I can name instances durin\' play time that the game would start to drop frames. Keep in mind, I\'m not talking massive drops, but it is still stuttering and when you pay $300 dollars for a new system and supposely buy the showcase game, you expect more than frame rate issues.
Come on now. There are games with far worse framerate issues that Halo barely touches. I do admit that there are plenty of instances, I notice them quite often, but it\'s not like it remains that way for the entire level. You have to give credit for what it CAN do without said framerate issues most of the time such as great texturing (albeit repetetive in certain instances), weather effects such as rain and snow, an incredibly draw distance, fogging to add effect and not hide limited draw distance, real time lighting effects, bump mapping, the list just goes on and on and almost all of the time, it\'s a fairly stable 30FPS. Comparisons aside, that\'s an awesome number of effects for a launch game and it looks surprisingly good as well.
As for the whole money thing, I don\'t think that\'s fair. There are plenty of consoles released over the years and millions of games over time and it\'s VERY unfair to bash a game solely because of the hardware. I believe that if the developers were given say, another 6 months, they could have fixed that framerate problem, but that\'s just me. I remember how angry and underwhelmed I was when I played my PS2 and that too was 300 dollars, but I never bashed the console for that. It\'s just an unfair bash.
I found myself enjoying the first part of a mission, but when I had to revisit / or be in the same enviroment again, I was annoyed.
Too true, but they do spice up parts here and there to make it more bearable. I\'d say 70% of the game is fresh for you while the other 30% is really what kills people about it. I suppose that\'s why they have co-op. Everything feels different and much more difficult when you\'re with a friend.
Same enemies over and over and dull weapons...
I like how you can use a set of weapons on certain levels and are given new ones at the start of a new level each time. I also like the fact that you can carry only two weapons as well. It adds a dynamic to the game that isn\'t easily matched. I cycle through many weapons while playing and it\'s nice to know that I can go through the game not having just one weapon that can annihilate anything. Besides, I think the needler rocks.
As for enemies, there\'s four different types of covenant soldiers, the grunts, jackals, elites, and hunters. The elites have about 4 different types ranging from cloaked, cloaked with plasma swords, gold elites who are MUCH smarter then standard elites, and the standard purple elites who are pretty tough on the harder difficulties. Then of course, there\'s the flood which has another four types with the small tiny crawlers, the exploding ones, the larger attackers who have melee attacks as well as carry weapons, and of course the smaller more human sized flood who can jump through the air. So if you count the different elites, the different covenant troops, the different flood, and then of course the covenant who use vehicles, there\'s almost 16 different types of enemies, each of which has to be approached differently.
There\'s a grat amount of variety that you pick up when you play it on legendary and it\'s hard to describe here, but most people don\'t see it who just blow the game off after going through it on normal. Their loss I guess, but I don\'t think the enemies and the play style should be shrugged off simply because the weapon selection is small (I disagree with that also, but I won\'t bother with it) and because the enemy selection is small, even though I addressed this directly. It\'s funny you knock Halo for limited enemy variety, but just how varied was Shenmue when you went through it for the first time? It\'s your GOTY, so you tell me...
