War Games – the new name for multiplayer Red vs Blue. This was always going to be the main area of the game for me, shooting guys is so much better than shooting AIs. It has a lot to live up to – the Halo series is the only First Person multiplayer experience that I felt was flawless – and then in subsequent games they always improve on it somehow. Halo was great – never has lugging an Xbox and TV round a mates house been so rewarding. Halo 2 improved it, made it smoother, added cool new weapons and had an amazing selection of maps. Halo 3 added equipment and refined the whole thing. Halo: Reach added armour abilities – these things really spiced things up. And now Halo 4…
As one of the three main facets of Halo 4’s Campaign mode, and a huge part of how successful the multiplayer side of things were going to be, this was a potential area for disappointment. Not only did any new weapons have to be balanced and Halo-ish, deciding which old ones to keep and which to quietly brush under the carpet must’ve been tough too. I was going to cover the vehicle selection in this post as well, but it’s standard stuff really. Apart from one new one, there’s just the basic, standard, (dependable) set in Halo 4. Mongoose. Warthog. Ghost. Banshee. Wraith.
Halo: Reach is officially launched on Tuesday, so I thought I’d take a look back at my time with the franchise – I can hardly believe it’s been ten years!
It all started way back in the days of working at Game, and the launch of the original Xbox. Halo was the big game of the launch and my manager at the time raved about it. I admit, I was unimpressed when he was telling me how the Pistol was the best weapon, and there were grenades that stuck to your enemies, and that one melee attack to the back of an opponent was an instant kill… But then I played it. Campaign at first, it was immense. I never really got on with other console First Person Shooters such as Goldeneye, Quake II or Perfect Dark on the N64 as they never quite felt right, but this did – the controls were sublime. Lugging an Xbox and TV to Craig’s flat was so worth it. Our Halo LAN sessions were never frequent, and there were only a few of them, but they remain a fondly remembered highlight of my life so far. Given that there were only eight of us playing, Sidewinder and Blood Gulch were probably not the best maps to choose, but man, those CTF games were epic, and it was incredible hearing the shouting and swearing come from the other room when we thwarted an attack and recovered our flag.
