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So with reviews looking pretty good, I am still going to wait a few more days after release before ordering the game, just in case multiplayer suffers issues similar to the Master Chief Collection.

That should mean I will have the game by mid-late next week
I don't personally think it's going to suffer the same issues as MCC. The beta for the most part was fine, and this is one game vs. MCC which was four games bolted together. At least custom games and Forge (when it's released) are looking promising this time around. Hope there's some nice big maps for Hog Games to make a comeback.
Hope I like this one. Won't get it til I try it.
Okay, now that I've finished the campaign, my thoughts, as I mentioned yesterday it feels short, but I was playing on Normal, so I've probably perceived it being short because I normally play on Heroic the first time through. As I also mentioned there's a massive imbalance between Blue Team missions and Osiris missions, makes Chief and Blue Team feel pretty distant to the overall story when they barely feature in it.

Spoilers ahead yo! Skip this next section and start reading again at the big END SPOILERS text to avoid anything to do with the campaign.

The overall story was fairly weak. I have no doubts this has something to do with Chris Schlerf (lead writer for Halo 4) leaving the studio before Halo 5 writing started and the guy who wrote Spartan Ops taking over, while Halo 4 wasn't the best from an enclosed standpoint (a lot of external lore knowledge was needed) it was still a good entry in the series at the time.

With Guardians it just felt like it was lacking... something. It's hard to put my finger on it, but it just didn't feel right.

Besides the fact that the Hunt the Truth podcast thingo and a lot of the marketing material leading up to launch didn't really align the overall plot of campaign (not that the majority of Halo marketing campaigns have ever truly aligned with the games content), I can't help but feel that there was a change in direction at some point. As for the entire length of the campaign there was really nothing that suggested Locke was ever out to kill Chief/Blue Team. Both Blue Team and Osiris were trying to discover what was happening with the Guardians. Blue Team through finding Cortana, and Osiris through finding Blue Team (though there focus does start to shift towards Cortana after their first contact with Warden Eternal).

It sets up a bit for Halo 6 (or whatever it's going to be called) but I still can't help but feel that there's an element to Halo 5's story that's missing.

That being said I feel Warden Eternal is one of gaming's best characters ever used in the wrong way. The voice actor instantly made Warden a Prophet of Truth-like villain. However the overuse of Warden as a boss for various fights (including a bullshit 3 on one (because the companion AI is the worst ever in the history of Halo) at the end of mission 14) made his presence feel more like an improved Promethean Knight. I said in a reddit thread that I was disappointed the E3 gameplay showing Warden doing his force chokey thingy and telling Locke that "your passage is denied" wasn't in the final version of the game and was replaced with a boss fight in the same area. I feel like it would have been better saving the boss fight against Warden for later in the game by keeping that sequence from the E3 gameplay and having him slipspace out with the Guardian for a fight later in the campaign. Of course the fact that you encounter him on Meridian earlier in the campaign kinda destroys this idea.

END SPOILERS


Overall it wasn't the worst Halo, but it wasn't the best either.

I did like the addition of the Promethean Soldier though. As it brings a lot of balance to the structure of the Prometheans. To compare to the Covenant, we had Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Hunters in Halo 4, while the Prometheans had Crawlers, Watchers, and Knights. Comparatively it felt like they jumped from Jackals (watchers) to Hunters (Knights) without anything in between. The soldiers fix that and turn the Knights into a more heavy fight unit rather than general foot-soldier like they were in Halo 4.

I haven't dived into much multiplayer at the moment. But so far I don't like Warzone. The intro (and outro) sequence is annoying because it runs it every time, after the first game I know how Warzone works, I don't need to be reminded every time I start a new one. And I feel 24 player games adds further instability to networking that results in more lag and a higher chance of dropouts even on these fancy dedicated servers.

I'm also disappointed that customisation has been scaled back. Individual armour pieces can no longer be modified, only the entire armour, helmet, visor, and armour colours can be changed. And emblems have fixed colour schemes that you pick a "main" colour for and then select between half a dozen or so variations. Compared to previous games, even Halo 4, it's extremely limited to what you can customise.

In the end, it's another Halo, but I'm starting to see that it's becoming the Halo that's no longer for me.
I haven't played war zone much yet, but really enjoying Arena. The dedicated servers plus decent populations in the hoppers (I am guessing) means very quick turnarounds between matches. Still getting used to the different controls with the jump, aim etc.

Very solid gameplay all in all. Will be exciting to see how things evolve with forge when it comes out and I love the fact that it is released after launch as it gives you more to look forward too.

This is a much better experience than what I had with Halo 4.

Campaign wise I am only on the second mission, but my interest in this side of things comes a very distant second to the multiplayer. That said, happy to do the campaign on co-op with anyone.
After Friday night I don't have as much of an issue with Warzone, playing with a group who can actually coordinate with other players in the game to focus on the bosses actually makes it much better. Coming from 800-600 down to win 900-1000 because we focused on bosses is much better than loosing 100-600 because people sit in the base(es) and try to camp it out.

Arena isn't bad, but we need some social gametypes to break up the competitive stuff. Hopefully they come soon.
Forge is apparently coming to PC on the 8th of September, pretty keen to check it out actually because the PC controls might be a bit more intuative for map and set creation, I just need to find 40GB of space for it! I know the controls in Forge for Halo 5 were supposed to be more productive than previous titles but I just couldn't get around the wholesale changes. Keyboard and Mouse should hopefully fix that up with all the extra keys we'll have to use!

Also a new social mini-games playlist is being put online with game modes like Mongoose Sumo, Ground Pound Arena, and Paintball. This might actually get me to launch the game back up again for the first time in months.
Oh my days, Halo 5: Forge is out and it feels like it belonged on PC from the start. It's so much easier to use and there's a lot more control and precision with the added keyboard and mouse input.

I could waste a lot of time making maps on this thing now...
You just need windows ten and decent specs on your pc to have it?
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