It has been a while since I've done any sort of ranting post on here. While I won't completely rage like I did in some posts I made on here in the beginning; I needed a place where I can speak my mind in more than 140 characters. This post won't be completely rage induced either, I'll talk about some stuff I have in mind to do in the future.
A couple weeks ago I went down to Peoria, IL to see The Pretty Reckless, Adelita's Way, Alter Bridge and Five Finger Death Punch in concert. It was a really sick show to see, all of the groups that performed were amazing. During the 5FDP set they introduced the next song they were going to play as "Burn MF" off of one of their newer albums. When doing so Ivan Moody (the lead vocalist for 5FDP) mentioned that some of us may be familiar with the news going around about the band performing this song live. At that time I didn't know what he was talking about, so I paid no attention to it; it wasn't until a few days later when I was listening to the radio and a radio DJ said what the whole deal was about. When they perform the song, they bring several kids on stage to sing the chorus. Apparently at one of the earlier tour dates some parent got all bent out of shape that they do that and started complaining.
I have this to say about it. You knew exactly who you were going to see when you bought the tickets. If you know anything about Death Punch you know they don't sing happy go lucky lyrics, so you cannot complain about your children being exposed to that. You most likely bought the album for them when they asked for it and if you didn't stop and think "Hey, should I maybe be a parent and find out if my child should really be listening to this?" after seeing the albums title (Wrong Side of Heaven, Righteous Side of Hell) you should probably rethink of your definition of parenting. I understand a parent not wanting their kids to swear up a storm every time they speak as my parents raised me to not do that.
Showing posts with label Halo Stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halo Stuff. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
Screenshots and Stuff
It would appear I like to use the word "stuff" a lot in my posts. Perhaps I should use a thesaurus next time I decide to write up a post... Yesterday a good friend of mine that runs his own forum (http://s15.zetaboards.com/CRF/index/) went back and visited some of the older threads that are lurking around there and found the "Virtual Photography" thread. That was our go-to place if we had taken screenshots from games and wanted to share them with others on the site. After going back and looking at the thread he told me that I had take some pretty sweet screenshots from Halo and posted them. I'll admit, they are some of my better shots I have taken from Halo over the years. Especially the ones from ODST; the lighting of that game is perfect for screenshots at times.
Speaking of screenshots...here are some that I have taken recently. Most of them will be from that ODST game I mentioned earlier, a couple from Halo 4 probably and maybe one or two from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
Interesting how placing the camera in an explosion can change the look. Simple effect, yet I've always liked it.
Speaking of screenshots...here are some that I have taken recently. Most of them will be from that ODST game I mentioned earlier, a couple from Halo 4 probably and maybe one or two from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
Interesting how placing the camera in an explosion can change the look. Simple effect, yet I've always liked it.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Wait, I Can Explain!
Strange title, I know. Lately I've been obsessed with Grifball (as always really) and that has been making me think as to why do I enjoy it so much? Is it the fact that it is one of the few custom created gametypes in the Halo franchise I truly enjoy? Is it the fact I'm good at it? Perhaps the community that surrounds this largely popular game mode?
In part, it is a combination of all of this...well minus the part I mentioned that I'm good at it. I'm still bad on my own. When I first played Grifball back in 2008 (I think that's when it was) I was hooked almost instantly. I had my reservations about it at first; the fact I was constantly getting betrayed by my teammates was rather annoying and I always wanted to score, so when I didn't score I got annoyed at that as well. As the first few years of playing it went by I started to realize that scoring wasn't everything and betrayals were going to happen. Betrayals still frustrated me, but only for the reason that they happened when we needed a carrier kill at our plant...and I easily would have had the kill.
In part, it is a combination of all of this...well minus the part I mentioned that I'm good at it. I'm still bad on my own. When I first played Grifball back in 2008 (I think that's when it was) I was hooked almost instantly. I had my reservations about it at first; the fact I was constantly getting betrayed by my teammates was rather annoying and I always wanted to score, so when I didn't score I got annoyed at that as well. As the first few years of playing it went by I started to realize that scoring wasn't everything and betrayals were going to happen. Betrayals still frustrated me, but only for the reason that they happened when we needed a carrier kill at our plant...and I easily would have had the kill.
Sunday, June 09, 2013
Looking Back...
I don't know why I always start posts on this place with trying to reason away my absence. Simply put, since my last post a lot of good (and an equal amount of bad) has happened to me in my life. Last year I had decided to join the staff of Inside View Gaming, got a position on the review team and then became their community manager. Almost one year later I'm still helping out around there and I have no plans on leaving any time soon.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Because...Grifball and Minecraft
Would you look at this, a post that isn't two months after my last one! I do believe I am getting into the habit of posting on a regular basis. As of lately I have been busy planning a bunch of cool stuff for Inside View and working a little bit behind the scenes on getting ideas up and running. We have our second game night coming up on Minecraft; our first one was on Forza 4. We also have our own clan that we started up recently, you can find out some info about that here. There's the contact information for one of our clan leaders and my own in case you want that also. Lastly, we have our own Grifball team we have started. We plan on gathering people now and working on some basic team fundamentals; then once Halo 4 is released entering in all kinds of leagues and tournaments.
I've been working on on planning some details for a Halo 4 campaign challenge once the game is released for IVG as well. I know that skulls are returning in the game thanks to the achievement list that was released a few weeks ago; but I do not know whether or not campaign scoring returning. I hope it does otherwise I'm going to have to figure out a makeshift scoring system to tally results...and needless to say math never was one of my best subjects. There's still plenty of time for me to find out if its returning...and work on one if it isn't.
I've also been playing a bunch of Minecraft when I have had the time to game. It's interesting looking back at the first "shelter" I made. I had no clue what I was doing so it was actually made out of a bunch of sand and the living space was very...cramped.
I've been working on on planning some details for a Halo 4 campaign challenge once the game is released for IVG as well. I know that skulls are returning in the game thanks to the achievement list that was released a few weeks ago; but I do not know whether or not campaign scoring returning. I hope it does otherwise I'm going to have to figure out a makeshift scoring system to tally results...and needless to say math never was one of my best subjects. There's still plenty of time for me to find out if its returning...and work on one if it isn't.
I've also been playing a bunch of Minecraft when I have had the time to game. It's interesting looking back at the first "shelter" I made. I had no clue what I was doing so it was actually made out of a bunch of sand and the living space was very...cramped.
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| Small living space eh? |
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Bound for Carnage
Yes, it's been a little while hasn't it? Surprisingly not a lot has happened with me in the meantime, I am still planning on doing the idea I mentioned in my previous post. I have yet to start them though as I have been busy, but this did give me time to think of another idea!
You remember the original Xbox right? No? I'm disappointed in you reader,not really. Anyways, as you may or may not know most of those games are backwards compatible on the 360; meaning I can take original Xbox games and play them on the 360. So what does any of this stuff have to do with me? Well, nothing in particular really except for the fact that I am going to take an original Xbox game, play through it and reminisce on all the amazing times. Once that is accomplished I will talk about the game a little bit and what made it such a classic for me. I also plan on giving you some pretty pictures to look at (aka screenshots) and even capturing a few minutes of footage to showcase what the game was like. The only problem I am really having with this is I can't decide which game to play first. I was thinking of leaning towards the first Mechassault (since it was my first game), but I had also been thinking about the second Mechassault game as I really love it. However....Mercenaries has also crossed my mind as well as a few other games I used to love playing all the time.
As I mentioned earlier, I still plan on doing what I mentioned in my previous post. I just have yet to start it as I have been diligently working on some things with the staff over at IVG. We have some huge plans in the works regarding getting our own Halo themed community up and running. Right now we're looking for contributors who would be willing to deliver consistent Halo themed content for us.
I know this is a short post, but it's late here and I don't have too much to discuss. I will leave you with my first montage I did though! It was done in Forza Motorsport 4 (I would have done a Halo one, but couldn't find clips that made me happy) and involves tons of crashes and carnage. It lacks a proper name but I think Project CARnage sounds pretty decent based on its theme. The editing is fairly simple and I think I went a tad bit transition happy as well; but I am happy with the end results.
So I present to you, Project CARnage by StoredGrunt360 (aka me!)
Anyways, that is all my friends. I hope to have my first "Look Back" post up either this week or next, depends on when I am able to get it done. If I don't have it up this week, I'm positive I'll have my first series of videos regarding NCAA Football 12 up. It'll be from my second trip to the national title game as Illinois...I'm not sure who I was playing in it though. I think it may have been Boise State, but I am not sure honestly. Oh! And I may start working on a Forged map in Halo: Reach next week if I can. If I do, I'll keep you updated on regular basis.
You remember the original Xbox right? No? I'm disappointed in you reader,
As I mentioned earlier, I still plan on doing what I mentioned in my previous post. I just have yet to start it as I have been diligently working on some things with the staff over at IVG. We have some huge plans in the works regarding getting our own Halo themed community up and running. Right now we're looking for contributors who would be willing to deliver consistent Halo themed content for us.
I know this is a short post, but it's late here and I don't have too much to discuss. I will leave you with my first montage I did though! It was done in Forza Motorsport 4 (I would have done a Halo one, but couldn't find clips that made me happy) and involves tons of crashes and carnage. It lacks a proper name but I think Project CARnage sounds pretty decent based on its theme. The editing is fairly simple and I think I went a tad bit transition happy as well; but I am happy with the end results.
So I present to you, Project CARnage by StoredGrunt360 (aka me!)
Anyways, that is all my friends. I hope to have my first "Look Back" post up either this week or next, depends on when I am able to get it done. If I don't have it up this week, I'm positive I'll have my first series of videos regarding NCAA Football 12 up. It'll be from my second trip to the national title game as Illinois...I'm not sure who I was playing in it though. I think it may have been Boise State, but I am not sure honestly. Oh! And I may start working on a Forged map in Halo: Reach next week if I can. If I do, I'll keep you updated on regular basis.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
A Bunch of Stuff
Yes, just like the title says, a bunch of stuff has happened in the what two months since my last post? Where to begin? Ah, well we can start with this. I finally reached 20,000 Gamerscore with an achievement from Forza 4...after all this time I don't remember what it was even... I'm not sure if I want to continue my quest towards the amount of 30,000 or give achievement hunting a rest for a little while. I am trying to get all the achievements from Halo Anniversary; however, some of the achievements are proving a little difficult.
I also completely missed making a post on here, which does sadden me to some extent, but life had taken over at that time. On March 29th of this year, it marked my 5 year "anniversary" for joining Bungie.net. I didn't follow the semi-tradition of creating a thread stating my opinion on the moderation in my time being there or anything else, besides I have to wait another two years before it becomes mandatory. Honestly because I was so busy at that time I almost forgot about it, only remembering it halfway through the day.
My next piece of news is in regards to my last post where I mentioned I was joining a Grifball team with Storm. Well we changed our minds on joining a team shortly after I posted that. Instead we decided to start our own team. Very long story short, neither Storm or I had people on our friends lists that enjoyed playing Grifball so in order to find teammates, I went to this place called GrifballHub and they had a thread for players looking for teams and teams looking for players. The day after I had posted that I received a message from this person with the name of oObeX asking about our runner position. I replied back with my Gamertag and the best day to catch us online to get some games in. A couple days later I was browsing through the same thread and saw that UCCxZAKORE was looking for a team. I sent him a message asking if he wanted to join the team and he was interested. Farther into the future we came to an agreement on a name and thus The Light Redcoats were created.
So far we had our first experience with league teams in a Vanilla GRUNT...it didn't go too well for us. Sadly our only win was by a default as one team dropped out. Since there was an uneven amount of teams that signed up we got a first round bye, once the second round rolled about we got to play our first game; which was a really close game. We jumped out to a 2-0 lead and were getting ready to score a third time to technically take the game, but we let that game slip out from underneath us. Our last two games of the tournament were rather...embarrassing. We got shut out 5-0 in each of them. Granted they were against veteran teams and we're only a rookie team. I still stand by what I have said before, with some time, patience and practice I know our team will be able to hold their own during actual league games.
The last thing I will quickly cover in this very short post has to do with my passion for both gaming and writing. A couple months ago, I was sitting and browsing through the gaming news blog that a few of my friends and fellow Xbox Ambassadors had started and noticed they were looking for staff members. So I sent a tweet away to the owner and founder asking if they were still accepting applications, he got back within a few minutes stating yes. So I sent in an application and they gave me a two month trial period to see if I had what it took to become their lead review. Nothing is official on that yet, but I have wrote a couple of reviews for them (one on Forza 4 and one on ODST) in that time and they were happy with them. I'm pretty sure I'll at least be a reviewer for Inside View Gaming for a little while. They are looking to expand greatly in the near future, it sounds like they are hammering out the details for some big stuff as well.
That does it for this short post, but it was at least something right? Remember, always keep an eye on the ever so elusive Grif. He's very sneaky if he takes over the right person.
I also completely missed making a post on here, which does sadden me to some extent, but life had taken over at that time. On March 29th of this year, it marked my 5 year "anniversary" for joining Bungie.net. I didn't follow the semi-tradition of creating a thread stating my opinion on the moderation in my time being there or anything else, besides I have to wait another two years before it becomes mandatory. Honestly because I was so busy at that time I almost forgot about it, only remembering it halfway through the day.
My next piece of news is in regards to my last post where I mentioned I was joining a Grifball team with Storm. Well we changed our minds on joining a team shortly after I posted that. Instead we decided to start our own team. Very long story short, neither Storm or I had people on our friends lists that enjoyed playing Grifball so in order to find teammates, I went to this place called GrifballHub and they had a thread for players looking for teams and teams looking for players. The day after I had posted that I received a message from this person with the name of oObeX asking about our runner position. I replied back with my Gamertag and the best day to catch us online to get some games in. A couple days later I was browsing through the same thread and saw that UCCxZAKORE was looking for a team. I sent him a message asking if he wanted to join the team and he was interested. Farther into the future we came to an agreement on a name and thus The Light Redcoats were created.
So far we had our first experience with league teams in a Vanilla GRUNT...it didn't go too well for us. Sadly our only win was by a default as one team dropped out. Since there was an uneven amount of teams that signed up we got a first round bye, once the second round rolled about we got to play our first game; which was a really close game. We jumped out to a 2-0 lead and were getting ready to score a third time to technically take the game, but we let that game slip out from underneath us. Our last two games of the tournament were rather...embarrassing. We got shut out 5-0 in each of them. Granted they were against veteran teams and we're only a rookie team. I still stand by what I have said before, with some time, patience and practice I know our team will be able to hold their own during actual league games.
The last thing I will quickly cover in this very short post has to do with my passion for both gaming and writing. A couple months ago, I was sitting and browsing through the gaming news blog that a few of my friends and fellow Xbox Ambassadors had started and noticed they were looking for staff members. So I sent a tweet away to the owner and founder asking if they were still accepting applications, he got back within a few minutes stating yes. So I sent in an application and they gave me a two month trial period to see if I had what it took to become their lead review. Nothing is official on that yet, but I have wrote a couple of reviews for them (one on Forza 4 and one on ODST) in that time and they were happy with them. I'm pretty sure I'll at least be a reviewer for Inside View Gaming for a little while. They are looking to expand greatly in the near future, it sounds like they are hammering out the details for some big stuff as well.
That does it for this short post, but it was at least something right? Remember, always keep an eye on the ever so elusive Grif. He's very sneaky if he takes over the right person.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Time for a Decision & An Announcement
Not to sound dramatic with the title of this post, especially since I hate Internet drama, this is more so about what direction that my Halo "career" could go. Along with some other things as well.As I'm sure you all can tell (even if you just found this blog today) I am a huge Grifball nut. The past few days I have been looking at GrifballHub's website and reading over the new stuff relating to the new season of the GGL (Good Games League); in that time I have also been thinking of how cool it would be to play in at least one season of the GGL. I also discovered that they have a list that people can sign up to be what they call "Guest Players". I've noticed that they mostly consist of current league players but they mention that since the GGL is a recreational league anyone can throw their name on that list so long as they can abide by league rules. When I saw that list I thought about signing up for that list, but then I had a dose of reality that made me realize my schedule would not permit it right now. Then a couple days later I was back to doing the same thing. After doing some extra reading and finding a topic in their forum that was for people looking for a team and for teams looking for players, I came to the decision that next season I will throw my name in the hat and see if I can land a spot on a team. I know I had said that my schedule will be busy, but by the time the next season of the GGL kicks off with sign-ups I will be finishing up what is tying me down now.
So there you have it, during the Spring or Summer (I don't remember exactly when the next GGL season is) I will at least try out for a team. Whether or not I make it onto any team is a completely different story.
Speaking of Grifball, I have a few games that I recently played in Reach of it.
We lost a person from the start, but we had control of the game pretty much.
Dibs on Defender! I totally called it!
Good game blue team....ouch.
Bomb meet face, face meet bomb.
And just for kicks, my very first game of Grifball in Reach.
I'll close out this short post (Hey! It's late here) with some clips from Grifball that I have taken recently. They are rendered so if you have Silverlight (I think that's what it is) installed and up-to-date you can watch it right on Bungie's site. If you don't you can either download it to watch next time you boot up Reach or I am hoping to have them uploaded to YouTube in the near future.
I'll first start off with my most recent favorite.
"Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting Gwif."
Hehe, I love doing that. I also kind of did it once before in Reach and once in Halo 3.
Nothing too special honestly, but I really don't think that I was supposed to get the bomb...
Yeah so that's what I believe (at least they used to call it that) a Grifumble (might be two "f's" not sure) recovered by the opposing team. What I believe was supposed to happen was the guy I killed was actually the one supposed to get the bomb while the guy that dropped it was supposed to come after me and kill me. It seems that something went wrong...somewhere.
"I got a clear path to plate, all I gotta do is kill this dude that spawned."
"No you don't."
Yeah, so that was me coming off the spawn. Nothing too impressive again but I at least saved us from getting scored against.
Planting Fail!
Yep, I failed at planting the bomb. I would have been fine if I didn't jump. I always jump though, it's like a force of habit...or nature whichever. Either way it didn't work too well.
Haha! I lied! A quick update on my quest for 20k Gamerscore. I am currently sitting at 19,571 which if you do some simple math (20,000 - 19,571 = 429) well would you look at that! Only 429 away from my personal goal. I still need to finish the Gears 2 campaign and do some clean up on some easy achievements, plus finish both Dead Island and Bulletstorm (still...) which all should net me some extra points. I am also still going to try to earn all the achievements for Halo Anniversary with Storm; though it looks like some of them might give us some troubles.
There you have it everyone, I will try to get a full fledged post out sometime soon. No promises but I have been trying to keep this place updated on a regular basis.
So there you have it, during the Spring or Summer (I don't remember exactly when the next GGL season is) I will at least try out for a team. Whether or not I make it onto any team is a completely different story.
Speaking of Grifball, I have a few games that I recently played in Reach of it.
We lost a person from the start, but we had control of the game pretty much.
Dibs on Defender! I totally called it!
Good game blue team....ouch.
Bomb meet face, face meet bomb.
And just for kicks, my very first game of Grifball in Reach.
I'll close out this short post (Hey! It's late here) with some clips from Grifball that I have taken recently. They are rendered so if you have Silverlight (I think that's what it is) installed and up-to-date you can watch it right on Bungie's site. If you don't you can either download it to watch next time you boot up Reach or I am hoping to have them uploaded to YouTube in the near future.
I'll first start off with my most recent favorite.
"Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting Gwif."
Hehe, I love doing that. I also kind of did it once before in Reach and once in Halo 3.
Nothing too special honestly, but I really don't think that I was supposed to get the bomb...
Yeah so that's what I believe (at least they used to call it that) a Grifumble (might be two "f's" not sure) recovered by the opposing team. What I believe was supposed to happen was the guy I killed was actually the one supposed to get the bomb while the guy that dropped it was supposed to come after me and kill me. It seems that something went wrong...somewhere.
"I got a clear path to plate, all I gotta do is kill this dude that spawned."
"No you don't."
Yeah, so that was me coming off the spawn. Nothing too impressive again but I at least saved us from getting scored against.
Planting Fail!
Yep, I failed at planting the bomb. I would have been fine if I didn't jump. I always jump though, it's like a force of habit...or nature whichever. Either way it didn't work too well.
Haha! I lied! A quick update on my quest for 20k Gamerscore. I am currently sitting at 19,571 which if you do some simple math (20,000 - 19,571 = 429) well would you look at that! Only 429 away from my personal goal. I still need to finish the Gears 2 campaign and do some clean up on some easy achievements, plus finish both Dead Island and Bulletstorm (still...) which all should net me some extra points. I am also still going to try to earn all the achievements for Halo Anniversary with Storm; though it looks like some of them might give us some troubles.
There you have it everyone, I will try to get a full fledged post out sometime soon. No promises but I have been trying to keep this place updated on a regular basis.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Four Years and Still Strong
So, today signifies the four year join date for me on Bungie.net. Since that is the case, I would qualify for the Veteran prefix for my title. However, that's not the case as I already have Exalted which is the highest prefix one can gain. Over my stay there I have been in so many awesome private groups, one of which was the very first group I joined I am still in. I remember the first group I started on my own and tried to get off the ground. Needless to say it didn't go to well... Ah yes, the abomination of a group that was Troops of Onyx. Oh, and can't forget about the real only semi-successful Legion of Elites. Yeah, it had a whole 15 members and only a few were ever active. After that I finally realized that I should give up on trying to start a group myself. I think the only group that ever had a chance at getting off the ground was the Halo Gaming Association. Apparently though, two revived versions of the group wasn't enough to get things going smoothly.
Anyways, a couple weeks ago I played some of Reach's multiplayer with Storm. We had plenty of awesome games and here are a few of them. One of the only times where I'll ever have 20+ kills. The Key made me do it! The Key is basically the sword; it's a reference to a phrase the Tucker makes from I think season four of RvB. Okay, so maybe this is another one of those times. Again, the Key made me do it. Blarg! That was an awesome game, it basically came down to who could control the yellow(more like green to me...) Which a lot of people consider bad for Sword Base, but I like it; I think it adds to the chaos that goes with the name of Halo. <3 Oddball. I didn't do much scoring wise, but I kind of helped by keeping the enemy team away from our teammate who had the ball. Yet another close game. Stupid Armor Lock... I believe that is all of the games I have to post.
However, I do have some rendered videos to show off. This first video shows how not to throw a grenade out a doorway. It might look like it worked, but Storm(yes, he's the one who threw the grenade) was actually intending to throw it out the doorway a little bit farther to the right. In turn I end up getting blown up by a grenade. I'll admit, I laughed pretty hard the moment it happened. Embedded version is below, with the direct link to download the clip to Reach. At some point I hope to have it uploaded to my Youtube channel.
Direct download link is here.
Speaking of my Youtube channel, about a month ago I uploaded some other rendered videos I had laying around in Reach to it. I believe that some of them I haven't posted on here before, on the other hand; some of them already have been. Ah well, pick and choose which one(s) you want to watch.
As of lately, I've been going for another personal goal of reaching 15,000 Gamerscore. Most of you might remember a couple posts I made earlier about my quest for 10,000 points and then later 12,000. I am currently sitting at 14,653 and having a hard time getting those last few points. I originally thought it would be easy to get the last 500 points when I reach it, but that was like 3 months ago... That's all I have for now. I know it's a rather short post compared to what I usually do, but it's at least something.
Anyways, a couple weeks ago I played some of Reach's multiplayer with Storm. We had plenty of awesome games and here are a few of them. One of the only times where I'll ever have 20+ kills. The Key made me do it! The Key is basically the sword; it's a reference to a phrase the Tucker makes from I think season four of RvB. Okay, so maybe this is another one of those times. Again, the Key made me do it. Blarg! That was an awesome game, it basically came down to who could control the yellow(more like green to me...) Which a lot of people consider bad for Sword Base, but I like it; I think it adds to the chaos that goes with the name of Halo. <3 Oddball. I didn't do much scoring wise, but I kind of helped by keeping the enemy team away from our teammate who had the ball. Yet another close game. Stupid Armor Lock... I believe that is all of the games I have to post.
However, I do have some rendered videos to show off. This first video shows how not to throw a grenade out a doorway. It might look like it worked, but Storm(yes, he's the one who threw the grenade) was actually intending to throw it out the doorway a little bit farther to the right. In turn I end up getting blown up by a grenade. I'll admit, I laughed pretty hard the moment it happened. Embedded version is below, with the direct link to download the clip to Reach. At some point I hope to have it uploaded to my Youtube channel.
Direct download link is here.
Speaking of my Youtube channel, about a month ago I uploaded some other rendered videos I had laying around in Reach to it. I believe that some of them I haven't posted on here before, on the other hand; some of them already have been. Ah well, pick and choose which one(s) you want to watch.
As of lately, I've been going for another personal goal of reaching 15,000 Gamerscore. Most of you might remember a couple posts I made earlier about my quest for 10,000 points and then later 12,000. I am currently sitting at 14,653 and having a hard time getting those last few points. I originally thought it would be easy to get the last 500 points when I reach it, but that was like 3 months ago... That's all I have for now. I know it's a rather short post compared to what I usually do, but it's at least something.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Title-less
No, I haven't lost my title on Bnet yet; it's just I don't know what to call this post...again. I think I'm going to jump right on into this post with a few of my older posts from the forums that have been hiding for a little while. You might have to scroll down the page until you see my name in order to find them. Whereas others are near the top of the page.
No, I don't have a Hail to the King; I have 7 of them now. Yes, at that point I didn't have any, but it was only a couple months later that I got my first one.
Really? I had no idea that getting a random unplanned kill was not expected.
You're kidding, right? The more I look at that thread; I don't know what I was thinking.
Seriously, back in Halo 3 I was always changing my helmet several times throughout the day. Luckily, I like the helmets they have in Reach so I don't change them that often.
Says the person who has played a handful of games and netted themselves a skill of 5 in the playlist.
Again, really I had no idea that it takes good teamwork to defeat a good team...
This is decent one with the way I worded it. It makes it sound like I boot people if they betray me in a game even if it was an accident.
So far, those are all the posts I have found for now. I'll see if I can scrounge up some more for a future post, but they are slowly dwindling now that I realize how not to be an idiot.
Anyways, remember that map that I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I said I was working that was originating as an idea for a Halo 3 map and it has kind of died of since I started it in Reach? Well, I haven't killed it completely...not yet anyhow. I do have a very good start on it(read: pretty much finished) however, I need to change around some things on the map that I'm not happy with. Oh, and it still needs a name for it. There still are a few things that I need to add to it, such as making it compatible for the other gametypes. I'm thinking of also changing the current spawns for the sniper rifle as I'm not exactly happy with them. Once it is finished and I have given it a playtest with Storm, I will post it on here accompanied with a few screenshots perhaps for you all to download and enjoy. Or hate on, whichever suits your style better.
Now, before I leave you with a short post; I'll add in a few more words and pretty colored text and some moving images share some of my files I have taken in Reach as of lately.
First up is so far the only Firefight gametype I have created. I am actually rather happy with it. When I first started brainstorming the idea I was hoping for a Jackal only match of Firefight; well that happened and it is comprised of mostly Jackals, but it wasn't fun with only them. Needless to say even with the skull selection for each round it didn't offer a challenge. I wasn't planning on creating a gametype that was meant for a challenge, but I didn't want something that was going to easy to complete either. Once I had everything perfected in the end I ended up with a few other groups of enemies added in there also. It's still a fun mode to play, especially if Jackals have been owning you in the campaign and you completely hate them(like I do) you can take out your frustrations on them here. I also think you'll like what's in store for you if download it and play until round two.
Anyways, link to download aforementioned gametype.
Next up are a couple video clips I took from the game. Right now I will embed the video directly into the post, and give you direct download link. However, here soon(as in I'm going to do it no matter what) I'll have them and the older ones I found that I had rendered and that are stashed away uploaded to my Youtube channel. No promises as to when they'll be up, but I'm hoping to remember to do it soon.
First up in the batch of videos, a very lucky Elite with a Ghost and also, a very unaware Grunt that ends up going through a window....ouch.
If only I had Armor Lock... Direct download link.
I hit the Elite with the Ghost thinking that ramming him up against the building and the front end of the vehicle would kill him, but nope it doesn't work that way. He evidently had an invisible parachute that saved him. Direct download link is available here.
Now, the following is so far, I think, my best failure of Reach currently. Like the description of the clip says, I need to learn how to get out of a vehicle safely.
So that was Storm driving the Hog on the left after getting killed then respawning near one, I was the one that drove our old Hog back(located on the right) so we could use it. Well, lets just say that Newtons law where an object in motion tends to stay in motion until an equal or greater force are presented didn't work in my favor. At least...I think that's the way that law goes. Direct download link can be found...here.
I believe that is all I have for now. I'm hoping to get another post out with that map I was talking about sometime in the next few days. However, if past experience is any source; I wouldn't count on it.
No, I don't have a Hail to the King; I have 7 of them now. Yes, at that point I didn't have any, but it was only a couple months later that I got my first one.
Really? I had no idea that getting a random unplanned kill was not expected.
You're kidding, right? The more I look at that thread; I don't know what I was thinking.
Seriously, back in Halo 3 I was always changing my helmet several times throughout the day. Luckily, I like the helmets they have in Reach so I don't change them that often.
Says the person who has played a handful of games and netted themselves a skill of 5 in the playlist.
Again, really I had no idea that it takes good teamwork to defeat a good team...
This is decent one with the way I worded it. It makes it sound like I boot people if they betray me in a game even if it was an accident.
So far, those are all the posts I have found for now. I'll see if I can scrounge up some more for a future post, but they are slowly dwindling now that I realize how not to be an idiot.
Anyways, remember that map that I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I said I was working that was originating as an idea for a Halo 3 map and it has kind of died of since I started it in Reach? Well, I haven't killed it completely...not yet anyhow. I do have a very good start on it(read: pretty much finished) however, I need to change around some things on the map that I'm not happy with. Oh, and it still needs a name for it. There still are a few things that I need to add to it, such as making it compatible for the other gametypes. I'm thinking of also changing the current spawns for the sniper rifle as I'm not exactly happy with them. Once it is finished and I have given it a playtest with Storm, I will post it on here accompanied with a few screenshots perhaps for you all to download and enjoy. Or hate on, whichever suits your style better.
Now, before I leave you with a short post; I'll add in a few more words and pretty colored text and some moving images share some of my files I have taken in Reach as of lately.
First up is so far the only Firefight gametype I have created. I am actually rather happy with it. When I first started brainstorming the idea I was hoping for a Jackal only match of Firefight; well that happened and it is comprised of mostly Jackals, but it wasn't fun with only them. Needless to say even with the skull selection for each round it didn't offer a challenge. I wasn't planning on creating a gametype that was meant for a challenge, but I didn't want something that was going to easy to complete either. Once I had everything perfected in the end I ended up with a few other groups of enemies added in there also. It's still a fun mode to play, especially if Jackals have been owning you in the campaign and you completely hate them(like I do) you can take out your frustrations on them here. I also think you'll like what's in store for you if download it and play until round two.
Anyways, link to download aforementioned gametype.
Next up are a couple video clips I took from the game. Right now I will embed the video directly into the post, and give you direct download link. However, here soon(as in I'm going to do it no matter what) I'll have them and the older ones I found that I had rendered and that are stashed away uploaded to my Youtube channel. No promises as to when they'll be up, but I'm hoping to remember to do it soon.
First up in the batch of videos, a very lucky Elite with a Ghost and also, a very unaware Grunt that ends up going through a window....ouch.
If only I had Armor Lock... Direct download link.
I hit the Elite with the Ghost thinking that ramming him up against the building and the front end of the vehicle would kill him, but nope it doesn't work that way. He evidently had an invisible parachute that saved him. Direct download link is available here.
Now, the following is so far, I think, my best failure of Reach currently. Like the description of the clip says, I need to learn how to get out of a vehicle safely.
So that was Storm driving the Hog on the left after getting killed then respawning near one, I was the one that drove our old Hog back(located on the right) so we could use it. Well, lets just say that Newtons law where an object in motion tends to stay in motion until an equal or greater force are presented didn't work in my favor. At least...I think that's the way that law goes. Direct download link can be found...here.
I believe that is all I have for now. I'm hoping to get another post out with that map I was talking about sometime in the next few days. However, if past experience is any source; I wouldn't count on it.
Friday, August 13, 2010
What is Mythic?
This is something I have been thinking of the past couple days since I saw a video on Waypoint and since I saw the new bio for someone on my Xbox LIVE friends list. Anyways, I'm sure most of you have at least heard of what Mythic difficulty is and what it is all about. If you haven't or simply just forgot what it was; here's what the "true" definition of it is. Turn the game up to Legendary difficulty and turn all the skulls on and complete it by yourself. Oh but wait! That's not all, you have to also complete it in one sitting without using the save and quit feature. Now personally, that's fine and all; but I mean if you complete a level of Halo 3 or ODST on Mythic difficulty and you turn it into someone to get an "official" award stating that you completed the level and they comeback and say for some reason that it doesn't count. And yes, I've had that happen before. That's not the point though, my point is since you don't sit and play the game in one sitting you shouldn't get an award for going through all that torture of Mythic difficulty? Tell me, is that any fair to you at all? Personally, I don't think it is. In my case I turned in a run to a site that was running a campaign challenge and I thought I would try it out on Mythic difficulty; well when I did that I did the run of the level on co-op with Storm. Once we finally completed the level I thought we both would get a little badge on our profile page saying we "completed this level on Mythic difficulty." Well, we get an award to go on both of our player pages; however, at the same time I received a message from the person running the challenge that it didn't count as on "official" Mythic run since it wasn't done solo. Now that's fine and all now that I understand what the "true" definition of Mythic is. However, if you break the difficulty for Mythic down into its basic parts what are you left with? Legendary campaign difficulty with all the skulls turned on and campaign scoring also. I suppose you could count that doing it solo is a key component, but to me it really isn't something that is a huge factor in it. Because again, Mythic is really just Legendary and all skulls on. Lastly on this subject, I will share the game which I refer to several times in the previous paragraph. Moving on now.
So, I'm sitting here thinking "what else is Mythic?" Well, I believe I can answer that question actually. Sometime the other day I was promoted from Exalted Legendary Member on Bungie.net's forums to Exalted Mythic Member. Now, I'm sure some of you might be thinking "Well what's the difference and why should I care?" Well firstly, you don't have to care if you don't want to. I just thought I would share this here with anyone who wandered here to my blog. Secondly, the difference between a Legendary Member and Mythic Member is somewhat simple. A Legendary Member is an active member for 1-2 years, whereas a Mythic Member is an active member for 2-3 years. Which if you look at account age, I can qualify for both. Another difference is the title bar color for each is light grey for Legendary and royal blue for Mythic. There are also a very few amount of Mythic's at one time.
Anyways, back to the point here. I could have qualified to become a Mythic member earlier in the year(since my 3 year join date was this past March) or even last year since you only have to be an active member for two to three years. When March did roll around I was hoping to gain the Mythic base title, but never did. Around March the only thing related to my title that I gained was the Exalted prefix; which is basically three years without a warning or ban. I didn't mind it at all since I didn't even know that I could qualify for that prefix. So at that time I was an Exalted Legendary Member and from what I've seen; not that many people hold the Exalted prefix either. Throughout most of the summer that is where I stayed and I didn't mind it in the least bit. Now fast-forwarding to yesterday, I log on and go about the normal stuff I do on there which consists of checking my groups I'm in. So I go to one that just recently started where I was asked to be a staff member for them, I go and check the staff group out to see if anything new has come up in the meantime. I see that something has so I go check it out; then I see a post I made right above the new one and that is when I noticed that my title bar color had changed from the Legendary light grey to the Mythic royal blue. At the time though I didn't know if my prefix changed to something else since I was viewing the group and my roll in it is called "Staff" (like had I lost my Exalted I have?) so I went and checked out a post I had made the night before in the public forums and found out that I wasn't actually seeing things and that I was an Exalted Mythic Member. Anyways, that's that; I am now(at least for the time being) a Mythic Member.
*Status Update* As of August 15th, I am back down to Exalted Legendary Member. I didn't think it would last long. Maybe I'll get it back sometime.
And moving on...yet again. The last thing I wanted to cover here quickly. Remember when I posted this map here? If you do and you have downloaded it, I am hoping to maybe go and completely redesign it in the next few weeks or so. What I have in mind for changing it so far is adding something more to make it look more visually appealing. The basic geometry of the map isn't going to change a whole lot, however I may add some more structures in the center and possibly in the bases somewhere. I also know that I am going to add some more weapons around the map as well; though I have no idea which ones I will place and where either. If everything goes according to plan also, I am going to make it work for more than just the Slayer gametype. That was probably one of the larger mistakes I made about the previous version "Prototype" and I plan on fixing it. With some help from Storm I might get it to work with Oddball and possibly even King of the Hill. I have also decided that if the release of Reach is getting too close before I have finished the map I will scratch it and start from new in Forge World when Reach is released. I have thrown around the idea of making it for Halo 3 and possibly making another version of it in Reach. No idea where I could go with that as of right now since I don't know a whole lot about what we can do in it. Well we do actually, but I have to try it for myself in order to brainstorm ideas for it.
Lastly for this post, I recently discovered that there are some rendered videos I have stashed away that I haven't uploaded to my Youtube channel yet. So, when I get some free time I will try my best to go through the ones I have uploaded and make sure these aren't already on there and if they aren't; I will upload the others.
That is all I have for now. My hands are getting tired from typing this thing for the past three hours (give or take a couple) and I have nothing else to discuss right now.
So, I'm sitting here thinking "what else is Mythic?" Well, I believe I can answer that question actually. Sometime the other day I was promoted from Exalted Legendary Member on Bungie.net's forums to Exalted Mythic Member. Now, I'm sure some of you might be thinking "Well what's the difference and why should I care?" Well firstly, you don't have to care if you don't want to. I just thought I would share this here with anyone who wandered here to my blog. Secondly, the difference between a Legendary Member and Mythic Member is somewhat simple. A Legendary Member is an active member for 1-2 years, whereas a Mythic Member is an active member for 2-3 years. Which if you look at account age, I can qualify for both. Another difference is the title bar color for each is light grey for Legendary and royal blue for Mythic. There are also a very few amount of Mythic's at one time.
Anyways, back to the point here. I could have qualified to become a Mythic member earlier in the year(since my 3 year join date was this past March) or even last year since you only have to be an active member for two to three years. When March did roll around I was hoping to gain the Mythic base title, but never did. Around March the only thing related to my title that I gained was the Exalted prefix; which is basically three years without a warning or ban. I didn't mind it at all since I didn't even know that I could qualify for that prefix. So at that time I was an Exalted Legendary Member and from what I've seen; not that many people hold the Exalted prefix either. Throughout most of the summer that is where I stayed and I didn't mind it in the least bit. Now fast-forwarding to yesterday, I log on and go about the normal stuff I do on there which consists of checking my groups I'm in. So I go to one that just recently started where I was asked to be a staff member for them, I go and check the staff group out to see if anything new has come up in the meantime. I see that something has so I go check it out; then I see a post I made right above the new one and that is when I noticed that my title bar color had changed from the Legendary light grey to the Mythic royal blue. At the time though I didn't know if my prefix changed to something else since I was viewing the group and my roll in it is called "Staff" (like had I lost my Exalted I have?) so I went and checked out a post I had made the night before in the public forums and found out that I wasn't actually seeing things and that I was an Exalted Mythic Member. Anyways, that's that; I am now(at least for the time being) a Mythic Member.
*Status Update* As of August 15th, I am back down to Exalted Legendary Member. I didn't think it would last long. Maybe I'll get it back sometime.
And moving on...yet again. The last thing I wanted to cover here quickly. Remember when I posted this map here? If you do and you have downloaded it, I am hoping to maybe go and completely redesign it in the next few weeks or so. What I have in mind for changing it so far is adding something more to make it look more visually appealing. The basic geometry of the map isn't going to change a whole lot, however I may add some more structures in the center and possibly in the bases somewhere. I also know that I am going to add some more weapons around the map as well; though I have no idea which ones I will place and where either. If everything goes according to plan also, I am going to make it work for more than just the Slayer gametype. That was probably one of the larger mistakes I made about the previous version "Prototype" and I plan on fixing it. With some help from Storm I might get it to work with Oddball and possibly even King of the Hill. I have also decided that if the release of Reach is getting too close before I have finished the map I will scratch it and start from new in Forge World when Reach is released. I have thrown around the idea of making it for Halo 3 and possibly making another version of it in Reach. No idea where I could go with that as of right now since I don't know a whole lot about what we can do in it. Well we do actually, but I have to try it for myself in order to brainstorm ideas for it.
Lastly for this post, I recently discovered that there are some rendered videos I have stashed away that I haven't uploaded to my Youtube channel yet. So, when I get some free time I will try my best to go through the ones I have uploaded and make sure these aren't already on there and if they aren't; I will upload the others.
That is all I have for now. My hands are getting tired from typing this thing for the past three hours (give or take a couple) and I have nothing else to discuss right now.
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Fun With Brutes in Firefight
Quick and short post here, but I wanted to share part of a film I rendered earlier tonight from a game of Firefight I played with Storm. This happened several times throughout the game, but the best part was at the end. I know from somewhere I will take ridicule for it and yes; I also know that it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do since we had no lives left and a fairly high score going. But hey, what's the point if you can't have some fun with the enemy at least once in a while right? Anyways, here's the embedded video plus the direct link to the file in case you don't have Silverlight installed, you can at least watch it in Window Media Player or whatever it's called now. Also, I know it's cut off on the right side of the video; so you might be better off going to the direct file link and watching it in WMV. Your call.
Direct link to file for download in ODST/Media Player.
Direct link to file for download in ODST/Media Player.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Reaching for Beta Part 2
Yep, that's a part 2 that you see in the title and no, it's not a mistake....or something like that. As most of you are sure the Halo: Reach multiplayer Beta was released on the 3rd and I'm also sure that you've done your fair share of providing feedback to Bungie to fix the broken things right? If not, oh well, no big deal. Anyways, I'm going to give my true feedback about the Beta here.
Be warned though, if you are a super-competitive person and think that Reach sucks and that I have a 1.03(which is still positive, but barely) K/D ratio and my opinion doesn't matter; you may want to stop reading after the next paragraph as what I'll say will most likely not agree with you think. That said, let's move on shall we?
Firstly, I'd like to redirect to this post here. In which case I stated that I was going to change my gamertag from StoredGrunt360 to TUE StoredGrunt. Well I did that, obviously, but now I have decided that after May 19th(the day that the Reach Beta ends) I am going to change it back to StoredGrunt360. No, I'm not leaving TUE and no I'm not losing interest in the group; I just want my old name back. So after the Beta is over with, I am going to become StoredGrunt360 again. Heh, right now I'm listening to the ODST soundtrack and the tempo increased right as I started typing that last sentence. Oh the irony of that.
Anyways, here's the start of what I currently think of the Halo: Reach multiplayer Beta. I'll start of by being general, I love it. It really brings back the fun that is Halo multiplayer. When I first started playing it, it brought back some memories from playing the first Halo on splitscreen with some friends. I cannot remember the last time I had this much fun playing the matchmaking side of Halo. However, there are a few things that could be changed I think. Some of them have already been addressed and are going to be fixed for the final game in the fall. I personally think the grenades are a bit overpowered, but it's not bother me if it doesn't change for the fall. Even though they already addressed the issue and are going to fix, they just don't know how though. I'm also not a huge fan of the spawn on Sword Base for 1 Flag CTF. The starting spawns for the attacking team are a little close to the flag. I mean, I don't mind the initial rush at the start of the game to see which team can get the flag first, but if the defending team doesn't choose the Scout loadout(which has the sprint armor ability), then the other team is almost guaranteed to get the flag first and be off before you can do anything about it. Like I said, it's fun and it scream Halo fun, but it gets annoying after a while when the other team is there and gone with your flag every single game. I also think that the spawns for the gold team I believe it is, in Invasion need to be changed or at least some more cover added to it. I don't like Elites in the least bit, but when your playing as them and you get stuck on this side, it's kind of hard to get away from you spawn before you get killed. Over and over again.... Other then those few things, I'm really enjoying the Beta so far.
Onto things that I like in it, besides the fact that it brings back the fun in Halo multiplayer. The new assault rifle in Reach is awesome. Other then the fact that it sounds real for once(which is a big complaint of mine in any shooter game where the weapons don't even sound real) it is actually effective and kills people. Well I was going to say that in the 3 years I have played Halo 3 I had less kills with the AR than I do in the few days of the Reach Beta, but I can't do that as I actually have more kills with in H3 than Reach. However, it's still much better in Reach. I also started to like the new Needler for Reach. It'll actually kill people now and not just annoy them...or me for not killing them. The new shotgun is different from the one in the past Halo games. That one is an M90 Close Assault Weapon System(or for whatever reason you want to call it by it's acronym; CAWS) while the new one in Reach is an M45 Tactical Shotgun(TS). Yes, that was the Halo canon(story) nerd in me there. I'm not sure what I think of the grenade launcher yet. I can say this though, I don't know how to use it correctly and I haven't blown myself up with it yet; which is actually good considering my luck in Halo games and blowing myself up with explosives. The Focus Rifle is really sweet also, I always enjoy using it and always hate getting hit by it. It really drains your health and shields quickly if you're caught out in the open with no cover in sight. I really can't describe what it's like to have, it's just super-awesome!
Now that I am done with the weapons, let's discuss the gametypes in the Beta. So the big hype of the Beta that I'm sure half of the community was really wanting to play was Invasion. Personally, regular Invasion is awesome and with a few tweaks to how the Elites spawn(for example, gold team has the worst spawn since it's right in the open pretty much) it can be perfect. I'm not a huge fan of Invasion Slayer though. I mean, I understand how it works and all that, but it's still confusing. I at least understand what the territories are for now, you capture them and hold them for an extra 15 seconds I believe it is and you are rewarded with a weapon or vehicle drop. Stockpile is something that will be awesome to play if you have a good team. The only thing I can see that would get annoying with it, but it's a totally legit tactic to do; is the teams that don't really want to play it just go in and take your teams flags out of the collection area for the entire game. As I said before, it's not cheating or anything, just rather cheap and annoying after a while. The return of 3 plots from Halo 2 is awesome, I've always enjoyed playing that gametype with friends, never got to actually play it online against other people though. Anyways, it's awesome and I like it, glad to see it return. It really is full of chaos and fun, which is Halo to me. 1 Flag CTF is still awesome, however; I don't like it on Sword Base. I already stated why I don't like it, but maybe it'll change. It's really fun on Powerhouse so far. SWAT is also in the Grab Bag playlist, but my opinion of SWAT does not change from Halo 3. I hate it. I mean, it's okay, but unless you see person A first, you'll most likely die from someone hiding away in a corner. So, in short, I still don't like SWAT. Team Oddball is still awesome and personally, I think it requires more teamwork now as the ball carrier doesn't have a radar now. Did you ever have one in Halo 3? Was there even a Team Oddball gametype in Halo 3? Covy Slayer is a new gametype to Reach also and I actually like it more then I thought I would. It's basically like regular slayer only with Elites versus Elites with Covenant weapons on the map and for the loadouts. It's simple, but I actually like it more then normal slayer. A new gametype that was added yesterday called Spartan vs. Elite Slayer(or as it actually appears, SvE Slayer) is pretty cool. However, I've only played it twice so I'm not exactly sure what I think of it exactly.
Headhunter in FFA is fun, however, not as fun as I thought it would be. Not a whole lot I can say about it really, so moving on. Juggernaut, an instant favorite of mine. I have no idea how long it's been around in the Halo series, but I got hooked on it back in the early days of Halo 3 when Storm would load up Mad Dash on The Pit or something. It's really cool how the Juggernaut sticks out this time around. They still have the basic waypoint above their head that tells you where they're at, but you also are on fire to. However, I'm sure the being on fire part is just for cosmetic purposes only, but it still looks sweet. I do think though that the Juggernaut needs a little reduction in damage resistance. I understand the definition of a juggernaut, but at points you just can't kill the person who was made the Juggernaut at the start of the game. And that's no fun after a while. Especially if you go in with a full party of 8 and get the game multiple times and the same person is the Juggernaut for most of those games. Oddball is still Oddball as I stated before. It's still fun, but still the same way it was in Halo 3...and 2...and CE, a camp with the ball in the corner of the map that no one can get to festival. I still enjoy it though.
I think that's all for the gametypes.
I really hope Firefight returns in Reach. I guess there have been videos posted up on youtube of people that have hacked the Beta and have found that Firefight does exist in the code, we just can't play it. That's fine and all(even though I'm against people hacking and modding their consoles) I just want official word from Bungie about it returning is all. It can really expand from ODST's version of it with the new sandbox. If it does return, which I'm sure it will with how popular it is in ODST currently, all I really want is more than ten maps. More vehicle based maps like Lost Platoon was in ODST. I think it would be also cool to have perhaps two versions of it, one where you play as Spartans and maybe the other could be where you play as Elites. I know it sounds cruel wanting to play as an Elite and kill endless waves of humans and all, but it would offer a different style of gameplay and you could play as them more then just in the multiplayer when you absolutely have to.
I think that is finally all I have to say about Reach so far. In a few days I'll be post some screenshots and film clips I took from the Beta so far once I have them situated and all that. I'd talk about the campaign a little bit, but we don't know anything about it...therefore I can't theorize about it yet. Oh and one last thing, I will be overhauling my blog a bit. It won't be anything major, but some of the tags are going to change(read: may or may not disappear) and maybe even the picture at the top might change again. We'll have to see. Hope you enjoyed this little read if you are currently reading this.
Be warned though, if you are a super-competitive person and think that Reach sucks and that I have a 1.03(which is still positive, but barely) K/D ratio and my opinion doesn't matter; you may want to stop reading after the next paragraph as what I'll say will most likely not agree with you think. That said, let's move on shall we?
Firstly, I'd like to redirect to this post here. In which case I stated that I was going to change my gamertag from StoredGrunt360 to TUE StoredGrunt. Well I did that, obviously, but now I have decided that after May 19th(the day that the Reach Beta ends) I am going to change it back to StoredGrunt360. No, I'm not leaving TUE and no I'm not losing interest in the group; I just want my old name back. So after the Beta is over with, I am going to become StoredGrunt360 again. Heh, right now I'm listening to the ODST soundtrack and the tempo increased right as I started typing that last sentence. Oh the irony of that.
Anyways, here's the start of what I currently think of the Halo: Reach multiplayer Beta. I'll start of by being general, I love it. It really brings back the fun that is Halo multiplayer. When I first started playing it, it brought back some memories from playing the first Halo on splitscreen with some friends. I cannot remember the last time I had this much fun playing the matchmaking side of Halo. However, there are a few things that could be changed I think. Some of them have already been addressed and are going to be fixed for the final game in the fall. I personally think the grenades are a bit overpowered, but it's not bother me if it doesn't change for the fall. Even though they already addressed the issue and are going to fix, they just don't know how though. I'm also not a huge fan of the spawn on Sword Base for 1 Flag CTF. The starting spawns for the attacking team are a little close to the flag. I mean, I don't mind the initial rush at the start of the game to see which team can get the flag first, but if the defending team doesn't choose the Scout loadout(which has the sprint armor ability), then the other team is almost guaranteed to get the flag first and be off before you can do anything about it. Like I said, it's fun and it scream Halo fun, but it gets annoying after a while when the other team is there and gone with your flag every single game. I also think that the spawns for the gold team I believe it is, in Invasion need to be changed or at least some more cover added to it. I don't like Elites in the least bit, but when your playing as them and you get stuck on this side, it's kind of hard to get away from you spawn before you get killed. Over and over again.... Other then those few things, I'm really enjoying the Beta so far.
Onto things that I like in it, besides the fact that it brings back the fun in Halo multiplayer. The new assault rifle in Reach is awesome. Other then the fact that it sounds real for once(which is a big complaint of mine in any shooter game where the weapons don't even sound real) it is actually effective and kills people. Well I was going to say that in the 3 years I have played Halo 3 I had less kills with the AR than I do in the few days of the Reach Beta, but I can't do that as I actually have more kills with in H3 than Reach. However, it's still much better in Reach. I also started to like the new Needler for Reach. It'll actually kill people now and not just annoy them...or me for not killing them. The new shotgun is different from the one in the past Halo games. That one is an M90 Close Assault Weapon System(or for whatever reason you want to call it by it's acronym; CAWS) while the new one in Reach is an M45 Tactical Shotgun(TS). Yes, that was the Halo canon(story) nerd in me there. I'm not sure what I think of the grenade launcher yet. I can say this though, I don't know how to use it correctly and I haven't blown myself up with it yet; which is actually good considering my luck in Halo games and blowing myself up with explosives. The Focus Rifle is really sweet also, I always enjoy using it and always hate getting hit by it. It really drains your health and shields quickly if you're caught out in the open with no cover in sight. I really can't describe what it's like to have, it's just super-awesome!
Now that I am done with the weapons, let's discuss the gametypes in the Beta. So the big hype of the Beta that I'm sure half of the community was really wanting to play was Invasion. Personally, regular Invasion is awesome and with a few tweaks to how the Elites spawn(for example, gold team has the worst spawn since it's right in the open pretty much) it can be perfect. I'm not a huge fan of Invasion Slayer though. I mean, I understand how it works and all that, but it's still confusing. I at least understand what the territories are for now, you capture them and hold them for an extra 15 seconds I believe it is and you are rewarded with a weapon or vehicle drop. Stockpile is something that will be awesome to play if you have a good team. The only thing I can see that would get annoying with it, but it's a totally legit tactic to do; is the teams that don't really want to play it just go in and take your teams flags out of the collection area for the entire game. As I said before, it's not cheating or anything, just rather cheap and annoying after a while. The return of 3 plots from Halo 2 is awesome, I've always enjoyed playing that gametype with friends, never got to actually play it online against other people though. Anyways, it's awesome and I like it, glad to see it return. It really is full of chaos and fun, which is Halo to me. 1 Flag CTF is still awesome, however; I don't like it on Sword Base. I already stated why I don't like it, but maybe it'll change. It's really fun on Powerhouse so far. SWAT is also in the Grab Bag playlist, but my opinion of SWAT does not change from Halo 3. I hate it. I mean, it's okay, but unless you see person A first, you'll most likely die from someone hiding away in a corner. So, in short, I still don't like SWAT. Team Oddball is still awesome and personally, I think it requires more teamwork now as the ball carrier doesn't have a radar now. Did you ever have one in Halo 3? Was there even a Team Oddball gametype in Halo 3? Covy Slayer is a new gametype to Reach also and I actually like it more then I thought I would. It's basically like regular slayer only with Elites versus Elites with Covenant weapons on the map and for the loadouts. It's simple, but I actually like it more then normal slayer. A new gametype that was added yesterday called Spartan vs. Elite Slayer(or as it actually appears, SvE Slayer) is pretty cool. However, I've only played it twice so I'm not exactly sure what I think of it exactly.
Headhunter in FFA is fun, however, not as fun as I thought it would be. Not a whole lot I can say about it really, so moving on. Juggernaut, an instant favorite of mine. I have no idea how long it's been around in the Halo series, but I got hooked on it back in the early days of Halo 3 when Storm would load up Mad Dash on The Pit or something. It's really cool how the Juggernaut sticks out this time around. They still have the basic waypoint above their head that tells you where they're at, but you also are on fire to. However, I'm sure the being on fire part is just for cosmetic purposes only, but it still looks sweet. I do think though that the Juggernaut needs a little reduction in damage resistance. I understand the definition of a juggernaut, but at points you just can't kill the person who was made the Juggernaut at the start of the game. And that's no fun after a while. Especially if you go in with a full party of 8 and get the game multiple times and the same person is the Juggernaut for most of those games. Oddball is still Oddball as I stated before. It's still fun, but still the same way it was in Halo 3...and 2...and CE, a camp with the ball in the corner of the map that no one can get to festival. I still enjoy it though.
I think that's all for the gametypes.
I really hope Firefight returns in Reach. I guess there have been videos posted up on youtube of people that have hacked the Beta and have found that Firefight does exist in the code, we just can't play it. That's fine and all(even though I'm against people hacking and modding their consoles) I just want official word from Bungie about it returning is all. It can really expand from ODST's version of it with the new sandbox. If it does return, which I'm sure it will with how popular it is in ODST currently, all I really want is more than ten maps. More vehicle based maps like Lost Platoon was in ODST. I think it would be also cool to have perhaps two versions of it, one where you play as Spartans and maybe the other could be where you play as Elites. I know it sounds cruel wanting to play as an Elite and kill endless waves of humans and all, but it would offer a different style of gameplay and you could play as them more then just in the multiplayer when you absolutely have to.
I think that is finally all I have to say about Reach so far. In a few days I'll be post some screenshots and film clips I took from the Beta so far once I have them situated and all that. I'd talk about the campaign a little bit, but we don't know anything about it...therefore I can't theorize about it yet. Oh and one last thing, I will be overhauling my blog a bit. It won't be anything major, but some of the tags are going to change(read: may or may not disappear) and maybe even the picture at the top might change again. We'll have to see. Hope you enjoyed this little read if you are currently reading this.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Reaching for Beta
Okay, quick update everyone. I've been enjoying the Reach Beta since it came out. That means I haven't put a post out yet, well in a few days I will make a post about what I think about the Beta. Currently though, it really brings the fun back into Halo multiplayer.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Long Time No....Post...
Okay, first off I'd like to apologize for not making an actual post since the start of the month. Anyways, let's get down to business shall we?
First things first, some games from Action this past week with Storm. More importantly, we played 10 games of Grifball in it and went 10-0. I'll post most of the really goods ones in here and some of the clips from them later on.
Trash talking generals complaining about Pit of Joy. Yep, they were complaining about easy the game is and how much it sucks. Then once they got tired of that, they started bringing out the fact the me and Storm were grade 4's.
Shut-out number one. The other two teammates of ours were good, but they wanted to go for kills mostly and in Grifball, that's not always good.
Second shut-out. Yep, another shut-out. Even though I scored four of the five points that game, I played defense the most. Makes no sense I know, but it's what happened.
I am tank. The definition of being a tank is something like this: "These are the guys who keep the other team distracted while the runners normally score. Also known for spawn killing." So yeah, I scored twice for us, but Tanked most of the time.
This game was a little better. It was actually a really good game except the lag at the start of the game.
2 on 2 Grifball....sucks. Yeah, it does. We actually did better once the other two teammates of ours quit.
More Pit of Joy please. Yes please, it is probably my second favorite gametype in Action Sack next to...you guessed it, Grifball.
That is all for games the clips will come towards the end of this post as I have to finish uploading a few. An update on the campaign kills you want? Okay, well after checking the last night, I am down to 4th and Storm is down to 5th. I've given up on going up from 4th. It's near pointless since these people come out of nowhere and have 88,000 kills overnight.
Anyways, this is a little random here, but while I have it on my mind. I'm sitting here listening to my iPod and browsing through the community files, well actually the rendered videos tagged with the word grifball(or girfball as I saw one of them...) and to be even more specific, narrowed down by the assault gametype. Some of them are pretty cool, yet some of them are extremely pointless and stupid....very stupid.
Anyways, now moving onto...something. Ah yes! I got a new 360 as an early birthday gift. It is a 360 Elite Holiday bundle. I still kept the old though, it still works so why get rid of it? Got three new games with it also, Pure, Lego Batman(can't guarantee how often I'll play it, but it has achievements and I'm a sucker for them anymore) and Modern Warfare 2. Which I'm not as happy with as I thought I would be and everyone made it sound like. I'd go into details, but it would bore you all.
I still can't get over the fact of how quiet it runs even with a disc in and running. And yes, I know I can install the game to the hard-drive, but I could only do that with ODST as normal Halo 3 isn't optimized to run on using the HDD. Honestly though, it isn't that noisy with a disc in it to begin with anyways so it really doesn't bother me. I love the fact that is has the 120GB HDD on it though, with the old one it was only a 20GB and we pretty much used most of the space on it up.
Now about those clips I was talking about earlier, I finally got them all uploaded. However, there are too many to embed in here and all that. So I took the time and learned how to create a playlist on Youtube...well it took longer than anticipated, but here they are: all the Grifball clips I have taken and all at your viewing pleasure. Feel free to either comment on them there at Youtube or here...or not at all, it doesn't matter to me what you do.
I think that pretty much covers it for now. I may have another post later this week, but be warned, it may contain lots of Grifball things as I am strangely addicted to it right now...and always. What can I say? It's a fun gametype that I like. Anyways, that's all.
First things first, some games from Action this past week with Storm. More importantly, we played 10 games of Grifball in it and went 10-0. I'll post most of the really goods ones in here and some of the clips from them later on.
Trash talking generals complaining about Pit of Joy. Yep, they were complaining about easy the game is and how much it sucks. Then once they got tired of that, they started bringing out the fact the me and Storm were grade 4's.
Shut-out number one. The other two teammates of ours were good, but they wanted to go for kills mostly and in Grifball, that's not always good.
Second shut-out. Yep, another shut-out. Even though I scored four of the five points that game, I played defense the most. Makes no sense I know, but it's what happened.
I am tank. The definition of being a tank is something like this: "These are the guys who keep the other team distracted while the runners normally score. Also known for spawn killing." So yeah, I scored twice for us, but Tanked most of the time.
This game was a little better. It was actually a really good game except the lag at the start of the game.
2 on 2 Grifball....sucks. Yeah, it does. We actually did better once the other two teammates of ours quit.
More Pit of Joy please. Yes please, it is probably my second favorite gametype in Action Sack next to...you guessed it, Grifball.
That is all for games the clips will come towards the end of this post as I have to finish uploading a few. An update on the campaign kills you want? Okay, well after checking the last night, I am down to 4th and Storm is down to 5th. I've given up on going up from 4th. It's near pointless since these people come out of nowhere and have 88,000 kills overnight.
Anyways, this is a little random here, but while I have it on my mind. I'm sitting here listening to my iPod and browsing through the community files, well actually the rendered videos tagged with the word grifball(or girfball as I saw one of them...) and to be even more specific, narrowed down by the assault gametype. Some of them are pretty cool, yet some of them are extremely pointless and stupid....very stupid.
Anyways, now moving onto...something. Ah yes! I got a new 360 as an early birthday gift. It is a 360 Elite Holiday bundle. I still kept the old though, it still works so why get rid of it? Got three new games with it also, Pure, Lego Batman(can't guarantee how often I'll play it, but it has achievements and I'm a sucker for them anymore) and Modern Warfare 2. Which I'm not as happy with as I thought I would be and everyone made it sound like. I'd go into details, but it would bore you all.
I still can't get over the fact of how quiet it runs even with a disc in and running. And yes, I know I can install the game to the hard-drive, but I could only do that with ODST as normal Halo 3 isn't optimized to run on using the HDD. Honestly though, it isn't that noisy with a disc in it to begin with anyways so it really doesn't bother me. I love the fact that is has the 120GB HDD on it though, with the old one it was only a 20GB and we pretty much used most of the space on it up.
Now about those clips I was talking about earlier, I finally got them all uploaded. However, there are too many to embed in here and all that. So I took the time and learned how to create a playlist on Youtube...well it took longer than anticipated, but here they are: all the Grifball clips I have taken and all at your viewing pleasure. Feel free to either comment on them there at Youtube or here...or not at all, it doesn't matter to me what you do.
I think that pretty much covers it for now. I may have another post later this week, but be warned, it may contain lots of Grifball things as I am strangely addicted to it right now...and always. What can I say? It's a fun gametype that I like. Anyways, that's all.
Monday, February 01, 2010
First! No...wait...Third!
Ah yes, I'm sure you will remember back on December 23rd I posted saying I was first in the state of Illinois for campaign kills and then later on someone posted this comment?
"Where are you at now? Did you make it?" Well, yes I had a 324 kill lead at the time of that posting. As for right now, well I'm some 18,000 kills out of 1st place. Currently sitting in 3rd with a 10,000 some kill lead on 4th. My 1st place seat only lasted for about a month, a lot longer than what I thought it would last. I really have no idea where the first person came from though, I look one day and have the lead still then come back the next and someone else has a 5,000 kill lead over me. Go back a week later and yet someone else has a 10,000 kill lead over me and the guy in now 2nd. I really don't care if I'm in first or not, I'm just surprised that it lasted a month. I thought for sure someone would have the lead the next day, but no.
Now my next goal is to get Storm into 4th. He's only 182...or 187 is it... I forget. Anyways, it's to get him into fourth and build a solid just in case someone decides to come along and wipe out an entire Covenant world. Ahem.... sorry, all Covenant must die in my book. Anyways, moving on.
I played some Grifball for the first time in I think two months maybe, not sure. We had some pretty good games, mostly dull ones however, played 18 games total and won 10 of them. Simple math indicates we lost 8 of them...I hope, not good with numbers, yes I said it.
First game up, down 2-0 and comeback to win 3-2.
Meh, not much can be said about that game. It was close, but awesome.
This next game was kind of like the one above this, typical 3-2 win for us. However, the other team would not shut up about me and Storm having gold bars. Yes, even the Brig on their team was trash talking us. Ha!
Last good game worth posting. 4-1 win for us, nothing too impressive.
I did get closer to my playlist Field Major though. I have 176 exp in the playlist and I need 185 I think to get it. I wouldn't mind getting a playlist general in it. I think that's like 500 or 600 exp in that playlist. So that's only about 200-300 more wins to get it...yeah, simple enough to do.
Right?
A little more reasonable goal I have right now is to surpass my current Social BTB exp at 273. That's only 97 more to go and 48.5 wins to get it...even though you can't get half a win. So we'll just say 49. That's possible and can be done. According to HaloCharts though I have a 99.44 percent effectiveness at earning exp in that playlist.
Some random(well maybe not so random...) stats from Grifball. It is my third worst playlist kill to death ratio at 0.75...which is negative. Ah heck, now anything below 2.5 is considered negative. After some looking, let's just say this, anything that involves K/D ratio and Grifball is negative. So...um, don't let me Tank for you then I'll defend or run. Mainly defend though, I love using the sword and making sweet stops, albeit close ones, but still awesome.
Have no idea what I'm talking about with these stupid terms such as tanking and ball running? Click this strange looking text and all will be clear...or at least that part will be.
Anyways, got two film clips for you to watch. Ha, and here you thought this was going to be a bunch of words thrown together. Well it is that, but not completely.
Anyways, first clip of two. Those are the kind of stops I was just talking about...only me doing them. Seriously though, that was an awesome stop by Storm. What happened was we launched our two other teammates up near the center(and I think maybe even over the center line) while those two are off wiping out the other team(except for one person) Storm and I make our way to the bomb. Well I get owned by the guy that gets past the rest of our team(badly owned, clip shows it I think) and grabs the bomb. With me being dead and the rest of our team gone spawn killing that only leaves Storm to defend, well this guy has a good lead on Storm already. No possible chance at stopping him, Storm rides a mini-wave(see Grifball glossary) and catches up to him and kills him. Stopped!
Next clip, No Mine! This was me, spying on the other teams ball runner. Heh. I really don't know how to describe this one, so you'll just have to watch it.
That's all I can think of to add in here. I'm sure I could throw the word playlist in here somewhere else. In a few days I'll try to get something with more random things in it. Don't ask how many days, because if you know me, it'll be the end of this year before I publish another post.
Playlist.
That is all now.
Oh and, playlist.
"Where are you at now? Did you make it?" Well, yes I had a 324 kill lead at the time of that posting. As for right now, well I'm some 18,000 kills out of 1st place. Currently sitting in 3rd with a 10,000 some kill lead on 4th. My 1st place seat only lasted for about a month, a lot longer than what I thought it would last. I really have no idea where the first person came from though, I look one day and have the lead still then come back the next and someone else has a 5,000 kill lead over me. Go back a week later and yet someone else has a 10,000 kill lead over me and the guy in now 2nd. I really don't care if I'm in first or not, I'm just surprised that it lasted a month. I thought for sure someone would have the lead the next day, but no.
Now my next goal is to get Storm into 4th. He's only 182...or 187 is it... I forget. Anyways, it's to get him into fourth and build a solid just in case someone decides to come along and wipe out an entire Covenant world. Ahem.... sorry, all Covenant must die in my book. Anyways, moving on.
I played some Grifball for the first time in I think two months maybe, not sure. We had some pretty good games, mostly dull ones however, played 18 games total and won 10 of them. Simple math indicates we lost 8 of them...I hope, not good with numbers, yes I said it.
First game up, down 2-0 and comeback to win 3-2.
Meh, not much can be said about that game. It was close, but awesome.
This next game was kind of like the one above this, typical 3-2 win for us. However, the other team would not shut up about me and Storm having gold bars. Yes, even the Brig on their team was trash talking us. Ha!
Last good game worth posting. 4-1 win for us, nothing too impressive.
I did get closer to my playlist Field Major though. I have 176 exp in the playlist and I need 185 I think to get it. I wouldn't mind getting a playlist general in it. I think that's like 500 or 600 exp in that playlist. So that's only about 200-300 more wins to get it...yeah, simple enough to do.
Right?
A little more reasonable goal I have right now is to surpass my current Social BTB exp at 273. That's only 97 more to go and 48.5 wins to get it...even though you can't get half a win. So we'll just say 49. That's possible and can be done. According to HaloCharts though I have a 99.44 percent effectiveness at earning exp in that playlist.
Some random(well maybe not so random...) stats from Grifball. It is my third worst playlist kill to death ratio at 0.75...which is negative. Ah heck, now anything below 2.5 is considered negative. After some looking, let's just say this, anything that involves K/D ratio and Grifball is negative. So...um, don't let me Tank for you then I'll defend or run. Mainly defend though, I love using the sword and making sweet stops, albeit close ones, but still awesome.
Have no idea what I'm talking about with these stupid terms such as tanking and ball running? Click this strange looking text and all will be clear...or at least that part will be.
Anyways, got two film clips for you to watch. Ha, and here you thought this was going to be a bunch of words thrown together. Well it is that, but not completely.
Anyways, first clip of two. Those are the kind of stops I was just talking about...only me doing them. Seriously though, that was an awesome stop by Storm. What happened was we launched our two other teammates up near the center(and I think maybe even over the center line) while those two are off wiping out the other team(except for one person) Storm and I make our way to the bomb. Well I get owned by the guy that gets past the rest of our team(badly owned, clip shows it I think) and grabs the bomb. With me being dead and the rest of our team gone spawn killing that only leaves Storm to defend, well this guy has a good lead on Storm already. No possible chance at stopping him, Storm rides a mini-wave(see Grifball glossary) and catches up to him and kills him. Stopped!
Next clip, No Mine! This was me, spying on the other teams ball runner. Heh. I really don't know how to describe this one, so you'll just have to watch it.
That's all I can think of to add in here. I'm sure I could throw the word playlist in here somewhere else. In a few days I'll try to get something with more random things in it. Don't ask how many days, because if you know me, it'll be the end of this year before I publish another post.
Playlist.
That is all now.
Oh and, playlist.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
60,372
What does this number mean you ask? Well for starters, it's the number of total Covenant that I have killed. Secondly, it is the current kills for the person sitting in number one spot for most campaign kills in the state of Illinois. Now stop and think about that for a couple minutes...or second whichever. I'll wait.
Thought about it yet? Good, if you were able to put two and two together it means that I hold the number one spot for most campaign kills in my state. I am currently holding it with a 324 kill lead, but who knows how long that will last.
Want some proof of it? Well, here's your proof!
Anyways, that's all. Merry Christmas(or whatever it is you celebrate) and if I don't get a post out before New Year's, happy new year.
Thought about it yet? Good, if you were able to put two and two together it means that I hold the number one spot for most campaign kills in my state. I am currently holding it with a 324 kill lead, but who knows how long that will last.
Want some proof of it? Well, here's your proof!
Anyways, that's all. Merry Christmas(or whatever it is you celebrate) and if I don't get a post out before New Year's, happy new year.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Holding The Line
So I'm sure many of you have Halo Waypoint...maybe. If you do and you just so happen to be on it this past Friday and watched the video(which you might still be able to catch right now, I don't think they took it down at all.) called "Holding the line" you already know what I am talking about. If not, I'll explain a bit here.
So the video starts off by showing the level ONI Alpha Site when you play as Dutch. Your job is to arm about three charges on the bridge you start off on and fall back to the inner courtyard. Instead of falling back and doing all that stuff, you go at the enemy and kill them all. Of course, I'm all for this; since I believe that all Covenant must die based on what they have done in the Halo universe. This past Saturday I sat down with Storm and we had our go at it on Legendary. The end result was successful, we did hold the line...even though it was really annoying when we kept getting killed. I really wish I could get area specific stats so I could tell you how many times we died and how many Covenant were killed on the bridge. However, I can give you post-game stats and a video. Yes! A video...sort of. You'll get it twice and actually probably around three times if I have a say so in it.
First, the interesting enough stats. Oh look! Pretty text. See it there, that should take you to the stats of it. Keep in mind that all the details and total kills and all that good stuff is of the entire level.
Now for the video. I'll post it two ways, one will be the direct link the clip(which is rendered so you can download it and watch it) and the second will be me trying to embed it into the post.
Only reason I am giving you the direct link is I'm not sure how many of you have that Microsoft Silverlight. So here it is, Holding the line in its embedded glory and yes I know, the timing is screwed up on it. Sorry! You didn't miss much...just tanks blowing up. You know, nothing too important. Oh yeah, and it might be cut off due to the blog layout. Curses!
If you can't see it, hit the link above the red X or whatever it is and download the Windows Media File and if you can't do that, download it to ODST. And if you can't do that...well I might try upload it to my Youtube page in a few days. I'll post it here in a separate post if I can upload it.
So the video starts off by showing the level ONI Alpha Site when you play as Dutch. Your job is to arm about three charges on the bridge you start off on and fall back to the inner courtyard. Instead of falling back and doing all that stuff, you go at the enemy and kill them all. Of course, I'm all for this; since I believe that all Covenant must die based on what they have done in the Halo universe. This past Saturday I sat down with Storm and we had our go at it on Legendary. The end result was successful, we did hold the line...even though it was really annoying when we kept getting killed. I really wish I could get area specific stats so I could tell you how many times we died and how many Covenant were killed on the bridge. However, I can give you post-game stats and a video. Yes! A video...sort of. You'll get it twice and actually probably around three times if I have a say so in it.
First, the interesting enough stats. Oh look! Pretty text. See it there, that should take you to the stats of it. Keep in mind that all the details and total kills and all that good stuff is of the entire level.
Now for the video. I'll post it two ways, one will be the direct link the clip(which is rendered so you can download it and watch it) and the second will be me trying to embed it into the post.
Only reason I am giving you the direct link is I'm not sure how many of you have that Microsoft Silverlight. So here it is, Holding the line in its embedded glory and yes I know, the timing is screwed up on it. Sorry! You didn't miss much...just tanks blowing up. You know, nothing too important. Oh yeah, and it might be cut off due to the blog layout. Curses!
If you can't see it, hit the link above the red X or whatever it is and download the Windows Media File and if you can't do that, download it to ODST. And if you can't do that...well I might try upload it to my Youtube page in a few days. I'll post it here in a separate post if I can upload it.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
CTF That Is Classic
This post will be short, but at the end you'll walk away with a free gametype...if you can call $60+ for the game free.
Anyways, if you have been to Bungie.net lately, I'm sure you have seen that The Upper Echelon got their Community Spotlight. If not, then click here and scroll about half way down the page and there is our first week in the spotlight. Once you've done that, head over here, no here. And check out week number 2 of our stuff. The first week can be found by going to page one and it should be right there.
Now moving on to the point of this post. If you go back to the last link I gave you, and notice the gametypes(Note: Don't feel like you're in a rush...unless you really are stretched for time then yeah, be quick, but take a glance at the other stuff there too, it's some good stuff.) at the bottom, the one titled "Classic CTF" is one that I created shortly before I changed my gamertag to what it is now. So feel free to give it a download if you want. Either from there, or from the direct link to the file; which can be located here. It has become the second most downloaded item on my file share, with 544 downloads. In the last half hour, it gained 100 downloads.
I'm imagining that someday I'll get recognized for creating it. I highly doubt it, and hope that it doesn't happen. I don't want to be that guy that had that gametype, I want to just be that normal Halo fan. Though if I do get found out and people do start sending me messages like they have nothing else to do, that's what the auto-responder is for. I've already got one typed up, but still have it set to send out the reply manually. Probably the only time I will consider setting it for automatic is when I log on four days in a row and I have 20+ messages. Don't get me wrong, I won't just let them sit there and ignore them, that's rude and I try not to be rude. I'll read them and most likely respond to them all personally as I would like to hear feedback about the gametype and maybe were a version 2 could be made.
I believe that is all, like I said, it would be short. On a plus, I'm not listening to the same track off of the ODST soundtrack anymore. I finally listened to the Halo Wars soundtrack...then went back to the same song.
One last update on the download count, it is only 18 downloads away from being tied with one of my screenshots that has 591.
Enjoy all!
Anyways, if you have been to Bungie.net lately, I'm sure you have seen that The Upper Echelon got their Community Spotlight. If not, then click here and scroll about half way down the page and there is our first week in the spotlight. Once you've done that, head over here, no here. And check out week number 2 of our stuff. The first week can be found by going to page one and it should be right there.
Now moving on to the point of this post. If you go back to the last link I gave you, and notice the gametypes(Note: Don't feel like you're in a rush...unless you really are stretched for time then yeah, be quick, but take a glance at the other stuff there too, it's some good stuff.) at the bottom, the one titled "Classic CTF" is one that I created shortly before I changed my gamertag to what it is now. So feel free to give it a download if you want. Either from there, or from the direct link to the file; which can be located here. It has become the second most downloaded item on my file share, with 544 downloads. In the last half hour, it gained 100 downloads.
I'm imagining that someday I'll get recognized for creating it. I highly doubt it, and hope that it doesn't happen. I don't want to be that guy that had that gametype, I want to just be that normal Halo fan. Though if I do get found out and people do start sending me messages like they have nothing else to do, that's what the auto-responder is for. I've already got one typed up, but still have it set to send out the reply manually. Probably the only time I will consider setting it for automatic is when I log on four days in a row and I have 20+ messages. Don't get me wrong, I won't just let them sit there and ignore them, that's rude and I try not to be rude. I'll read them and most likely respond to them all personally as I would like to hear feedback about the gametype and maybe were a version 2 could be made.
I believe that is all, like I said, it would be short. On a plus, I'm not listening to the same track off of the ODST soundtrack anymore. I finally listened to the Halo Wars soundtrack...then went back to the same song.
One last update on the download count, it is only 18 downloads away from being tied with one of my screenshots that has 591.
Enjoy all!
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
"KEEP IT CLEAN!"
Ah yes, the age old phrase of the Superintendent. Remember him? The one random green dude that appeared all over Halo land about May of last year. Well you all probably know that it lead up to the announcement of Halo 3: ODST and all that good stuff. Well ODST came out about 2 weeks ago, I'm sure most of you have picked it up and had your fun with it already. I have completed the campaign with my friend(whom you are familiar with as Storm) on Heroic right now, we still have to beat it on Legendary. I have almost beat it on Legendary solo, I have just one more level to do. He's working on Heroic right now and I think is almost done with it also. Granted it's a short game, but if you don't sit there for 7-8 hours on easy(like most people I know did, at least not on easy though) and actually take a break to do something else you would be surprised at how much play time you can get from the 7-8 hours of campaign. Plus if you want it to last about double that time, just explore the city, look for the audio logs or more Covenant to kill or just walk around mindlessly admiring all the cool looking architecture and stuff.
Anyways, moving on. I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but it should be interesting...
I'll start with the new multiplayer/co-op mode called Firefight. It's kind of like Gears of War 2's Horde mode...I guess, I've never played that. It's meant for a full team of 4 people, but if you're bored enough and have plenty of time, you can go in on your own. Now what I find cool is that going in solo and going in with 3 other people, the amount of enemies do not change at all and I think that is really neat.
The two things I don't like about it are these: it only has 10 maps, 7 of which are available straight out of the box. I mean yes, they're good maps and I enjoy them, but seriously 10 isn't enough. Granted Bungie has said that there are no plans on releasing any DLC maps since they are mainly focused on Reach right now, but if the demands arise, they might start considering it. I seriously hope they think about it even for a second.
Also the skulls needed to be randomized. Tough Luck, Catch and Black Eye are good selections for round skulls, but when you complete a set and start with the same three skulls again with just adding a new skull, it gets boring after a while. Don't get me wrong, I think the skull selection is great, but making them random would be more interesting. So I guess this is more of an idea of improvement then a complaint.
Onto a little bit about the campaign. Note: there are possible spoilers here, so if you have not completed it yet, just skip over this section here. I'll let you know when you can start reading again.
*Spoilers ahead!*
Most people I know felt it was short, and it was somewhat, but it wasn't meant to be an actual game. The story was really good, except the drama between two of the characters, that just isn't Halo I'm sorry. I enjoyed the flashbacks, they lead to a lot of interesting gameplay and memorable moments. Take for example the end of Uplift Reserve when you're playing as Dutch. You are supposed to escape the area and get into the city, or whatever it is I forgot, and you drive through this hole in a cliff wall and all of a sudden, you're flying from 1,000 feet in the air(or something like that) and crashing into building. Now I'm sure most of you are familiar with the classic crash the Banshee you're in to the nearest wall, well this is the same. It's another one of those classic moments that you'll remember a while down the road.
Another thing I liked was the fact that since you're not the Chief anymore, some of the Covenant are actually larger then you. Like the Hunters, remember how in Halo 1 the Hunters were about as tall as you were? Then they gradually increased in size in Halo 2 and 3. Now they're actually these 12 foot tall walking tanks. Roaming around the city is really nice, since you can pretty much go anywhere and explore the majority of the city is great. Plus with the hidden audio files, it gives you a reason to explore the city.
*Spoilers end.*
Yep, that's it for spoilers. I really enjoy music in the game, it sets the mood for it perfectly. It still has the "Halo" sound to it. Granted it's not like the music for the past three games, not the more uplifting sound that they have had, it's more quiet then the it has been before. So far my favorite piece is "Finale", though "The Menagerie" is slowly becoming my favorite. I first started off by liking the overture the best, but once I got the actual soundtrack the previously stated tracks sound really good and I like them more now. I think that Neon Lights is becoming a favorite of mine also, it's really good.
I think I'll close of this post with a few screenshots that I took over the weekend. Most of them were taken in campaign, but again, are free of spoilers. They're just some pretty sweet action shots that I thought were cool. Also, instead of seeing them right here embedded into the post, I'm going to give you the link to them. You know, make you work for them.
Okay, not really, but I've noticed that pics I have uploaded and posted as of lately you have not been able to click the picture to get a larger version of it. Well a couple of these need to be seen in more then just a small 2x2(or something like that) thumbnail. So by giving you the links, you shall be able to see them in all there juicy digital color.
I'll start off with my favorite out of the bunch I took called, "Green and Dark."
I really like how that one turned out with the lighting of the Hunter's cannon blast mixed with the pitch black background. If I would have to say so myself, it is one of the best screens I have taken yet. Moving on.
This next one isn't a real good one, but it shows how much larger the Hunters are compared to an ODST. Nameless Screenshot 1.
Like I said, not real good, but it's sort of an action shot.
Again, nothing interesting going on, but if you take notice there is something lurking in the background...
Nameless shot 2.
My first screenshot from ODST called "Cornered." It's a fairly decent shot, it shows me and Storm trapped inside a room on one of the Firefight missions, Windward, by five Jackals. Yeah, there where more, but they kind of died before the majority of them in the frame. So I tried to get as many as I could in there to try to make it look epic and this was the end result.
Another interesting action shot here. "Drone and Chieftain vs. ODST." Umm yeah, so apparently a Drone and hammer Chieftain against a lone ODST doesn't end well for the poor soul. That was classic, a 15 foot or so lunge while on fire that still kills the ODST.
Finally, this is another one of those attempted lurking screens. However, this one is a little bit more hard to notice...maybe. Hiding. This one is semi decent I think for the simple fact that they had no idea I was there.
Well that is all for now. I will try to get a post out sooner next time...of course whenever I say that I don't manage to do it. So, maybe I should just stop talking about doing it and just do it.
Also look forward to some screenshots over the next week or so. I plan on taking more of them, how good they are is another question. I'm more of an action shots kind of person. No pre-staged standing in a corner with a sniper rifle.
In the meantime remember; "OBEY POSTED LIMITS."
Anyways, moving on. I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but it should be interesting...
I'll start with the new multiplayer/co-op mode called Firefight. It's kind of like Gears of War 2's Horde mode...I guess, I've never played that. It's meant for a full team of 4 people, but if you're bored enough and have plenty of time, you can go in on your own. Now what I find cool is that going in solo and going in with 3 other people, the amount of enemies do not change at all and I think that is really neat.
The two things I don't like about it are these: it only has 10 maps, 7 of which are available straight out of the box. I mean yes, they're good maps and I enjoy them, but seriously 10 isn't enough. Granted Bungie has said that there are no plans on releasing any DLC maps since they are mainly focused on Reach right now, but if the demands arise, they might start considering it. I seriously hope they think about it even for a second.
Also the skulls needed to be randomized. Tough Luck, Catch and Black Eye are good selections for round skulls, but when you complete a set and start with the same three skulls again with just adding a new skull, it gets boring after a while. Don't get me wrong, I think the skull selection is great, but making them random would be more interesting. So I guess this is more of an idea of improvement then a complaint.
Onto a little bit about the campaign. Note: there are possible spoilers here, so if you have not completed it yet, just skip over this section here. I'll let you know when you can start reading again.
*Spoilers ahead!*
Most people I know felt it was short, and it was somewhat, but it wasn't meant to be an actual game. The story was really good, except the drama between two of the characters, that just isn't Halo I'm sorry. I enjoyed the flashbacks, they lead to a lot of interesting gameplay and memorable moments. Take for example the end of Uplift Reserve when you're playing as Dutch. You are supposed to escape the area and get into the city, or whatever it is I forgot, and you drive through this hole in a cliff wall and all of a sudden, you're flying from 1,000 feet in the air(or something like that) and crashing into building. Now I'm sure most of you are familiar with the classic crash the Banshee you're in to the nearest wall, well this is the same. It's another one of those classic moments that you'll remember a while down the road.
Another thing I liked was the fact that since you're not the Chief anymore, some of the Covenant are actually larger then you. Like the Hunters, remember how in Halo 1 the Hunters were about as tall as you were? Then they gradually increased in size in Halo 2 and 3. Now they're actually these 12 foot tall walking tanks. Roaming around the city is really nice, since you can pretty much go anywhere and explore the majority of the city is great. Plus with the hidden audio files, it gives you a reason to explore the city.
*Spoilers end.*
Yep, that's it for spoilers. I really enjoy music in the game, it sets the mood for it perfectly. It still has the "Halo" sound to it. Granted it's not like the music for the past three games, not the more uplifting sound that they have had, it's more quiet then the it has been before. So far my favorite piece is "Finale", though "The Menagerie" is slowly becoming my favorite. I first started off by liking the overture the best, but once I got the actual soundtrack the previously stated tracks sound really good and I like them more now. I think that Neon Lights is becoming a favorite of mine also, it's really good.
I think I'll close of this post with a few screenshots that I took over the weekend. Most of them were taken in campaign, but again, are free of spoilers. They're just some pretty sweet action shots that I thought were cool. Also, instead of seeing them right here embedded into the post, I'm going to give you the link to them. You know, make you work for them.
Okay, not really, but I've noticed that pics I have uploaded and posted as of lately you have not been able to click the picture to get a larger version of it. Well a couple of these need to be seen in more then just a small 2x2(or something like that) thumbnail. So by giving you the links, you shall be able to see them in all there juicy digital color.
I'll start off with my favorite out of the bunch I took called, "Green and Dark."
I really like how that one turned out with the lighting of the Hunter's cannon blast mixed with the pitch black background. If I would have to say so myself, it is one of the best screens I have taken yet. Moving on.
This next one isn't a real good one, but it shows how much larger the Hunters are compared to an ODST. Nameless Screenshot 1.
Like I said, not real good, but it's sort of an action shot.
Again, nothing interesting going on, but if you take notice there is something lurking in the background...
Nameless shot 2.
My first screenshot from ODST called "Cornered." It's a fairly decent shot, it shows me and Storm trapped inside a room on one of the Firefight missions, Windward, by five Jackals. Yeah, there where more, but they kind of died before the majority of them in the frame. So I tried to get as many as I could in there to try to make it look epic and this was the end result.
Another interesting action shot here. "Drone and Chieftain vs. ODST." Umm yeah, so apparently a Drone and hammer Chieftain against a lone ODST doesn't end well for the poor soul. That was classic, a 15 foot or so lunge while on fire that still kills the ODST.
Finally, this is another one of those attempted lurking screens. However, this one is a little bit more hard to notice...maybe. Hiding. This one is semi decent I think for the simple fact that they had no idea I was there.
Well that is all for now. I will try to get a post out sooner next time...of course whenever I say that I don't manage to do it. So, maybe I should just stop talking about doing it and just do it.
Also look forward to some screenshots over the next week or so. I plan on taking more of them, how good they are is another question. I'm more of an action shots kind of person. No pre-staged standing in a corner with a sniper rifle.
In the meantime remember; "OBEY POSTED LIMITS."
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