Lets Play: Halo Anniversary Edition

Following my new post framework, Wednesdays will be lets play days. Where I will play a certain game and talk about my experience.

Just look at that title screen. Doesn’t it make you want to play a Halo game? Well it should, because Halo is simply amazing.

For those of you that don’t know, Halo Anniversary Edition is a polished and modernized version of the original Halo: Combat Evolved. This is the first Halo game released by the franchises new permanent designer 343 industries. Even though 343 Industries is a branch of Microsoft as Bungie is, I am a little worried of where they may take the Halo universe. But I digress, Halo Anniversary Edition is essentially all the same programming from the original game, just with improved graphics. Some might say this was lazy on their part, but I believe it is much better that they kept it the same rather than trying to changing it.

Since I was short on time I started on the second level, one of my favorites. One thing that caught my attention is that even in the first halo they really had the driving down.

The driving is extremely smooth and the cpu gunner works very well. In this play through I got through three levels, and one thing that kept sticking out to me was how funny the primitive animations looked with good graphics. Because when 343 Industries redid the graphics they didn’t redo the way things moved. So character movements are very un-detailed and it just seems so out of place with these graphics. One thing that really brought back many memories of the original Halo was the death animation. Anyone who has played Halo: CE remembers how no matter what angle your body hit the ground it always ended up doing the same spin and landing in the exact same position every time. I laughed each time I saw this animation during my playthrough.

Elites are by far my favorite alien in the Halo universe. One thing I’ve always missed in the later Halo games is hearing the aliens talk in their native tongue. While playing through, I was very pleased to hear “Wort Wort Wort!” (my favorite elite phrase of all time). The typical weapons I used throughout my play through was the magnum pistol, and either the plasma rifle or plasma pistol. You always hear people talk about how good the Halo 1 pistol was, and yes it is a very good weapon. But I do believe the hype created about it is mostly from comparison, because I dont even think Halo 2 had a pistol and Halo 3’s pistol was garbage.

Hunters are my second favorite aliens in the Halo universe, they are simply badass. So I was very disappointed while playing through because they were extremely easy to kill. Hunter fights in other Halo games were the perfect combination of difficulty and fun; it took strategy, planning, badass maneuvers, and pure luck to defeat hunters even on the normal difficulty. But in the original Halo you could take both hunters down with a single plasma pistol. So in original games, you win some you lose some.

Now, I’d say about half the reason I love Halo games, is because of the story behind it all. 343 Industries won major points with me by adding terminals (like in Halo 3), but unlike Halo 3 these terminals didn’t include text that pertained to Halo’s backstory, they contained cinematics that pertained to Halos backstory. I simply love them, here are a few screen shots of them.

As you can see all the ones I saw on my play-through had to do with 343 guilty sparks. As I typed that I realized the significance of 343 Industries name, very clever.

If you have any thoughts of Halo or games in general, leave a comment!

Thats all for the first installment of Lets Play, next wednesday I will be playing Call of Duty Black Ops: Nazi Zombies.

How All Video Games Should Be More Like Dead Space 2

From now on, I will be following a loose framework for my posts, days that start with “T” are free post days were I can post whatever I like.

This post will have nothing to do with the game-play, story, or general awesomeness of Dead Space 2, instead it will be entirely about it’s achievements.

I for one enjoy the achievement system on the Xbox 360, and as you can see I have a pretty respectable amount of gamer-score. But as you can also see in “completed” game section, Dead Space 2 is very lonely… It is a good thing I finally got that last achievement I needed for Dead Space 2, because prior to this weekend I didn’t have every achievement unlocked for any game. Now when I say more games should be like Dead Space 2, I’m referring to the kinds of achievements in that game. All of them were fairly doable, no achievements were impossible to obtain and on the flip side, you didn’t get achievements for turning the game on, and yes I have played games were you got an achievement for exactly that.

Most of the achievements pertained to gameplay aspects, which you could easily get just by reading what the achievement was, and then altering your playing strategies to get said achievement. There were achievements in which you had to find secret items, normally I would have to look up how to do all of these achievements online, but the maps on Dead Space 2 are not too intricate and I found almost all the secret items I needed after a couple run-throughs. Another thing I appreciate about Dead Space 2 is that they didn’t have any achievements that you got from the multiplayer. When games make achievements that you must unlock in multiplayer matches, they just become chores that dampen your multiplayer experience, this would have been especially true in Dead Space 2’s case because I didn’t care for the multiplayer very much. Now, all games have that one achievement “Beat the game on the hardest difficulty” and Dead Space 2 is no exception.

Dead Space 2 has one of the hardest campaign of any game I have ever played, the only games that come to mind as being harder are the Halo games on legendary, and Twisted Metal (2012). But one thing that is different, is that Dead Space 2 doesn’t make you want to throw your controller across the room and rage like legendary Halo games do. The main thing that make Dead Space 2 hard is that on the hardest difficulty there are no checkpoints and you can only save three times. This seems like a daunting task, but once you get your strategies down it is very doable. Anyway, the main point I’m trying to make is games need to lighten up a bit with the difficulty of their achievements, and become a bit more like Dead Space 2. Achievements should be challenging, but not impossible, and easily obtained with some time and effort put towards it.

Now, what do you think of achievements and their difficulty?

My Recently un-dusted PlayStation 3

 

I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember, it’s just something I grew up with. In my more early years of gaming the Xbox certainly took a backseat role. There were much more games for my other systems that appealed to me, and also I did not appreciate the huge awkward controller that belonged to the original Xbox. But when the Xbox 360 came out, it instantaneously became my main gaming system. The controllers were perfect, the graphics were great, and the game selection was wonderful. Out the three main systems, xbox exclusives proved to be my favorite. Only the occasional Wii exclusives (such as super smash bros brawl, or paper mario) would detour me from my Xbox 360. All the while the playstation 3 that my dad bought sat in my living room, virtually untouched.

Even now the only use my Playstation is receiving running an old Playstation 1 game that me and my dad used to play all time. You’ll hear more about that later. My main point is, my Playstation has been there the whole time, and not once has a PS exclusive come out that has compelled me to get it. That is, not until now. A Playstation exclusive is coming out in the very immediate future that I just have to get. I can’t wait to get my hands on it and you’ll hear about it soon enough.

My Personal History of Gaming

Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Sam and I have been an avid gamer since as far back as I can remember. Although gaming is only one of the many activities that I participate in, it is one of the biggest and most time consuming things that I do daily. I am the proud owner of an Xbox 360 along with many other consoles, but my life as a gamer was not always so luxurious.

Let me take you back to when I first got my hands on a gaming device. I was around 6 or so and my family had ventured out to Disneyland for a quick vacation. At this point in my life I was desperate for a Game Boy and I had been bugging my parents endlessly for one. When we got to Disneyland I saw it, a red, Mickey Mouse shaped handheld gaming device. It was much less advanced than Nintendo’s Game Boy, but it incorporated many elements of the Disneyland experience was solely based on Mickey Mouse.

From there I moved on to a real Game Boy. My friend and I would always meet at his house, each with our Game Boys, and trade games back and fourth until we had fully exhausted each other’s collection. Soon enough our Game Boys were not sufficient and my friend got a Gamecube. This led to hours spent on his living room couch attempting to score in quittage, trying to find princes Zelda, killing giant robots in Rocket Power and many other important activities. The Game cube was fun but it did not last. That Christmas my friend got an Xbox original. Along with his Xbox came Halo 1. The idea of an 8 foot tall, steroid-induced super-soldier running around killing obnoxious alien beings bent on destroying our galaxy did not appeal to my parents and so I was forced to play the game in secret.

From the Xbox I moved to the computer. Internet games were the trend in 5^th grade. I played everything from MMORPGs to free flash based games. Websites like Shockwave and AddictingGames became my life. Although Internet games were fun, they only held my interest until I finally convinced my parents to allow me to get an Xbox 360. This has been my main weapon in the gaming world sense 7^th grade and without it I would have way more free time. Although the red ring of death is a pain to deal with and the fact the disks constantly get scratched for no apparent reason is extremely obnoxious, overall my Xbox 360 has done its job of consuming countless hours of my life. Although my Xbox is currently my favorite console, it is hard to tell what the future of gaming will bring. But I know that without a doubt I will be ready to upgrade when the time comes for the release of the next major gaming console.