lefliesoopreem2

lefliesoopreem2 / Member

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The Halo Online Community... or Lack Thereof

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Halo multiplayer: surely, it's a great way to bond with teammates and make new friends on the internet, right?

Call me slow, but I've just realized how many **** there are in the Halo online universe.

Sometimes, I wonder if these people have ever heard of the word "teamwork". There's a chat function on Halo online that allows you to talk, somewhat, but it's a joke. Hardly ever do people use it except to ridicule others or say "omg ghey or **** Team Games are purely nominal. In Halo online, instead of teams being focused, organised units, they're usually a ragbag group of people who have agreed not to shoot each other. Other than that, everything's up for grabs.

Also, thanks to the release of Halo 3, all of the good players have moved to that game and left the Halo servers barren. All they're filled with now are ****.

For once, I'd like to see a vehicle server that does not have tanks.

For once, I'd like to see a server without any vehicles at all.

I have nothing against vehicles, but it's how people whore them that is so annoying. Especially the **** tanks.

Yeah yeah, I can hear the Halo fanboys already "You're just mad cuz u suck at Halo, omg ur ghey."

Well what do you want me to do?

"Get the other tank"

They already have the other tank.

"Use the rockets"

Rockets don't do **** against vehicles. It's only in Halo 2 where anyone can do something useful with the rocket launcher.

"Use the sniper rifle."

Good luck trying to be the first one to get it if all of the other sniper suckers don't get it first.

That brings me to another point: the sniper rifle.

That thing is never where you want it when you want it. Nine times out of eight, it will be in the hands of some class-A nub who has no **** clue on how to use it at all.

The sniper rifle also helps develop a megalomania of sorts in its wielders as well. For some reason, people who pick it up suddenly think they're gods at Halo and rejoice at every kill they get with it as if it took ridiculous amounts of skill. This in itself is somewhat tolerable, but what is really irksome is pulling up the list of all servers available and seeing that there are about fifty-million sniper servers and forty billion mod servers. What ever happened to the good 'ol CTF with AR and pistols?

It's times like this that make me want to give up playing online permanently.

Halo...

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Even though the other two Halo games are out, I still play H:CE all the time because for one thing, it's the only Halo game I have, and secondly, I can get Haloes 2 or 3 if I want, but I've played them, and I still think Halo 1 is the best.

Yesterday was the first time I played it in a while, but when I did, I realized how disappointed I was with it. Playing Half-Life 2, along with both episodes, along with Portal, along with Team Fortress 2, has caused me to realize how dull it is now.

:( I'm sorry, Master Chief, but you're not fun to play with anymore.

Why do I move so slowly in that game? I keep looking for my sprint button, but it doesn't work.

Also, somebody turned the SV_gravity down to like, 200 or something. Master Chief jumps like he's in space.

Guns: at least the weapons are still as visceral as they have always been.

Multiplayer... CTF is no longer CTF in the game. Nobody really cares anymore about getting the flag and stay cooped up in tanks or banshees while the flag sits naked in the base.

Campaign: story is still kick-butt, but like I said, gameplay is rather... limiting. I don't like playing it much anymore.

I'm sorry, Halo, but I think I'll have to put you back in your box again.

Jeff Gerstmann Fired!?!?!?!?!!

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O.o Zound the alarms! Unleash the hounds! Jeff Gerstmann is with us no more!

What on earth could have caused his untimely exit from Gamespot? Hmmmm...

*Kane and Lynch: Dead Men*Cough Cough.

According to the consesus opinion of most Gamespotters, and previously unbeknowst to us, Eidos Interactive is the puppet master of Gamespot administration. The timing between the termination of Jeff's job and the rather undesirable rating given to Eidos' game, Kane and Lynch is uncanny. While I am all for bashing Eidos if Gamespot really was pressured into firing Jeff, I do not think it wise to jump to conclusions here. If we start accusing before solid facts are known (although I know the situation looks bleak for Eidos), we'll all look like idiots if Gamespot releases the reasons for Jeff's termination.

Meanwhile, before I even heard of the controversy, I would like to say I was annoyed by Kane and Lynch before it came out. You know those little ads that pop up that you have to close whenever you want to look at some screenshots? It was ridiculous: almost one out of every two of those that popped up were nagging me to buy Kane and Lynch, along with those already-irksome banner ads located at the top of each page, so it was quite satisfying to me to see the game get a rather tepid review for all the hype saddled along with it,, much like Hour of Victory did (Hour of Victory, X-D). IN YOUR FACE. It was also very gladdening to go to the user reviews for Kane and Lynch after learning about the (supposed) reasons for Jeff's departure and seeing that over a quarter of them were given as abysmal.

Come back to us, Jeff!

Nvidia Geforce 7900 AGP

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Alright, so last week, I ordered an XFX Nvidia Geforce 7900 Card for an AGP slot (I don't have a PCI-E board yet), and I was waiting for about a million years to get it in the mail. It arrived on Wednesday, and I'm so so so so so happy! :D

The Card itself is beautiful. You don't even have to plug it into your PC to like it, as the design of it is eye-candy. It has a matte-black finish with a neon greenish fan+heatsink case thingy (If you've ever seen an Nvidia 8 series card, you know what I'm talking about) and the XFX logo on it lights up, giving the computer itself a nice touch (although I'm stuck with a dingy, opaque Dell computer case; go figure X-P)

I had upgraded from an ATI Radeon 9550 AGP, and it definitely shows. Previously, I had to tune all the settings on CNC 3 down except for shaders and texture detail, and even then, there were some noticeably laggy moments; but now that I have this in my system, WOW. All details are maxed, except for Anti-aliasing, including resolution, which is something that I have NEVER done before with a game for fear of turning it into an agonizing slideshow. Framerates in HL2 jumped from max 60 to max 130 X-D.

So yeah..... I like it a lot. :)

Why I hate Microsoft's management of Halo

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When the first Halo game was released, it was considered a landmark achievement in the world of First-Person shooters. Therefore, it was little wonder that people were falling over each other to get their hands on Halo 2 when it was released in 2004. Now, everyone is waiting with bated breath for the release of Halo 3, which, supposedly, is to be the clincher of the trilogy.

Halo 1 and Halo 2 were both awesome games. Halo 1 had a gripping storyline along with 2 somewhat scary levels (343 Guilty Spark and Keyes [or was it called The Captain?]) plus terrific multiplayer options and maps. Halo 2 had a good story as well, but not as good as the first one, but it does have one level that's even spookier than Keyes and 343 Guilty Spark combined (High Charity). It also had two cool new features: boarding and dual-wielding along with a better vehicle death system: In halo 1, all a vehicle had to do to kill you was give you a gentle tap, in Halo 2, you have to ram whoever you want to squish. Its graphics were also better, although I was a little put off on how objects would be rendered only if you looked at them, causing visible graphical glitches and a pixelation of explosion effects, but these were just minor problems compared to the scope of how awesome the game was.

Now, here are my problems with Microsoft's management of Halo. Don't get me wrong, I love the Halo games, but I hate how Microsoft uses it like a bludgeon. First, Halo 1 for the PC. You need a CD key to activate the bloody thing. CD keys supposedly prevent piracy and illegal distribution of games; the truth is, however, they do nothing of the kind. People can easily circumvent the invincible shield set by a CD key simply by asking others for one. Another problem CD keys pose is, they're written on things that are easily lost: boxes, CD sleeves, and manuals. If you lose a CD key and uninstall the game it was for, then the CD you just bought is now utterly worthless, unless you can download crack software or key generators that are loaded with viruses. The "Support" sections of games with CD keys also don't do anything about it. If you ask them "what do I do if I lose a CD Key?", they'll tell you to buy another copy. Halo 1, thank goodness, has a program that goes into the Halo 1 CD, parses the Key Code out of it, and then displays it for you to copy down, but Bungie wrote it, not Microsoft, and it doesn't work unless Halo 1 is actually installed on the computer, making it useless if you don't have the key and you just uninstalled Halo. I could go on more about this, how Halo 1 rips off the concept of the Banshee aircraft from a different game (seriously, it does, look up NOD units under Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, and NOD has an aircraft called the Banshee that was conceived from alien technology and it shoots plasma bolts, just like Halo's banshee, except Halo's Banshee is completely alien, while TS's banshee is derived from alien technology http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Banshee) but I won't, because Halo 1 is the game I have the least problems with, and that Banshee thing is trivial, and the two don't look anything like each other.

Halo 2 has my second biggest-gripe against Microsoft. It's a great game, and multiplayer rules, but some of the good weapons from halo 1 were cut out or toned down (Pistol, Assault rifle) but that's not Microsoft's fault, Microsoft's fault comes in when they were porting the game from the xbox to the PC. I was all in a tizzy when I heard Halo 2 was coming for the PC, because I had just given away my xbox version of the game in exchange for Star wars: Republic Commando. I thought if Halo 2 came out for the PC, I would be able to buy it to replace the one I just gave away and have a swell time with it, because internet play would be free. Imagine my utter rage when I found out it was going to be a Vista-only game on the PC. This disgusts me because it is an obvious ploy of Microsoft's to force people into buying the new Vista OS. For those of you not acquainted with it, Vista is the new operation system by Microsoft featuring a prettier interface and an updated media center. The thing isn't even friggin original (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6YO30GhmQ) and rips off a ton of stuff from Mac OS X, as you will see in the video in that link. That, however, is not the main reason why I'm mad that Microsoft is trying to make us buy Vista. The main reason why I'm mad is because Vista plain sucks. Sure, it's shinier, but it's also a system hog. People who bought Vista had to go out and replace a bunch of parts on their computer, such as GPUs, RAM, etc. in order to make it Vista-worthy. By porting Halo 2 to the PC as a Vista only game, Microsoft is trying to force people to buy crappy software just so they can play that one game.

Halo 3 is okay, since it hasn't been released yet and it looks awesome.

My biggest beef, however, comes from Halo Wars.

Yeah, it sounds cool, a strategy game for Halo, won't that kick ass? Heh heh heh NO!

I hate the very concept of this game because of what happened prior to the unveiling of the Halo Wars Project.

I own a game called Command and Conquer: Generals, and it's a pretty good real-time strategy game, if not one of the best. REMEMBER THE FACT THAT IT'S A REAL-TIME STRATEGY GAME, THAT'S IMPORTANT, and a mod was coming out for it called HaloGen. 8 Modders, working for a group called Slipstream Studios, had been working on it for three years and it was going to be a FREE MOD. They were just making a program that would be FREE for download by everyone else; it was not copying any file codes from either of the Halo games and the team that made it was not taking credit for the character and vehicle models (they fully acknowledged that Microsoft and Bungie were the brainchilds behind the Halo franchise, and that they're just fans who want to make a project that shows their appreciation of Halo), therefore, this entire project should have been perfectly legal, as they were neither cashing in on the Halo franchise, nor were they taking credit for the birth of it. Microsoft, however, did not like this, and shut down the program in September. To visit the empty shell where the ruins of this project stand, visit this link: http://halogen.slipstreamproductions.net/

Now, here's a whopper. Literally less than a week after Halogen was shut down, Ensemble studios (they made the Age of Empires games) and Microsoft announced their "new game" Halo Wars, which, just like HaloGen, is an RTS! Wow! What a coincidence! Also, it's for the **** Xbox 360, and if it's ever ported to the PC, it's going to be for Vista.

Now I begin My Tirade.

Microsoft, what the hell is wrong with you people? (I am not mad at Bill Gates because he has no real power over Microsoft anymore, he relinquished like 99 percent of control to other people so he could continue charity work) First, you force people to buy a buggy and exorbitant operation system just so they can buy your PC version of Halo 2, and now you shut down HaloGen (WHICH WAS COMPLETELY LEGAL AND THE DEVELOPERS WERE NOT PLANNING TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT) to release your crappy Halo wars project. At least HaloGen had a reasonable and cool sounding name (HALO+GENerals). Halo Wars? I can name a few franchises with "War" in its name: Tiberium Wars, Star wars, Dawn of War, Gears of War, War of the Ring, Ring Wars (A lesser known Lord of the Rings game), etc. etc. (The real ironic thing is that Halo Wars takes place during the first encounters with the Covenant, meaning that no battles will actually take place on Halo). Microsoft can't even be the slightest bit original or inventive when they're ripping off other people's ideas. Another glaring example of Microsoft's unoriginality is in the creation of one of their units, the Sparrowhawk:











Looks pretty cool, I'll admit that, but I hate it. This is because over 10 years ago, Westwood Studios (now defunct) released the first ever Command and Conquer game, and it featured an aerial unit called the Orca. This is what the Orca looks like:




















Notice the glaring similarities between the Sparrowhawk and the Orca. I have made this picture to help you along:












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Halo 1 seemed like a harbinger of better things to come in video games, but Microsoft's recent meddling and strong-arming policies has coated the franchise with an ugly veneer. Go buy Halo 3 and Halo Wars if you like: I probably will, although I sure will grumble about it. Either that, or I'll steal it or swap it out with another game.

First Blog Entry

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Today's Sunday, the one day that I am not allowed allowed to play video games or watch TV, so I decided to start my blog. Lately, I've been playing CNC:TFD a lot because I wanted to beat the entire Generals campaign from the start of the original game to the end of the expansion pack. So far, I've just completed the Generals USA campaign and I'm doing the China infantry challenge on brutal AI settings.