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20080730.144615
i added amazon context links... just because i can... if they're not too obtrusive... i'll leave them
20080114.231544
enabled mod_deflate on andromeda. the site is now seeing an estimated 80% reduction in overall size for clients to download
20080109.022443
added an rss 2.0 feed for the news at http://www.subnova.com/news/rss/. it will show the 14 most recent posts
20070823.031056
updated cq calculations so that if a member doesn't login to the website in the past 77 days, the contribution points start vanishing in a hurry... tanking the irank
20070823.024814
removed the referral ads from the bottom of the main content area
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(Continued from part 1)
The expo was silent, the arena was empty, and we were ready to start letting people into the Fanfest. Me, deanero, and Stosh were drafted to man the registration desk, along with instructions from Sketch to provide each guest with a raffle ticket and a mysterious colored slip of paper with a Seventh Column logo and a number. Unfortunately, as often happens, the plan went off track fairly quickly, with last-minute changes to the registration process, people who didn't bring or even receive in the mail their badges, people trying to bring in guests, authentic special guests needing special treatment, and increasingly harried expo security trying to stay on top of everything. Finally, everyone got in, and was led to the real site of the fanfest- the Xbox arena.
The first thing to do to get everything started was a welcoming speech by SketchFactor, with the assistance of David Scully, the voice of Sargeant Johnson. After he took control of the situation, the show floor was opened for free play on the dozens of Xboxes in the room - and despite all the great prerelease game demos, people still lined up to play the original Halo. There was plenty of food, ranging from soft drinks and cookies to some of the worst pizza anyone there had ever tasted. More Bungie personnel came out of the woodwork and mingled with the fans, showing the friendliness and close connection to the community that has been Bungie's trademark for all these years and which brought us all to the Fanfest in the first place. Artist Lorraine "mehve" Mclees and audio masters Jay "The Younger" Weinland and Marty "The Elder" O-Donnell (left and third from left, respectively) chatted with the crowd while enjoying the horrible pizza, and then Brian ran the Halo 2 demo shown to the press. It was essentially identical to the many movies that hit the net over the past few days, but it was nice to see Frankie and Max Hoberman off to the side actually playing the game as we watched. Then, Brian revealed what the colored slips were for: We were divided into groups of 20 and finally played a few rounds of Halo 2!
There's been a lot of confusion and misguided deduction over the movies released on the net, so let's just get one thing straight first: It is fun. It is damn fun, at least as good as Halo 1 (unfortunately we got so little experience with it I don't feel qualified to say more than that yet). The new features add a ton of new wrinkles to the gameplay, but the core Halo action is still there. The groups of 20 were divided into 2 groups of 10 and each given a separate room for 5v5 games on Zanzibar, playing the same one-flag CTF game as the demo. There were 2 types of stations available: Comfy chairs and small LCD monitors, or simple stools and huge plasma displays- guess which one I picked :) Max Hoberman spent a good deal of time watching over my shoulder and giving me advice; while I usually didn't have the opportunity (or skills) to actually follow it he had some interesting tidbits about the map. As we've seen, Zanzibar consists of 3 general areas:
- A beach, where the attacking team and their vehicles spawn. This beach also contains the flag return point; I was not aware of this and had to have it pointed out to me by Max while carrying the flag. It's necessary to hold down X to interact with the flag now, either to grab it out of the base or to return it if dropped. This is an interesting change, since returning the flag is no longer a matter of simply getting close enough to it, it requires attention to the task and timing. This new delay also applies to entering vehicles (it's "Hold X" instead of "Press X"), which is probably meant to cut down on accidental boards when trying to do something else the X button is usually for, but I've never noticed that being so common as to be annoying. There are 2 ways (that I found) to get from the beach to the interior: a small staircase leading up onto the sea wall and through a short hall, and a large opening suitable for driving vehicles through. The short hallway makes the battle rifle and sniper rifle available, for long-range attacks on defenders manning the gun turrets. The large opening leads directly into the huge, slowly turning fan in the center of the map. This fan turns fast enough to have an effect on maneuvers but not fast enough to be annoying or to make it worth avoiding altogether; it's easy to slip through it, but if you fight around it the sweeping blades add a nice element of chaos as they shove players, corpses, and debris out of their way. The beach also has a wave effect similar to the one of Silent Cartographer and Death Island.
- The central area is where most of the action on the level takes place, as the attackers are engaged by defenders on the ledges surrounding the base. In here,I saw how the rocket launcher is meant to absolutely dominate vehicles when they go head-to-head: with Max's help I took out the Warthog and 3 Ghosts while they all attacked at once. The ground is littered with "fusion cores" which are pretty much booby traps; if they take enough damage they will explode, and they can be moved with the new physics engine by walking into them. If anyone managed to spot a small cluster of rocks near the door to the base interior, there are some extra rockets in there. There's also a shotgun available among the pillars in the center. If you bring in a Warthog, chances are it will explode in this area, so there's plenty of open space for it to send its debris flying around. The energy sword is also found in this area, but it takes so much time to run up and grab it that it didn't see much use. According to Max, it's possible to blast it out of its hole with a rocket.
- The interior of the base has a large open area containing the flag, along with a ramp that spirals around from the back and ends at the turret ledges in the front. There are several glass windows overlooking the flag room, and has been observed from the screenshots they can be broken in sections. It took me 4 shots to completely destroy a glass window, unfortunately I didn't get time to try any different patterns of fire. The turret ledges are pretty exposed, vulnerable to both sniping with the rifle or battle rifle and rocket fire from the Warthog. Explosives will destroy most of the decoration on the edge, but it seems you have to score a direct hit on a turret to take it out as well. There is a side passage that allows you to go from the exterior directly to the gate control, opening up the main gate to let your teammates rush the base. Driving a vehicle into the base, however, is suicide, since there's no room to maneuver.
The polygon counts around this map are significantly higher than those in Halo 1, and the texture design seems to have a rough, weathered appearance that Halo 1's spotless sci-fi surfaces often lacked. This is definitely a war zone, and it's been through a lot.
More weapons are available on the level than were showed in the demo, and the old weapons have been tweaked in significant ways.
- Each player, on both sides, spawns with a single SMG. I've seen the SMG compared to HPC's flamethrower, and that's not all that far from the truth- the SMG is very effective at close range but loses most of its power as the target retreats. However, this can be offset by picking up a second SMG, which makes for a devastating attack. The SMG fires very, very fast, faster than the AR from Halo 1.
- The new Needler is, as promised, actually useful in multiplayer. Its needles fly far faster than before, although I couldn't determine if they still tracked.
- There is a plasma rifle present on the level, and it seems to be relatively unchanged except for the ability to dual wield it. When used in combination with an anti-armor weapon like the SMG, you can see how dual wielding completely changes the strategies one needs.
- The battle rifle seems to be designed to replace the pistol (at least on this level), and does a pretty good job of it. As we know, it fires three-round bursts (and, yes, you have to release and re-pull the trigger after a burst, it's not automatic) and single shots when zoomed, so it can be both a decent close combat weapon and a passable sniping weapon. When I tried to use it to take out a turret operator, I didn't manage to do it, though, which could mean that the turret was blocking my shots or that the BR is tough to aim. Whatever else you can say about it, the BR doesn't seem to fulfill the same role as the AR, so the AR may still be in the game (or the SMG is its replacement).
- The shotgun, found in the center of the level, is also relatively unchanged, but due to the added features of the rest of the game it's been kicked out of the catbird seat of close-range combat, and can easily be defeated with dual SMGs or the plasma sword.
- The sniper rifle has one important change in its behavior: It will kick up after each shot, requiring you to re-aim. Getting a headshot is now of the utmost importance, since you won't be able to easily squeeze off 2 or 3 shots and hit the same target each time (at least, not without a lot of skill and practice, which I'm sure is the idea).
- The rocket launcher has had two changes, one minor and one major. The minor change is that rockets now accelerate as they fly, which is closer to the behavior of real-life rockets. Leading a target is now significantly harder, especially when you have to un-learn the behavior of Halo 1's rocket launcher. But it doesn't matter that much thanks to the controversial tracking feature. When asked personally, the Bungie guys were very clear: The rocket launcher is meant to pwn vehicles. Some of the arguments for a vehicle-pwning weapon can be seen in HPC: The Ghost and the Banshee. The Banshee is extremely difficult to kill unless it's diving straight at you, and even then you'd better have very good aim and hope he isn't good at dodging. As for the Ghost, a popular strategy on Blood Gulch (or other vehicle maps) is to jump in a ghost, zoom over to the enemy base, grab the flag, get back in the ghost, and zoom back to your base before the enemy realizes what just happened. Unless there's a very, very skilled enemy sniper, you're pretty much home free once you get up to top speed and head downfield. In Halo 2, this will no longer be possible; you'll need to ensure that nobody with a rocket launcher is covering your escape route. Preventing a single person from accomplishing an objective that's meant to require a team effort is an admirable goal, but this of course would require that your teammates all be willing to work together on a plan at the same time, which in most FPSes is quite rare outside the organized clan realm. It remains to be seen how Xbox Live, with its voice chat and guaranteed broadband performance, will affect this. One other minor tweak to the rocket launcher is that the player now holds it on his shoulder at an angle, which lets both barrels be seen from the first-person view.
- The plasma sword is extremely difficult to reach, so it was rare that it was put into play. I only picked it up once, and didn't get a chance to kill anyone with it (even the plasma sword won't help you when charging 2 people with 2 SMGs each). One thing I did notice is that the recovery time for the lunge attack is very, very long; after test-firing it I was afraid that I would encounter another player before I was ready to attack again. Of course, once you are killed carrying the sword, it drops on the ground and now it's in play and can be used by anyone who finds it, so you'd better be good at using it if you're going to grab it. As above, the sword can apparently be blasted out of its hidey-hole with explosives, but no one tried this and I suspect it would go bouncing unpredictably all over the courtyard, turning it into a wildcard instead of an advantage for your team.
There's so much that can be said about dual wielding that it deserves articles all on its own when the game ships. In Halo 1, much was said over potential combinations of 2 weapons to carry and switch between; now you have the ability to fire 2 types of attack at once, and can mix and match many of the weapons in the game for a huge number of damage type combinations. The dual-wield weapons on Zanzibar are the SMG, the needler, and the plasma rifle, so that's 6 configurations right there, and there are likely additional dual-wield-capable weapons in the game that we haven't even seen yet. The behavior of dual wielding is a bit unclear, so this is how it works: When you are holding a dual-wieldable weapon, standing over a second dual-wieldable weapon pops up a "Hold Y to dual wield" message. Holding Y will indeed pick up the second weapon in your left hand (or you can hold X to swap as in Halo 1). From now on, you can't throw grenades or use a melee attack. Pressing X will apparently only reload the weapon in your right hand; this may change in the future. There is no ammo display for the left weapon, another possible target for change. You can fire the weapons independently with the two triggers, but when you fire both at once your aim will start to drift up, as if the increased recoil is overwhelming even the Chief's strength. You can stop dual wielding by pressing Y; this will make you drop the left weapon and return to using the single right weapon. I'm not quite clear on what happens to this weapon (whether it gets dropped back on the ground or simply disappears). If you are standing over a weapon, holding X will drop both dual wielded weapons and give you the new one. While all this is happening you can still carry a second weapon in your second weapon slot (what you normally get when pressing Y), but you can't get to this weapon without giving up your left weapon. If you take the ammo from a dual wield weapon (walk over a weapon identical to one you are holding), an empty weapon is left on the ground to be dual wielded. In the end, dual wielding is going to make weapon balance pretty interesting, and a lot less "weapon X beats weapon Y" formulaic, although Halo was already pretty good in that regard, and definitely a place to look for behavior to change before release.
The three vehicles available on the level (a rocket hog and 2 ghosts) were also significantly different from their Halo 1 equivalents. I did feel that the level was rather cramped for vehicle use; it was difficult to get up any real speed without crashing into something. The ability to damage parts of vehicles wasn't actually that important, as most players spotting a vehicle would attack with explosives, and either miss completely or total the vehicle (killing everyone on board and rendering it a smoking hulk). You can't simply steal a vehicle from the enemy by attacking willy-nilly, you'll have to aim carefully to hit the driver without damaging the vehicle if you want it to be available after he's dead. But why would you need to kill him anyway, since there's boarding? Sadly boarding was very rare; I didn't spot it being performed at all during my games. I suspect the reason for this is that, for an experienced Halo 1 player, the response to an attacking vehicle is virtually a reflex: If you are properly equipped, attack at range, otherwise retreat. Getting in close to an enemy vehicle is suicide in Halo 1, so it will take a while to get used to boarding. Hopefully, the single-player campaign will have some good boarding opportunities, to introduce and the concept and provide opportunities to practice. The warthog has 2 new controls: An emergency brake on the left trigger, and a horn on the right. The emergency brake is useful because the hog has picked up a lot more traction since Halo 1; it's much less likely to go into a skid unless you hit the brake. Driving the vehicles should now be less a matter of simply pointing the way you want to go and bouncing off rocks and trees until you're clear, especially since vehicles now take damage, and more a matter of actual steering and skill. The horn is just a bell and/or whistle, but I can't wait to honk out a warning just before turning someone into a hood ornament (or, more likely, to hear that taunting hoot fading in the distance as the camera spins out from my tumbling corpse). Incidentally, a few people have complained that it sounds a bit lame, and one of the Bungie guys (Max?) admitted that he also wasn't happy with the current sound, so perhaps it will get better by release. Boosting in the ghost looked really cool, but wasn't that useful since the available space on the level was rather small to get up a good speed before crashing into something.
There are a few other miscellaneous changes worth mentioning. You can see your legs and shadow in first-person view, but that's all you can see- the legs extend off the bottom of the screen and there's no huge chest model blocking your view as there is in most other games that attempted to do this, so the effect is more like bowing at the waist than simply looking down. The legs animate to roughly match what the other players are seeing as you move, so it's easy to catch sight of your bent knees while jumping. (Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that I had Chief legs while playing as an Elite. Bug!) I noticed that the shield effect for the players looked subtly smoother than in Halo 1, and more rounded, and I wouldn't be surprised if the shields are being tweaked by the artists as unique models this time instead of just being generated from the character they are surrounding. The death camera still focuses on your character's ass if you die in an enclosed area; it's strange to see an Elite there instead of the usual player model.
One last thing to make clear before we move on to the rest of the fanfest: Halo 2 still has 5 months of development left on it, and much of that time will be spent playtesting. Many of the things I mentioned may change, and many of the things people are currently complaining about will be tweaked or removed entirely. Bungie isn't stupid, and they are constantly playing the game and they are probably thinking the same thing you are about any problems the game has, and they will almost certainly come up with a solution. They pulled it off for Halo 1, didn't they?
While all this was happening, the other Fanfest special events were getting under way. There was a new video from Red vs Blue running on the big screen, and several of the RVB guys were in attendance. Several other special guests appeared, including Tim Dadabo, voice of The Monitor, as well as the Strikers and Tankers in Oni (His custom-made shirt says "Voice Guy for the Gamer Eye"). Chris and Scott from Joyride (sorry, but I can't remember your last names and I can't read your signatures) showed off some of their upcoming figures: the Grunt, the Halo 2 Warthog, Red Elite, and Flamethrower Master Chief, the dual-wielding Halo 2 Master Chief, and the huge Brute (compare him to the standard 8" Chief nearby). The special guests held a Q&A session (From the left: The Joyride guys, sorry I don't remember which is which, Marty O'Donnell, Lorraine Mcless, Tim Dadabo, David Scully, and Jay Weinland), after which Tim and David signed autographs- in David's case, a huge stack of Sarge glossies ("To Mark- I'm alive! tell the world! love, Sgt. Johnson" is a reference to an earlier question in the session, where someone had asked him to explain how Sarge survived the end of Halo 1 and appeared in the previous Halo 2 video). Then it was time for the raffle. After a bit of a rocky start due to many of the winners being too busy playing Halo 2 to claim their prizes, Alta (with Shishka's help) gave away tons of cool Bungie stuff, including action figures, prototypes of the Halo 2 LE metal case, and an oversize promotional Halo 2 display box (I hope whoever won it lives in the LA area, because it looks like a huge pain in the ass to get on an airplane...). Cunbelin won one of the even more unique prizes: A drawing by Lorraine, which she did on the spot (come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw her without her sketchbook for the remainder of the evening).
As the fanfest wound down, we all trooped back to the hotel where the Bungie guys were staying, and enjoyed a very late dinner and a round of drinks (hey, everyone was over 18). Dog-tired, we staggered (well, drove) back to our various homes to recuperate. I was staying with mnemesis, Claude and Miguel were with deanero, and other people had their various hotels. Tomorrow, with the Bungie festivities out of the way, we could tackle the rest of E3...
(Continue to part 3) |
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Slackers.
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