Halo: Combat Remembered
By Vashkey 11 Comments
Lol
There it is, the new Halo remake. Totally digging the new box art. So we got two new Halo games on the way.
I have mixed feelings about this though. We just got Halo 3: ODST and Halo Wars in 2009 and Halo: Reach last year. Now we're getting another Halo game this year and Halo 4 next year? Thats four straight years of Halo. Not only that but Halo 4 is the start of a new trilogy. We're gonna have a Halo 5 and 6? Just how long after 4 will they come?
I guess my concern is if Halo is becoming a yearly thing. I love Halo and all but Xbox is getting a bit cramped with them. We're getting to the point where a Halo game announcement just doesn't have the same impact. I doubt that for many people the announcement of two new Halo games really significantly improved their outlook of the Microsoft press conference.
Well, with that rant out of the way lets actually talk about the Halo Remake(and start a new rant). So it turns out this remake is very faithful. So faithful that apparently it's pretty much the same game. All they're doing is improving the graphics. I'm not kidding, one of the remake's features is allowing the player to freely switch between the new graphics and the old.
343 claims they're doing this out of respect to the game and it's fans. I can understand this to an extent I guess. Halo: Combat Evolved has stodd the test of time very well and it's pretty fun.
However, I feel this doesn't leave many people too much reason to buy this. The only people that are really going to enjoy this are the Halo hardcore and those who've never played it before but even for them it might seem a bit odd to if they've played later games in the series since in the original Halo vehicles can't blow up, you can't use the sword and some of the aspects of the physics and animation such as how theres only one animation for flying dead bodies and how Halo Reach used mocap where as Halo 1 used more traditional animation will feel a bit antiquated.
This remake will not include the original Halo's multiplayer. Yeah, too bad, tad disapointed, what ever. I'm not going to dwell on it. Obviously they don't want to kill Reach off already, thats understandable. So This rmake includes seven new maps for Reach, all of which are remakes of older Halo maps(one of them is for firefight).
The odd thing is you can choose to play the Reach multiplayer from the disc but you're limited to these seven new maps. You do not have access to Reach's original maps or the two already rleased map packs. However, the game also comes with a code you can use to download these seven new maps to Reach so that you can play with them along with the original maps and the other DLC map if you already own them.
So what if you don't own Reach? I suppose your limited to only the playlists tht utilise the maps. Will they offer the maps that shipped with Reach as DLC for those who want the maps but don't want Reach? Or do they expect them to just buy Reach if they want the full multiplayers experience?
What ever. I already have Reach so it doesn't to me, I guess.
So when I first saw this I was kinda worried we'd be paying sixty dollars for expansion material again. Turns out that it'll actually just be fourty bucks.
Initially that was a rlief but after some thought I'm not really sure that it's any better a deal. ODST was at least an entirely new campaign and included the new fire fight survival mode along with the complete Halo 3 multiplaye experience. This is just a prettier version of a campaign we've already played with online co-op and a map pack. Still, if not having the complete Halo Reach multiplayer is what stopped this from getting the sixty dollar price I wont complain. As much.
343 claims there are still some additional features not found in the original, such as terminals and some things they've yet to reveal so this remake just may yet further justify it's price.
Oh, and it's releasing on the 15th of November. When I first found this out I thought they were being stupid. Thats only a week after Modern Warfare 3, the same week as Skyrim and the new Assassin's Creed will be out sometime during the month. But then I remembered, November 15th was the same day the original Halo Combat Evolved came out.
I listened to their podcast recently and apparently they had to fight with Microsoft for the price and the release date. These people really care about Halo. They cared enough to make sure this was on the anniversary, they tried to make sure the price was right and they loved Halo so much that they triied to respect the game by keeping the gameplay exaactly as we remembered, quirks and all.
While I can't agree with everything here it's clear that they tried to do this right. I'm betting this will probably be the least well recieved Halo but I think whats important is they've met their goal. It's not like they could of let the occasion go by withoutdoing something big.
And my thoughts on Halo 4?
...
um
It's Halo 4. Not much to be said at this point.
I was originally going to make this an E3 post... But I got too caught up in eh Haloz to reasonably get my thoughts on other E3 content in here. Maybe tomorrow.
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