Tuesday, September 14, 2004
A million steps forward and one step back
So, a sweet rumor and a nasty confirmation about Halo 2 today. First, the good stuff. Apparently when EGM played their demo build there was a disabled "saved films" option, and a Bungie rep hinted that it might be a feature for saving videos of your games to the hard drive for later viewings. This would be great for obvious reasons, but it would also be a nice tool for the thousands of people out there who like to make Halo fan videos. If they included some basic editing options, there's no end to how cool this could be. Might as well use the hard drive for something, right?
Next, the bad, lame, ultra-weak news. No bots. I wasn't exactly expecting them, but I was really hoping that Bungie would bust them out at the last minute and give everyone a pleasant surprise. And really, there's no excuse for not having them. Once Tom finds out this news, he's sure to blurt out to no one in particular that Perfect Dark had eight very customizable bots, and that should have been the standard from then on (and he's right). Timesplitters took it to a ridiculously great 16, and most games with a solid multiplayer component since then have had at least a couple. So for what's become the biggest FPS franchise ever to not have them, frankly, it's a crime against humanity. I appreciate the great online play, I really do, but there are times when I just need to slay some mindless multiplayer drones. It remains to be seen if 4-player online play will work as smoothly as everyone is hoping it will, but even if it does run well I don't always want to be dealing with going online and changing my whole gameplay dynamic when I have a couple of friends over. I understand that bots wouldn't ever quite have the same unpredictability that makes Halo thrilling against humans, but hell, how hard is it to program some basic A.I. into an already perfect engine? I mean, fuck, it was by far the biggest omission in the first game's multiplayer, but now that they've had all the time in the world, I won't accept any excuses. I'd actually rather have bots than 4-player online play, dual wielding, destructible vehicles and all this other jazz. Oh well, I can't have it all I suppose, I hope Timesplitters 3 will sooth my botless pain.
P.S. Check out our rockin' new weekly releases section. Thanks.
Next, the bad, lame, ultra-weak news. No bots. I wasn't exactly expecting them, but I was really hoping that Bungie would bust them out at the last minute and give everyone a pleasant surprise. And really, there's no excuse for not having them. Once Tom finds out this news, he's sure to blurt out to no one in particular that Perfect Dark had eight very customizable bots, and that should have been the standard from then on (and he's right). Timesplitters took it to a ridiculously great 16, and most games with a solid multiplayer component since then have had at least a couple. So for what's become the biggest FPS franchise ever to not have them, frankly, it's a crime against humanity. I appreciate the great online play, I really do, but there are times when I just need to slay some mindless multiplayer drones. It remains to be seen if 4-player online play will work as smoothly as everyone is hoping it will, but even if it does run well I don't always want to be dealing with going online and changing my whole gameplay dynamic when I have a couple of friends over. I understand that bots wouldn't ever quite have the same unpredictability that makes Halo thrilling against humans, but hell, how hard is it to program some basic A.I. into an already perfect engine? I mean, fuck, it was by far the biggest omission in the first game's multiplayer, but now that they've had all the time in the world, I won't accept any excuses. I'd actually rather have bots than 4-player online play, dual wielding, destructible vehicles and all this other jazz. Oh well, I can't have it all I suppose, I hope Timesplitters 3 will sooth my botless pain.
P.S. Check out our rockin' new weekly releases section. Thanks.
// posted by Nick @ 11:14 PM 
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