Halo Series

As someone who had no experience with CE or H2 until recently, I wouldn't have known anything with CE was out of the ordinary. The main issue with that game, which I think has existed since CE Anniversary on the X360, is that the remastered environments use the collision data from the originals. That's not a great way to explain it so I'll give an example. You might find that if you shoot beside a tree with the remastered graphics, your bullets will hit an invisible wall. This is because the tree in the old version was bigger, and you're actually shooting it. The tree on the remastered graphics is smaller but they haven't adjusted the collision detection to match it. This happens with a variety of objects, walls and surfaces. It happened to me a few times but didn't really affect my enjoyment of the game.

For H2 (Anniversary), the game runs mostly smooth on PC, although it does occasionally stutter in some areas where it seems to be loading things in the background. This issue doesn't seem to be present on any of the other games in the collection.

About 2/3 of the way through H3 now - not got much to do in the evenings at the moment so I'm flying through them. The most standout thing to comment on is that it's much, much easier than the previous titles. There hasn't really been a fight yet that's taken me more than 2 goes. I feel like this game probably has the best vehicle sections of the trilogy so far. Given how the ally AI can be, I'm glad they've made enemies die quicker. Equipment was a cool addition that allows for some new tactics. Some of them don't seem useful against the AI though and only serve to make your own life more difficult (Solar Flare / Radar Jammer).

Typed these for Gamefaqs, but here's some easy notes on each boss for those that want it. Note that these are about skipping them as easily as possible, so no holds barred. Merry Christmas everyone! :)

Tremonius
Start the fight with a Plasma Weapon + Needler equipped, have an explosive canister nearby. At the start, throw all your canisters+grenades at the jackels, just kill them asap and grapple away from Tremonius. Use chargedplasma/carbine to remove his shields. Then kite him around cover while sticking him full of needles. A few needler clips should take care of him. Be sure to stay at medium range, at long range he'll OHKO you with the Hydra.

Chak ‘Lok
Start the fight with Spanker+BR if possible, and max grenades (sticky + plasmasticky), grab a bluecontainer before the fight starts.. Immediately throw a blue container at him. When he jumps at you, side step and throw grenade on him in his recovery, then keep throwing plasma containers and fire the spanker. His shields drop pretty fast under this pressure. A few BR shots to the head kill him once they are down. Be sure to stay in the middle arena, as his shields recharge if you go too far away. Be sure to stay in the edges of the middle room, to have him dash-slash into the containers.

Bassus
Easiest of them all to cheese. Bring a Spanker and Spiker if you can, or a SentinelBeam+Spiker. In the middle of the two rooms is a window you can jump through, simply stand there and when he gets close, jump through the window and shoot him (he can't climb that little ledge). Repeat until dead. You can also grapple up to above one of the doors if you want, he can only throw grenades at you then.

Adjutant Resolution
Bring a Breacher AR and Arcane Beam, and laugh.

Tovarus and Hyperius
If possible, have the Arcane Beam (you have to bring it with you before the mission begins, as you cannot get one in Pelican Down). Maxed out Dropshield helps.
Bring 2 plasma grenades.
Start the fight, drop the shield as Hyperius rushes at you with his bike. Stand in front of him, throw two plasmagrenades at his bike, then shower it in Arcane Beam. The bike should explode, OHKO'ing him. Normally he gets off before it explodes, but since your arcane damage damages it enough to make the grenades kill it, but not for him to get off, he dies. Run around a bit until you get a checkpoint.
For Tovarus lure him to the wrecked ship above (where the Spanker and audio log is). Then just stay at medium range and shoot away. His gun is very easy to dodge by just strafing.

Adjutant Resolution
Bring a Breacher AR and Arcane Beam, and laugh.

Jega ‘Rdomnai
Probably the easiest boss. He has no ranged weapons, so just stand on top of things, or wreck his AI by standing in front of the gap in the ground (he has to jump over it). If he jumps, you jump too. Just keep firing while doing it. If he falls down the hole, it's even easier, just stand on top the hole and melee him down.

Escharum
First phase as normal, you can use Arcane+Breacher which helps if you still have it with you.
For the final and only really hard phase, grapple into the cables above one of the nodes you broke. You can just stand there, he can't reach you. Sometimes he throws a grenade, but it's not too hard. Just wail on him aftwards.

The Harbinger
This one is a bit hard to cheese, but there are tips. First off, enemy-spawns are based on proximity. If you're too close to the door, they'll spawn in a door behind you. Memorize the doors and grenade them as they open for a much easier time. If you can, save a few upgrades (like the final Threat Sensor) for this fight. Using an upgrade always generates a checkpoint, which should help.

Really enjoying Halo Infinite, just roaming around and fighting groups of enemies is so much fun. The grapple is really well done, going with a physics-based system instead of a canned pull to location might have been the single best decision that was made.

I'll definitely echo the "game is what you make of it," you can play really safe and try to hold onto the same weapon for a long time, or optimize getting the most RPG points, but it's a lot more fun to just experience the encounters as they come.

Honestly I'm really happy that the game turned out well. I'm not a fan of Halo 4 or 5, so seeing 343 manage to make a solid Halo game is a pleasant surprise. They managed to substantially add to the Halo formula in a positive way, something even Bungie struggled a lot with. Hopefully they can keep that momentum into whatever they're doing next. (DLC?)

First off, hope you all had a great Christmas/Holidays!

Beaten a couple more titles since my last post - Halo 3 and ODST.

Really enjoyed Halo 3 this time around. Equipment was a cool addition, giving you extra options in combat. It was cool that the Covenant could use them too, although there's a couple of equipment types that are only really useful when used against you. Most of the new weapons were fun, especially the Flamethrower (even if it's very easy to kill yourself with it on high difficulties) and the Spartan Laser. The Spiker was less exciting but could have some hidden utility that I didn't discover. I would have liked Heroic to be a little bit tougher, but I also appreciated having shields that were more durable than H2s. In that game, even on Heroic they could disappear in the blink of an eye. I think it has a good arrangement of levels and there weren't any I particularly disliked, even Cortana. With all the cool weapons and equipment, it's a shame H3 didn't get a Firefight-stlye mode. It's very hard for me to pick a favourite between H2 and 3.

I had a lot more of an appreciation for the story this time around, having played CE and 2. It really does feel like a great conclusion to the original trilogy. When I first played this as a kid that was new to the Xbox brand, I had no idea why Chief had crash landed, who the Arbiter was or why he was a friendly, the whole Cortana "voice in your head" situation, who the "monster voice" belongs to in the Cortana mission, where the Flood had come from, etc.

ODST, on the other hand, was a little bit disappointing. Not a bad game, just not a noteworthy one either. I think there were a lot of missed opportunities to feature more "human" combat mechanics. The gameplay feels very "Spartan-lite", which just feels like watered down H3. Definitely think they could have done more to give ODST more of it's own unique combat experience. I did like that the Magnum was much improved from the H3 iteration, and the SMG's redesign was cool. The addition of suppressors on these guns was a cool idea, but not especially useful in execution IMO. There aren't that many opportunities for stealth, and after that the suppressor makes no difference.

I think aesthetically, the game is a mixed bag. The environments and colour pallette were cool at first but feel very same-y and get quite tiresome towards the end of the game. I did like the music that plays throughout the hub-world sections, which helps to reinforce that lonely/lost vibe you're supposed to be feeling. I liked the concept of having the plot focus on a group of playable characters, although the game isn't really long enough to make everybody feel interesting. It's only really Buck and Dare that get any sort of story or development. Also, wasn't a fan of the nameless/faceless/voiceless Rookie character. I gather you're supposed to insert yourself into the role, but I never buy into that trope. For me, it just feels lazy and difficult to immerse myself in. Other characters ask Rookie direct questions only to be met with awkward silence...it's just weird. The game is very noticeably the shortest (unsurprisingly), which makes me feel like the hub world was mainly included to pad the length out.

The biggest thing I've learned from my Halo marathon so far is that I'd underrated the series. They have a pretty satisfying combat loop when you try to play "correctly", engaging with the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon and enemy. Current ranking is looking like this (top two could be interchangeable, but I tried to force myself to pick a winner):

Halo 3 > Halo 2 > Halo CE > Halo 3: ODST

Yeah ODST is more an experimental expansion title, it has some good ideas but generally speaking I'm less a fan of it than most. The idea is more that you can use the open-world to play the missions in any order, but there's no punishment or reward for doing them out of order (like higher difficulty) and the map is literally laid out in such a way that most players will just experience them in the same order.

Also agree that you feel far too powerful, if anything you might be more durable than Master Chief which is super weird. Think if they'd just grabbed Halo 3's combat, removed shields but added healthpacks, that'd be it. Add more NPCs and a higher emphasis on NPC management/kitting them out, we'd have gotten a better ODST feeling. Now you're just some insane super soldier that makes you wonder just how earth lost the war when a single soldier can kill so many damned Covenant.

> Halo 3
The game is probably the easiest, also on Legendary. A lot of players beat that game as their first Legendary win.

Played some Halo Multiplayer, mostly in CE and 3. I've found that, while interesting with fun gamemodes, vehicles and colorful weapons, most games just boil down to a single weapon so far. Halo 1 is the Magnum, nothing really comes close to it except the shotgun at close-range and perhaps the Sniper. Halo 2 it's the BR. Halo 3 its the BR too. You'll sometimes grab other guns but it's rarely worth it.

For all it's shame, Halo Infinite's multiplayer actually has other weapons with a usage, which is cool. And I really enjoy the more "get the weapon pickups" side of the multiplayer compared to bringing your own loadout to bear.

In the singleplayer I'm nearing the end of Infinite again on Legendary this time. I was considering for a spell to do another playthrough with some skulls, but honestly I don't want to burn myself out and the main missions are just such a bore I really don't want to play them again.

Will probably play KH2 soon as a result!

Finished Legendary yesterday in Infinite; it was great except the final mission (of course). Ended up skipping a lot of it with the Arcane Sentinal Beam, but a lack of ammo-caches meant I had to do a few rooms with just containers and the grapple which was neat haha.

The red-hunter room was rough though. They're way too agressive in such a tight space and the splash damage is unreal, with a ton of homing OHKO shots.

Honestly "glad" that it's over.

Tried a Heroic run afterwards with Mythic+Promotion, but enemies are way too tanky now and most are wielding RPGs which is kinda dull. Had hoped Promotion meant more enemy variety but it just means "RPG brutes". Shame. Kinda done with the game for now I think.

Very interesting (and long) video that analysis the multiplayer aspect of Halo Infinite. This isn't usually a part I'm interested in, but the way he analyses weapons, their impact on the player's kit and enviroment is very interesting. Great design-commentary imo.

EDIT: Note that the thumbnail and title are ofc. massive clickbaits to increase views because it's 2022 and we can't live without it apparently.