Social Hooper McFinney's RPF Bar & Grille 7.0 - "Keeping blind people away from Priuses one step at a time"

And we will see Sarge in a few days, when he eventually finishes Halo 4

 

Okay, so the problem is me and not the hype. I was beginning to worry about marketing Have good fun, Sarge!

 

Look what I just scored at a used book store!

Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and Octavarium
Iced Earth - Night of the Stormrider
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
Opeth - Deliverance

 

God bless redundant forms of technology. Hang onto those CD players, boys and girls, you'll be picking up every album you could ever want for a fraction of the price.

 

Yup, although I really only buy the CD for collection purposes. I usually only put it into a CD drive once, rip it to FLAC format, then put it into my cd carousel.

By the way, prices really are going down. I picked these up for the following prices:

Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and Octavarium - $8 a piece
Iced Earth - Night of the Stormrider - $8
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters - $8
Opeth - Deliverance - $6

 

My tongue is purple!

 

Glad I finished my homework with plenty of time to spare - got to go drinking with the rest of the math department and shoot **** in that uniquely "We are all left as hell but also cynical about politics" way that you get to shoot **** in in math departments. Watching the results come in was amazing, and they were close enough to make good television - best election night I've had in years.

 

So, anyways, at least where I am, Gabe Newell's birthday was 3 days ago... On the 3rd.

In 3 years, when he turns 53... Maybe he'll release Half Life 3?

Nah... We all know he doesn't believe in birthdays, because they have to deal with number systems that can go over 3. In all actuality he hasn't aged a single bit since the day he entered this world, due to the circumstance of his sudden appearance in which he is contained with in a bubble of space-time making him immune to the effects of aging. The only reason he looks the way he does now is because he always has, from the day he appeared. All we know about the events that unfolded when he entered this world is that it took place on November 3rd, 1962, and that he wasn't born via childbirth.

 

Hours, a pizza, and several Dews later....



So I had a good night with Halo 4 last night. Once three of my other friends logged on, we immediately partied up together and went for the campaign! Well...we kind of had trouble joining at first cause lol, first-day launch problems and all that...but we managed to get going!

...And it took us only six hours to complete the campaign on Legendary......hm. Definitely one of the shorter campaigns when compared to the other Halo campaigns out there. Though to be fair, I'm not sure if the campaign was particularly optimized to increase in difficulty as more players joined even though its been specifically said that Spartan Ops does that. Whatever the case, despite being on the highest difficulty, my friends and I were pretty much walking through the entire game, blasting Covenant and Prometheans as we went. However, this may also be because of the spawning system where we were all able to respawn in like two to three seconds after our death and the surviving players don't have to run an entire football-field's length in order to get out of combat to give the dead players a safe area to respawn. I suspect the campaign to be much more difficult when you solo it but, on average, it seems that players are able to beat Halo 4 in less then ten hours.

Despite the length though, I thought the campaign was pretty good. It started off really well, got even better as we went on.......and then the ending happened. Wasn't that great. Nonetheless, as a whole, I thought the campaign was pretty sweet especially near the end where we have a......

Spoiler: Minor Spoiler

A StarFox Death Star Trench Run

I liked the focus on the relationship between Cortana and Master Chief throughout the gameplay. It was nice and definitely tugged on some heart strings seeing Cortana breaking down due to her rampancy and yet the Master Chief still trusts her and tries to comfort her to the best of his abilities (which, despite being an indoctrinated supersoldier, was kind of cute). More importantly, once the action really started picking up, I liked the more cinematic and immersive feel that I got when the Chief was working with UNSC personnel and some of the missions really did feel like military ops as, at times, it feels like the Master Chief is truly being supported by the Marines instead of them being dumb cannon fodder that are only there to take a few plasma bolts/grenades to the face for you. Nonetheless, the campaign did feel rather short and the ending felt a bit abrupt but I'm looking at Halo 4 as 343's test game to see what they can do. They added what they wanted but, at the same time, they stayed pretty safe with it. I'm hoping that with the next game they'll feel more confident to experiment with a bit more. At the end of the campaign, they've certainly set up a few things here and there that could potentially expand and last up through the planned future two games of this trilogy.

For graphic and sound comments, both are rather fantastic. One of the first things my friends and I commented on upon firing up the campaign was "Holy **** when did Halo start looking so good?" Despite the limitations of the 360, 343 managed to make the game look pretty sweet in terms of graphics. The leap to the quite excellent visual display we were given was amazing especially when the fighting started and you had Covenant shooting and rolling while vehicles blasted one another. Even if I'm not one to put much stock in graphics, I was pretty impressed with what Halo 4 had to offer. The small touches to the HUD to make it look like you're really looking from inside Master Chief's helmet is definitely something else I appreciate and combined that with the more cinematic feel that 343 was working for...it really is quite a beautiful-looking Halo game.

On the music side...I have to admit I can't comment much on it. Mostly due to the fact that my friends and I were being...well...friends that were playing Halo. As in always cracking jokes, cursing, and laughing so any music I could hear was drowned out with our good cheer. Maybe when I play the campaign solo I'll be able to pay more attention. Still, the soundtrack does seem to be getting great reviews. For other sounds...the weapons sound awesome. I was at first a bit weirded out since I was so used to your standard sounds but I've learned to appreciate them. The ratatatat of the Assault Rifle never felt as powerful or as satisfying as it does now and makes me love the weapon even more. The Covenant have gotten some new sounds as no longer are we getting the silly roars and squeals and "Wort, wort, wort!" but, rather, more menacing hisses and snarls which make them seem more threatening.

Now the multiplayer...its perfect. I think its the most perfect Halo multiplayer I've ever played. Upon completing the campaign and trying out the different multiplayer game modes, I've just seen improvements all across the board. The changes they've made to existing gametypes (such as Oddball, Territories, and Infection) have magically made them three times more enjoyable, especially when you combine them with the excellent maps that have been made specifically for multiplayer. So far I don't believe there are any maps that have been copy and pasted from the Campaign. Add in some new armor abilities (with Armor Lock having been gotten rid of thank God), weapons, and whatnot and you got a multiplayer that, while Halo, gives you a whole host of new surprises and strategies that can be done.

The only thing I feel like I should mention is that despite all these additions 343 has given to Halo everywhere else, there seems to be a distinct lack of new vehicles. I think the only new vehicle they really added in was the Mantis.

Now for Spartan Ops, a nice little mix of co-op campaign and multiplayer. To be honest though, its a little too early to comment on it. I like 343's attempt to give the multiplayer its own cinematic and campaign twist but, at the moment, I'm not sure if it was wise to get rid of Firefight and replace it with Spartan Ops. However, there's only five missions currently out right now and with them planning to release more missions per week (for a total of 25 missions if I remember correctly), we'll see if it can get better. The first few missions I played certainly felt more like intro missions with the stakes (hopefully) getting higher when the next missions are released.

A friend of mine had said it during our gametime last night and I'll quote him on it: "Clearly Bungie was holding 343 back" For those that have been afraid of what to expect upon 343 taking control of Bungie's creation, fear no more! Clearly 343 is up to the challenge! The staff certainly seemed excited to get their hands on Halo and, upon doing so, go completely crazy with it to make it awesome while still sticking loyally to the original material. For Halo fans, Halo 4 is a must buy and for those who aren't, you should certainly try it out nonetheless

 

Just had to share this.

 

....Okay that's lulz

 

Dear God @ furries and Disney...

 

Welp, day after I get Halo and then the snow comes in and transformer blows up. One day I forget to charge my phone too. Ah well, gonna have to call it a night here. Dunno when I'll get power back. Would like to think in a day but transformers are going all over town and efforts are probably still focused on Sandy buuut...we'll see.

 

Exploding Transformers can just ruin your whole day.

 

Dammit Transformer you have failed Sarge for the last time!

 

Go home Transformer, you're Drunk.

Sent from my C5155 using Tapatalk 2

 

Fixed that for you.

 

Get my phone charged at work, get online while expecting Transformers jokes. When I get to Hoopers what do I find? Transformers jokes!

Glad to know that you guys will never disappoint >.>

 

You might be surprised, Sarge. We're more than meets the eye.

 

Ok boys and girls I seem to be on winning streak when it comes to ideas. So I shared one in the RPR thread if anyone would like to add it that would be great.

 

*walks in..grabs an extra large java, and goes to the corner...*

Extremely...
bad...
day...