Have I mentioned how tedious it is playing this? How little fun I’m getting out of it? How I can’t wait until it’s all over? No? Well, I am now. Today was spent working through the same three areas over and over again. First, there’s The Big Almost Circular Room (with smaller circular room within it). Then, there’s One Of Three Styles of Tunnel, and finally Jesus Christ Not Another Bloody Bridge. Intersperse these with Boring Lift Journeys, and you …
Sigh. If “The Silent Cartographer” is supposed to be a highlight of the game, then it really does need putting down. It was awful. More corridors that look the same. Areas of the map too dark to see in (and no, the flashlight doesn’t really help). Wave after wave after wave of the same baddies again and again and again. Tedious! I thought things might have improved when I got to the next bit (which starts with more identical rooms …
And so it gets worse. The same corridors over and over and over and over again on the alien space ship. The way you go through essentially the same hanger 5 times. The fact everything is too dark to see. The annoying little baddies that sound like Ewoks. The way I had to complete almost the entire chapter with just one block of health. That chapter really was horrible. But then it was onto The Silent Cartographer. I recall from …
I’ve played it before. And didn’t like it. And I tried again on the PC. And didn’t like it. I’ve always found it dull, dark, slow and boring. So, having bought it at a car boot sale yesterday for the princely sum of £1.50, I thought I’d play it again. Not least because I got the sequel at the same time (for the same price), and I have a mostly unplayed Halo 3 for the 360 sat on a shelf. …
I turned my 360 on to find a couple of friends from work in a Halo 3 Campaign lobby, so I put the game in and joined them. It turned out that they were starting on the final level, although I didn’t realise this. Well, not until I completed it for them. Um, that’s it really. Too much jeep-thing action and not enough shooting. And you can’t drive properly as you have to steer with the camera controls, and everything …
Well, the ugvm boys were supposedly going to play this tonight. But they didn’t turn up until I’d been hanging around for an hour so I left. Pff. I’d played a few match-making games while waiting, and didn’t lose any (although I didn’t do especially well), but it just isn’t fun when you don’t know the people you’re playing with (unlike Team Fortress 2 which is ace regardless).
Ssh! Don’t tell anyone, but I played this for over an hour and a half this evening. And not all of it was rubbish! Of course, I was playing with lots of people from ugvm, and all on multiplayer modes that weren’t co-op campaign, so it was all pretty good. Well, I wasn’t. I held my own for a few games when there were only four or five of us, but then more people turned up and I was demoted …
It was decreed that after work today, Halo 3 was to be played on two system-linked 360s and huge projected screens. And so it came to pass, and there was much shooting of each other and baddies as we three played some Slayer (I came second) and some co-op until it was time to go home. And ye, Halo 3 still isn’t fantastic but verily in a group Slayer is much fun.
No, I’m not impressed. Halo and Halo 2 both left me cold, and after several days of Crackdown this just feels slow, clunky and, well, dull. FPS games aren’t really my thing at the best of times, and deathmatch type things even less so. Unless the full game has an outstanding single player mode (and to do this, it’ll have to be different to the previous two games), I don’t think I’ll bother. As for how I got on with …