Lurker > Darmik

FL81 posted...

This tbh

and IIRC its "benchmark" status was mostly because of how poorly the game's code was written

Nah it was very ahead of its time. Compare it to something like Halo 3 from the same year which was still only like 540p on the 360.

They developed the game thinking of future hardware but they thought CPU's were going to develop differently than they did IIRC.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

Looks great. Love the callback.

DarkRoast posted...

Have they confirmed if it'll launch on Steam day 1 or just the awful Windows Store?

It's coming to Steam. Not confirmed if it's day one.

chrono625 posted...

Doom has really set a high bar for action FPS. I remember playing first halo and being floored by the scale, graphics and story.

it would be nice to see a faster gameplay and paced Halo game.

Halo 5 is already pretty fast paced. I'm hoping it's more paced like CE. Seems like they're drawing inspiration from it.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

I'm not far into Watch Dogs 2 yet but if it keeps up with the quality I think it'll take it for me. Closest thing I'll get to a Splinter Cell from them I guess.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

sabin017 posted...

Haven't played any but would be most inclined towards playing Steep.
Isn't there For Honor?

Oh yes that's one I forgot

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

Jabodie posted...

I think in many ways the mission structure is a lot more "get orders, follow the way point, activate/ destroy object." Technically all the Halos are like that, but the others do things to obfuscate this or have entire levels centered around a single goal rather than being led by the nose to many small ones. Whereas Reach is "go disable these AA guns! Now go help these guys! Now go press this Covenant!" I think it's less interesting than something like the first game, where things are structured around one big goal per level, and things just sort of get in the way of that. Idk if I explained that very well.

So if you're not invested into the story scenario, it's probably a lot less interesting.

Yeah it does. Even from the top of my head I can remember the primary objectives

• Flee the Pillar of Autumn
• Find the stranded marines and regroup on Halo
• Rescue Captain Keyes
• Find and activate the Cartographer
• Find the Control Room
• Find the secret of Halo
• Access the Library (I think this was to find out the purpose of Halo to stop the Flood?)
• Sabotage the control room to stop it from being activated
• Find Captain Keyes again to find the thing to blow up the Pillar of Autumn
• Blow up the Pillar of Autumn to destroy Halo

I don't think I can remember the other ones in the same way.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

I didn't mind the 2nd season but yeah the 3rd felt so aimless and pointless. Very disappointing.

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Darmik

YellowSUV posted...

Tell that to The Covenant.

(I love all the cheesy one liners in Halo 2)

I need a weapon

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Darmik

• Rey finding out she wasn't related to anyone important and struggling with that revelation (Oops)
• Kylo Ren doubling down on being irredeemable by killing Snoke and wanting to take over the galaxy with Rey (Oops)
• Luke struggling with his failures as a Master, the callbacks to ESB with Yoda and his final redemption scene
• Finn being a Stormtrooper who rebels against his former comrades
• Kylo Ren being a villain who struggles with the light
• The performances of the old cast
• The hero being a woman

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Darmik

You've got;

• A bunch of Assassin's Creed games
• A bunch of Far Cry games
• A bunch of Just Dance games
• Two The Division games
• Two Ghost Recon games
• Two Watch Dogs games
• Two The Crew games
• Rainbow Six Siege
• Steep
• Mario + Rabbids
• A bunch of Trials games
• Anno games

Did I miss anything?

What's their standout game of this gen?

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

Yeah Villanelle is great.

One of those shows that peaks in the first season though sadly.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

One does not doubt the Keighleys.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

Waluigi made his debut on Mario Tennis 20 years ago.

WAHppy Birthday!

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

Played a few of them.

Cris Tales is by far the biggest highlight. A charming JRPG inspired game with combat similar to Stick of Truth with a plot and feel that sort of feels Disney inspired. The hook is time travel. On the screen you can see three time periods. The past, present and future. You do little side quests and actions that can change the future. This also applies to battles. You can soak an enemy in water, hit them with a future time crystal and their armor is rusted. I can see a lot of creativity with these mechanics. Game looks gorgeous too.

Dandy Ace is a roguelike dungeon crawler where you collect cards that give you abilities. Seems fun enough and has a fun Persona 5 inspired style. But roguelikes aren't real my thing. Some people will really dig it though.

9 Monkeys of Shaolin was a surprisingly good 3D brawler. Think of it like what a TMNT game should be. It's set in China. Combat was fun and satisfying. Definitely keeping an eye on this one. Has coop too.

Freshly Frosted was a surprisingly fun puzzle game! If you liked ChuChu Rocket play this game. Very similar. You have to plan a conveyor belt route for donuts. Has a comfy vibe and pleasant music.

I'm finding this fun. Reminds me of the old demo discs back in the day. Similar scale to those games too.

Major Nelson has put up a proper blog for it now
https://majornelson.com/2020/07/21/play-over-70-new-xbox-one-demos-with-xbox-summer-game-fest-demo-event/

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

Jabodie posted...

Also, thinking about it, I agree that a Mass Effect like spinoff where you go around with a team of SPARTANs conducting secret missions in the galaxy actually sounds like a pretty great idea. And a great way to express Halo lore in a video game. Maybe you even team up with an Elite, an ODST, a Jackal, a Monitor, whatever lol.

I think that's what they were going for with Locke. I mean hunting down the Chief is meant to be a hugely controversial thing. They are treated as hostile by those colonist planets.

But it's sharing too much screen time with other stuff.

I wouldn't be against them bringing back Locke to do this concept properly in a spin-off. Don't think we'll be seeing much of him in Infinite lol. I don't mind the character overall.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

pinky0926 posted...

lol, no. I'm not angry about TLOU2 at all, if anything I think it's incredibly sad how people reacted

I was making a general point since wackyteen was praising the game for being less linear about the direction game design has taken over the last decade where it attempts to shoehorn "exploration" into all aspects of the gameplay, often to its detriment. Like sometimes they should just focus on the pacing instead of having you deviate from the quest line in order to go collect a villagers 5 lost luggage items.

And yes I think game that have you travel around thousands of square kilometres to pick up 400 cassette tapes so that the game can brag about hundreds of hours of replayability are not making the game better, just my own opinion.

Eh I don't think this is really comparable to that sort of thing.

TLOU1 is painfully linear. You sneak when you're told. You get ambushed when you're told. You shoot when you're told. It's not just linear it's scripted.

TLOU2 isn't like that. You've got some larger areas that support player experimentation. Generally you have a large amount of enemies hunting you down (one of my issues with the game is how hilarious it is that they always find an excuse to be actively looking for you) and there are so many ways to get past that. You can sneak past. You can set up yourself a little fort and ambush people as they try get you. You can flee and set up traps for your pursuers. It flows well. The open areas help with the combat most of all. Generally the game makes it obvious when a place is open for combat or when there's a hidden room off the beaten path for goodies.

There is one open worldish area that takes a couple of hours but it gives you the points of interest on the map so you're never really mindlessly wondering around to fill up game time.

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Darmik

GeneralKenobi85 posted...

Yeah I thought for sure ONI was being set-up as a villainous faction for Halo 5. But you're right, I don't think they want you to shoot humans. A bit ironic since the Spartans were originally created to fight Insurrectionists.

I remember thinking that they didn't want you to shoot humans going all the way back to Reach. The first mission was setting up shooting insurrectionists but they chickened out heh.

And yet I bet a whole lot of people shot Captain Keyes and tried to survive the marine onslaught.

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Darmik

PC gaming is great when it works but yeah when you encounter an issue that just doesn't want to work it can ruin your day.

I think my favorite was for whatever reason the camera wouldn't stop spinning in Saints Row 4.

Consoles that are in 4k seem to finally have the image quality I'm happy with (I tried to play Watch Dogs 2 on Xbox One and it looked horrible) so hopefully 60fps becomes standard and I'd be more than happy to stick with consoles for next gen.

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Darmik

That's a good point actually. Locke's plot in 5 would probably work better as some WRPG-lite game that set up Halo 5 or something. I like the universe of Halo but there hasn't really been a game that takes advantage of it in the same way something like Mass Effect does.

The thing that made the older Halo games work was that it was basically two opposing factions messing with things they didn't really understand. When you make the villain the creator of those things it's really hard to make an interesting dynamic out of it. Which I guess is why they tried to bring in Cortana instead. But it's just getting so convoluted to follow. Then Halo Wars 2 comes along with Atriox who automatically becomes more interesting than basically any villain of the series so far because of how they set him up and because he wasn't really bound by anything from before. He's more like what we got before but with an added personal motivation.

I think they're scared of making a human enemy faction but I think ONI would be a pretty fun villain faction to battle. Hunt the Truth was a podcast setting up 5 and it's way more interesting than anything 5 does because we're seeing all of these opposing dynamics that we don't really delve into with the games.

I'll be interested to see what Infinite does. It sounds like they're scaling things back. I'm guessing it's going to be a battle between Chief/UNSC, The Banished and Cortana/Forerunners/AI for Halo. Hopefully goes back to basics a bit.

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Darmik

They did top the Metacritic list last year

https://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-publisher-rankings-for-2018-releases

Wait wrong year. It was 505 Games last year

https://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-publisher-rankings-for-2019-releases

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Darmik

I4NRulez posted...

I honestly dont want Wahlberg anywhere near that movie. I feel like none of the casting ive seen nails it at all

Yeah movie is gonna suck.

The HBO Last of Us show has a better chance but even then I dunno.

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Darmik

He was originally cast as Nathan Drake over 10 years ago.

Am I the only one who finds that hilarious?

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Darmik

Jabodie posted...

I actually just finished this campaign for the first time today. I think it was a mistake to kill the didact outside of the games. It could have easily been part of why Cortana contacts MC: to kill the Didact in order for her to get full control of the Guardians. It could help fill out that play time and make the mission split more 50/50. And throughout his missions you get insight into the scope of her true plan.

Otherwise, I think it was a decent campaign as far as shooters go. The guns were fun to use and the occasional vehicle section was a decent time. However, so those "guns down" sections feel extremely pointless, and I think stuffing as much book more as is reasonable to the game was a detriment. Enemy variety wasn't great, but it helps that the game is short. Probably the worst campaign in the series though.

But yeah, the game feels a lot like "kill enemies in this zone, open door, kill enemies in this zone, open door." I found it odd how often I was restricted from progress because enemies were alive. In the previous games you mostly needed to kill enemies because they were a danger in your way, and what actually mattered was the objective.

I'll probably post more thoughts when I'm at my pc and not posting from my phone though. I played all the Halo campaigns over the pandemic so I might make a thread about it.

Yeah I agree with all of your points. That design has to be there because of the coop I'm sure. Otherwise you could simply flee while the enemies are focused on your squad. If you get shot down you can get revived.

It's also weird because Halo 3 supported 4 player coop and overall felt the same. I guess because they didn't care 4 players could steamroll the game.

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Darmik

It's just typical of Ubisoft in general really.

Blacklist flopped? Ah it has nothing to do with it releasing right before next gen consoles and the fact we never bothered porting it. It's because Splinter Cell isn't popular so it's time to move on. We'll just slap the property into other games.

Assassin's Creed Unity and Syndicate flopped in succession?! Oh lets take a year break and try to make the franchise exciting again. Now they have another formula they'll suck that dry until it flops.

I bet we'll see another sandbox Ghost Recon game too despite Breakpoint flopping so bad they delayed every other game. Having 4 open world games as a service games makes more sense than actually trying to have some diversity in their lineup.

Ironically enough mindsets like this mean they're unable to start up a new major franchise like Assassin's Creed to begin with.

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Darmik

"If you're good at games...like having the skills of a 9 or 10 year old"

lol it's really not that different from the Fortnite stories of today. Even still have the Pacman comparison. Funny to think the gap between the SNES and Pac-man would be like Uncharted 2 and now.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik

Grischnak posted...

So you think Ubisoft sabotages their own games to push some sort of anti-women agenda? That seems a bit...tin foil hat..

They haven't done it so there's nothing for them to sabotage. It's just been small budget spin-offs that had female leads in AC.

If anything the biggest AC game that flopped was Unity. Which had a white guy lead. Didn't bother them though.

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Darmik

iPhone_7 posted...

As someone who has not read the books or hardly remembers ODST, I was confused by the sudden inclusion of other Spartans. I thought he was the only one of his kind left and that they were instead making newer smaller versions, like the Spartan woman in Halo 4.

Also what happened to that Didact guy? Theres all the fuss about the Forerunners for several games and then when one shows up & its a badass villain its just immediately gotten rid of in a crappy quick time event scene. I thought he was going to survive but be scarred after falling through that portal.

I thought it would have been neat if he corrupted the surviving part of Cortana. At the end of 5 she could still have turned bad, killed off the Didact, & assume control of the Forerunner army.

They did have other spartans in 4 IIRC. But they weren't a focus. I think Palmer was one? The woman? Locke and hew crew are more like those I think.

Oh wait you mean Blue Team. Yeah they were in the books lol. Probably should have kept them there at this point.

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Darmik

deoxxys posted...

I dont think "Women dont sell"

Its more like "trying to pander to Women doesnt sell"

The Triple A industry majorly tries to capitalize on demographics and hitting a broad audience to sell games, so essentially all thye know how to do is pander.

All the great examples of games with women protagonists are games that are largely NOT trying to pander.
Horizon Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider, Portal.

I think another distinction that should be made is people dont like when you take a primarily male protagonist series and inexplicably turn it into a female protagonist, it comes off heavily as pandering especially when its a bad game as well it becomes easy to blame "feminizing" a game or movie.

I doubt Assassin's Creed Odyssey with just Kassandra would have felt like pandering.

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Darmik

BeyondWalls posted...

Not coincidentally, this is exactly why the Atari 5200 and the 7800 failed. Atari couldn't make families understand why they needed to upgrade. It wasn't until the SNES that the public finally understood and embraced the idea.

To be fair with the 5200 they barely bothered making games for it because the 2600 had the bigger userbase so that method would still fail heh.

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Darmik

darkbuster posted...

Both San Andreas & Windwaker were sequels in established franchises. Both had a degree of insulation from this issue, in the fact they were practically guaranteed to sell regardless.

Just like Assassin's Creed.

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Darmik

"Women don't sell"
Zzzzzz. Wha...he has a point right?
"Single player games don't sell"
FUCK YOU

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Darmik

BignutzisBack posted...

These dweebs had the audacity to put that message of inclusion at the start of their games and then pull crap like this

Well technically it's true.

There's just a white guy who is their boss who tells them no.

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Darmik

I think The Medium and Returnal look great. But they're more mid budget games so they'll never be as big as the others.

The big counter-point to this is Horizon Zero Dawn. Which is a game that is very similar to Assassin's Creed. It probably wasn't far off from outselling the last two AC games either which considering it's an exclusive says a lot too.

I don't see why a female led Assassin's Creed game wouldn't sell.

We hear this same shit for movies and then people wonder why they make stuff like Captain Marvel into a big deal.

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Darmik

I can see it. First game had a man protecting her. Second movie is all about how she needs no man to protect her which shits on Kyle Reese as a character!

I can see the angry YouTube thumbnails now.

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Darmik

https://twitter.com/disco_jill/status/1285590827830517761

Ubisoft suck. No wonder their games are all so safe.

The Gamergate-type crowd liked to pretend this stuff doesn't happen though and that developers can make a game starring any character they want.

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Darmik

Blue_Inigo posted...

https://youtu.be/Pj93B0Irjh0

TC's statement confirmed by Nintendo themselves

Well at least they didn't lie about it. Nintendo really need to translate this stuff themselves.

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Darmik

Shadowplay posted...

Would you say that it was weaker than Halo 4's campaign?

Yes. The biggest issue with Halo 4 was that it was short and the Prometheans were sorta eh compared to the Covenant.

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Darmik

The developers wanted to have a game with a woman protagonist. Executives said no.

If this was literally anything else (even the genders being flipped) we'd have #Gamers flipping out about it.

Looked gf posted...

The publisher said sales were terrible, would a male lead/different storyline have made a difference? Idk

It was a stealthy horror game that followed Colonial Marines and got a bad review at IGN. So no. Prey also flopped.

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Darmik

Antifar posted...

That's Ubisoft, not Microsoft.

I don't think it will happen but I could see that being announced at an Xbox event due to their history with the series.

Hell Microsoft paying for an exclusive might be the only way a might Splinter Cell game will happen at this point. Similar to the Sony/Silent Hill rumor.

But yeah it's a longshot.

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Darmik

I played the Destroy All Humans demo when it was on GOG.

It seemed pretty good. Just a tutorial though. But kinning the farmers and using the telekinesis on cows was fun. The physics system adds a lot I think.

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Darmik

MFBKBass5 posted...

There wasnt a single game on that list I was interested in. Plus tons of those games are old.

I thought the point of a demo was to get us excited about an upcoming game.

They're basically all indie games outside of Destroy All Humans.

The link is just for all of the demos on Xbox in general so it does eventually go back to older games.

https://www.trueachievements.com/event/xbox-summer-game-fest

This is probably a better list

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Darmik

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/game-demos/games/xbox

Seems similar to the Steam one. Definitely a few demos I'm gonna try out though since the Steam one passed me by.

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Darmik

I'm playing it now and it's fun. I love stealthing through it.

teepan95 posted...

It's good, but the frame rate dips bugged the hell out of me

I have a Ryzen 3600 CPU and a 1070 and I still had to turn shadows down to high lol.

My old i5 6500 CPU outright could not play the game without framerate drops. It's very CPU heavy.

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Darmik

TreyFlowers posted...

This laptop would be like $3k in Australia @Darmik lol

https://www.amazon.com.au/GF65-9SD-004-i7-9750H-GTX1660Ti-Win10Home/dp/B081JDXQTK

$2,165! lol

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Darmik

I think getting kicked out of ADS when getting shot is a fine middle ground at least.

Sprint I'm fine either way. I overall like the dashes and clamber is a great addition.

I don't mind the mobility and style of Halo 5. Worked good in Arena when I played that back in the day. Overall I preferred it to Reach and 4.

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Darmik

Should be fine for current gen and cross gen.

Won't keep up when next gen gets into full gear. So probably good for 3ish years.

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Darmik

DarkRoast posted...

It's influenced too heavily by Call of Duty's style.

Halo works best when it plays... Well, like Halo.

Maybe in the sense of having a lot of disposable enemies but it doesn't really play like COD. I think it's more because they wanted the 4 player coop experience which really impacted the campaign design. A lot of the encounters play more like a Firefight sort of mode with massive arenas and secret areas to get weapons and whatever. It's a bit weird.

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Darmik

DarkRoast posted...

Hell, the RTX 2080 Ti, quite literally the best GPU on the market, only gets like 60fps with Minecraft RTX at 1080p (without cheating by using DLSS at least)

Minecraft is just pure brute force ray tracing. I doubt any games on console will do that. They'll apply it where needed and use techniques to bring the cost down. Which is what is also happening on PC games like Control and Battlefield.

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Darmik

I'm replaying this now and I'm only a few missions in but I'm just reminded how odd this game is in general.

I can see where the ambition was. It's just...totally off from what people wanted in a mainline game I think.

Like how you have the squadmates in the Halo 5 campaign. It just doesn't really sit right. It makes the balance completely wonky for single player. You've got three powerful allies. So to make up for that they absolutely flood these levels with enemies or bosses that have weak points in the back that rely more on coordination. But it just doesn't really work well compared to the originals. The fine tuned flow is thrown off. Because of that this means they've basically added 7 new protagonists to this story. Split across two protagonists. So you barely know any of these people. Like they've got Nathan Fillion and Laura Bailey for some of these characters so I don't think they will be disposable. And yet other than Locke and Buck I don't think many people will recognize them if they return in future games. Buck is primarily known from ODST as well. Chief's allies are just fan service from the books so I can't help but wonder if they were even needed at all. Dropping them from the Chief levels would at least make both characters feel more distinct and bombard the player with less stuff.

You've got these weird non-combat sections that just...don't really do anything interesting. You can't do anything other than follow objective markers or find intel. I think they're inspired by stuff like Uncharted but there's nothing interesting to really look at. They set up some of the AI uprising stuff that pays off later but it just doesn't really fit.

The concept of Chief going on the run and going up against his old allies is interesting. But it also doesn't really go anywhere or land anywhere interesting.

It's like a game that has a lot of interesting ideas but just doesn't really jive together. It's a shame really. I'm guessing they thought going with Locke wouldn't be a big deal since people liked ODST and Reach but they had their own games to flesh that idea out. That probably would have been better for the whole squad concept in general. Something like Republic Commando for Halo instead of this weird sort of combo that has the strength of neither.

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Darmik

I miss his quirky outfits, being a Muppet, his "Directly to you!", Please Understand and whatever else.

https://i.imgur.com/haAhb74.mp4

They don't have the playfulness that they used to.

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Darmik

I don't think it's a game for people on boards like this. I'm not really interested. I think it's more for the Minecraft/Fortnite crowd. Where it's basically an excuse to just hang out with friends in a game and go on adventures.

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Kind Regards,
Darmik