PixlBit

Wow that tactical flashlight attachment is brutal, the brightness and spread is obnoxious. Sometimes exploits are fun, other times it makes a game no longer fun to play. When Halo 2 came out there were so many interesting bugs, the most fascinating bugs I've ever seen a game but no matter what happened the game was always fun to play for some reason. There was a team slayer match running one time and by accident one of my teammates got a warthog stuck on a bridge and an opponent shot a rocket at him, and the rocket began to orbit around the warthog and bridge. It was so weird that the entire battle broke down and both teams stopped fighting, came together by the warthog and kept firing rockets to put in orbit around the warthog/bridge. Everybody from red and blue laughed, and started dicking around instead of killing each other. Those are the kinds of memories that are priceless and don't happen very often with most games, but it happens all the time in Halo games. There were so many other fun bugs in Halo 2 and 3 and the example I just used was probably the most boring of them all lol, just goes to show how many crazy ones we would always find. The bugs and exploits in Halo games usually extended well into the campaigns too. My favorite was the Outskirts level in Halo 2 where you were able to play the beginning encounter spaces like a big platform level by jumping you're way up to the rooftops and making your way across the rooftops of the whole area, bypassing the enemy. It was as if it was designed to be able to provide the opportunity to curious players because in one encounter space you even find a sniper rifle hidden in a niche around the rooftops. For the curious, the pathways to the rooftops and across them were hidden, fun to discover, but not too difficult to explore. It's one of the things that probably inspired my platformer Forge World maps in Halo Reach.

For contrast I played a bit of Gears multiplayer back in the day and the exploits we would find weren't fun, like host advantages and stuff like that. The Gears universe and mechanics weren't really ripe for fun glitches, physics, or bugs like Halo is. In Team Fortress 2 (my favorite competitive multiplayer game ever) the bugs weren't very fun or entertaining either like being able to snipe people from up in the skybox on Dustbowl or shooting through the ceiling in 2Fort and having the damage transfer to people and sentries above. It was fun to mess around with glitches for a match but it wore off and eventually people were just using it to help them win and it wasn't fun anymore.

Thanks Nick! I went and checked out the review and it was a great read. I've heard there's some crazy and weird things that happen at the end of the game and there's a need to save up lots of gold. If there's one thing I was great at in Fable 2 it was saving cash. By the time I was halfway through Fable 2 I already had all the real estate and had raked in several million in gold. So much so that every time I booted the game I would have to donate a few million to the temple just to get rid of it and attempt to be mildly rich instead of insanely rich.

I only got into Halo multi-player back when Halo 2 came out. I played much less multi-player with Halo 3, and virtually none with Reach. I fell in love with the series because of the campaigns and universe. The story events and narrative in the games were great at times, convoluted and ridiculous at others, but the universe really shines through in the novels and does the complexity of the lore justice.

Sadly enough it already feels retro and eventually even though I'm only 22, kids these days are going to look at me as "old man Mike the weird guy that still plays Halo". I've been a huge Halo fan since 2001 and I feel like it became retro after 2007 not only because the trilogy wrapped up that year with Halo 3 but also because of the mass exodus of Halo multi-player people heading over to the young Modern Warfare series that was just getting its foot in the door that year. I'm passionate about the series in ways I could never be for many other shooters though so my loyalty has already been won a long time ago. The Halo universe, games, novels, etc are like my Star Wars. I'm getting Halo: Cryptum soon and I'm geeking out about getting to read it finally, and get me prepped for Halo 4 next year.

Jules I decided to wait a little while for the HD remake of CE and instead yesterday I ordered Fable 3 new on Amazon for a grand total of $6 lol! I love Fable and I've been waiting for my chance to get 3 for a long time, and I'm sure it's safe to say I'll be getting my monies worth right? How can I go wrong with $6? The reason it was so cheap is because when I pre-ordered War in the North I got a $20 credit and so that took a huge chunk out of the cost for Fable 3 when I decided to get it.

Seems like it's pretty safe to say the industry is very healthy. How can you go wrong with, "...biggest entertainment launch of all time, in any medium..."

I'm not sure what the catalyst was but I remember pre-E3 and pre-Wii U the majority of the media and gamer sentiment I saw on 1UP for example was that we weren't quite tapping the potential of our current hardware and people were just begging for new games instead of consoles. Now all this momentum is building for new consoles just because Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony will it to be true lol. Suddenly it's a "foregone conclusion" as this article puts it. I for one don't have a problem with new consoles, as long as they are backwards compatible and don't come out of the oven before they're workable. I hope the new Xbox doesn't come out before my dream of replacing my frankenstein first gen 360 that's been repaired 3 times with a slim 360 comes to fruition.

2013 would be fine because I'll have time to prepare and save up for it. The reason backwards compatibility is important to me is because this generation I've only had the funds to be able to invest in a Microsoft experience and I still don't have my own PS3 and all the Sony games I want. If I have to wait till PS4 I hope I can still buy and play the Uncharted series, MGS 4, God of War, etc on it. There's ton of stuff I could go on because Sony has lots of games I want.

Nice review Jules. When the game came out I only heard the G4 review and their review didn't help me much at all so the game went off my radar for a while. Now this game is definitely back on my radar. I loved the 1st game and I finished another playthrough last month because I wanted to play it again. I also have the first anime Deadspace: Downfall and I love it. I love the universe and atmosphere they've created for the series. I love the mechanics for the series and to be honest I get the kind of experience out of Dead Space that I kind of wish I could have from Resident Evil, as far as the feel of the game and the mechanics of the 3rd person shooting.

I agree with Jules, I love Norrath, but as far as this game goes it'll be best to wait till it's a bit cheaper. I don't think they capitalized on the potential they had with this game, but it's not a terrible game. I've been having fun, but just know that the flaws the game has are very obvious and it's obvious where Snowblind could improve in their brainstorming, conception, design, and implementation. I think it works pretty great as an action RPG in most of the encounters. The combat animations are pretty cool at times (they are the only interesting animations I might add), there's tons of loot to find, and I tend to like the skill trees even if they are predictable. Looking through the skill trees I see a lot of useful skills and things I actually want. When I play through Borderlands the skill trees are hard to understand and I never know what will actually benefit me or how I could use a skill. In War in the North the benefits are obvious and useful.

I love the Great Eagles, they are the only characters I care about in the game so far. Every time I see Beleram I just want to cuddle up in his feathers and look into his big shiny hazel eagle eyes lol. The eagles are a sight to behold, but with that said they don't have much competition. The animations are so dry with most character interactions that I can't wait to just get a dialogue sequence over with. For example you go to show Gloin some gems and have him appraise them. Well you press the input, immediately his task is done and he's telling you about it with some mediocre dialogue lines. Quest complete, move on. During the game you see lots of people like Aragorn and Frodo, but they are always so lifeless. The animation is so skimpy that it doesn't do the Tolkien world justice. The poor animation sucks the life out of this game world no matter now pretty the eagle are or how sweet the loot you just grabbed is. I agree that I don't appreciate the invisible walls Jesse. There's plenty of them to be found in each level. Another example of the dryness of the game is the boss battle I had last night. I was in the Ettenmoors and fought the main boss, a rouge stone giant. He looked pretty cool, and he was damn huge, but the battle itself was as dry as it could be. I'll prove it. To beat him I had to hack at his shins like a little ankle biter, than he'd stumbled slowly down on all fours and we'd hack at his arms. That's how you win, grab your XP, and move on. The game's not broken, it's absolutely playable, and I'm honestly having fun with it but I'm very forgiving and understanding lol. I still love Snowblind with a passion and I can tell they had passion behind this project, but the execution was really bland in all but certain parts.

I agree Jules. I personally believe the best way to deal with staleness is to say "To hell with the status quo" and just start throwing design ideas at the wall and see what sticks, what is fun. That's how I see level design and mechanics anyways, I'm not a writer so I don't plan to ever worry as much about plot but as long as the people who write the plot and plan the pacing of the unfolding narrative do a good job of it, than a level design team can build an experience suited to the narrative and throw whatever they have at the game to make it fun. There's no point in making Rainbow Six Vegas 2.5 just so you can satisfy the minority of fans that want a never changing "purist" formula.

I thought the interactive sequence at the beginning was beautiful and terrifying. The actual game-play representation that followed, on the bridge, looked really fun. I liked the direction they took Splinter Cell Conviction in as far as mechanics go, so I have no doubt the direction they're taking Rainbow Six in will be awesome as well. It's more cinematic, varied, and sophisticated in the sense that the mechanics revolve around the environment and how you will need to interact with the environment.

For example, when they needed to get down onto the bridge from their sniper nest, they quickly repelled down, shooting enemies along the way. Older design techniques or styles would've had you enter an elevator and wait while a short loading screen took you down. Or there might have simply been a cut scene and removed the player from the action altogether. I love the philosophy of making the mechanics and game-play serve the story and situation at hand, as opposed to having the story or narrative be restricted, interrupted, or broken by a game mechanic. I really loved the whole vid, it looks like the game is going in a great direction. It looks like the kind of game I would want to make, and want to play.

What?! Hell yea then, I'm on board. Lets get this butter on a roll lol. That's great it'll be in physical disc format, I'm excited about that. I missed the opportunity to play the games last hardware cycle so I've been needing to experience those for quite a long while.