That’s me on the left there, holding the pwnager, as I like to call it. You see, I had some time today to play through several, rather entertaining multiplayer matches, using the built-in matchmaker. It was overall, rather fun (have a look yourself, if you own Halo 3), though hectic and even in ‘team matches’, almost entirely one-on-one… Business as usual in other words.
Strangely Valhalla seems to be the team map of choice, which beats me, as it is so entirely unbalanced in the hands of a good Banshee pilot, that I would’ve just torn the Banshee’s right out before putting that thing in a box and shipping it. Talk about frustration.
That said, the match maker did seem to more or less group me up with similarly skilled teenagers — or tweens — from across what sounded like Europe, judging from their high-pitched voices and the way they listed the achievements they’d earned last round.
Yeah, I had to give a few of those… youngsters, some bad reviews. Sorry dudes.
Also, VIP and ‘Bomb’ modes turned into cataclysmic failures in the hands of inexperienced players… like me. No one really knew what to do; no team work really came into being, and chaos ensued on a grand scale. Something I’m sure will be rectified once I either raise in rank, or as the market begins to collectively understand just what the intention was.
As always with team-based multiplayer games, the teams don’t really coordinate when no one knows each other. But there are those small ad hoc moments here and there, where a couple of guys on a quad-bike change the tide of the battle, and man, is that ever gratifying.
Oh, and as evidenced by the clips I’ve uploaded to my bungie.net profile, I’ve also tried out the ‘theater’ functionality, and boy, is it ever sweet. Currently I’m just loving the fact that I can actually go back and rewatch my ‘killing sprees’, as they happen rather rarely, and thus are worth cherishing…
And if only I can figure out why the screenshots don’t show any thumbnails, I might also get a few more of those uploaded to bungie.net, and show off some of my mad skillz, yo!
Bungie’s put together a really solid package, and I can actually see myself playing some more online on this system. Provided more of you, my friends, join in every once in a while :)
Long time reader, first time commenter. :)
Just added you as a friend on Xbox Live in case you’re wondering who this stranger is. My first real foray into the Halo universe so I may have to work up to your rank.
If you are interested in the ranking system that is employed by halo for the matching system, you can scope it out here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000961.html
That was a great read; thanks ian.
That is one of my favorite developer blogs that I read. Jeff Atwood is one bright dude. Not surprisingly, most developers are also gamers. :)
VIP was one of my favourite modes in the beta. Especially 2 v 2, with each sharing a box on Higher Ground. Very tactical!
Sorry, this is slightly unrelated, but it bugged me last Halo post, and this one as well:
Quad Bike?
Quad Bicycle? Four Two Wheel?
Just quad will do :)
What’re you, some sort of a professor?!… Ehm… Yeah, never thought about that :D
Well, if you’re bugged by that than you surely must be bugged by ‘color’ being spelled ‘colour’. ‘Quad bike’ is a regional colloquialism common in English speaking countries besides the U.S*. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s because it’s an expression. “Quad” doesn’t either if you really think about.
Four. Ok. Four of what?
*Sorry I program for a company with 23 international offices. I hear all kinds of expressions I’m not accustomed to and this was one of them. :)
lol @ pwnager XD
Yes, I think so. I’ve been playing EA’s Skate the last coupe of days and the video on that has a great scrub forward/back facility, but not free-roaming camera. A mixture of the two would be great.
Err, not sure what happened there, that comment should have been on this post