Tag Archives: 343 Industries

Best of 2012 #2: Halo 4

Halo 4There’s no way Halo 4 should have been as brilliant as it is. Reopening a series that closed quite nicely, farmed out to a brand new studio for the fifth instalment in seven years. Just goes to show that throwing immense amounts of money at a project and setting technical geniuses on performing miracles with ageing hardware can do big things for what could have ended up being a fairly safe sequel.

I was frankly blown away by how good this game was. Putting aside how ridiculous it looks, it was an outstanding debut for 343 Industries, clearly showing where every penny of those huge production values went. Credit, too, for the story, which I, as a huge fan of the series’ wider fiction – I’ve read ten novels so far – found fascinating. Jen Taylor made it thanks to some touching moments as Cortana, managing to add pathos to a tale about the relationship between a super soldier and a computer. Quite an achievement.

And the multiplayer is arguably the best the series has seen since Halo 2. I just with the BTB players would pick something other than Ragnarok.

Honestly, Halo 5 is probably the number one reason why I’ll be buying the next Xbox. 343 undoubtedly built this engine with the upcoming generation in mind, and if this is a hint at what we have to look forward to, I can’t wait.

Halo 4: How is This Even Possible?

You know, after so many years it’s only natural that this generation of hardware has run dry, that it’s impossible for the consoles to impress us any more…

Halo 4 cut-scene

Well, that’s a cut-scene. Obviously prerendered.

Halo 4 E3 2012

Nope. PR bullshot. Show me some real screens.

Screenshot © Eurogamer

Okay, so that one’s from Digital Foundry’s tech breakdown. It’s pretty undeniably indicative of how good Halo 4 looks. How 343 Industries has done this, how it got hardware that has seemingly been running on fumes for years now to push out what I don’t think, resolution aside, would look out of place on a decent PC gaming rig, how many virgins had to be bled dry in sacrifice to the gods of gaming, is utterly beyond me.

It doesn’t change my tune about new consoles being desperately needed, but I haven’t been this impressed with a game’s visuals since Uncharted 2. I’m genuinely flummoxed at why even first-party 360 games have so often been allowed to coast visually, content to be adequate rather than spectacular and giving rise to a popular opinion that the PS3 has a noticeable performance advantage. It frankly shows how lackadaisical Microsoft has been in pushing its developers and partners this gen, and I hope that this is the first sign of a rumoured push for more high-quality, exclusive, internally produced content from Redmond in the next generation.

Plus it’s bloody good to play. That always helps.

Halo: Anniversary

As much as I like Halo, I get the feeling that nobody cares about its anniversary as much as Microsoft. Cool receptions to many of its spin-offs suggest to me that it’s something of a manufactured phenomenon that, without the marketing spend to turn each new iteration into an ‘event’, wouldn’t have developed organically. I genuinely do like the series, especially in multiplayer, but a new announcement does tend to provoke eye-rolling more than it would with any of gaming’s other marquee franchises.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

But without any new multiplayer – or even, more gallingly, old multiplayer – Halo: Anniversary is a good opportunity to go back to the first game and see whether it’s actually as great as the hype would have us believe. My theory was that the years and a million arguments between fanboys have led to both what Halo did right and what it did wrong being amplified, so while a two-weapon limit and recharging health weren’t the foundation of a new dawn for the 21st Century’s most popular genre, The Library isn’t that bad. Ten years on from my first playthrough, I actually found the Flood quite enjoyable to fight, and what I like and dislike about certain levels has changed dramatically. I love the horror vibe of the enemy-free section in 343 Guilty Spark, for example, but the open battlefields of Assault on the Control Room that I enjoyed in 2002 were overshadowed by the tedious repetition of rooms. Needless to say, doing practically the same level in reverse, only with Flood and without a tank, in Two Betrayals seemed like the low point.

First of all, how is the remastering job? While it’s not immediately all that impressive, it’s striking how much has changed when flipping to the original graphics. Looking at that makes me thankful that the graphical overhaul is closer to complete remake territory, and putting it closer to the graphical standards of current games illustrates just how dull a lot of modern shooters are to look at; nowhere will you see such a refreshingly vibrant palette of greens, purples, blues and pinks, and it’s even made the classic graphics look drab in comparison.

Too bad that something – possibly the strain of pushing two engines, possibly the 3D, or maybe even a misguided attempt to keep things true to the original Xbox – makes the frame rate inconsistent. This should be running locked at 30fps at the very least, and it undermines the otherwise-lovely presentation.

Flaws aside, however, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting Halo, and after years of seeing it barracked by popular backlash from areas of the community I was surprised by how much I liked it. Bungie did a tremendous job of balancing satisfying weapons, very believable AI and a few truly brilliant level designs that 343 Industries’ was right not to touch in its attempts to modernise it. Is it a remake? Is it an HD remaster? It’s somewhere in between and I like it. More please.