This Week: Halo Wars

This is the game that resulted in me falling behind on Halo games for over a decade. It was so different from the rest of the Halo series, yet it still tied in and needed to be played.

As a kid, I got into a few Real Time Strategy games. Warcraft II(one of the only times I was willing to break the “I have to play the first game first” rules) and StarCraft. I did try an go back to play WarCraft 1, but in my stupid little brain, I assumed the graphics quality would be the same, just the story would be what happened before.

So yeah, I bailed on that, but I really enjoyed the Crafts. As long as I used Cheat Codes. And only played against my family. Whenever I played online, I got my butt handed to me.

But yeah, I apparently didn’t have a a strong affinity to try or succeed, I just wanted to see the end of the story. And also have the biggest army possible TO WIPE OUT MY ENEMIES APOCALYPSE STYLE!

So when I started playing Halo Wars, I tried playing it normal for the first few levels, then I lost on one level where you have to save the citizens, and I stopped playing. I tried to find some cheat codes, but they don’t exist. Or at least aren’t built in like the Craft games.

So I put down the controller and walked away, never to play Halo again. . .

Yeah, I just kept buying Halo games figuring at some point I would finish Halo Wars and be allowed to continue the series. I bought Halo 3: ODST, bought the collector’s edition Halo: Reach, bought the Master Chief Collection, and even the Collector’s Edition Halo 5.

It was suggested that I should have just done a lets play. I considered it, but I’m an old school gamer. I can’t watch a let’s play without wanting to play myself. If I’m not interested in a game enough to play it, then I’m not interested in it enough to watch a let’s play.

But then the Coronavirus attacked and the lock down occurred. And it didn’t effect me one bit because I was a double essential employee. But I decided to take up arms once more. I played through Halo 1-3 and I had to decide where to go next. By release it was Halo Wars. But Halo ODST was built right in (or so I FREAKING THOUGHT!)

As I mentioned before, I had my stimulus check and my tax refund, so I felt rich. I could buy the digital copy on the Microsoft Store for $20. Or I could buy the Halo Wars 2 Ultimate Edition for $40 and get the Definitive Edition for free. (or I could just throw in the Xbox 360 disc and not spend any additional money)

I figured I would need Halo Wars 2 in the future anyways, so I decided to get the 2 for 1 and ordered the Halo Wars 2 Ultimate Edition. Well I waited for the delivery, I played ODST. Once I was done, I loaded up Halo Wars Definitive Edition and started all over again.

I beat the first few levels on normal speed but again was a failure in saving the citizen.

When I got to this point I realized the setting was on Normal. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, so I dropped it to easy mode and unleashed hell.

Yeah, it become a lot easier to save the citizens when they stopped dying all the time. So with the kid mode turned on it was much easier to just cruise through the rest of the game.

Like other RTS games, I enjoyed building up my bases, my forces, and once I had a good head of steam going, I would start swarming my enemies with a veritable legion. Or else I would if it weren’t for the fairly restrictive forces option. You generally could only max out at about 40 troops.

You couldn’t make more Spartans, mainly due to the lack of time to steal children and raise them to adulthood.

The Spartans were considered Hero characters, and as a result, they didn’t “die.” If they went down, you just sent troops over and they healed back up.

One thing I am happy about, that some other people may not be happy about, is the fact that you ONLY play as the UNSC. You don’t have three freaking campaigns where you also play as the Covenant and the Flood. I’ll concede, I just wanted to finish the game and move on, so if it moved from 15 missions to 45, I probably would have quit again.

If they were trying to properly compete with games like StarCraft, then yes alternate campaigns would probably be a good move. However, the narrative doesn’t really support that. The Covenant and the Flood are both, without question, the bad guys. The Protoss are not bad guys(haven’t played past StarCraft BroodWar, don’t @ me with SC2 spoilers) and the Zerg are. . . misunderstood?

I mean ultimately all three parties suck, but in Halo, you are firmly on the human’s side, because so far, everyone who is playing it is human.

Also, the gameplay style was significantly different from all the other games in the series, so if you had people, like me, who were ONLY playing it for more of that sweet sweet Halo story, you didn’t want to bog them down for too long of a campaign.

The story is a good one, despite lacking Master Chief. One of the things that bugged me about it going in was that it takes place a few decades before the events of Halo: CE, so it shouldn’t include the Flood. But lo and behold, the Flood shows up about halfway through. Just like in Halo 1-3. So my thought was, why was anybody surprised in Halo: CE?

So apparently this crew is just dropped out of the equation. They encounter all this stuff and before they can drop a line back to UNSC that a new threat to the galaxy exists, they are warped to a completely ass end of the galaxy and have to use their warp drive to blow up the Forerunner Technology the Covenant is trying to use to

So they are stranded at the ass end of the galaxy and it will take them decades to get back to home. Fortunately they have Cryosleep to keep their soldiers the same age.

So yeah, story holds up, the characters are interesting and the sequel that we thought would never happen actually looks good.

Now on to the gameplay. I beat the whole game, but still felt that the controls were weird. I’m sorry, most of the time I am purely on the side of the controller, but when it comes to RTS, I have to side with Keyboard and Mouse crowd.

Also, comparing with games like StarCraft, Halo Wars seems very stripped down and limited. You can never really get more than a small army, at least in the campaign. You can only place buildings in a specific base area, you only have a limited number of buildings, you can’t get beyond a certain preset number of troops. Just a whole lot of needless limitations, mainly just to play on a controller and not throw the FPS out the window by having 16,000 troops to keep track of.

So I would say this is only for Halo fans who are willing to put up with a fairly stripped down RTS. But overall I enjoyed it.

Next Week: Halo: Depression Quest

This Week: Halo 3: ODST

So I never played this game when it first came out. I bought it, but to this day it remains sealed in its original shrink wrapped packaging. And for that we mostly blame Halo Wars, but we’ll talk about that next week.

I knew a little about Halo 3: ODST. It was meant to run alongside Halo 3 and play as a character who wasn’t Master Chief. As a result you didn’t have the same armor and unstoppable power as a Spartan, so you had to be more cautious. So right off the bat, I’m thinking, “So you want me to die?” Going in like I’m a walking tank and beating people to death with my health bar is my go to move.

I generally go in hoping that I manage to kill everything else before my hit points run out. Not the best strategy for a first person shooter. . . or you know, anything, but

So Halo 3:ODST just sat on my shelf not getting played. It was always on my to do list, but Halo Wars had to come first.

So when Covid-19 attacked, and I finished Halo 3, I of course had to start Halo Wars next, right? Well, check the title. I had the Master Chief Collection which came with ODST and Reach, but not Halo Wars. I found out that Halo Wars 2 Ultimate Edition came with Halo Wars Definitive Edition, so I ordered that and decided in the mean time to play Halo: ODST, which was free with the Master Chief collection. So to keep the momentum going, I loaded up Halo ODST.

And it immediately took me to the Xbox Live Store to buy it.

So, when I first bought the Master Chief Collection, I knew it was just Halo 1-4. But when I started hearing about the PC releases of Master Chief Collection including Reach and ODST. So when I eventually found my missing MCC disc and loaded up, I saw Reach and ODST both listed. So I assumed that they were now included in for everybody who bought the game.

Nope, ODST was gifted to players who bought the game when it first came out and was buggy as all hell. Now it is $5. $5 for a game I already bought on the 360 and was shrink wrapped on my shelf?

But. . . I would have to get up, find the game, unwrap it, open the box, eject the Master Chief Collection, load in Halo 3: ODST, wait for it to load, deal with the stupid 360 Emulator, and then do it all over again for Reach. Also, it’s just $5 and I got my stimulus check.

Yeah, it was just simpler. So I loaded it up and HOLY F***BERRIES! IS THAT NATHAN FILLION?!?

Yeah, I had become aware that Nathan Fillion appeared in Halo 5, but what I didn’t realize was that he was in Halo 3: ODST. I probably would have played that game a lot sooner had I known. Or at least maybe watched some cut scenes.

I had my own idea of what Halo 3: ODST was supposed to be. I imagined you were an ODST who was participating in missions that ran parallel to what Master Chief was doing. While Master Chief was fighting the big fight, you were playing the smaller missions. I imagined that you were going to see some of the events from Halo 3, but you had your own job.

And to a minor degree that is true. You have your own mission, but it doesn’t really have ANYTHING to do with Halo 3. The ODST drop at the beginning of Halo 2 and then the final scene occurs just before Halo 3.

Honestly it is kind of confusing, because as far as I know, the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3 seem like they could be one really long bad day for Master Chief. However, because Halo doesn’t delve into the realism of Master Chief eating, sleeping, and using the necessary, one should assume that whenever he isn’t immediately going from one threat to another, a sleep or two has passed.

At least we know this to be true in Halo 3: ODST. We begin the game as the unnamed Rookie who is sleeping, drops down in his pod, and then falls asleep again.

From here, a rather interesting game format occurs. You end up wandering around the abandoned city of New Mombasa at night trying to figure out what happened to the rest of your team. Somehow by looking at an empty can of biofoam, you can figure out that your team stole a Phantom and bailed out of the city. Are we sure that the Rookie didn’t die and was brought back by a big black bird?

Every time he finds a clue, we cut to another team member and get to play as them for a mission. It’s a neat form of storytelling and gives us a way to prevent the Rookie from having any lines because he has no one to talk to. Win win.

I really don’t know why this was called Halo 3: ODST. It has almost nothing to do with Halo 3. It would have been fine as Halo ODST. And apparently I am the only one asking this question because google is giving me no answers.

My only drawback is the weird love story at the end and the engineers. It was weird having this new creature that we haven’t seen for three games suddenly make an appearance. Apparently they were in the books though, so what the hell.

Anywho, Halo 3: ODST. I recommend it, nice little side story that has nothing to do with Halo 3, but has Nathan Fillion, so 10/10!

Next Week: Halo Wars, the game that put everything on the back burner.

This Week: Halo: Combat Evolved

So, am I video game blog now?

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No, I am not so broadly well versed in video game lore and history that I think I could do an effective gaming site. I leave that to the pandas.

However, I did want to discuss my history with a few franchises of my past and how I am revisiting them now. Let’s begin with the one that will leave me in financial ruin every time they decide to launch a new console based around him.

So, since the dawn of time, I have loved helmets. Power Rangers, Knights, the Guards in Judge Dredd, Motorcycle helmets, Iron Man, the whole shebang. I particularly preferred ones that covered the whole face. Sorry RoboCop and Dredd.

There is probably some psychological thing in there about me preferring the hero to be an every man so I can self insert myself into that role, but nah, I just think helmets are cool.

So when I got the Xbox, I’m not one hundred percent sure how quickly I got Halo. It might have been bundled in with it, or my parents might have bought it later, but I’m pretty sure I got it fairly quickly.

Oh and I can tell you right now, when I started playing that bad boy I didn’t stop until I got to the second level and put the controller down for like several years.

I kid you not, Halo 2 had already been out for a while before I ended up finishing Halo: CE.

For one, I never was a big fan of First Person Shooters (FPSs). I played Goldeneye on the N64 and got pretty good at setting traps for my friends with a room FILLED with proximity mines, and I finished the game a couple times, but games like Doom, Hexen, Turok, and Duke Nukem all got played for a little bit, but eventually I got killed and gave up.

Finishing games wasn’t a conditioned past time. I died way too often to think games could be finished or had a story. Sonic, Mario, and Tetris all taught me to play the beginning, die, then play the beginning again. The N64 tried to fix me of this with finishing Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, and StarFox, but these were outliers, right?

Also, I was never a multiplayer guy. I didn’t bring my Xbox over to other people’s houses and link up to do a LAN party. That requires, like, friends. Which in the early 2000’s I did not have.

(Oh so you had friends in the late 2000’s?) Shut up.

So I played alone. I played Halo for the story instead of getting my butt kicked in Multiplayer ALL the time.

I actually think I might have had the 360 and been awaiting the release of Halo 3 when I finally dusted off Halo: Combat Evolved. I think I had to relearn how to hold the massive controller after getting used to holding the 360 controller.

Not to brag, but I beat the whole game on Easy.

I never cared much for the multiplayer. I’ve always understood and accepted that I am a low quality wretch of a gamer. Everyone else out there is much more dedicated and have finely honed their skills to become masters of death. I’ve at best developed the habit of shooting until I run out of ammo and then throw a hand grenade to buy time to reload.

I can snipe the hell out of you if you have put down your controller to go make a hotpocket.

So in 2015 when I moved back into my parents house for 2 weeks 4 months while trying to buy a house, I got the Master Chief Collection and decided to try my hand at Legendary.

Interestingly enough, I made it to roughly the same spot I died at the first time I played Halo on easy. I beat the first level, then I made it to the base first base on Halo and kept dying horribly. All the marines I was trying to save were long dead. I eventually was just not having fun and decided to try and decrease the difficulty. I found out I would have to restart the level/game and just went back to Dark Souls.

Because I wasn’t having fun dying, if you recall.

After I moved again, I couldn’t find my Master Chief Collection at all. I kept looking at prices for a new disc, but they weren’t low enough for me to justify buying it again. So for several years I just carried around my empty case and watched as more news about Halo games came out and I still wasn’t ready to pick it back up again.

Then everything changed when the Covid-19 attacked.

I decided I wanted to finally push through my block of playing Halo. I decided to ask my dad if he found the disc and even prepared to buy the Master Chief Collection did not resurface.

Then I opened my old Dark Souls case and guess what was inside?

There it was, my Master Chief Collection. So I called off the search that I initiated twenty minutes earlier and loaded up Halo:CE.

I switched back to my comfortable mode that makes me feel like a god and only died maybe a dozen times the entire playthrough. Most of them coming from that damn Warthog run at the end of the game.

It was really neat to see the graphics upgrade between the original Halo:CE and the Anniversary edition.

I never really took to the Covenant Weapons. Except for the Ghost. I like just driving around and shooting everything to death. The Scorpion tank is fine for just blowing everything up, don’t care for the warthog because you either drive or shoot, not both. Except when you stop, get out, shoot everything for 10 minutes, then move on.

Banshees I have yet to fly effectively across any of the games. Just like the Warthog I have to choose between flying effectively or shooting things to death.

Favorite weapon would probably be the Sniper Rifle when I am in a situation where I can snipe everybody and then move on. However when I am running and gunning, I like the Shotgun and Assault Rifle combo. Only downside is how few shots the Shotgun carries and how long it takes to fully reload.

Now, it is really difficult for me to judge video game stories. Hell, most movies I judged as “good” as long as I finished them. It wasn’t until I started watching online reviews that I actually decided North maybe wasn’t the masterpiece I thought it was simply because I saw the credits.

However, games are a bit different. If you go through the effort of finishing the game, it means you probably enjoyed it enough not to give up. Doesn’t necessarily mean the story is good, but at least the gameplay is enough to keep you interested enough to finish. Am I a good judge of whether a video game story is good?

Well, I enjoyed Shadow the Hedgehog’s story. All 50 of them. So if you want to use that as your-

Nah, there were some things I found weird about Shadow, but I did enjoy the game. But that is for another review. I enjoyed the characters and the overall mythos of the Halo universe enough to keep playing it across 9 soon to be 10 games, 2 movies, 2 mini-series, and 3 books. Is it a good story? I’ll let the more snobbish critics decide, but I enjoy it.

Halo: Combat Evolved is the starting point of a great series. Although I was mainly in for the story rather than the multiplayer madness that everyone else was in for, it was a fun ride.

Next Week: Halo 2. We get to use 2 GUNS AT ONCE!