to splitscreen which I imagine would be the best way to co-op it if is terrible over Live.

Oh well, thanks anyway.
 
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