Halo 2 Anticipation

Yeah I heard about that. There are people playing it on xbox connect, which is pretty stupid since when bungie or MS see that the shit is gonna fly.
 
Nothing's really going to happen, and this isn't unusual. Every single game gets pirated a few days after it goes gold. It can have an affect on PC launches, but it's really not an issue with consoles. You can't play the thing on Live, they'll ban your account and xbox in a second. You need a modded xbox to play the leaked game anyway, and very very few people actually have those. The pirated copy is also huge, more than 7.5 gigs. The game is only 3 weeks away. It'll sell many millions of copies. On November 9 everyone will have forgotten about the silly leaked French version.

Had a meeting this evening about planning the Halo launch here. It's really going to be spectacular. The biggest event in the more than four years I've been having big launch events. Have you all gotten your collectible limited edition Halo 2 Slurpee cups from Seven-Eleven? Collect all three.
 
Chris, what's your Xbox Live game tag? (I'd like to play my online matches with some people I know). Mine is obviously Major Striker.
 
Someone explain to me - in very concise terms - why Halo 2 is such a big deal? I just don't see the attraction.
 
LeHah said:
Someone explain to me - in very concise terms - why Halo 2 is such a big deal? I just don't see the attraction.

I guess we could make a pacman mod for it. :p
 
If you don't see it then no one is going to be able to explain it to you in a way that makes you suddenly crave it. Either you like or you don't, it's as simple as that.
 
Multiplayer, I think. MANY people who drooll over Halo and HAlo2 are dedicated console gamers, with no PC background. It's the same phonomenom as CS for pcs.
 
Its not that I think poorly of it - it's just there. It's nothing revolutionary or amazing - yet no one makes as big of a stink about, say, Timesplitters 2.
 
Yeah, it's very ordinary - to us PC gamers. For console-only people it's very impressive. And very revolutionary.
 
I don't really see how it's revolutionary to console games, either - consoles have plenty of competant ports of FPS games... I mean, I know how much we all love idiotic elitism (oh, zee zilly console gamerz!), but it doesn't really make sense.
 
There is really nothing revolutionary about Halo2. Bungie however as a company has a long history of creating followings to there games. Hell my signature here is a quote from one of Bungie's earlier games, Marathon, a game from 1995.

Much like WC, some of halo's popularity comes from the depth of its story, both the Halo story page and the Marathon story page are very active places of discussion of the most minute details of the plot. Why? It is really that encompassing.

I anticipate the game mostly because I'm curious to see if Bungie connects the Marathon and Halo stories.

Beware those of the se7en....
 
I beg to differ, loaf. I have no qualms against console people, I have a couple of older machines and I think that there are some pretty cool things only available to consoles.

But there are some genres (Like true flight sims, RTS, FPS, TBS) that were kinda exclusive to the PC, or that the console versions were quite limited.

Console FPS games were pretty inferior to the PC ones, and lacked true multiplayer beyond 4 player split screen. There were some exceptions (like golden eye). Then Came Halo and console people started making events very similar to LAN parties, with 16 players in 4 xboxes. IMO, that's why people love Halo so much. It didn't have half the same impact on the PC market. I personally like it even though there are some flaws in the SP.
 
Edfilho said:
Console FPS games were pretty inferior to the PC ones, and lacked true multiplayer beyond 4 player split screen. There were some exceptions (like golden eye). Then Came Halo and console people started making events very similar to LAN parties, with 16 players in 4 xboxes. IMO, that's why people love Halo so much. It didn't have half the same impact on the PC market. I personally like it even though there are some flaws in the SP.

You forgot the Medal Of Honor series - especially Frontline.
 
Edfilho said:
Console FPS games were pretty inferior to the PC ones, and lacked true multiplayer beyond 4 player split screen. There were some exceptions (like golden eye). Then Came Halo and console people started making events very similar to LAN parties, with 16 players in 4 xboxes. IMO, that's why people love Halo so much. It didn't have half the same impact on the PC market. I personally like it even though there are some flaws in the SP.

I think the above statement is pretty accurate. There are quite a damn lot of FPS games on the XBox/Consoles/PC now, but Halo is incredibly balanced with incredible replayability. There are a million customizable modes for different types of multiplayer, and the maps are diverse and well thought out. The game mechanics are very well done. The variety of weapons, limitations on what you can do and variety of strategies while playing are very compelling. Combine this with a rather interesting single player/storyline and the aforementioned easy LAN party play, and you've got a real XBox killer app. While not necessarily revolutionary, it's super polished. Things like the single player campaign cooperative multiplayer and 16-player console LAN play are something that current FPS games still don't consistently feature or do right.

The first Halo has reached five million sales. After three years, Halo 1 is still in the monthly top ten sales slots for the XBox. People who play it tend to like it a hell of a lot, and Halo 2 is everything in Halo and more (better single player variety, refinements in mechanics, online play, etc). People love it. My store has tried to run quite a few tournaments over the years. Most are pretty pathetic. Madden, Gran Turismo, etc, attract a crowd of a dozen or so and end pretty quickly. The first Halo tournament we threw had 60 people and packed the store all day (https://www.wcnews.com/chrisreid/halotournament01.jpg). So a significant portion of the initial five million Halo adopters are going to be very excited about November 9.

Maj.Striker said:
Chris, what's your Xbox Live game tag? (I'd like to play my online matches with some people I know). Mine is obviously Major Striker.

ChrisReid.
 
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Concerning Medal of Honour... Well...
I've watched my girl's brother playing the original PS MoHs and it was boooooooooooooring. Walk in a VERY linear map, STOP, take aim for 20 seconds, shoot...

I know that PS2 MoHs were a lot better. But I don't think they had the same MP goodness as Halo, nor the same speed.
 
The MOH Frontline I played had a real problem with lighting...it was always too dark. It was very hard to make out anyone from rock by a wall. Also, it didn't offer system link options, only 4 player splitscreen. The graphics were subpar at best...am I missing anything? Oh the plot was completely missing. It was like a stripped down version of RTCW.
 
I have both Frontline and Rising Sun for gamecube . . . I enjoyed it. I still play frontline from time to time. Rising Sun lacked the good musical score that Frontline boasted, and that kinda ruined the experience. It wasn't exactly the be-all, end-all of ww2 FPS style games, but it was enjoyable, and I got a good amount of gameplay out of it, which is all one can realistically ask.

The fact that Halo had the correct balance of graphics, story, etc etc is a bit of a phenomenon, similar to WC. Not every FPS game is going to be as good, and not every game that uses a joystick and shoots at spaceships is going to be as good as WC. It's just a given.
 
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