I dare any of you guys who disagree with me about H2 being a good game to go play it on legendary and stream it, lets see how much fun you have.

If you aren't playing it on legendary, you aren't playing the game with all it's mechanics working as intended.

I play my own rendition of Mythic (all Skulls that make the game harder without ditracting from how the game is suppose to work), as well as my counterpart to the mainstream Mythic called Suicidal (all Skulls that only make the game harder for the player. Any that can go either way, or only benefit the player, are left out). The game is extremely hard on either difficulty, but, very rewarding. The only quirk I see is that if an Elite is stuck with a Plasma Grenade and survives, they might be without a weapon, or are stuck with an Energy Sword for higher ranks. Though thats not guranteed. Sadly, I can't stream, as that would burn through our limited internet usage.
Edited by austen1000 on Oct 23, 2014 at 09:19 PM

I'm pretty sure Heroic is suppose to be the intended difficulty. What you're saying is just a matter of opinion.

if you want halo 2 at 1080p, and 60+ fps (144fps in my case) go play h2v, and then take on the intended experience, or mod it

Thats literally one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Its the same with saying that SPv3 is meant to be played on Legendary. Why the hell would it be meant to be played the hardest difficulty? There is a reason there is literally a mode called "normal", because it gives you the defualt, NORMAL style of playing that is fun and paced nicely. Legendary is the hardest mode and creates a much more challenging experience in the gameplay department, but its not the intended version of the game to be played on the first run through, its meant to be a challenging way to replay the game. Sure, Halo 2 Legendary was very hard, but its called "Legendary" for a reason...

Halo 2 had one of the biggest collection of single player and multiplayer maps, and in that collection arguably some of the best out of the entire series. Not only in terms of execution and level design, but aesthetics, encounters, and interesting moments in storytelling. It had one of the best soundtracks and an interesting and creative way to tell the story of both the Chief and Arbiter in a way that made sense. The multiplayer had a simple and clean way of ranking and was inherently competitive, making it a blast to continually play over and over on (again) great maps. It made great use of Xbox Live too, and did interesting things like clans unlike its predecessor did. It was a game that DEFINED the original Xbox.

This thread has veered from topic.Halo 3 PC confirmed

Take a look at H1 on Heroic vs Legendary, its only on legendary where all the weapons differences really shine. You can also look through the old Bungie Weekly Updates where they talk about Legendary, it's pretty clear they intended that to be the game at it's most fun and best. It's also on legendary where the human and alien weapons nuances shine through as well. It's all crafted so the most interesting and most fun experiences will be on Legendary, and it's simply not true in H2. But it is in H1, H3, ODST, and H4... and kind of in Reach but that's pretty much considered blah overall by most people.

In regards to Heroic and Legendary:


Edited by Echo77 on Oct 23, 2014 at 10:04 PM

I'm not trying to defend halo 2, I hate the incomplete lazy programing in parts of it, but compared to how long it took to make halo 1 (1996 to 2001) It was rushed. I can't stand certain parts of the campaign, especially where right at the beginning you can actually see Miranda keys cable car vanish into thin air, but despite all this, I genuinely enjoyed the campaign, I thought it was fantastic, especially the forerunner mining facility and library sections, yes it needed work, but it is still a good game, just because the nagging problems with it are annoying (like the wraiths plasma cannons that the player can't fire) that doesn't take away from the fact that It was fun to play. as for the MP, yes, it was broken in parts, but It was still a great system, I love several of its maps, Ascension, Containment and Backwash especially.
Edited by Jobalisk on Oct 23, 2014 at 10:23 PM

H1 had like a 8 month dev cycle, I can look it up.

I don't have a problem with people liking certain things about H2, and people can certainly enjoy it. I just don't think anyone can really call it a well done game and it craps on a lot of what made H1 fun.

Some people enjoy licking others buttholes, others don't. To me H2 is a butthole, and I dislike licking it. Playing H2 brings me 0 satisfaction, hopefully the new skulls for H2A will let players either tone legendary down or increase heroics difficulty to where I can find the game enjoyable and not a walk in a park or excruciatingly painful.

I'll be going into a lot of this in the article I am writing.

Pretty sure Halo 2 legendary was designed almost as if Bungie was trying to create the most frustratingly unfair and unbalanced game experience they could possibly conjure up. Screw you player, it takes 3 sword hits to kill an Elite!

This is not a discussion.
This is a bunch of people saying their opinion is the only understandable opinion, whilst not understanding the concept of an opinion. By summarising their posts into their core-message, I aim to provide them a means of self-reflection.



At the start of the article, you should include an article-summary section.
In it, write: "My opinion is right and those who disagree are wrong".
Edited by DaLode on Oct 24, 2014 at 01:03 AM

I guess if only I were god my opinions would be facts. There is plenty of evidence and hard numbers that proves H2 is a f* ckup in terms of design. The fact it's own creators said they failed at making the game is just another point of evidence. You think it's a great playing game, explain why other than putting your hands over your ears and crying that someone has something to say with actual facts behind it. The fact that you enjoy playing the game on normal or heroic but not on Legendary simply proves my point that the game can not function properly as intended with all it's mechanics working at their full potential. And I won't believe you enjoy it until you go and play it on Legendary.

You are welcome to your opinion about what I have to say, but frankly I don't really care what anyone has to say about the game who wants to defend it. In the end, it fails to execute what it tried to do, and it's a great example of what not to do with a franchise. The series is still trying to recover from what it introduced.

Even inside companies people will disagree on things, trust me, you'll find out when you hit the job-market. Not to mention that public self-criticism is equally a good marketing strategy for such companies.

As you state yourself, I realise you don't care about people's opinions on the game that disagree with yours, that is just who you are. I've also seen other people in this thread disproving plenty of your "facts", and many come to mind as I type. That is why this "discussion" will go nowhere, and why I choose to summarise your posts to their core, instead of entering a lengthy pointless "discussion". Not to mention we've seen this "discussion" plenty of times in this forum.

In an attempt to save us all time, I suggest people re-read my summary of these posts.

Guys, enough with the arguing. This thread is about discussing the supposed confirmed extra Halo 3 mission. Argue here.

If you think that H1 had an 8 month dev cycle then explain this video filmed by Bungie employees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI84riXyXoU

I know that Halo 2 is full of bugs but saying that you think it was painful begs the question of why did you play and finish it then. If you hate the game so much then why write an article on it. stop acting that you hate it and admit it will you, if the bugs in the game were not there, (which they probably won't be in the MC release version) then you would probably be singing a whole different tune right now.
Edited by Jobalisk on Oct 24, 2014 at 02:03 AM

But Heroic has been established as "the way Halo is meant to be played," while Halo 2 Legendary has been established as "A whole new sick twist on game difficulty," so I don't see why you still have the Legendary stipulation.

I enjoy playing Halo on Normal. That doesn't mean that I'm secretly not actually enjoying it because I'm not playing on Legendary. Legendary is an extra challenge for those who enjoy having the sligtest error punished with instant death, it's not the end-all be-all definition of fun. You can say that people are more willing to look at Halo 2 through rose-tinted glasses, are more willing to overlook flaws that it has been confirmed to have, but you can't say that someone didn't enjoy the game just because they didn't play it the same way you enjoy playing it.
Edited by Echo77 on Oct 24, 2014 at 02:13 AM

I'm not understanding the logic behind a mission being added to halo 3. Unless said mission was already compiled into .map format and they actually went in and added it to the globals.globals tag, it isn't happening. I highly doubt 343i has or even went ahead and recompiled the tools to package the map file and even went in beyond that to patch the tags to make it playable. We're talking about a 3 title old engine from when Bungie had Blam!. The only way they could add a mission, would be to execute it using the H2A or Halo 4 engine, and even then, it won't play like it was meant to since it would be a different engine version running very differently.

It is more than likely back story in pre-rendered streamed cinematic form similar to Spartan Ops and nothing more. Either way, who cares. Like we needed a 3rd version of Halo 2, a second version of Halo 1 to begin with. Just poor franchise mismanagement and uncreated thinking to sell a failing console, nothing more. eat up all the fan service comments from MS all you want. They just want to sell consoles and they had no other ideas except to remake Halo from older consoles.

99% of that was gutted and wasn't used for H1 Xbox, the game was reworked pretty much from scratch for Xbox. The story, the missions, the weapons, the vehicles, all that was implemented into the FPS in around an 8 month dev cycle.


Legendary is though regardless of the twist on difficulty the only difficulty where the gameplay mechanics are working. It doesn't matter how many twists they add or how hard they make it if they are not functioning, which they don't.

You aren't really "playing" Halo on normal, the mechanics of the game are toned down so you can easily go through it, you should check out Hokie's school of Halo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EabNk6i-Q2c&list=PLI1zyR8U6_093Z8Gdk-w0B1ugvZdeKt6Z

He does a good job of showing why Halo is unique on it's Legendary difficulty and how all it's mechanics work. If you aren't playing on Legendary, you aren't experiencing the game as it was fully designed to function.
Edited by Masters1337 on Oct 24, 2014 at 03:03 AM

None the less, Halo 2 is a good game, yes it's broken in parts but over all, it works, even if it does work like a cat with three legs.

I'll be honest, I have never felt that Halo was designed for Legendary. It feels at it's best on Heroic but still good on everything else.
But what the hell do I know? 10 years of game design experience means nothing clearly.
Edited by Adler on Oct 24, 2014 at 05:49 AM

GL to you with that kind of attitude man. Seriously, its not going to get you anywhere in life [:)]

You know, Masters, other people are allowed to have opinions too...


Forum Poster: "...but I enjoyed playing H2 on Heroic...."

Masters: "No you didn't. Game failed. The mechanics failed. You failed. No fun was had".

thank you, higuy. argue gameplay all you want (clearly you will), i loved h2 for its storytelling.
as someone with a higher than mediocre understanding of ballistics, i absolutely hate legendary and sometimes even heroic. it doesn't make enemies smarter, or more reactive, it just makes them all into bullet sponges, and i don't see the fun in that.
clearly though, some of you guys like your aliens extra absorbent, and everyone has opinions.
one thing i definitely didn't like about h2, was small maps with a high player limit, and slow guns. other than that, it's still my favorite in the series.
(anton, comment of the year)
Edited by greg079 on Oct 24, 2014 at 10:44 AM

"We drove off [a cliff] Thelma & Louise style. The trick is to avoid...writing by committee."

"We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it."

"Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right"

"I ****ing cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it."


I mean if you enjoy playing Halo 2 (which I still do, to an extent), that's great. But I don't think you can just opine away from the fact that Bungie screwed up Halo 2 by their own admission.

I can deal with the elites having bullet-sponge shields on legendary - it makes sense from a technological standpoint, they're still fun to fight, and you can kill them quickly with the Noob Combo if you have the proper weaponry.


The Brutes, though... Halo 2 brutes are tied with the H4 Crawlers for the "worst enemy in the series" award.

There are some instances where the player is not graced with headshot-capable weaponry.

That is just such nonsense, and multiple people here have already given some good examples why.
But those aside, here's one of my reasons:

I prefer my Halo combat to be somewhat realistic (inside its sci-fi lore of course), and by combat I don't just mean the solo-FPS experience. I mean the Marines vs Covenant as well. I want to be able to watch the AI battle it out, without one side being ridiculously overpowered (also keep in mind the UNSC never sucked on the ground, they held their own quite well). When I play a singleplayer level, I experience the complete battle, story and immersion. I feel a sense of fellow-pride towards "my" marines, as they manage to flank and clear their side of the battlefield, without being hopelessly slaughtered.

I think a game such as Serious Sam is more along the lines of a campaign level you enjoy to play. Just you, your guns and gameplay mechanics, and heaps of enemies and bullet sponges. And that is completely okay. But understand not everyone shares your views on mechanics and good, fun gameplay. Luckily.

Not to take any particular side but I think it's important to be aware of the facts before reciting conjecture.


http://www.halopedia.org/heroic

Except I never said that. I can only enjoy H2 on heroic as well, but thats because it is not super frustrating.

You can still have fun in H2, but as a game overall it fails to do what it was intended to do, and does not function. People are welcome to like it but if you look at it objectively, it's not a great game.

There is a difference between enjoying something and looking at it from a critical perspective.

---

What I'm learning from this exchange is that it seems like, right or wrong, the general consensus is that people would rather have something they like and enjoy in spite of its flaws, than something that's technically "better" but not as fun/lacking the same appeal.
Edited by Echo77 on Oct 24, 2014 at 02:05 PM

That is not a war Sphinx. The closest comparison is with mendicant bias. There is a thread talking about it here:
http://www.343industries.org/forum/topic/30330-dismissing-the-theories-of-the-ark-and-mendicant-bias/

I don't know if this has been disproved but I like this theory.
Edited by AlekosGR on Oct 24, 2014 at 02:01 PM

There's critical, and then there's "pro gamer" elitist. I feel like I agree with a lot of your criticisms of the game's flaws, just not the severity to which they negatively impact the game. You throw around terms like "broken" and "fail" about a product that seemed quite successful to a lot people. Shooting down counter-arguments like your word is god's absolute truth doesn't help your case either.

Why are we even arguing about this again?

Because we can