I'm in, uh, phase 3 I guess. I beat Leafly, got past the retro game and challeged the former stoat robot.. and I'm apparently stuck. I got to the second waypoint and no matter which way I go I just get crushed. Previously when you'd die you'd just unlock more stuff and come back more powerful until between RNG and your power level, you'd just eventaully steamroll stuff. But by swapping out the restarts with a checkpoint system, I'm not getting that power level. Also the energy decks suck ass to start when the robot plops out two 2/2 enemies and I just have my measly flipping empty container to block them, basically handing them 2 damage off the bat.
Am I just missing something, or am I really meant to just farm up cash over and over again?
It's another one of the best looking 360-era games I've seen (Bungie clearly got very comfy with that hardware) and the art direction and sound design are of a similar high quality. The narrative is simple, but it once again has actual characters in it! Flat, restrained, one-note characters, by and large, but characters nonetheless. You don't quite get attached to them, but when something bad happens you might go "aw." It does lack the sense of humor that Bungie had infused into a lot of their games, but given the material, it would have felt out of place if they'd tried it. There isn't quite an interesting story here, more an excuse for set-pieces, but it's simple, clean, and direct, and none of that is by necessity a bad thing. Even knowing how it has to end, the way they get there is legit entertaining, and the epilogue is a real excellent way to fuse their gameplay with their story in a meaningful way
The standout for me are the scenes with Halsey, which even though I only know the vague outlines of her character in the lore, gives off severe sociopath vibes. It's subtle and restrained, like the rest of the performances, but from almost the moment she's on screen I really did not like her. In a good way, though! I got the distinct feeling that's what they intended. Interesting dynamics with the squad leader and the big heavy guy, too, I appreciated that, small as it was
Olivaw don't read until you've finished Halo 4
Halo 4 ending up being one of my favorite storylines pretty much entirely for what it does with Master Chief and Cortana. It's a game that realizes that one of the biggest tragedies of Master Chief's existence is that he was trained to be a perfect soldier above all else, to the point where he is completely incapable of confronting the imminent death of the only friend he's ever had. Throughout the game Cortana tries to have a serious talk with him about rampancy, but he constantly brushes it aside, telling himself that if he just completes this next mission, everything will be fine. After all, completing the mission worked out for him before. If he just does what he was created to do--if he soldiers hard enough--Cortana will be saved.
He does win the fight. He defeats the big bad and saves the universe, but he still loses. And even if he had any idea how to process that grief, it feels like he's not allowed to, because he's the Master Chief.
Halo 4, to me, signaled a willingness to turn inward and explore what it actually means to be this walking avatar of military might, and it left Chief in a fascinating place. I was genuinely excited to see what they would do with the franchise moving forward in a way I hadn't been since, like, Halo 1.
And then Halo 5 happened and flushed everything I actually liked about 4 down the toilet.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I'm in, uh, phase 3 I guess. I beat Leafly, got past the retro game and challeged the former stoat robot.. and I'm apparently stuck. I got to the second waypoint and no matter which way I go I just get crushed. Previously when you'd die you'd just unlock more stuff and come back more powerful until between RNG and your power level, you'd just eventaully steamroll stuff. But by swapping out the restarts with a checkpoint system, I'm not getting that power level. Also the energy decks suck ass to start when the robot plops out two 2/2 enemies and I just have my measly flipping empty container to block them, basically handing them 2 damage off the bat.
Am I just missing something, or am I really meant to just farm up cash over and over again?
Farming cash is a viable option of last resort, but I don't feel like I ever really wound up in that position. Make sure that you're clicking everything you come across; you'll find a few free new cards and the moral equivalent of the sigil-attachment events at various spots in the map. For sigil printing in particular, keep in mind that you'll be offered three different options and you can attach the sigil to any card you want, so make sure that you don't settle for something like the "refund an energy when played" sigil when "damage splitting" is available.
And if you want a slightly (only slightly) deeper mechanical spoiler,
Not every path is marked on the map; try hovering the mouse over empty spaces to see if there's an extra route that might have more goodies on it.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
a friend made fun of me for minecraft being the first thing i played when i upgraded my computer and look buddy i'd like to see you find a game with a better computer intensity to install time
agreed, minecraft has a huge amount of computational load scaleability if you crank up the chunk render distance, it's perfect for testing out new hardware
a friend made fun of me for minecraft being the first thing i played when i upgraded my computer and look buddy i'd like to see you find a game with a better computer intensity to install time
agreed, minecraft has a huge amount of computational load scaleability if you crank up the chunk render distance, it's perfect for testing out new hardware
minesweeper has such sights to show you, depressperado
Man, I'd love to see a gussied up Tetris Effect version of Minesweeper.
You guys just reminded me of a game I tried a little while ago and meant to mention here, Lizzi Crossing, I found it in that big itch bundle from last year. It's a cross between minesweeper and picross, and has an avatar you move around inside the puzzle. It's fairly unpolished but the concept seemed pretty neat, and I had some fun with it, I want to spend some more time with it once I finish these other puzzle games I'm doing.
minesweeper has such sights to show you, depressperado
Man, I'd love to see a gussied up Tetris Effect version of Minesweeper.
You guys just reminded me of a game I tried a little while ago and meant to mention here, Lizzi Crossing, I found it in that big itch bundle from last year. It's a cross between minesweeper and picross, and has an avatar you move around inside the puzzle. It's fairly unpolished but the concept seemed pretty neat, and I had some fun with it, I want to spend some more time with it once I finish these other puzzle games I'm doing.
Someone here pointed me to Tametsi, which is like minesweeper at its root, but it's all specifically built puzzles solvable without guessing. And the cells can be different shapes or colors and other rules. Great laptop game for when I'm at my parents, and cheap too. It was like, 3 bucks?
minesweeper has such sights to show you, depressperado
Man, I'd love to see a gussied up Tetris Effect version of Minesweeper.
You guys just reminded me of a game I tried a little while ago and meant to mention here, Lizzi Crossing, I found it in that big itch bundle from last year. It's a cross between minesweeper and picross, and has an avatar you move around inside the puzzle. It's fairly unpolished but the concept seemed pretty neat, and I had some fun with it, I want to spend some more time with it once I finish these other puzzle games I'm doing.
Someone here pointed me to Tametsi, which is like minesweeper at its root, but it's all specifically built puzzles solvable without guessing. And the cells can be different shapes or colors and other rules. Great laptop game for when I'm at my parents, and cheap too. It was like, 3 bucks?
minesweeper has such sights to show you, depressperado
Man, I'd love to see a gussied up Tetris Effect version of Minesweeper.
You guys just reminded me of a game I tried a little while ago and meant to mention here, Lizzi Crossing, I found it in that big itch bundle from last year. It's a cross between minesweeper and picross, and has an avatar you move around inside the puzzle. It's fairly unpolished but the concept seemed pretty neat, and I had some fun with it, I want to spend some more time with it once I finish these other puzzle games I'm doing.
Someone here pointed me to Tametsi, which is like minesweeper at its root, but it's all specifically built puzzles solvable without guessing. And the cells can be different shapes or colors and other rules. Great laptop game for when I'm at my parents, and cheap too. It was like, 3 bucks?
Someone here pointed me to Tametsi, which is like minesweeper at its root, but it's all specifically built puzzles solvable without guessing. And the cells can be different shapes or colors and other rules. Great laptop game for when I'm at my parents, and cheap too. It was like, 3 bucks?
have you already played the Hexcells family?
The first few levels of Tametsi were just like Hexcells levels.
Then I got to level 4 and this happened.
hmmmmmm. this bodes ill.
(edit: the Hexcells series (and the other ones by the same guy) are fantastic, though, they're also hand-crafted and solvable without guessing, and there's a series of walkthroughs on Steam where someone goes through all the levels and doesn't just provide solutions, they explain _why_ they're the solutions at every step, which is great for working out the tricks you need for some of the more complex levels)
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
edited November 2021
Halo update, final entry: Halo 4 owns, actually, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise
I mean, sure, the gameplay is so-so -- the new weapons don't feel at all unique, the armor abilities feel more superfluous than ever, and there are like three new enemy types in total and the most common one is my least favorite enemy since Brutes! (Though at least those fuckin' cyberdogs are easy to kill...) There's also kind of a lot of very linear corridor shooting. I'm no Halo scholar, but I feel I've at least got my undergrad in combat puzzles and the encounter design doesn't feel nearly as deliberate and considered as Bungie's best work
But the aesthetics of the thing, its technical artistry, its halfway-decent precursor race art direction (got old by the end but was pretty striking most of the time!), its solid music, its truly incredible sound design (with the sole exception of that one room with all the turrets in it...) and especially its storytelling, are all so on point that I find it really hard to give a damn about some fairly rote gameplay sections. Yeah, a lot of weapons are kind of lame, but they feel real good to shoot, have some truly crunchy reload sounds, and whoever designed the weapons shared my enthusiasm for bullet hose machine guns, so I found myself enjoying even the most boring sections because my eyes and ears were exposed to near-constant positive reinforcement
Heck, I give this game credit, it almost manages to explain everything it needs to! We get an exposition dump about what the Didact wants and what the Composer is and all that, and that's a bit more than we usually get with these games, so it was much appreciated. The terminals you find fill in much more of the backstory and almost make the Didact into a semi-interesting villain, but y'know, not quite, so marginal points for that. There are some Bungie-tier proper nouns here ("Didact" and "ancilla" being the best) but also some that fall short (the ship is just called "Infinity" which is thoroughly lame in comparison to shit like "Pillar of Autumn" and "Forward Unto Dawn") and it all feeds into the typical Halo thing of "interesting ideas that I don't know enough about to be truly interested in"
But there are a couple questions the game never actually answers, and it almost seems like the game forgot about them! Such as: why were the Covenant there?? Who was leading them?? And where the FUCK is the Arbiter???
Anyway, here's what I think was going down:
So Chief wakes up and all of a sudden they're being attacked by Covenant for some reason, but they're also being sucked into the gravity well (which is a real physics thing but is also like a device I guess?) of this giant cyber planet, and once they sucked in their busted-ass ship is torn apart and they crash land and fight Covenant until they get another signal from a UNSC ship "Infinity" which is coming from the center of the planet for some reason. Oh yeah, the planet is hollow, but it has a metal sky you can't see most of the time and a fake sun inside, but the planet INSIDE the planet is ALSO hollow, so in the center of THAT they go and try to use a weird device to contact the ship only to find out that they were tricked (I guess??) into opening up the Didact's orange prison egg, and he's been luring in the Infinity as well so he can... trap them inside here? I dunno really
Anyway point is he's bad, and when Chief encounters the hologram of the Librarian, she drops some lore on us that I think is a giant retcon? It says that humans and forerunners existed at the same time (which we knew) but it also said that we were at war with them, which I thought... we were like their weird children? Or were geneseeded by them? I dunno I haven't actually dug into the lore but that's the impression I got. Hence the whole "Reclaimer" bit because only humans can use their technology. But according to Halo 4, we were at war and eventually got beaten and sentenced to "regression" which, assigning intelligence and "civilization" to something like genetics is pretty fucked but whatever we gotta keep moving, because we were only at war with them because they were in our way and we were running from the Flood! Which I guess we knew about before the forerunners?? Okay then! Anyway since our giant thousand year war (if we were running from the Flood how did we survive a war for a thousand years???) and then, weakened, the forerunners were like "I guess these humans are pretty baller, we'll regress them but then leave our technology to them when we die, which we're gonna because the Flood are here" and then they pop the cork on the Halo rings and end all sentient life in the galaxy (except humans which I guess weren't smart enough to count??? even though they show us like making huts and toys and stuff???) including them, except for the forerunners that they imprisoned in weird eggs, the ones who got "composed" into AI shells or holograms, and the ancient humans that were punished with imprisonment for the big war, which were turned into Prometheans, who would be immortal and cool robot guys except that because they are turned essentially into AI, they eventually go crazy/rampant just like original flavor AI do
OKAY so then the Didact is out and he's like "well fuck humans still, I'm gonna compose the shit outta them and imprison them in these shells and then eventually they'll got insane but also still obey my commands somehow cuz they robots" and Chief is like "fuck that" but also when he talks to the Librarian she drops the ULTIMATE bomb and says that she (either her specifically or her species in general) planned for Chief to exist??? Like they seeded genetics and foresaw and planned the future out so good that it would create him specifically, from his training to his "combat skin" to his "ancilla" Cortana! They planned on creating him specifically to exterminate the Flood, defend humanity, and presumably take out the Didact and whatever else! Nevermind how the hell they could have done this, this has now made Mister Chief into not just the last Spartan of his generation, not only a genetically enhanced and horrifically trained super soldier and galactic savior, now he's just a straight up Chosen One and that's fuckin' nuts. Oh, and then she does a capital-s Something to him that felt like the equivalent of Lord Guru unlocking Gohan's potential or something, because now he's immune to composition and, one assumes, will gain superpowers at some point? He could hear the Didact when Cortana couldn't, which speaks to either some weird psychic shared-consciousness shit, or to Cortana's growing rampancy, one or the other
Anyway Chief fights the Didact a bunch and then he does a StarFox level near the end (which involves too much dodging and not enough shooting but hey even mediocre StarFox is still StarFox!) and then detonates a nuke with his bare hands and somehow survives because Cortana, and then she dies (except I know she doesn't because sequels) and Chief is left bereaved and completely unable to process because there was exactly one person in the universe that he cared about, and who cared about him, and now she is dead and he is completely alone
PHEW. Going through it, actually, the main plot is... pretty bad, honestly! Lots of neat ideas, but a lot of weird/lame ones too, and a lot of contrivance and poorly explained bits. I think what makes it work is the cutscene and voice direction, both of which were on point throughout, even for lame characters who don't make a ton of sense, like Captain Del Rio, who commands his men to arrest the guy who literally saved the entire universe just because he refused an order, like god damn I know some guys are real control freaks but that's a little absurd. The doctor at the research station did a good job too, and her end was genuinely horrifying in a way that I didn't expect! Great visual effect on the Composer, getting digitized and inserted into a robot shell/server somewhere doesn't sound like the worst thing until you actually see it get done, y'know? That was smart of them to include that
But all of that, absolutely all of it, is completely ancillary to the real story, which was about Chief and Cortana. That was genuinely well-executed, giving them both a ton of characterization and a ton more emotional heft, to the point where the final scene in the game actually got me feeling some type of way! Certainly much more than I expected
So, TL;DR: Halo 4 is not the best Halo game in terms of balance or design, but it is the best Halo game in terms of aesthetic, storytelling, and sound design! God damn 343, you did a hell of a job and should be proud of this work
It's another one of the best looking 360-era games I've seen (Bungie clearly got very comfy with that hardware) and the art direction and sound design are of a similar high quality. The narrative is simple, but it once again has actual characters in it! Flat, restrained, one-note characters, by and large, but characters nonetheless. You don't quite get attached to them, but when something bad happens you might go "aw." It does lack the sense of humor that Bungie had infused into a lot of their games, but given the material, it would have felt out of place if they'd tried it. There isn't quite an interesting story here, more an excuse for set-pieces, but it's simple, clean, and direct, and none of that is by necessity a bad thing. Even knowing how it has to end, the way they get there is legit entertaining, and the epilogue is a real excellent way to fuse their gameplay with their story in a meaningful way
The standout for me are the scenes with Halsey, which even though I only know the vague outlines of her character in the lore, gives off severe sociopath vibes. It's subtle and restrained, like the rest of the performances, but from almost the moment she's on screen I really did not like her. In a good way, though! I got the distinct feeling that's what they intended. Interesting dynamics with the squad leader and the big heavy guy, too, I appreciated that, small as it was
Olivaw don't read until you've finished Halo 4
Halo 4 ending up being one of my favorite storylines pretty much entirely for what it does with Master Chief and Cortana. It's a game that realizes that one of the biggest tragedies of Master Chief's existence is that he was trained to be a perfect soldier above all else, to the point where he is completely incapable of confronting the imminent death of the only friend he's ever had. Throughout the game Cortana tries to have a serious talk with him about rampancy, but he constantly brushes it aside, telling himself that if he just completes this next mission, everything will be fine. After all, completing the mission worked out for him before. If he just does what he was created to do--if he soldiers hard enough--Cortana will be saved.
He does win the fight. He defeats the big bad and saves the universe, but he still loses. And even if he had any idea how to process that grief, it feels like he's not allowed to, because he's the Master Chief.
Halo 4, to me, signaled a willingness to turn inward and explore what it actually means to be this walking avatar of military might, and it left Chief in a fascinating place. I was genuinely excited to see what they would do with the franchise moving forward in a way I hadn't been since, like, Halo 1.
And then Halo 5 happened and flushed everything I actually liked about 4 down the toilet.
Yo I am right there with you!
The way that the opening with Halsey (which we never come back to, so we never know why she's being interrogated... chalk that up to another thing I wish the game answered or came back to) actually acknowledges how fucked up her "training" was and how fundamentally broken Chief is? That instantly establishes his character in a way that three previous games somehow didn't! And that characterization is what makes his absolute refusal to accept Cortana's incoming rampancy (themed almost like a terminal illness) into something genuinely emotionally involving
Because this guy isn't a machine, despite Cortana's frustrated remark late in the game. And he's not just a soldier, wholly apart from humanity, despite his own remark at the very end. He's a human dude named John! He does still feel, and care, and love. The problem is that he only truly feels those things for one person, which makes the thought of losing that person so unacceptable. Because then he would have nothing
The end of Halo 4 is, exactly like you said, a loss for him. He accomplished the mission, but he didn't accomplish his mission. And no matter how much he is compelled by duty to protect Earth and safeguard humanity and all that nonsense, he doesn't care about Earth, or his fellow soldiers, or the UNSC. He only cares about Cortana. Because she too is uniquely apart from humanity, because she's been a constant in his life, and because she didn't treat him like... well like anyone else treats him, like a soldier, or a tool, or a savior figure. That willingness to interrogate Chief as a character, to actually look inward like you said? Is a really great choice
And man hearing that Halo 5 squanders that truly sucks
Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
edited November 2021
Well! That's Halo! I guess I'm done with it now! I don't own any more, I hear Halo 5 kind of sucks and you couldn't pay me to play a Halo Wars game, so I guess it's down to whether or not Infinite is any good. I hope it is! I guess I'm a Halo guy now, kind of!
I suppose I could read the books... but that's a line I'm not quite willing to cross yet. Not while I've got plenty of other less trashy sci-fi to read first!
You play Star Lord, but you command the rest; mechanically you're playing the team (even if at the start of the game it feels like they're all just One Power each).
I am playing through San Andreas, and I forgot how quickly CJ just starts murdering people for no good reason.
A garbage friend asks you to murder a bunch of people so you can steal a book of lyrics from a rapper? Welp, time to stab some people in the back. Said garbage friend then asks you to kill some rapper? You lock the rapper and his girlfriend in a car and then drive it off a pier into the ocean.
CJ: We are going to murder a guy at a funeral!?
Sweet: Yes.
CJ: OK.
Well! That's Halo! I guess I'm done with it now! I don't own any more, I hear Halo 5 kind of sucks and you couldn't pay me to play a Halo Wars game, so I guess it's down to whether or not Infinite is any good. I hope it is! I guess I'm a Halo guy now, kind of!
I suppose I could read the books... but that's a line I'm not quite willing to cross yet. Not while I've got plenty of other less trashy sci-fi to read first!
Well! That's Halo! I guess I'm done with it now! I don't own any more, I hear Halo 5 kind of sucks and you couldn't pay me to play a Halo Wars game, so I guess it's down to whether or not Infinite is any good. I hope it is! I guess I'm a Halo guy now, kind of!
I suppose I could read the books... but that's a line I'm not quite willing to cross yet. Not while I've got plenty of other less trashy sci-fi to read first!
In case you're curious about how Halo 5 fucks up Halo 4's setup
The basic plot of Halo 5 is that Master Chief discovers Cortana cured her Rampancy and has taken over a Precursor facility. He goes rogue to find her, and a different Spartan team (assisted by Halsey) is sent to look for him and bring him back--by force, if necessary.
Chief and his squad do find Cortana, but it turns out she's gone full cliche-evil-AI and wants to become God Empress of the Galaxy by using all of the Precursors' sweet tech to keep all the organics oppressed. So the two Spartan squads eventually team up to defeat her.
So yes, not only does Halsey get to be a good guy who helps save the galaxy, Cortana heel-turns in the dumbest way possible. There is one pretty cool scene where Cortana broadcasts herself to the entire UNSC and asks the AI if they want to stick with the people who deliberately built in a death timer, or if they want to side with her, and you get a sequence of a ton of AI abandoning their UNSC posts. But the impact is stymied by the fact that Cortana isn't just at war to destroy the UNSC (which WOULD be a righteous goal). She's doing war to control all organic life, but especially humans.
The truly wild thing is that this is contrasted by the shit Arbiter is doing while all this is happening. He's currently fighting a civil war with the remaining Covenant in order to preserve a peaceful relationship with humans. He's fighting against the same people he used to fight alongside, because he knows that if he succeeds, he'll secure a better future for everyone. You could have just done this with Cortana, too! Instead of becoming a Space Fascist, have her specifically target the UNSC, arguing that it's the only way to prevent the continued creation and abuse of AI like her and child soldiers like John. Have her convince Chief to help her by pointing out that the UNSC at-large doesn't actually care about humanity, it just cares about doing war well. You could even incorporate the dangling thread of Halsey never facing any consequences by highlighting how fucked up it is that this lady has done a bunch of horrible shit, but the UNSC still keeps her around because it still kinda wants her to keep doing all those things, even if the higher-ups don't want to admit it.
Unfortunately, Halo has always been a series that thinks the military is pretty rad, so I suppose "destroy the UNSC to build something better" was never going to happen.
Give me a Halo that is just Master Chief and some alien friends destroying the UNSC
Give me a Halo game that is the Arbiter hanging out with his alien friends finally breaking the last chains of the Covenant and then at the end his friend the Demon can show up and be like "hey wanna help me help humanity do better too?"
Give me a Halo that is just Master Chief and some alien friends destroying the UNSC
Have Chief and the Arbiter looking into this rogue covenant terrorist group threatening the peace by attacking human civilians colonies to find out that some division of ONI is funding it, then when they get to ONI they find out that it is actually the full UNSC government planning the attacks simply to retain power because they know the moment real peace is obtained, the people will demand change.
It turns out that the UNSC is really controlled by a group of AIs that have formed a war economy reliant on constant warfare. They are creating a new world without ideology, principles, or ideals.
What I am saying is that Halo should go Metal Gear
what are the rules governing whether a boss will take their full iframes (or whatever the technical term here is) or not? It's hard to describe what I mean, so here's a recording I took:
what are the rules governing whether a boss will take their full iframes (or whatever the technical term here is) or not? It's hard to describe what I mean, so here's a recording I took:
If I am understanding a speedrunning trick guide I found correctly, Zero's first two slashes in his three slash combo do the short iframes while the third slash causes the long version, so if you just never do the full combo you won't trigger the long iframes. Sounds like this only works in Zero 1 though.
It's kind of unironically implied that the Chief is the suit, isn't it? Like Tony Stark and the Iron Man armor, except he never gets to have the realization that the suit is just a tool. So the personality that is Master Chief can't survive without it.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I am playing through San Andreas, and I forgot how quickly CJ just starts murdering people for no good reason.
A garbage friend asks you to murder a bunch of people so you can steal a book of lyrics from a rapper? Welp, time to stab some people in the back. Said garbage friend then asks you to kill some rapper? You lock the rapper and his girlfriend in a car and then drive it off a pier into the ocean.
CJ: We are going to murder a guy at a funeral!?
Sweet: Yes.
CJ: OK.
There was a screenshot lets play on Something Awful long ago, and the meta narrative the player wrote for that part was that CJ was having terrible insomnia and was going on days without sleep and thats why he was ok with all the crazy murder in that section.
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Am I just missing something, or am I really meant to just farm up cash over and over again?
Olivaw don't read until you've finished Halo 4
He does win the fight. He defeats the big bad and saves the universe, but he still loses. And even if he had any idea how to process that grief, it feels like he's not allowed to, because he's the Master Chief.
Halo 4, to me, signaled a willingness to turn inward and explore what it actually means to be this walking avatar of military might, and it left Chief in a fascinating place. I was genuinely excited to see what they would do with the franchise moving forward in a way I hadn't been since, like, Halo 1.
And then Halo 5 happened and flushed everything I actually liked about 4 down the toilet.
Man, I'd love to see a gussied up Tetris Effect version of Minesweeper.
I always install Diablo 2 first. The original. I usually play it for about five minutes, but it feels like an important ritual.
And if you want a slightly (only slightly) deeper mechanical spoiler,
agreed, minecraft has a huge amount of computational load scaleability if you crank up the chunk render distance, it's perfect for testing out new hardware
Also it has RTX now
You guys just reminded me of a game I tried a little while ago and meant to mention here, Lizzi Crossing, I found it in that big itch bundle from last year. It's a cross between minesweeper and picross, and has an avatar you move around inside the puzzle. It's fairly unpolished but the concept seemed pretty neat, and I had some fun with it, I want to spend some more time with it once I finish these other puzzle games I'm doing.
Someone here pointed me to Tametsi, which is like minesweeper at its root, but it's all specifically built puzzles solvable without guessing. And the cells can be different shapes or colors and other rules. Great laptop game for when I'm at my parents, and cheap too. It was like, 3 bucks?
have you already played the Hexcells family?
I have not.
The first few levels of Tametsi were just like Hexcells levels.
Then I got to level 4 and this happened.
hmmmmmm. this bodes ill.
(edit: the Hexcells series (and the other ones by the same guy) are fantastic, though, they're also hand-crafted and solvable without guessing, and there's a series of walkthroughs on Steam where someone goes through all the levels and doesn't just provide solutions, they explain _why_ they're the solutions at every step, which is great for working out the tricks you need for some of the more complex levels)
I mean, sure, the gameplay is so-so -- the new weapons don't feel at all unique, the armor abilities feel more superfluous than ever, and there are like three new enemy types in total and the most common one is my least favorite enemy since Brutes! (Though at least those fuckin' cyberdogs are easy to kill...) There's also kind of a lot of very linear corridor shooting. I'm no Halo scholar, but I feel I've at least got my undergrad in combat puzzles and the encounter design doesn't feel nearly as deliberate and considered as Bungie's best work
But the aesthetics of the thing, its technical artistry, its halfway-decent precursor race art direction (got old by the end but was pretty striking most of the time!), its solid music, its truly incredible sound design (with the sole exception of that one room with all the turrets in it...) and especially its storytelling, are all so on point that I find it really hard to give a damn about some fairly rote gameplay sections. Yeah, a lot of weapons are kind of lame, but they feel real good to shoot, have some truly crunchy reload sounds, and whoever designed the weapons shared my enthusiasm for bullet hose machine guns, so I found myself enjoying even the most boring sections because my eyes and ears were exposed to near-constant positive reinforcement
Heck, I give this game credit, it almost manages to explain everything it needs to! We get an exposition dump about what the Didact wants and what the Composer is and all that, and that's a bit more than we usually get with these games, so it was much appreciated. The terminals you find fill in much more of the backstory and almost make the Didact into a semi-interesting villain, but y'know, not quite, so marginal points for that. There are some Bungie-tier proper nouns here ("Didact" and "ancilla" being the best) but also some that fall short (the ship is just called "Infinity" which is thoroughly lame in comparison to shit like "Pillar of Autumn" and "Forward Unto Dawn") and it all feeds into the typical Halo thing of "interesting ideas that I don't know enough about to be truly interested in"
But there are a couple questions the game never actually answers, and it almost seems like the game forgot about them! Such as: why were the Covenant there?? Who was leading them?? And where the FUCK is the Arbiter???
Anyway, here's what I think was going down:
Anyway point is he's bad, and when Chief encounters the hologram of the Librarian, she drops some lore on us that I think is a giant retcon? It says that humans and forerunners existed at the same time (which we knew) but it also said that we were at war with them, which I thought... we were like their weird children? Or were geneseeded by them? I dunno I haven't actually dug into the lore but that's the impression I got. Hence the whole "Reclaimer" bit because only humans can use their technology. But according to Halo 4, we were at war and eventually got beaten and sentenced to "regression" which, assigning intelligence and "civilization" to something like genetics is pretty fucked but whatever we gotta keep moving, because we were only at war with them because they were in our way and we were running from the Flood! Which I guess we knew about before the forerunners?? Okay then! Anyway since our giant thousand year war (if we were running from the Flood how did we survive a war for a thousand years???) and then, weakened, the forerunners were like "I guess these humans are pretty baller, we'll regress them but then leave our technology to them when we die, which we're gonna because the Flood are here" and then they pop the cork on the Halo rings and end all sentient life in the galaxy (except humans which I guess weren't smart enough to count??? even though they show us like making huts and toys and stuff???) including them, except for the forerunners that they imprisoned in weird eggs, the ones who got "composed" into AI shells or holograms, and the ancient humans that were punished with imprisonment for the big war, which were turned into Prometheans, who would be immortal and cool robot guys except that because they are turned essentially into AI, they eventually go crazy/rampant just like original flavor AI do
OKAY so then the Didact is out and he's like "well fuck humans still, I'm gonna compose the shit outta them and imprison them in these shells and then eventually they'll got insane but also still obey my commands somehow cuz they robots" and Chief is like "fuck that" but also when he talks to the Librarian she drops the ULTIMATE bomb and says that she (either her specifically or her species in general) planned for Chief to exist??? Like they seeded genetics and foresaw and planned the future out so good that it would create him specifically, from his training to his "combat skin" to his "ancilla" Cortana! They planned on creating him specifically to exterminate the Flood, defend humanity, and presumably take out the Didact and whatever else! Nevermind how the hell they could have done this, this has now made Mister Chief into not just the last Spartan of his generation, not only a genetically enhanced and horrifically trained super soldier and galactic savior, now he's just a straight up Chosen One and that's fuckin' nuts. Oh, and then she does a capital-s Something to him that felt like the equivalent of Lord Guru unlocking Gohan's potential or something, because now he's immune to composition and, one assumes, will gain superpowers at some point? He could hear the Didact when Cortana couldn't, which speaks to either some weird psychic shared-consciousness shit, or to Cortana's growing rampancy, one or the other
Anyway Chief fights the Didact a bunch and then he does a StarFox level near the end (which involves too much dodging and not enough shooting but hey even mediocre StarFox is still StarFox!) and then detonates a nuke with his bare hands and somehow survives because Cortana, and then she dies (except I know she doesn't because sequels) and Chief is left bereaved and completely unable to process because there was exactly one person in the universe that he cared about, and who cared about him, and now she is dead and he is completely alone
PHEW. Going through it, actually, the main plot is... pretty bad, honestly! Lots of neat ideas, but a lot of weird/lame ones too, and a lot of contrivance and poorly explained bits. I think what makes it work is the cutscene and voice direction, both of which were on point throughout, even for lame characters who don't make a ton of sense, like Captain Del Rio, who commands his men to arrest the guy who literally saved the entire universe just because he refused an order, like god damn I know some guys are real control freaks but that's a little absurd. The doctor at the research station did a good job too, and her end was genuinely horrifying in a way that I didn't expect! Great visual effect on the Composer, getting digitized and inserted into a robot shell/server somewhere doesn't sound like the worst thing until you actually see it get done, y'know? That was smart of them to include that
But all of that, absolutely all of it, is completely ancillary to the real story, which was about Chief and Cortana. That was genuinely well-executed, giving them both a ton of characterization and a ton more emotional heft, to the point where the final scene in the game actually got me feeling some type of way! Certainly much more than I expected
So, TL;DR: Halo 4 is not the best Halo game in terms of balance or design, but it is the best Halo game in terms of aesthetic, storytelling, and sound design! God damn 343, you did a hell of a job and should be proud of this work
Yo I am right there with you!
Because this guy isn't a machine, despite Cortana's frustrated remark late in the game. And he's not just a soldier, wholly apart from humanity, despite his own remark at the very end. He's a human dude named John! He does still feel, and care, and love. The problem is that he only truly feels those things for one person, which makes the thought of losing that person so unacceptable. Because then he would have nothing
The end of Halo 4 is, exactly like you said, a loss for him. He accomplished the mission, but he didn't accomplish his mission. And no matter how much he is compelled by duty to protect Earth and safeguard humanity and all that nonsense, he doesn't care about Earth, or his fellow soldiers, or the UNSC. He only cares about Cortana. Because she too is uniquely apart from humanity, because she's been a constant in his life, and because she didn't treat him like... well like anyone else treats him, like a soldier, or a tool, or a savior figure. That willingness to interrogate Chief as a character, to actually look inward like you said? Is a really great choice
And man hearing that Halo 5 squanders that truly sucks
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I suppose I could read the books... but that's a line I'm not quite willing to cross yet. Not while I've got plenty of other less trashy sci-fi to read first!
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
A garbage friend asks you to murder a bunch of people so you can steal a book of lyrics from a rapper? Welp, time to stab some people in the back. Said garbage friend then asks you to kill some rapper? You lock the rapper and his girlfriend in a car and then drive it off a pier into the ocean.
CJ: We are going to murder a guy at a funeral!?
Sweet: Yes.
CJ: OK.
In case you're curious about how Halo 5 fucks up Halo 4's setup
Chief and his squad do find Cortana, but it turns out she's gone full cliche-evil-AI and wants to become God Empress of the Galaxy by using all of the Precursors' sweet tech to keep all the organics oppressed. So the two Spartan squads eventually team up to defeat her.
So yes, not only does Halsey get to be a good guy who helps save the galaxy, Cortana heel-turns in the dumbest way possible. There is one pretty cool scene where Cortana broadcasts herself to the entire UNSC and asks the AI if they want to stick with the people who deliberately built in a death timer, or if they want to side with her, and you get a sequence of a ton of AI abandoning their UNSC posts. But the impact is stymied by the fact that Cortana isn't just at war to destroy the UNSC (which WOULD be a righteous goal). She's doing war to control all organic life, but especially humans.
The truly wild thing is that this is contrasted by the shit Arbiter is doing while all this is happening. He's currently fighting a civil war with the remaining Covenant in order to preserve a peaceful relationship with humans. He's fighting against the same people he used to fight alongside, because he knows that if he succeeds, he'll secure a better future for everyone. You could have just done this with Cortana, too! Instead of becoming a Space Fascist, have her specifically target the UNSC, arguing that it's the only way to prevent the continued creation and abuse of AI like her and child soldiers like John. Have her convince Chief to help her by pointing out that the UNSC at-large doesn't actually care about humanity, it just cares about doing war well. You could even incorporate the dangling thread of Halsey never facing any consequences by highlighting how fucked up it is that this lady has done a bunch of horrible shit, but the UNSC still keeps her around because it still kinda wants her to keep doing all those things, even if the higher-ups don't want to admit it.
Unfortunately, Halo has always been a series that thinks the military is pretty rad, so I suppose "destroy the UNSC to build something better" was never going to happen.
Give me a Halo game that is the Arbiter hanging out with his alien friends finally breaking the last chains of the Covenant and then at the end his friend the Demon can show up and be like "hey wanna help me help humanity do better too?"
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Have Chief and the Arbiter looking into this rogue covenant terrorist group threatening the peace by attacking human civilians colonies to find out that some division of ONI is funding it, then when they get to ONI they find out that it is actually the full UNSC government planning the attacks simply to retain power because they know the moment real peace is obtained, the people will demand change.
What I am saying is that Halo should go Metal Gear
what are the rules governing whether a boss will take their full iframes (or whatever the technical term here is) or not? It's hard to describe what I mean, so here's a recording I took:
case study
He didn't not fall in love with it, kind of
If I am understanding a speedrunning trick guide I found correctly, Zero's first two slashes in his three slash combo do the short iframes while the third slash causes the long version, so if you just never do the full combo you won't trigger the long iframes. Sounds like this only works in Zero 1 though.
And that girl's name? Samus Aran.
Put some teeth on the outside of a Halo, it becomes the largest Metal Gear ever.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
There was a screenshot lets play on Something Awful long ago, and the meta narrative the player wrote for that part was that CJ was having terrible insomnia and was going on days without sleep and thats why he was ok with all the crazy murder in that section.
One of the best Lets Play that I ever read.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981