Halo

Things that are probably kind of sad, in their own way.

Ended up watching Red vs Blue, which I rather skipped when it was young.

Thinking back to the days when graphics looked like that Blood Gulch.

Legendary was fun, but no chance in hell I’m doing that with an Xbox controller.

Remembering that I still have my Halo: CE disc.

Thinking that buying the Master Chief Collection again on PC, would be a good way to play Halo 3 and 4 with a mouse.

Thinking that for $40, I’d rather buy my iPad a keyboard case or add to my anime collection.

If I actually got to play games more often, I’d probably just Game Pass.

Did I mention, I originally bought Halo Combat Evolved because I thought the Assault Rifle looked cool? Yeah, I was probably a nitwit when I was that young.

Post Script: Huh? The storage requirement for MCC on Steam is marked 20 GB? I could swear that my Xbox dedicates several times that much to it.

Managed to get done with work in half the time today, I don’t mind getting home early !

Haven’t managed tog et much coding done today though… Hopefully tonight, tomorrow, and the weekend :

Took sometime to relax, fired up Halo: CE and finished off the game on Heoric. Came in at what was left of Captain Keys as the shoot out was about to start. Not very hard, just move down the ramp to trip the area-triggers on the flood goons and back pedal off the dais and use the pillar at either corner for cover while doing some hit’n’fade and sharp shooting work.

Blew away the flood 2 or 3 at a time with my Assault Rifle and Shotgun then reloaded on my (very low) supply of grenades and ammunition from the corpses. Since several previous attempts told me there would be a covenant attack squad full of elites and grunts including fual rod guns. I stock pillied weapons near the corner, (ab)using the weapon swap to prep my fall back point. I setup a plasma rifle and pistol in the strong corner and left my assault rifle and a plasma pistol on the opposite side from the covenant door. Then loaded off my shotty and picked up a needler for some long-range work.

I figured, if I couldn’t take out the attack squad when I went for the door — lobbing grenades into there midst while letting rip at survivors with a needle gun. I’d do a fall-back by suppressive shotgun fire to the pillar, fall back point (FB) one. If I got boxed out of there, I’d fling the empty needler, frag out and rush to the assault rifle over by FB two, a last stand and run for ye life moment.

Brains over brawn 😉

So I went over to the door, tripped the auto-open and chucked in a few grenades as the grunts threw back, blew most of them up. Then applied needler fire to deal with the living critters and put some more grenades in. Took it easy and fetched full supplies hehe

Halo I think is very much a game where you need to learn when to stand and fight from a distance and when to kick down the door and storm the enemy position, if you want to survive. After 15+ years of gaming and thousands of hours in the shoot house with my teammates training room clearing in RvS & SWAT, it comes a bit easier tome then it used to.

After that, made it off the ship (while dodging endless streams of plasma grenades) and down to the pillar of autumn. Fighting through armies of Covenant and Flood, even going toe to toe with Hunters (up close and shotty). Blew the ships reactor and high tailed it out… Halo’s ending really is a bit anti-climactic compared to the pump up to get through the end game lol.

Game felt much shorter and much easier this time around 0.o

One thing I like about Halo is the Elites are almost the Master Chiefs equal, on legendary if your not paying attention a single blue elite can kill you. Heroic, well is not that challenging imho but it gets the job done for R&R. I find the best way of dealing with Elites is to use the range advantage — and hit there shields with accuracy. The 12.7mm pistol and covenant plasma rifle work best, but the needler also works great in open ground. And you can always use your own movements and grenade tosses to control the AI’s movement patterns, Halos AI ain’t that bad for the Elites (although the rest suck) but they don’t do long range work well and like any half realistically intelligent creature of an AI, they know RUN FOR COVER. Which makes grenades great for flushing out elites and forcing them to move towards ground more favorable for you to pick them off.

I also like going “up close and personal” in situations where I can use mobility to close and avoid more hits while finishing them off. During the control room missions I did that a lot, blast’em with the pistol then close in with the plasma rifle and rifle butt any slugs that got to close.

Halo is far from one of my ‘preferred’ styles of game but the single player makes good relaxing. Multilayer, I avoid though. Whenever I play Halo online I usually get owned for actually trying to capture the flag. Or I spend the round shooting the heck out of the other team like a crazed one-man-army and screaming at my stupid teammates for having the tactical ability of a slug, for camping our base instead of taking advantage of the perfect time to launch an attack !!!

Modern siege warfare favors the attacker in the long run.

Hmm, code time soon !

A little Halo to curve the days annoyances…

Continued off from “If I had a super weapon” on Heroic mode but still found the mission a bit sticky. Almost beat it, using my pistol with a mag & a half to clear the front way and plasma pistol shots to take down the Banshees. Making it to the end of the bridge only to meet a pair of Hunters that gave me a Fuel-Rod kiss off lol.

So… enough of that crud, I dogged it back past the checkpoint into the area I had cleared last time — lots of dead Covenant and a pair of hunters guarding supplies. Ran in there between the hunters, grabbing more grenades, a full stash of pistol magazines, and a health pack ;-).

Ran back out of there dodging between Hunters trying to pancake me but got out without a scratch. That was fun, to bad I didn’t get to slap one on the way out >_>

With the piutol fully loaded, sniped out the Elites on the bridge and kept them from getting into the Banshees. Triggering the hunters to emerge, I dashed back and climbed in, oh man… Dive bombing Hunters and Grunts with a Banshees plasma guns xD

Finished them off and made it to the objective, unlocked the door and gave the Golden sword wielding Elite a plasma missile on the way through 😉

Fighting towards the flood, I actually found a nice trick. The looks quid like floods are dangerous in groups, perfect time for the assault rifle but… The pistol and the shotgun is a bit more useful against the larger floods then shotgun and assault rifle. So what I started to do to conserve pistol ammo, was dancing between flood and when the little critters jump to try infecting the Master Chief, pistol whip’em in mid air. It has to be timed right or they will hit the shields or miss, but it’s fun to time it right and whack’em with the pistol instead of shooting them all.

Left off on The Library, the best part of the game but the start off is a bit rough. Swarms of flood all over and my shotgun traded out for a pistol grr… But I generally find once you manage to get decent weapons. The levels like the most stress-reliving one in the game.

Running, jumping, shooting, and fending off swarm after swarm of zombie like and well armed enemies during one of the most prolonged running gun battles in video-gaming lol.

Just slide into it and relax, good way to clear the brains thoughts for a little while hehe.

Been playing still more halo to kill time, I still think it feels to much like a console game in the controls and the vehicle steering system really portrays it imho… But gets the job done, at least it’s some thing to do :

Almost managed to get a round of SWAT4 in but supper was ready to soon :-(.

At least, if nothing else for the day… I’ve gotten a few pages more done of the book and a a slight issue resolves on the website . So the days not a total wash out, I guess.

Getting closer to the flood, I remember when I first got Halo one of my friends was asking me if I had gotten that far yet, and I was like “The Flood, what the hecks that?”. He didn’t want to spoil ot for me so when I finally got to it, I was shouting “MORE AMMO!”. Best part of the game hehe.

Despite best efforts, my family has still mustered enough to give me a good sized headache… So switching from *actually* trying to learn some thing, to killing time, now I’m hopping to make some progress for the day…. It’s like when ever I dare some try and get any thing done. They either find a way to circumvent it, or cause actions to bring others into deraiing it.

!@#$%^ %!(%*Y^!(%^!’s must have radar.

I start, they start; I stop they stop — intentionally or coincidentally this is getting on my frigging nerves.