Let’s Talk - Halo

Halo is a contentious topic for me these days. I can talk it with pretty much anyone who will listen. My friend Goose (Alex) is the one whom I can probably talk  the most in depth with, as we've talked balance and design throughout most halos since H3 when we became friends. Whether armor lock is OP, what maps are good, which are bad, why. My friend Rick and I will both read the novels and talk lore and story direction. Up to this point I've read probably guessing, 80% of establish halo extended fiction. 

What I'm getting here, is I'm quite passionate about Halo. It is amongst my "Top 3" in gaming. I love shooters, and I'm also partial to the real time strategy genre. I'll play other games but those are my mainstays. Number one, is and was Halo, while the other side of the coin is Homeworld which could be considered a close 2, and to make the distinction, Homeworld is the best space based RTS while the best ground based at 3 is Supreme commander.

The crazy thing is that of those 3, I've easily spent the most time across Halo titles. Halo 1 was a renaissance for me. Before halo, there was Perfect Dark, and before that Goldeneye. Both great games in their own right. Halo was, to quote Bungies Luke "Froman" Timmins "This is it. This could very well be it." Halo was like nothing I ever saw or played before. I can still remember the first day I saw it and how alien it felt. My brother from another mother, Larry had gotten an Xbox for Christmas in 2001. He asked what games he should get, and me, pretending I knew something said, "I heard this one was ok" and pointed at Halo. Then when I next came to his place he was on the second level, with a needler, mostly out of ammo. We realized we could play co-op which was crazy since up to then Jet Force Gemini was the only "co-op" experience is really played. We started on easy and thought it was insanely hard. We were young but it was so much fun! 

What followed was my becoming "the halo guy". I'd play other things, but Halo was it. The game I called "Home". Skipping class at the launch of Halo 2, LAN parties to all hours of the night. Halo 3's launch post high school and the setting up of a permanent LAN setup in my basement for LAN Halo games any day we wanted. When I moved? Going away LAN party. Now every year I return home, Halo LAN is present in some fashion.

When Reach came out, (ODST was good, but a small experience) we still played.  Let me be clear on where I stand. Lots of my friends will say that Reach was the best Halo game. I do not hold that sentiment. I think that as far as features, yes, Halo Reach is the best, however Halo 3 is, in my opinion to this day the most well rounded. I thought Armor Abilities were fine, but I hated fighting around them. Shoot a guy, he armor locks, runs away, turns out to be a hologram. It was ok for a while, but I eventually got to a point of missing the simplistic but deep combat of Halo 1-3.

To me, the only flaw of the original trilogy was the BR was king, and net code could be an issue. Reaches net code was great, but I didn't want to combat bloom all the time. Because of these drawbacks, and the obvious disdain from the Halo community at large, I refer to Reach as a "black sheep". Being sure that Bungie would take it back to its roots while maintaining what great strides Reach had made. Unfortunately as it turns out, the winds of change were blowing...

343 Industries

It was announced that Bungie wanted freedom from Microsoft, but if they did, they would have to leave Halo behind. So Bungie left, and Microsoft kept Halo. 

Enter 343 Industries.  A company built from scratch to make Halo games. Comprised of developers from a variety of backgrounds, all wanting to make Halo. So to start off, at this juncture I'm INCREDIBLY skeptical. A company not Bungie making Halo? How? I don't know if they have what it takes. So I watch from a distance. Start listening to the "343 sparkcast" where they talk about improvements.  Bring back armor abilities? They take out armor lock, so that's something I guess. Replace descope with flinch?  That sounds questionable. Verdict? I really don't know. Debut their first launch "Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary". A remake of Halo 1 with new maps for Reach multiplayer to make a spiritual successor to its multiplayer. The new maps are for the most part pretty good. Mostly made by Certain Affinity, but that's ok. Campaign is pretty solid overall remaster. I'm "ok with this".

I break down to hype, believe their promises. Their "Trust Us" statements, and buy Halo 4. The collectors edition no less. It came with all the maps, surely I want this. I mean, come on, cheaper maps, and from a company built to make Halo. 

Matt and I actually wait all day for our deliveries get impatient, and go out and buy a split screenable copy to play in the meantime.

Almost immediately I notice issues. Grunts and Elites sound weird. Gun handling doesn't feel smooth like I'm used to with every other Halo. Story inconsistencies are present. I try to reassure myself. "New company, going to have to learn a little, and also are going to have different design decisions".

Let's play matchmaking. Let's be real, that's where most time is spent, campaign is ok anyway.  Start playing.

To save time a quick bullet list of things that  come out during no the following couple of weeks.

- Everyone sprinting is a huge map design and escape issue.

- Armor abilities are still obnoxious.

- Power weapons are ludicrously powerful.

- The entire summon your weapons from the sky system.

- No weapons on map.

- Not an Arena shooter.

The list could go on and on. "Maybe it's just me?" I think. Upon talking to my friends, they all hate it too. What the hell happened? After this, I more or less abandon Halo. Novels come out and are horrible stories, with forced rhetoric and no intelligent writing in them. I go cold on halo for the most part and turn to other

games for the remainder of the 360's primary lifecycle. Xbox one comes out, I move on. Titanfall, Battlefield 4, a variety of satisfying games. A halo light at the end of the tunnel emerges.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Oh man. 3 great Halo games and 1 piece of hot garbage in a collection for 60 dollars? All on the new console, with fresh servers. Also, at 60 frames per second (which I was never elitist enough to care) which could be alright. Sounds great. I know at this point based on Halo 4, they had no idea how to make a Halo game without modern shooter trends, but MCC could be what I need. Get MCC and ignore 343 and their madness for the foreseeable future. Can't wait. They can't possibly mess this up. I mean, H1 Anniversary turned out well, and this is fairly similar, right? I mean, Right?

Nope.

Sitting that night, in my room was a period of pure denial. I called my roommate Matt in to play split screen. He didn't buy the game right out because of Halo 4, and I couldn't blame him. So split  screen would have to do, ala the "old days". However, we were sitting for a while waiting for a match. "No one has the game installed yet, that's all". Then after waiting all night and playing maybe 1 broken match, I call it quits and head to bed. I'd taken the day after off just to play, so I would have plenty of time tomorrow.

The next day, I jump on and still, barely getting matches. Something like a match an hour if I was lucky? "Oh, must be the servers couldn't stand the load. Typical. Oh well, I'm sure in the next couple days it will be resolved if not by later today." I couldn't see what was coming. It couldn't possibly be that bad, so It didn't even cross my mind. As days past, and STILL no decent matchmaking, I start looking up info. Apparently, people everywhere are having issues. BIG ISSUES. More than I'd care to list here. Point is, there was something far worse than servers wrong here. Halo The Master Chief Collection was fundamentally broken, and in such a way, that its population would never recover.

More than a month passes. Several patches promising to "fix matchmaking" come and go. People have at this point given up. People will only take so many false promises. People stop coming back for MCC patches. However, in the end of December of that year...

Halo 5 Beta

At this point, I'm pretty well done with 343 industries, and their garbage. They've proven themselves wholly incompetent. Let's see what they've cooked up for Halo 5 beta.

The UI won't let you back out , and there's some occasional freezing. After the MCC, nothing surprises me. What about the gameplay? Is it finally Halo that everyone wants? Or is it more drivel? Take a guess.

The art style is still the questionable thing that to this day I wonder just... Why? F***ing sprint! It's STILL in the game. I thought people, and more over 343 realized what it did to the maps and gameplay?! Apparently not. Descope is back, but now we have ADS. "Ugh" More modern shooter garbage that apparently MUST be in the game to make it familiar to everyone who plays every other shooter currently out. Maps, even remakes are HUGE. This is... This is, what is this? I play for a few hours across a few days, and completely lose interest.

Arguments break out across the Internet. New Halo players vs Veterans. The term "Purist" becomes a dirty term to describe people who aren't interested in 343's direction for Halo. That all those people want is a reskin of Halo 2/3 or Halo 3.5. After this, most people give up. MCC is a ghost town. Still broken in some ways, and new fans can't see what made the original games special. They're just "slow", and "wouldn't work today". Buzzwords become the norm, and people who saw what made Halo special, most, just walk away. 

Halo 5 Launch

Halo 5 launch is pretty standard. Everyone waits for the dust to clear, asking "does it work?" And "is it another MCC?" 

Mostly, it becomes the following bullet points.

- NO SPLIT SCREEN JUST FOR 60 fps!

- NO LAN

- 343 can't tell a coherent story (campaign is bad)

- AI is bad

- "purists" feel it's just more halo that has unnecessary modern shooter mechanics jammed into it.

- Zealots love it, but are themselves, like the "purists" a minority. Everyone else leaves after they get their fill, to play the next game.

- Not enough maps, not enough playlists. (No BTB at launch, seriously?)

- No Forge.

It is a mix of solid base and extremely questionable design decisions obviously  targeted at pulling in modern shooter players, while trying to as loosely keep their "bring it back to its roots" promise to veteran players.

This is where I come in. I honestly don't know how to feel about Halo anymore.

I have a deep desire to love this franchise. However the story alone is mediocre at best. It shows much of the terrible story telling that the recent Halo novels had shown, and has boring uninteresting characters. (Except Buck. You'd have to be a fool to hate Buck) 

The best review that comes very close to my views is by Favyn. Watch here if you want to see that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUK0vApC-B8

I had read somewhere that likened it to a football team. You stick with your team, good years, or bad years. Do you though? Do you say to yourself "they've obviously learned some stuff, maybe it will keep getting better", or do you say "they've obviously lost sight of what made it special, and want to go another direction. I guess it is no longer for me."

I honestly don't know. Parts of Halo 5's multiplayer are fun, and feel good. Others feel terrible, and I honestly shake my head when I realize it's only that way to appeal to an audience that doesn't care or didn't love Halo for what made it special. I don't know that I've ever felt torn about such a seemingly trivial issue ever in my life. 

I guess time will tell. I'll keep sitting on the fence, and hopefully the grass will actually look green. On one side eventually. Till then, just keep on shooting.

- Emperor Tiberius

Game Review - Rainbow 6 Siege

In the most recent/current thing the Emperor is partaking in, is Rainbow 6 Siege. Playing on Xbox One because "PlayStation has no games" :p

I had seen a game in development called "Due Process" some time ago. It was a very in depth game about police vs ... Not police? Anyways, I watched the guys at Node on YouTube play and was instantly hooked. 

(If you'd like to see, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYq7ShPVJc )

Anyways, it's still a long way off. Last I saw, it was still using block looking dudes ala less than mine craft for its player models, so there was no chance for some time. 

However, some time later I saw gameplay for Rainbow 6 Siege, which had similar gameplay to Due Process, but was due later in the year. I'd seen Rainbow 6 a few times in the past, but hadn't had much exposure otherwise. I decided though, based on what I'd seen, I'd pick it up. 

So far it's been less than a week, but  from what I've played, I love it. The actual skill curve is quite steep. I can shoot, sure, but communication, tactics and planning, play far more a part than just merely the shooting.

The game starts you out with 3 modes. One that stands in for single player, Multiplayer, and then Co-op multiplayer. In lieu of full class customization, you instead unlock characters with special abilities and gear, whom you can then make a few choices about them such as a couple weapon choices, then attachments for said weapons, sidearm, followed by a choice between a couple equipments. Characters are however separated into offense and defense types, so if you unlocked nothing but offensive, you are then stuck with the base "recruit" class, which has very limited customization, but will get you by, until you can aquire enough credits to buy a character. If another player picks the only character you've bought, then you're out of luck. It's first come first serve.

As previously mentioned, characters are separated into offense and defense types. Then further by faction. Each characters purchase will first cost you 500 credits. Credits are gained by playing matches, but you are given enough to buy at least a couple characters to start out. Factions are SAS, FBI, GIGN, Spetsnaz, and GSG 9. As you buy into a faction, each having two offensive and 2 defensive characters, the price to buy another will add another 500 credits to the price. So in the end, to get all of say, the FBI, will cost you a total 5000 credits.

I started off playing through the single player content, which is a series of missions, each letting you play one of the characters, and teaching you a portion of the base mechanics. I thought this was a cool way to let people try out each character to get an idea of your play style, while also learning the mechanics. 

My only real gripe with this however is not being able to choose which character/lesson I want to learn or refresh on. Instead it's linear progression, making the player complete each mission before moving onto the next. Once I ran into a mission with a character that I didn't care for the feel of, I failed a lengthy mission twice and no longer had much interest in trying again. Thus character purchasing has been sheerly shots in the dark or based on watching other players in multiplayer.

After this, I jumped into the co-op with my roommate to get a further feel of how the game played. It was fun, but communication often was non existent. This was only exacerbated later on in full on multiplayer. I'll get into that a bit later.

The maps were fairly fun, but there are a multitude of enemies which could be quite difficult. One map in particular is full of gas that you can't see through very far and while is interesting, the computer can see what you can't, leading you to walk into ambushes all to often. This wouldn't be an issue, but the map rotation for co-op is a little rough around the edges, and as result, I played said map for what felt like 70% or so of my matches and I was finally sick of it. 

Each match comes with one of a variety of objectives. While co-op is focused purely on completing the objective, multiplayer objectives serve as an alternate win condition which usually only comes into play when one or two defensive players decide to hide or not pay attention. Though they can play a solid part of strategy in some cases. 

Objectives are bomb defuse, bio hazard container, and hostage. Bomb defuse has 2 bomb locations that splits the defense between 2 locations requiring the defense of both. The offensive team has one player per team who has a case that is deployed in vacinity of one of the bombs which then starts to disarm on a timer. At this time, defense has to defuse it or lose. Even if the offensive team is killed, the case can still serve as a sort of "torpedo in the water", which if not located can still win the match for the offensive team. Defense no matter the objective has to either kill all attackers, or defend until the time runs out. Time is around 5 minutes total. Also, if the player on offense whom is carrying the disarming case is killed, their team must reaquire the case or kill all defenders to win.

Biohazard instead is more about defending the room that the objective is in. (From the rainbow 6 wiki): 

• Attackers must locate the room housing the biohazard container and hold the position inside for at least 10 consecutive seconds. 
• Defenders must prevent the attackers from locking down the biohazard room by maintaining a presence within the same room. 
• The timer can be interrupted if any Defenders enter the room, Attackers must work to either eliminate them, or force the Defenders out of the room.

I found that the most fun as a defender as it was easier to secure the room. And it felt the most fair for both sides.

Hostage is similar to bio-hazard, but with a dangerous twist for both teams. The hostage spawns in a room much like the previous game type. At this point, baring killing the entire opposing team, the offense must acquire and safely escort the hostage to the extraction point marked out by flares. The catch here however is that if either team kills the hostage in the ensuing fight, their team loses outright. This poses a real challenge and need to use caution when using grenades. There is a character named "Fuse" whom has a special charge that injects grenades into a room for example. It is a running joke that on the hostage game mode, when chosen, he will invariably kill the hostage. The sad truth is, he really does, more often than not. It's a tense game type but can be a lot of fun.

The biggest key in this game is communication. As I said earlier on, teammates whom do not have mics are a huge hinderance. It is the opinion of this Emperor, that if you don't want to talk to your team, randoms or friends, you should not be playing this game. Too often teammates will ignore warnings of booby traps or ambushes resulting in their own death or in my case being next to them when they kill themselves resulting in my death as well. Thus, Mics are a must! Talk or get out. As my friend Mike (Toast King) Sailor said "take your copy back to Walmart and get a refund".

Final issue of important note is issue with servers and net coding. While the overall gameplay is very solid, the game suffers  from rampant server disconnect issues. From day one my friends and I have suffered through inability to connect to one another, mics not working properly, and just inability to play multiplayer. After a month now, the problem is still a serious issue. Also as I speak for me anyways, netcoding in this game is quite poor. Damage not being dealt etc, and my biggest gripe, people being a few frames behind where they actually are. People walking out in the open, and shooting me before I can actually see them. My hope is for patches and fixes for these issues before too much longer .

Despite the mentioned setbacks, I still have spent many hours with friends playing and hope to do more as more of my friends have picked up the game.

In the end, I give Rainbow 6 Siege - 7/10 Thug Lars Eyebrow Scars. I highly recommend you pick it up if you're looking for something new but don't want more cod in your life.

-Emperor Tiberius

A New Era is coming

It's been some time since posting here. I have since then, deleted the old posts, as there were only a few, and I didn't feel that they resonated with who I am, or how I felt about the subjects there in.

I have been wanting for a while to work on something mildly creative. I've had several projects on the back burners, and life being what it is, often get very busy, and when I'm not, find myself very tired. Thus, things like "let's plays", podcasts and the like, are very constrained by free time. Free time, which, as I said is almost non existent, and is often only used to rest when I have it.

That's not to say that, for all those ... One of you? That I will not finish those things (Don't worry Mike Sailor), but in the meantime, it only takes 20 minutes to jot down thought about various things, so for that reason, I'm bringing the "Taiifox Imperial Foundry" blog back up and running. However instead of merely thoughts or ideas, I thought I may review games and things of that nature now and again to fill in and get it out there.

Hopefully someone will read beyond one or two people who get bored but if not, oh well. This is for me, more than anything else.

In other news, besides this, I'm going to try to get some of the other afore mentioned projects at least worked on. I hate this constant feeling of not finishing what I start. So expect podcasts, and let's plays in the telenovela near future, and expect blog posts semi regularly also. 

San Dimas Highschool Football Rules,

-Emperor Tiberius