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Halo: Campaign Evolved - Review Thread

Buggy Loop said:
WTF? It was great playing Halo, but because of virtue signaling, a fucking list (BDS? first time I hear of that) and layoffs, the nostalgia of a great game clashes with realities of today?

nathan fillion hd GIF


Which site published that garbage?
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OC and MC scores are useless when you have activist douche bags knocking points off for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the game is. Review the game, not the company. Personally I'm really looking forward to playing this with the boys and as usual I will ignore the review aggregate scores and listen to people I know I can trust. I can't see how anything can go wrong with this remake with such a good foundation to build on.
 
Positive things I'm seeing are weapon models and the Guilty Spark swamp level. Other than that it far exceeds my bottom barrel expectations in the wrong direction. If this was some contracted team with a 12-18 month dev cycle, I'd be more charitable. But this is made by the people who ostensibly are bringing the next mainline Halo game. The new levels in this should divorce anyone from the notion that it might be decent
 
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I remember playing Halo when Xbox launched in my country (which was in March 2022, btw). Like so many I was blown away, and I wasn't even into FPS at the time. Halo was different. From what I've seen of the remake I'm a bit torn on whether I'll like it or not, UE5 is hit or miss here. But I've pre-ordered and will give it a go next week.
 
clappedcheeks said:
OC and MC scores are useless when you have activist douche bags knocking points off for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the game is. Review the game, not the company. Personally I'm really looking forward to playing this with the boys and as usual I will ignore the review aggregate scores and listen to people I know I can trust. I can't see how anything can go wrong with this remake with such a good foundation to build on.
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Don't worry, the Game is GREAT !!! A honest Review from normal people...
 
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Buggy Loop said:


Just got done watching Gmanlives' review, epic stuff. He's right for one thing, where the fuck is enemy AI in modern games? Early 2000s were very good at this.
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I watched this video, and I think it's fair. New missions are lame, new graphics look great, the changes the devs made were reasonable and restrained, the core game still is intact.

At the same time I watched all the footage and was like, "wow I have absolutely no desire to play this again"
 
Skifi28 said:
That's what I've also gathered so far. A mostly good remake with the occasional weird decision and a few bugs/technical issues.
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I played through the first level, and my friend played through the second before returning it. And it felt and played nothing like CE in my opinion. It was very surreal, and I didn't appreciate it. The graphics are quite good, but it's very difficult to parse compared to CE. And it absolutely loses the charm the first game had. The pacing of the cutscenes is very strange, but not all bad some of the additions work well... others definitely do not. It feels like a frankenstein of multiple games stitched together. The controls being so vastly different also makes interacting with it very bizarre.
 
Negotiator101 said:
Looks really good, I think their are a few bugs though but I'm hoping they're sorted before Tuesday 😂 I know they won't unfortunately.

The Digital Foundry look really show's the cutting edge tech running this.
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Launch issues with releases is why I typically wait a while until bugs are ironed out, and why early access is easily avoidable. I did preorder this as it's been a long time since I last played and my 2 boys really want to play coop with me. They remember me helping them to drive the worthog on the final mission so I've been nominated to drive again, not that they need my help any longer. Hopefully the early access will help for a smoother launch on Tuesday but it's no big deal if not. It seems to be a solid remake with very minor issues, and we're going to have a blast regardless.
 
I watched the first 20 minutes on YouTube. First immediate takeaway is that the cutscenes were 100% AI "storyboarded", with basically zero alterations from the AI slop result (except to actually build it from their own assets and put them in-engine). They are amateurish to the point of being totally absurd. It's basically unbelievable. Long, awkward pauses as the characters stare lifelessly at nothing, or looking straight into the camera with dead eyes.

What really took the cake was Johnson trying to "inspire" his men with a calm, detached pep-talk... delivered right in the middle of a firefight. And after this frankly insane moment, while I continued to sit there gobsmacked by what I was seeing, there was yet another like six seconds of dead air as the character just... stared off doing nothing, before the scene transition.

Halo Sergeant Johnson delivering inspiring speech while nearby halo combat evolved marines do soldier things
"Oh, okay, this looks soldiery enough. Did I mention I actually hate this stuff? Fuck Halo. Send this to Gary down the hall."

And this is supposed to be a flagship series! What were they trying to do, hope that the game becomes a smash hit so they can a few months from now say "Oh, that game you love? AI directed the cutscenes! Neat, right?"

Welcome to the future. It's embarrassing slop.

I'm being dead-serious, by the way. I have never seen such an abject lack of talent in what's supposed to be a serious, AAA (questionable) release. NEVER. What actually happened, if not pure AI slop? Good God, it's awful! The bizarreness of it utterly ruins the game, BTW. At least it does for me. IDK.
 
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[Tact] said:
I played through the first level, and my friend played through the second before returning it. And it felt and played nothing like CE in my opinion. It was very surreal, and I didn't appreciate it. The graphics are quite good, but it's very difficult to parse compared to CE. And it absolutely loses the charm the first game had. The pacing of the cutscenes is very strange, but not all bad some of the additions work well... others definitely do not. It feels like a frankenstein of multiple games stitched together. The controls being so vastly different also makes interacting with it very bizarre.
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sounds like youre playing default settings. Just switch to recon. You can also change the hud to better fit classic halo (like the radar in the bottom left instead of top right)
 
Zacfoldor said:
I mean, I remember the original Halo.

The muliplayer sucked. It was local splitscreen only the and pistol/sidearm or whatever you started with was so OP it was unplayable.

Everybody on here saying Halo is multiplayer.

I'm not sure they were playing Halo when it launched. Multiplayer was a novelty addon for that game iirc, and the multiplayer did not become what Halo was about until 2. 2 was huge man. I was in college when it came out and it changed our lives.
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This is kind of like saying that the multiplayer in GoldenEye was a novelty added on with nothing but split screen and bad framerate.

It didn't matter that other FPS games were on PC, it was a big deal on console. People treated the Xbox like an N64 playing Halo split screen and also LANed it for Halo 1.

The pistol was more OP on PC with the mouse. It wasn't that bad in the original game flailing around with a gamepad.
 
diffusionx said:
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holy shit. at what point do people just refuse to accept this shit
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I don't know. She comes dangerously close to having a personality. In isolation, that doesn't seem so bad. She looks like she's supposed to be an ODST, and if you've read the books, a lot of those guys have superiority complexes and actually hate the Spartans.
 
Walliwallipaloo said:
I don't know. She comes dangerously close to having a personality. In isolation, that doesn't seem so bad. She looks like she's supposed to be an ODST, and if you've read the books, a lot of those guys have superiority complexes and actually hate the Spartans.
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right it just happens to be the same fucking personality as every obnoxious girl boss in every video game the past 10+ years

also note how literally no reviews made any mention of this
 
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diffusionx said:
I watched this video, and I think it's fair. New missions are lame, new graphics look great, the changes the devs made were reasonable and restrained, the core game still is intact.

At the same time I watched all the footage and was like, "wow I have absolutely no desire to play this again"
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Same. And it's a fucking shame because I was a huge Halo fan. I do still have a soft spot for it. But honestly, the franchise feels like it ran its course with me.

The multiplayer of the franchise just doesn't do anything for me today. I've been spoiled by all the other experiences I've had since the original trilogy.

The campaigns? The new stories they're telling just don't land with me the way the old ones did. And I've played the old ones enough to where yet another fresh coat of paint and a few additions isn't going to excite me.

I want to love Halo again, but I just haven't seen anything to convince me that Xbox can figure out how to bring someone like me back. I feel the same way with Gears. Loved the starting trilogy. Can't manage to get excited with any entries since.
 
Varteras said:
Same. And it's a fucking shame because I was a huge Halo fan. I do still have a soft spot for it. But honestly, the franchise feels like it ran its course with me.

The multiplayer of the franchise just doesn't do anything for me today. I've been spoiled by all the other experiences I've had since the original trilogy.

The campaigns? The new stories they're telling just don't land with me the way the old ones did. And I've played the old ones enough to where yet another fresh coat of paint and a few additions isn't going to excite me.

I want to love Halo again, but I just haven't seen anything to convince me that Xbox can figure out how to bring someone like me back. I feel the same way with Gears. Loved the starting trilogy. Can't manage to get excited with any entries since.
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I don't remember anything about Halo 5 Guardians besides ADS and swapping between multiple main characters. I barely remember Halo 4 except the promethean weapons and Cortana's whole situation. It kinda got dull? Infinite had its moments but it was basically an endless OG Halo game with simple missions. My first playthrough I got the "best the game in less than 8 hours" achievement. Which was underwhelming. It was then I was glad I had played it on Game Pass. Both games haven't done better than their initial plot it you ask me. Halo 3 was when we were going to "Finish the Fight" and that whole slogan probably sold the game for a lot of people. Moving on was difficult. Where could they take the plot to where fans would care as much?

Gears is the same way. The robots, the queen or whatever, and the way 4 and 5 ended. What a tease was Gears 5. It literally went off on another character's backstory and then left you with a horrible finale. I didn't care who I was, who JD was, and I had zero remorse if they would have killed any of their characters.

Multiplayer probably saw a lot of people bounce off gaming completely. I know nothing about the MLG but it seems like all the betting is done with CS and CoD. Halo and Gears faded when the 360's popularity dwindled. If you think about it. That console was 10 years strong, anything could have happened. Especially in the hands of the wrong type of director taking both games in directions that no one truly liked.
 
diffusionx said:
right it just happens to be the same fucking personality as every obnoxious girl boss in every video game the past 10+ years

also note how literally no reviews made any mention of this
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Who knows - maybe the character is completely insufferable throughout. Maybe she's exactly what you say she is. I'll likely never know, because I have a near-zero percent chance of ever actually playing the game. I'm talking about one isolated snippet of dialogue, which you posted here. And as I said, as a former Halo fan, deep into the "lore," this chick badmouthing the Chief is completely right by the canon. The Spartans got shit from basically everybody, and were considered disgusting freaks of nature by most of the "elites" who feared being replaced. Only the rank-and-file idolized them at first.

I know for a fact Halo Studios is full of rainbow-haired idiots who have already gone on-record saying they hate the franchise, however, so there's that.

Still, I'm almost equally sick of that Critical Drinker bullshit in which every single female character with skill or an attitude is immediately labeled a "girlboss." It's not "based," it's a negativity grift. He's a one-note assclown who probably got dumped and never got over it.

I mean, movies are kinda for losers, anyway.

Should've just given this franchise to id, then immediately shut down 343/"Halo Studios."
 
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Zacfoldor said:
I mean, I remember the original Halo.

The muliplayer sucked. It was local splitscreen only the and pistol/sidearm or whatever you started with was so OP it was unplayable.

Everybody on here saying Halo is multiplayer.

I'm not sure they were playing Halo when it launched. Multiplayer was a novelty addon for that game iirc, and the multiplayer did not become what Halo was about until 2. 2 was huge man. I was in college when it came out and it changed our lives.
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It wasn't local split screen only though. It also featured local lan which was crazy fun. I frequently had lan parties in my front room with a bunch of friends.

Say what you want about Halo, but the multiplayer has always been as popular as the single player campaign, much like Call of Duty. Halo multiplayer was extremely fun and has some of the most memorable maps of any shooter ever. Halo CE multiplayer certainly hasn't aged as well as future games multiplayer, but to say it sucked is just nonsense and I can't imagine that's the view of the majority.
 
Walliwallipaloo said:
Who knows - maybe the character is completely insufferable throughout. Maybe she's exactly what you say she is. I'll likely never know, because I have a near-zero percent chance of ever actually playing the game. I'm talking about one isolated snippet of dialogue, which you posted here. And as I said, as a former Halo fan, deep into the "lore," this chick badmouthing the Chief is completely right by the canon. The Spartans got shit from basically everybody, and were considered disgusting freaks of nature by most of the "elites" who feared being replaced. Only the rank-and-file idolized them at first.

I know for a fact Halo Studios is full of rainbow-haired idiots who have already gone on-record saying they hate the franchise, however, so there's that.

Still, I'm almost equally sick of that Critical Drinker bullshit in which every single female character with skill or an attitude is immediately labeled a "girlboss." It's not "based," it's a negativity grift. He's a one-note assclown who probably got dumped and never got over it.

I mean, movies are kinda for losers, anyway.

Should've just given this franchise to id, then immediately shut down 343/"Halo Studios."
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Topher said:
The bar for claiming "xbox tax" can't get any lower if we gotta reference some idiot who can't keep politics out of his review bro
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Will happily retract if someone can show me examples of external factors being cited to dock points for Nintendo / Sony first party reviews.

🙏
 
adamsapple said:
Will happily retract if someone can show me examples of external factors being cited to dock points for Nintendo / Sony first party reviews.

🙏
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The "external factors" have nothing to do with "Xbox". It is about Microsoft corporate and their business relations in Israel. It's the same shit that had Microsoft employees protesting on their campus.

www.cnbc.com

Microsoft had police remove protesters who stormed office over work with Israeli military

Of the seven people who entered the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith, two were employees, he told reporters during a briefing.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
 
Topher said:
The "external factors" have nothing to do with "Xbox". It is about Microsoft corporate and their business relations in Israel. It's the same shit that had Microsoft employees protesting on their campus.
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It's an external factor that doesn't belong in a game review and you don't see shit like that in most other cases, is my point.

You can disagree with me on this if you want, but like I said, there's not really any comparable examples to cite.

Put it this way, are Wolverine reviews gonna get impacted by the physical media ending thing? Most probably no.
 
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