Halo 3 - now coming to Xbox One. MC Collection.

[dan_tm]

I didn't even realise the co-op had even been confirmed that it was being worked on, so it's good news in that respect.

But those sorts of comments don't fill me with confidence... It's like when developers say, it's not running in 60fps at the moment but we're going to try as hard as possible to get it in before the game ships, we still have time to do it. You know it's going to be 30fps though, don't you Bizarre?

Hopefully it's just Bungie playing with us, I doubt they'd confirm it's inclusion just yet if it was working anyway.

[Rev]

Check out the article. They say the reason is 'cos in Halo's open world, you can quite easily have someone miles away from his buddy, and that's proving hard to code in terms of lag and performance. It's not like Gears where you are always within 10 meters of each other.

So, identical to Crackdown then?

[hanzo]

Shit those scans are brilliant. WTF!

I'm officially excited

[andrewwd]

Aye those screenshots are looking rad. I love the sort of 'eggshell' plasticky look everything has, the game models look like toys, but in a good way. Nothing is overly shiny / slimy looking.

[squirtle]

I'm not really that fussed about online co-op to be honest. I want a good single player campaign, like the last two games have provided. I would hate that they go down the Gears of War route. A game should be excellent in single player, and as a bonus, excellent in co-op as well. Gears got the balance very wrong, and it's bloody obvious they did by all the comments in the thread about it. Halo 1 and 2 were both ace in single player and of course, co-op just added to the general fun of it all. I really do hope that the levels have been designed for one person playing, and they haven't tried to shoehorn in some extra co-op bits where you're reliant on the AI. Halo 1 and 2 were not about this, and the third in the series should not fall foul of this either.

[tyler]

Summary of the new information:

New Gear:

Flare - It's a flashbang. Seems Forerunner in design, definently the unknown grenade type.

Mauler - Dual-wieldable shotgun. Brute weapon, mandatory blade randomly sticking out the bottom.

Gravity Hammer - Based on Tartarus special toy. Can act like a sword, but mostly used for area attacks and physics based fun. Sends vehicles and grenades flying. Has a shockwave-type effect.

Regenerator - Equipment. Like the power drainer but opposite.

Radar Jammer - Equipment. Causes radar to go crazy with false positives. More importantly though, described as "mostly" useless in the campaign. Yea, okay I guess it's just a turn of phrase.

Positional Shield - Equipment. Pretty much exactly like the ground shields in Halo/Halo 2. Not clear whether or not it's permanent or whether or not it lets gunfire through one side.

New Vehicles:

Warthog Troop Transport (M831 TT) - Carries four passengers in rear cargo hold rather than turret.

Prowler - A Brute Spectre. Looks amazingly badass.

Hornet - UNSC helicoptor only seen in Campaign mode so far. Appears to carry passengers, but God knows how, seems to expose them more than the Mancannon does.

Elephant - Described as a Jawa Sandcrawler, it's essentially a UNSC Scarab. A dozen soldiers can ride it, it can house a Mongoose in it's belly, is driveable, has a turret, can respawn troops, and holds both the flag and cap point. Only available on Sandtrap as of right now, and is only thing specifically mentioned not to be included in Forge.

Campaign:

Online Co-op - WHO KNOWS? FRANKIE KNOWS. SAY SOMETHING FRANKIE. C'MON FRANKIE.

Brutes - They stay towards rear, commanding others in encounters. Berserking is gone, but they will do a monkey charge if stripped of their technology. Chieftains come with Grav Hammers and the same invincibility power Tartarus had. Oh and they can use jetpacks.

A.I. - The monkeys can now climb, along with the rest of the Covenant. Seems to be a direct response to retarded Elite On A Hill moments in Halo 2.

The Arbiter - Nothing. "No Raiden moment." Campaign is 100% MC, with Arbiter in tow for Co-op. Whether this means Arbiter won't be selectable solo at all or rules out 4 player co-op is unknown.

Encounters - "There's an encounter at the end of the second mission that you play that has more enemies allies than the entire first mission of Halo". Claims less drastic distinction between the Now I'm Exploring This Corridoor, Now I'm Blowing Up Vehicles parts.

Lighting, Sound, Music, Graphics in general - Godly. Around 40,000 voice clips too. Cursing used to indicate status.

Metagame - Played solo or co-op, score based on player performance and active hidden skulls. Presumably difficulty level too. Mentions stat collection on bnet but not the all important LEADERBOARDS.

Multiplayer:

LOCKOUT REMAKE - Not really. Map's name is Gaurdian, Forerunner place hanging in the jungle. "This is not a port of Lockout". Maybe he's lying? Supposedly Lockout influenced, it's really hard to read the section on it. The screen of it has the double level and catwalk thing going on but seems much, much larger.

Game Modes - A good amount spent on the customizeable gameplay modes. Gravity, spawns, move speed, and even stuff like immunity while within a King of the Hill circle are customizeable. Lists stuff like Hamster Crack and Hammer Time, but it's not clear whether these are actually preset modes or just ways of messing with options in Custom games.

Sandtrap - Vehicles on a goddamn 15 second respawn timer. Not really clear how the vehicle spawn locations will interact with moving the Elephant around.

Elite model - Larger than Spartan but not so much to gimp yourself. Head seems to have been raised much higher although it definently still seems longer than the Spartan domes.

Invincibility - Based on Tartarus green haze of don't waste your ammo, allegedly rare in multiplayer.

Forge:

You can turn your Spartan into a Halo Monitor and back again. That's pretty much it. Full control over a map's spawned items except for the Elephant. Multiplayer, although player count unknown. Everyone gets a Monitor. Create your own gameplay, or whatever that stupid buzzword is. Divergent, or something. Will track Spartan's stats for goal based play, although won't have any rules enforced.

Marathon:

Speculation about the terminals, no new info. But the magazine says Marathon should be on XBLA "now". Which should correspond to sometime near August 11th.

More stuff (some of which may be duplicate info):

Forge:

-Map editor

-Does not support geometry creation, or texture modification

-Allows you to remove and place any items or vehicles or spawn points or objectives, etc... anywhere on the existing maps

-For things like weapons you can tweak their respawn timer and ammo count and other minor things

-Possibly more things, but I don't have that info right now

Forge info updated, this is cool!

-You can have multiple people work in the Forge editor over Xbox Live!

-You can also dynamically switch from creation mode to playing mode and run around as your spartan

-If you are "playing" in Forge and have other players in it, they can still change things! For instance, if you have a friend making a pyramid of fusion cores, you can turn into your player and lob a grenade in to destroy all his work!

-Make your own kind of games in forge. Bungie gives the example of grab the mongoose. One player rides a mongoose while everyone else tries to grab it out from under him by removing it in Forge! Another is like a magic carpet ride where one player will stand on a object and a forge monitor will drag it along making the player ride it through the air.

Finally Bungie talked about how you can kind of make it into a realtime strategy game where you set up "teams" where each team has a monitor creating items for his team to use.

Elephant:

-Only works on Sandtrap map right now

-Giant floating base which players will spawn on, have vehicles spawn on, and hold objectives such as flags.

-The Elephant is drivable by players making for moving base games

Hornet:

-UNSC flying vehicle

-Only seen in Campaign so far, but should be in MP as well

-Can carry two people and the pilot

-Can combat Banshees, but weapons specifics are not know right now

Mauler:

-Brute Shotgun

-Dual Wieldable

-Not as powerful as Human shotgun (its dual wieldable, duh)

Prowler (not predator):

-Brute version of Warthog

-Turret gun

-Passengers on side

-4 players on it total (1 driver 3 passengers)

Flare Equipment:

-Blinds everyone who sees it... its a flare

Invincibility Equipment:

-Makes you temporarily invincible

-Brutes use in SP a lot

-Will be in MP, but will be rare

Regenerator:

-Equipment which regenerates players health near by (anti-energy drainer?)

Personal Shield (retrieved from lucidgrey):

Unlike the 360 degree bubble shield, this is a stationary version of the Jackal's handheld deflector and it only protects against attacks from one direction. Stand behind the shield and fire through to hit opponents on the other side.

Gravity Hammer:

-Kind of like plasma sword

-Knocks openness and vehicles and grenades (yes grenades in mid air) back

-The Meta game scores your skill in each level. You can play the meta game in solo or in coop. You get scored for kills, who you kill, how you perform the kills and doing special things like picking up the magic skulls which will create different effects (like Halo 2). They say the skull effects stack so while you could try to play through picking up all skulls for mad points, it would probably make the game impossible. You also lose points for team killing

[Rushy]

Summary of the new information:

Cheers

[K]

It'd be nice if, once you've picked up a skull, you could just activate it from a menu rather than having to fanny around to get to it every single time.

[Mr Do 71]

Consider me EXCITED!

[Smitty]

Stirling work, Tyler.

I mean, all of that's there, but thank you very much for condensing it and putting into bullet points.

[Mr Do 71]

It'd be nice if, once you've picked up a skull, you could just activate it from a menu rather than having to fanny around to get to it every single time.

This.

[Guest]

So, identical to Crackdown then?

good point.

it's be funny if the game that launched the biggest game on the 360 could do more technical trickery than that actual game!

[MalevolentPanda]

It'd be nice if, once you've picked up a skull, you could just activate it from a menu rather than having to fanny around to get to it every single time.

Presumably not possible if picking up skulls forms part of scoring system as described.

[Angles Morts]

*Explodes*

If that's factually correct, then that deserves another

Bums, the biggest fights in Halo 2 were the most boring.

I'm beginning to think that Halo was so good because of its simplicity - having few variables seemed to give great variation in gameplay. I think the more they add, the more everything averages out into a less satisfying mush.

[simms]

I'm beginning to think that Halo was so good because of its simplicity - having few variables seemed to give great variation in gameplay. I think the more they add, the more everything averages out into a less satisfying mush.

This ^ In light of the new info thats just been posted I'm a bit worried that they are adding too much to the Halo formula and it may backfire and dilute the experience a bit. A Halo veteran might be excited at all the cool possiblities but may become a bit overwhelming for me personally (I found dual whelding a bit much at first but love it now). Having a large fan base and community maybe a bad thing for Bungie as they probably have got shitloads of feedback since Halo2 and they trying to please everyone. Don't get me wrong like Halo 2 it will probably still be better than 98% of the other FPS out there.

[Snowman]

Bums, the biggest fights in Halo 2 were the most boring.

I'm beginning to think that Halo was so good because of its simplicity - having few variables seemed to give great variation in gameplay. I think the more they add, the more everything averages out into a less satisfying mush.

I was thinking more along the lines of the large scale battles in Halo rather than the sequel, particularly in AotCR. You know, hopping into a warthog with a gunner and tearing through the Covenant ranks, duking it out with the wraiths and banshees.

[K]

So, identical to Crackdown then?

To be fair, I reckon the AI and shit will be loads more complex in Halo 3 than in Crackdown. If Bungie are having problems, it's probably because it's difficult.

[Kryptonian]

To be fair, I reckon the AI and shit will be loads more complex in Halo 3 than in Crackdown. If Bungie are having problems, it's probably because it's difficult.

That's what I thought.

Cheers for the summary too Tyler

[sir stiff_one]

Yeah exactly like that Crackdown game where you build a pile of cars, run just out of sight and they all disappear. So no, not like it at all.

Chieftains come with Grav Hammers and the same invincibility power Tartarus had. Oh and they can use jetpacks.

This sounds too awful to be real.

[moosegrinder]

That link just goes to a GT page. There's nowt there, have I missed it?

[Ben]

All you missed were some godawful blurry, out of focus photos of a magazine; Tyler's post above has all the info that it had and is far easier on the eyes.

[moosegrinder]

Ah fair do's. I can't be arsed to read all that. Kudos to tyler for having more patience than I'll ever possess, mind.

[Lothar Hex]

Man all the new info has me so glad I got the week the games out off from work.

[tyler]

Cheers

Stirling work, Tyler.

I mean, all of that's there, but thank you very much for condensing it and putting into bullet points.

Cheers for the summary too Tyler

Kudos to tyler for having more patience than I'll ever possess, mind.

I didn't actually type all that, hence the quotes, it's all c&p from a few sources with some formatting to make it easier to follow. I'm appalled you took that for my writing style.

Forum love accepted though.

[Kryptonian]

You still posted it

I knew you wouldn't have typed that shite. Well, some of it.

[Harry]

I'm a big fan of the Halo games, I loved the single player for Halo 1, not so much for Halo 2, but Halo 2 was a terrific multiplayer game, especially on Live.

My only concern with this is that it look's a lot similar to Halo 2, I mean the engine look's entirely the same, I.e. player models, animations, lighting etc..

I'm sure it will be great on multiplayer but the graphics don't look next-gen at all.

[Smitty]

All you missed were some godawful blurry, out of focus photos of a magazine; Tyler's post above has all the info that it had and is far easier on the eyes.

Er. he also missed some pretty good pictures, including first looks at a whole bunch of stuff.

My only concern with this is that it look's a lot similar to Halo 2, I mean the engine look's entirely the same, I.e. player models, animations, lighting etc..

Pffft.

[dan_tm]

My only concern with this is that it look's a lot similar to Halo 2, I mean the engine look's entirely the same, I.e. player models, animations, lighting etc..

Why didn't you try out the beta to see for yourself? I assume you didn't from that anyway.

From what I saw the graphics were a decent step forward, nothing revolutionary or something to go mental over but they were solid and functional. The most amazing improvement with the beta was the audio, it sounds incredible. I can't wait to hear more of the campaign audio.

[Rev]

Yeah exactly like that Crackdown game where you build a pile of cars, run just out of sight and they all disappear. So no, not like it at all.

This sounds too awful to be real.

I'd tend to think that there will be more things to remember the positions of in Crackdown than Halo 3. Also, Crackdown was vastly better after the update...

[Guest]

I'd tend to think that there will be more things to remember the positions of in Crackdown than Halo 3. Also, Crackdown was vastly better after the update...

i think the problem with halo though is that if one player fucks off into the distance somewhere and triggers a battle, that could be between the elites, brutes & flood, then comes back to the original player, by the time they both get back there everything will have finished.

it could waste a load of set pieces for one of the players and i doubt they'll want that to happen.