"Dangerous ground to be treading there, Shufflemonkey." you might have thought before bringing the cursor over the needlessly long thread title. And you're most likely right. I probably would have better chances treading on an un-detonated mine field left over from the Korean War than speaking of Halo to a community of gamers. However, I have had some luck in making Halo threads that did not descend to the 7th circle of gaming forum hell in a ball of fire fueled by the rage of rabid fanboys, and I intend to bypass that which ignites gruesome flame wars (the campaign) and focus on that which is 75% (or more) of the Halo playing experience (the multiplayer). Thus follows my most unbiased balance of satire and splendor for Halo on Xbox Live.
Before I begin, I'll let my readers know that I am very much a veteran of Halo. I've played the campaigns and multiplayers of all three games and have been subject to all that I speak of. So, I'm basically going to say it how it is. But I'll start with the bad. Halo fanboys, please don't burn me.
If there's one thing that can be agreed upon about Halo is that it's popular. Like massively popular. Like more American children and teens can recognize a picture of Master Chief than can recognize Barak Obama and Jesus of Nazereth combined popular. There's nothing inherently wrong with great popularity (except for the actualization of the recognition joke, which was totally made up in case you were wondering), but with great popularity comes and equally great volume of douchebags.
Douchebag. Such a word I have used many times in the online matchmaking. The evolution of this word into vulgar English was a gift orchestrated specifically for the cornucopia of opportunities to use it in Halo, for many douchebags there are. Halo's versatile and free multiplayer environment provides a vast breeding ground for a large variety of the aforementioned bags of douche such as...
Tea Baggers
-"What big testicles you have!" "The better to teabag you with, my foe!" -
-
There are times when it is quite appropriate to sexually desecrate your fallen enemies' bodies (as well as times to defile children's stories, and that caption probably wasn't one of them). If an opposing team member were to ambush me from the side with an assault rifle when I'm in the middle of lining up a headshot with a sniper, and in a last desperate effort to save myself, I no scope a bullet right into his visor, I'm not going to be able to resist the urge to click that crouch button a few times knowing that he's forced to spend the next 5 seconds as an invisible spectator of his fresh corpse (which I did, and it's proudly displayed in my file share).
However, there are times that such actions will place you among the douchebags. It may be a video game, but the least that can be expected is some sportsmanship. But such things are trivial offenses compared to being one of the...
Squeakers
I like kids. I have a job looking after a whole bunch of them every summer, and running/talking/drawing and things with them is fun, but one thing that is not fun is to play Halo with them. The sounds of a loud, obnoxious 10 year old cuts into my soul with a rusty butter knife. The "mute" option becomes incredibly handy for these pests. Unfortunately, many of the female gamers share similar vocal qualities and distinction between the two make take some dialogue which may expose you to the horrible sound of a child's (or abnormally high pitched teen guy's) voice on Xbox live.
For all the uses of that wonderful "X to mute" button, they cannot stop...
Team Killers
-But, trying to fight people who want to kill me is so scary!-
-
Maybe it was an honest mistake, maybe they're colorblind or something, definitely I'll need to channel The Ninja so as to reach through the internet and strangle 14 year olds with my bare hands if another one of those pre-pubescent morons shout obscenities at me though a so-close-to-the-face-I-can-hear-the-single-functional-neuron-rattling-in-his-skull mic while desperately missing me with his assault rifle.
Comparing my experiences with Halo 2 and 3, it seems that the amount of team killing has noticeably diminished in the last game. But choosing between the two is akin to being offered a teaspoon or tablespoon of goat excrement in your coffee.
For such blatant douchebagery, Bungie gave us the "boot" option. But those team killers who can manage to fire up that single synapse may find that finishing off a team mate weakened in a fight allows them immunity from repercussions. With them we must live, but we can find satisfaction in that they apparently suck so much that they must resort to backstabbing to kill anything in Halo.
There are certainly more varieties of douchebags who seem defy Darwin's theory of natural selection and who not only persist today but grow greater in divisions of species, but for fear of becoming too rant-ish, I will let you and your Halo colleagues vent anger as you plan your lynch mobs for the preceding douchebags. There is another fault to be analyzed here.
That is the manner of "leveling". Most importantly, there is the numerical rank in a playlist which essentially measures the size of one's Halo playing balls. This allows certain people to compare their testicular fortitude with that of other players and be matched against others with similar measurements. This does make for theoretically fair matches, but a problem quickly arises with the fact that everyone suffers or benefits based on the entire team performance. No matter how much you rock that match, your personal performance does very little for you should your team mates not know which way their gun is supposed to point.
A valid argument could be made for the dynamic that presents with team work in that the personal performance falls to the side of team effort, but I can count on two hands the number of games in which my team really worked together to achieve victory. Perhaps that's my bad luck.
----------
Now that I've thoroughly roasted on and ranted about Halo's multiplayer, I will now redeem it with fond sentiment of those factors of excellence. Halo haters, please don't burn me.
My next door neighbors are a family of husband, wife, and four children. Somehow, that husband finds time to, at least once a week, fully wash, wax, and polish their van. As a result, the sun's reflection off the hood regularly blinds passing birds and sends them crashing into nearby solid objects. This is the intensity of polishing that Bungie went to in the creation of the multiplayer.
-Battle rifle and Giant Lemon Tube. The ultimate super weapon coming in Halo 4-
- The weapons of Halo 3 are very arguably the best balanced weapons of any multiplayer game. In the right hands, any single weapon or two weapon combo can be very potent. Whereas, the same weapon in the hands of an inexperienced player could be quite useless. The plasma pistol, useless for everything but the Noob Combo in Halo 2, takes on new uses with it's anti-vehicular abilities, but receives new handicaps with less homing ability and a prolonged charge constantly using its battery. The weapons are designed so that each player can develop their own weapon carrying strategy, and the only thing that makes theirs worse than any other player's is their personal skill with those weapons.
The vehicles and anti-vehicle measures are also impeccably polished. In Halos 1 and 2, vehicles could dominate a map so long as they knew how to dodge the homing rockets in 2. In Halo 3, a vehicle's reign of terror can quickly end with an accurate laser, a well placed mine, a few homing missiles, a hijack, a power drain, a plasma pistol charge, a stick, or just a crap ton of bullets. If you like to stay on foot, that's fine. Keep any 1 or two of the preceding nearby, and you'll be set for vehicle slaying.
-I don't think he was counting on this-
- The process of matchmaking itself is an issue that can stir mixed emotions (namely for me). It's refreshing to go and play CoD4 on live and rarely have to wait more than 30 seconds for a match to start, but this again speaks to Halo's rabidly zealous passion for fairness. After every match, you are pulled from the game lobby to spend another 1 to 3 minutes waiting for the system to place you with another batch of evenly matched players (consistently putting you on a team with the worst retards of the batch, presumably because Bungie decided to randomly pick your gamertag as a target for such intense frustration that you begin to gnaw your hands off from the wrists). The tediousness of such ritual becomes tiresome, but you can stick it to the man and abate the suckage of such things by either pulling friends into your party or grouping up with strangers who have proved both their skill and their mental capacity to not be insufferable duchebags.
-The party of clan Kickass. Don't mess-
If you aren't an online multiplayer person, then such things won't appeal or even matter to you, and that's understandable. But I'm going to finish with some things that are very prominent facts about Halo's multiplayer.
Halo multiplayer has done more to change the gaming community than any other game in history. WoW is very much a contender for such a statement considering that it has caused several deaths, but no other game can lay claim to the internet phenomenon of Red vs. Blue, the longest running and most popular machinima series of all time, and the catalyst for the development of contemporary machinima. On top of that, Halo 3 is the biggest game in MLG.
---
Wrapping it up: Halo has made a very excellent system of online gaming. There are many other games that have very well designed multiplayer, but if you're into online gaming, it's very likely that Halo 3 is for you.
A fair review of the multiplayer aspect of Halo 3.
What I find that many people (shufflemonkey16 included) gloss over/ignore outright is the Theatre. I personally derive great enjoyment from pouring over replays of games, taking screenshots for upload to the website (a process that is automatic if one is connected to Xbox Live), and recording film clips of particularly amusing feats. For example, I possess, on my 360's HDD, a video that shows in excruciating detail how I vanished from the crosshairs of a mate of mine, only to reappear five seconds later over the top of him brandishing dual rapidfire flechette pistols. The sounds of horror that gargled their way out of his throat still rebound in my memory of that awesome game. With regards to screenshots, I have a folder full of interesting/amusing images, some of which I have taken to with Photoshop to produce such results as this shot of my mates during a LAN CtF.
I am aware that the Theatre isn't so much a multiplayer aspect, but noone gives it any love, so I thought I'd try. Shuffle, your writing is balanced and honest. Congratulations, you've just written about Halo 3 and probably won't be burned because of it.
I love theatre. I have a match saved wherein me and my friend had three people leave our team, putting it at a 2 vs 5 with us eleven points down, and we won. This jackass tried to teamkill my friend for the brute shot, so I killed him. He left, and had two other guests.
Wow, if that really is the most balanced Halo review I've seen. Of course, you'd still get flamed for it on Gamefaqs.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, especially the teabagging part. My friends call it hypocritical to say not to teabag, then teabag someone when deserved. Of course, we all do it to the obnoxious 5 year-olds (i'm not saying all 5 year-olds, or even all 5 year-olds on XBL, are obnoxious, I'm just talking about the ones that are).
That was the most intelligent and well worded review of halo multiplayer I've ever read, I personally think they should print that on the back of every halo 3 so that people know what they're going to be facing and how to avoid it. But also you did a great job showing that there's more to halo than the douchebags.
_Serendipity_: Wow, an entirely balanced review of Halo 3. *clap clap clap*
So, in essence what you're saying is 'good game, awful community'?
In essence, yes. There is the rare refreshingly pleasant person that you'll find, and the best ones are the people who have mics but only speak when it's pertinent to the game (where guns are, what guns the opponents have, where opponents are, etc).
Hooray for witty and well worded reviews! Hooray for people who recognise witty and well worded reviews! I now have somewhere to come when all the complaints about games 'not being what they used to be' on the gaming discussion forum becomes too much.
I agree with every single word in that review. But al people on xbox-live are not like the ones that you described. But then again i only notice people with enough brain capacity to talk like a normal person.
I have to agree with this. Halo 3 is an awesome game, and I want to play it, but unfortunately, due to the large number of d-bags that play it, I won't play more than 2 games in a row.
I just played a game of SWAT CTF, and my team got dominated, but that was fine. It was only when the other team proceeded to capture our flag, move it above their base (where I have, admittedly, no clue how to get to) and then just spawn kill us. Two of my teammates quit, so it was 2 on 4. And there was no point. If it was CoD4, I could understand that, since you get exp for every kill. But in Halo it just makes you look like a douche. Which is the whole point of this post--there are more d-bags on Xbox Live than anywhere else.
I dislike the fact that every seems to think halo innovated with the theatre and battle forge. No, they are rare on consoles, but again, the father of all multi-player gaming, the PC, has been doing that for a LOOOOOONG time. Not saying it's bad, but stop trying to act like Bungie pulled that shit out of their golden asshole.
Oh Aries, isn't bringing that stuff to a console innovative on its own?
That's what Halo has been doing, bringing formerly PC only stuff to consoles. Maybe that's why those damned elitists hate it so much.
Additionally, I demand (ok, ask) that you give an example of a game that has both those features as well similar community support built into the package.
Actually I'm being harsh, nevermind that last sentence unless you want to. However, as far as I know Bungie did pull Forge (an object layout editor that allows testing the new configurations without resetting) out of their golden asshole. After the consumption of some map editors of course.
HomeAliveIn45: It's just too bad the XBL community is... lacking
Actually, I haven't seen any problems lately besides annoying voices (which is honestly not that person's fault, as long as they don't talk very much). Either I'm lucky or the banhammer is finally taking its toll on the legions douches.
I guess that's one of the things that makes Live the best, d-bag gets banned from Halo he's not playing anything on Live. D-bag gets banned from Counter Strike, he switches servers.
HomeAliveIn45: It's just too bad the XBL community is... lacking
Actually, I haven't seen any problems lately besides annoying voices (which is honestly not that person's fault, as long as they don't talk very much). Either I'm lucky or the banhammer is finally taking its toll on the legions douches.
I guess that's one of the things that makes Live the best, d-bag gets banned from Halo he's not playing anything on Live. D-bag gets banned from Counter Strike, he switches servers.
hooray! a lad on the escapist who's brave enough to talk about halo love, but isn't an illiterate whining fanny-boi, who purposely uses leet and profanity.....ON THE INTERNET!!!!!:D
HomeAliveIn45: It's just too bad the XBL community is... lacking
Actually, I haven't seen any problems lately besides annoying voices (which is honestly not that person's fault, as long as they don't talk very much). Either I'm lucky or the banhammer is finally taking its toll on the legions douches.
I guess that's one of the things that makes Live the best, d-bag gets banned from Halo he's not playing anything on Live. D-bag gets banned from Counter Strike, he switches servers.
You don't get banned for being a douche. You get banned for cheating, and unfortunately, most people know how to be jerks and not do anything that qualifies as cheating. As much as I hate to say it, playing most games on Xbox has sucked recently for me. Maybe I'm just playing at wrong hours of the day?
shufflemonkey16: "Dangerous ground to be treading there, Shufflemonkey." you might have thought before bringing the cursor over the needlessly long thread title. And you're most likely right. I probably would have better chances treading on an un-detonated mine field left over from the Korean War than speaking of Halo to a community of gamers. However, I have had some luck in making Halo threads that did not descend to the 7th circle of gaming forum hell in a ball of fire fueled by the rage of rabid fanboys, and I intend to bypass that which ignites gruesome flame wars (the campaign) and focus on that which is 75% (or more) of the Halo playing experience (the multiplayer). Thus follows my most unbiased balance of satire and splendor for Halo on Xbox Live.
Before I begin, I'll let my readers know that I am very much a veteran of Halo. I've played the campaigns and multiplayers of all three games and have been subject to all that I speak of. So, I'm basically going to say it how it is. But I'll start with the bad. Halo fanboys, please don't burn me.
If there's one thing that can be agreed upon about Halo is that it's popular. Like massively popular. Like more American children and teens can recognize a picture of Master Chief than can recognize Barak Obama and Jesus of Nazereth combined popular. There's nothing inherently wrong with great popularity (except for the actualization of the recognition joke, which was totally made up in case you were wondering), but with great popularity comes and equally great volume of douchebags.
Douchebag. Such a word I have used many times in the online matchmaking. The evolution of this word into vulgar English was a gift orchestrated specifically for the cornucopia of opportunities to use it in Halo, for many douchebags there are. Halo's versatile and free multiplayer environment provides a vast breeding ground for a large variety of the aforementioned bags of douche such as...
Tea Baggers
-"What big testicles you have!" "The better to teabag you with, my foe!" -
-
There are times when it is quite appropriate to sexually desecrate your fallen enemies' bodies (as well as times to defile children's stories, and that caption probably wasn't one of them). If an opposing team member were to ambush me from the side with an assault rifle when I'm in the middle of lining up a headshot with a sniper, and in a last desperate effort to save myself, I no scope a bullet right into his visor, I'm not going to be able to resist the urge to click that crouch button a few times knowing that he's forced to spend the next 5 seconds as an invisible spectator of his fresh corpse (which I did, and it's proudly displayed in my file share).
However, there are times that such actions will place you among the douchebags. It may be a video game, but the least that can be expected is some sportsmanship. But such things are trivial offenses compared to being one of the...
Squeakers
I like kids. I have a job looking after a whole bunch of them every summer, and running/talking/drawing and things with them is fun, but one thing that is not fun is to play Halo with them. The sounds of a loud, obnoxious 10 year old cuts into my soul with a rusty butter knife. The "mute" option becomes incredibly handy for these pests. Unfortunately, many of the female gamers share similar vocal qualities and distinction between the two make take some dialogue which may expose you to the horrible sound of a child's (or abnormally high pitched teen guy's) voice on Xbox live.
For all the uses of that wonderful "X to mute" button, they cannot stop...
Team Killers
-But, trying to fight people who want to kill me is so scary!-
-
Maybe it was an honest mistake, maybe they're colorblind or something, definitely I'll need to channel The Ninja so as to reach through the internet and strangle 14 year olds with my bare hands if another one of those pre-pubescent morons shout obscenities at me though a so-close-to-the-face-I-can-hear-the-single-functional-neuron-rattling-in-his-skull mic while desperately missing me with his assault rifle.
Comparing my experiences with Halo 2 and 3, it seems that the amount of team killing has noticeably diminished in the last game. But choosing between the two is akin to being offered a teaspoon or tablespoon of goat excrement in your coffee.
For such blatant douchebagery, Bungie gave us the "boot" option. But those team killers who can manage to fire up that single synapse may find that finishing off a team mate weakened in a fight allows them immunity from repercussions. With them we must live, but we can find satisfaction in that they apparently suck so much that they must resort to backstabbing to kill anything in Halo.
There are certainly more varieties of douchebags who seem defy Darwin's theory of natural selection and who not only persist today but grow greater in divisions of species, but for fear of becoming too rant-ish, I will let you and your Halo colleagues vent anger as you plan your lynch mobs for the preceding douchebags. There is another fault to be analyzed here.
That is the manner of "leveling". Most importantly, there is the numerical rank in a playlist which essentially measures the size of one's Halo playing balls. This allows certain people to compare their testicular fortitude with that of other players and be matched against others with similar measurements. This does make for theoretically fair matches, but a problem quickly arises with the fact that everyone suffers or benefits based on the entire team performance. No matter how much you rock that match, your personal performance does very little for you should your team mates not know which way their gun is supposed to point.
A valid argument could be made for the dynamic that presents with team work in that the personal performance falls to the side of team effort, but I can count on two hands the number of games in which my team really worked together to achieve victory. Perhaps that's my bad luck.
----------
Now that I've thoroughly roasted on and ranted about Halo's multiplayer, I will now redeem it with fond sentiment of those factors of excellence. Halo haters, please don't burn me.
My next door neighbors are a family of husband, wife, and four children. Somehow, that husband finds time to, at least once a week, fully wash, wax, and polish their van. As a result, the sun's reflection off the hood regularly blinds passing birds and sends them crashing into nearby solid objects. This is the intensity of polishing that Bungie went to in the creation of the multiplayer.
-Battle rifle and Giant Lemon Tube. The ultimate super weapon coming in Halo 4-
- The weapons of Halo 3 are very arguably the best balanced weapons of any multiplayer game. In the right hands, any single weapon or two weapon combo can be very potent. Whereas, the same weapon in the hands of an inexperienced player could be quite useless. The plasma pistol, useless for everything but the Noob Combo in Halo 2, takes on new uses with it's anti-vehicular abilities, but receives new handicaps with less homing ability and a prolonged charge constantly using its battery. The weapons are designed so that each player can develop their own weapon carrying strategy, and the only thing that makes theirs worse than any other player's is their personal skill with those weapons.
The vehicles and anti-vehicle measures are also impeccably polished. In Halos 1 and 2, vehicles could dominate a map so long as they knew how to dodge the homing rockets in 2. In Halo 3, a vehicle's reign of terror can quickly end with an accurate laser, a well placed mine, a few homing missiles, a hijack, a power drain, a plasma pistol charge, a stick, or just a crap ton of bullets. If you like to stay on foot, that's fine. Keep any 1 or two of the preceding nearby, and you'll be set for vehicle slaying.
-I don't think he was counting on this-
- The process of matchmaking itself is an issue that can stir mixed emotions (namely for me). It's refreshing to go and play CoD4 on live and rarely have to wait more than 30 seconds for a match to start, but this again speaks to Halo's rabidly zealous passion for fairness. After every match, you are pulled from the game lobby to spend another 1 to 3 minutes waiting for the system to place you with another batch of evenly matched players (consistently putting you on a team with the worst retards of the batch, presumably because Bungie decided to randomly pick your gamertag as a target for such intense frustration that you begin to gnaw your hands off from the wrists). The tediousness of such ritual becomes tiresome, but you can stick it to the man and abate the suckage of such things by either pulling friends into your party or grouping up with strangers who have proved both their skill and their mental capacity to not be insufferable duchebags.
-The party of clan Kickass. Don't mess-
If you aren't an online multiplayer person, then such things won't appeal or even matter to you, and that's understandable. But I'm going to finish with some things that are very prominent facts about Halo's multiplayer.
Halo multiplayer has done more to change the gaming community than any other game in history. WoW is very much a contender for such a statement considering that it has caused several deaths, but no other game can lay claim to the internet phenomenon of Red vs. Blue, the longest running and most popular machinima series of all time, and the catalyst for the development of contemporary machinima. On top of that, Halo 3 is the biggest game in MLG.
---
Wrapping it up: Halo has made a very excellent system of online gaming. There are many other games that have very well designed multiplayer, but if you're into online gaming, it's very likely that Halo 3 is for you.
It was a fair review, but i cannot stress enough that it is a personal opinion whether you like halo or not. Personally i hate it, but i respect your opinion to like it. But i will not stand idley by while someone says forge was intuitive because it brought a level editor to a console. I do believe Tony Hawks Pro Skater has that honor on the ps2. The point is, Halo has brought nothing new to the arena, the giant fuckin' lazor is equivalent to an AWP, the huge powered suit is better looking on gordon freeman and the constant nade spam looks better on COD4. I don't care if you like Halo, i don't care if you like Minesweeper, just dont say it's intuitive and bringing something new. MDK was new and intuitive back in the day, so was quake. Also
Eldritch Warlord:
HomeAliveIn45: It's just too bad the XBL community is... lacking
Actually, I haven't seen any problems lately besides annoying voices (which is honestly not that person's fault, as long as they don't talk very much). Either I'm lucky or the banhammer is finally taking its toll on the legions douches.
I guess that's one of the things that makes Live the best, d-bag gets banned from Halo he's not playing anything on Live. D-bag gets banned from Counter Strike, he switches servers.
It's called a VAC ban. I don't know 'bout you, but the XBL system reminds me of Apple software, always trying to force you to do everything their way. Unpleasant.
Calm down, this is not a flame. Just a rant fueled by alcohol.
GIJED: It was a fair review, but i cannot stress enough that it is a personal opinion whether you like halo or not. Personally i hate it, but i respect your opinion to like it. But i will not stand idley by while someone says forge was intuitive because it brought a level editor to a console.
All it takes for evil to triumph. Is for good men to do nothing.
Also really good review. That being said calling it awesome because it spawned the most machima is right up there with saying Harry Potter is awesome because it spawned the most slash fanfiction.
"Dangerous ground to be treading there, Shufflemonkey." you might have thought before bringing the cursor over the needlessly long thread title. And you're most likely right. I probably would have better chances treading on an un-detonated mine field left over from the Korean War than speaking of Halo to a community of gamers. However, I have had some luck in making Halo threads that did not descend to the 7th circle of gaming forum hell in a ball of fire fueled by the rage of rabid fanboys, and I intend to bypass that which ignites gruesome flame wars (the campaign) and focus on that which is 75% (or more) of the Halo playing experience (the multiplayer). Thus follows my most unbiased balance of satire and splendor for Halo on Xbox Live.
Before I begin, I'll let my readers know that I am very much a veteran of Halo. I've played the campaigns and multiplayers of all three games and have been subject to all that I speak of. So, I'm basically going to say it how it is. But I'll start with the bad. Halo fanboys, please don't burn me.
If there's one thing that can be agreed upon about Halo is that it's popular. Like massively popular. Like more American children and teens can recognize a picture of Master Chief than can recognize Barak Obama and Jesus of Nazereth combined popular. There's nothing inherently wrong with great popularity (except for the actualization of the recognition joke, which was totally made up in case you were wondering), but with great popularity comes and equally great volume of douchebags.
Douchebag. Such a word I have used many times in the online matchmaking. The evolution of this word into vulgar English was a gift orchestrated specifically for the cornucopia of opportunities to use it in Halo, for many douchebags there are. Halo's versatile and free multiplayer environment provides a vast breeding ground for a large variety of the aforementioned bags of douche such as...
Tea Baggers
-"What big testicles you have!"
"The better to teabag you with, my foe!" -
-
There are times when it is quite appropriate to sexually desecrate your fallen enemies' bodies (as well as times to defile children's stories, and that caption probably wasn't one of them). If an opposing team member were to ambush me from the side with an assault rifle when I'm in the middle of lining up a headshot with a sniper, and in a last desperate effort to save myself, I no scope a bullet right into his visor, I'm not going to be able to resist the urge to click that crouch button a few times knowing that he's forced to spend the next 5 seconds as an invisible spectator of his fresh corpse (which I did, and it's proudly displayed in my file share).
However, there are times that such actions will place you among the douchebags. It may be a video game, but the least that can be expected is some sportsmanship. But such things are trivial offenses compared to being one of the...
Squeakers
I like kids. I have a job looking after a whole bunch of them every summer, and running/talking/drawing and things with them is fun, but one thing that is not fun is to play Halo with them. The sounds of a loud, obnoxious 10 year old cuts into my soul with a rusty butter knife. The "mute" option becomes incredibly handy for these pests. Unfortunately, many of the female gamers share similar vocal qualities and distinction between the two make take some dialogue which may expose you to the horrible sound of a child's (or abnormally high pitched teen guy's) voice on Xbox live.
For all the uses of that wonderful "X to mute" button, they cannot stop...
Team Killers
-But, trying to fight people who want to kill me is so scary!-
-
Maybe it was an honest mistake, maybe they're colorblind or something, definitely I'll need to channel The Ninja so as to reach through the internet and strangle 14 year olds with my bare hands if another one of those pre-pubescent morons shout obscenities at me though a so-close-to-the-face-I-can-hear-the-single-functional-neuron-rattling-in-his-skull mic while desperately missing me with his assault rifle.
Comparing my experiences with Halo 2 and 3, it seems that the amount of team killing has noticeably diminished in the last game. But choosing between the two is akin to being offered a teaspoon or tablespoon of goat excrement in your coffee.
For such blatant douchebagery, Bungie gave us the "boot" option. But those team killers who can manage to fire up that single synapse may find that finishing off a team mate weakened in a fight allows them immunity from repercussions. With them we must live, but we can find satisfaction in that they apparently suck so much that they must resort to backstabbing to kill anything in Halo.
There are certainly more varieties of douchebags who seem defy Darwin's theory of natural selection and who not only persist today but grow greater in divisions of species, but for fear of becoming too rant-ish, I will let you and your Halo colleagues vent anger as you plan your lynch mobs for the preceding douchebags. There is another fault to be analyzed here.
That is the manner of "leveling". Most importantly, there is the numerical rank in a playlist which essentially measures the size of one's Halo playing balls. This allows certain people to compare their testicular fortitude with that of other players and be matched against others with similar measurements. This does make for theoretically fair matches, but a problem quickly arises with the fact that everyone suffers or benefits based on the entire team performance. No matter how much you rock that match, your personal performance does very little for you should your team mates not know which way their gun is supposed to point.
A valid argument could be made for the dynamic that presents with team work in that the personal performance falls to the side of team effort, but I can count on two hands the number of games in which my team really worked together to achieve victory. Perhaps that's my bad luck.
----------
Now that I've thoroughly roasted on and ranted about Halo's multiplayer, I will now redeem it with fond sentiment of those factors of excellence. Halo haters, please don't burn me.
My next door neighbors are a family of husband, wife, and four children. Somehow, that husband finds time to, at least once a week, fully wash, wax, and polish their van. As a result, the sun's reflection off the hood regularly blinds passing birds and sends them crashing into nearby solid objects. This is the intensity of polishing that Bungie went to in the creation of the multiplayer.
-Battle rifle and Giant Lemon Tube. The ultimate super weapon coming in Halo 4-
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The weapons of Halo 3 are very arguably the best balanced weapons of any multiplayer game. In the right hands, any single weapon or two weapon combo can be very potent. Whereas, the same weapon in the hands of an inexperienced player could be quite useless. The plasma pistol, useless for everything but the Noob Combo in Halo 2, takes on new uses with it's anti-vehicular abilities, but receives new handicaps with less homing ability and a prolonged charge constantly using its battery. The weapons are designed so that each player can develop their own weapon carrying strategy, and the only thing that makes theirs worse than any other player's is their personal skill with those weapons.
The vehicles and anti-vehicle measures are also impeccably polished. In Halos 1 and 2, vehicles could dominate a map so long as they knew how to dodge the homing rockets in 2. In Halo 3, a vehicle's reign of terror can quickly end with an accurate laser, a well placed mine, a few homing missiles, a hijack, a power drain, a plasma pistol charge, a stick, or just a crap ton of bullets. If you like to stay on foot, that's fine. Keep any 1 or two of the preceding nearby, and you'll be set for vehicle slaying.
-I don't think he was counting on this-
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The process of matchmaking itself is an issue that can stir mixed emotions (namely for me). It's refreshing to go and play CoD4 on live and rarely have to wait more than 30 seconds for a match to start, but this again speaks to Halo's rabidly zealous passion for fairness. After every match, you are pulled from the game lobby to spend another 1 to 3 minutes waiting for the system to place you with another batch of evenly matched players (consistently putting you on a team with the worst retards of the batch, presumably because Bungie decided to randomly pick your gamertag as a target for such intense frustration that you begin to gnaw your hands off from the wrists). The tediousness of such ritual becomes tiresome, but you can stick it to the man and abate the suckage of such things by either pulling friends into your party or grouping up with strangers who have proved both their skill and their mental capacity to not be insufferable duchebags.
-The party of clan Kickass. Don't mess-
If you aren't an online multiplayer person, then such things won't appeal or even matter to you, and that's understandable. But I'm going to finish with some things that are very prominent facts about Halo's multiplayer.
Halo multiplayer has done more to change the gaming community than any other game in history. WoW is very much a contender for such a statement considering that it has caused several deaths, but no other game can lay claim to the internet phenomenon of Red vs. Blue, the longest running and most popular machinima series of all time, and the catalyst for the development of contemporary machinima. On top of that, Halo 3 is the biggest game in MLG.
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Wrapping it up: Halo has made a very excellent system of online gaming. There are many other games that have very well designed multiplayer, but if you're into online gaming, it's very likely that Halo 3 is for you.
-Would it be mongooses or mongeese? Mongooi?-