Halo 3 Multiplayer behind the scenes

[Pericolos0]

I still play halo1 alot with my friends, the feel and vehicle physics are still damn awesome imo. Halo3 doesn't really have me exited though.

[Zacker]

I never really understood what people saw in the Halo games, but then again I have never been a fan of FPS on consoles.

[ReNo]

I can't imagine anybody is all that impressed by what has been shown of Halo 3. They keep saying "what we've shown is ugly - the game will look much better!", then releasing some new media like this documentary that really doesn't show any improvement at all. Some parts of the environment are so low poly it hurts, and most of it just looks like a UT2004 mod. Things like there being no splashes when a ragdoll falls into a river just looks completely ridiculous in this day and age. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume some of the more obvious shortcomings will be fixed before release, but I can't see them doing enough to make this as "wow!" a game for the 360 as the original game was for the Xbox.

That said, I really enjoyed playing through Halo 1 and 2, particularly in coop. I've no doubt I'll enjoy Halo 3 as well, regardless of how big or small an improvement over the originals it ends up being.

[Psy]

Bleh. Halo is uninspiring, boring and uses an over-done concept.

(Kill aliens, proceed to next room, kill more, proceed to next room, fmv, kill aliens, fly in vehicle, kill more aliens...etc etc)

[Hourences]

It does look like it plays solid but I too have the feeling Im looking at UT2004 with a few small model changes.

Same type of gameplay, theme, levels and visuals polycount wise.

They kind of act like having teleporters and jumppads and all that are revolutionary.

Im sure itll be fun though, I just dont always get whats so damn special about Halo.

[Thrik]

I've never been particularly impressed by Halo, but I think a large part of its popularity is that it was a very solid FPS that brought well-balanced vehicle mechanics and the feeling of an open world to consoles.

The reason I'd imagine a lot of people here don't find it too impressive is because as PC gamers we'd seen most of the stuff offered by Halo long before the mainstream console public did, thus explaining why we find its popularity baffling.

Of course, it's not like it's a bad game at all and it's perfectly feasible for many PC gamers to enjoy it. It's just that on consoles it stood out a lot more amongst its peers, while on the PC it was a bit more like everything else (and Halo 3 probably will be too).

[MJ]

its decent as for console goes..

but you pc fps vets will not be impress..

[ifO]

Hrm they should spend less time playing it, more time making it look good.

Of course, that's just a silly 1-line quip, but yeah Halo never really appealed to me, I don't like the look of it, I've never played it and I don't think I ever will. It reminds me of Tribes, but without the flying.

[von*ferret]

I'm hoping that they're focusing on gameplay first, visuals later, which is the key to any good game. Make sure you have a functional and fun system, and when you do art the shit out of it while maintaining that functional and fun system. Of course the hard part is getting that system.

[ifO]

That is true, hopefully there are still some sexy visuals to come and suprise us doubters.

[KungFuSquirrel]

Bungie operates on the principle of "15 seconds of fun" or something similar to that - the goal being to take 15 seconds of awesome gameplay and maintain that through the game. So they're definitely gameplay first. They may have gone a bit far in that philosophy in level design, mind, but they've had fun and solid combat throughout both the games so far.

Like Thrik was saying, Halo created its own pedigree separate from the Quake and Unreal basis that PC gamers are used to in their 3D shooters; even though I found Halo 2 enjoyable I found the character's movement speed and FOV infuriating. But for a straightforward, fun, and polished shooter, they've hit the mark both times. And as far as console FPS games go, it absolutely set the bar for all games to follow it.