It would be so easy to write a "Halo 3" review. But I won’t.
You can go elsewhere to read how good the game is (though, to finally answer some of the commenters on my recent "Halo"/"Halo 2" binge post, the new game is way more to my liking than the first two).
So go elsewhere to read reviews of "Halo 3." Stay here to read Bungie’s review of how I played "Halo 3."
Without fear of spoilers -- which will be clearly noted -- hit the jump to find out how I did and what it's like to play a major game while one of the people behind it is watching. You'll also learn what sound not to make while playing "Halo 3" in front of a Bungie rep as well as the surprising nature of the game's toughest room.
And you'll learn why never to "John Woo" it.
(Note that all screenshots in this post were taken by me, using "Halo 3," an Xbox 360 and Bungie.net. They all depict scenes from my play-through. I’m the Arbiter. N’Gai is Master Chief. Even better, if you want to watch the final four hours of my and N'Gai's session of the game, you can use the same tools listed above. Log onto Bungie's site, look up my Gamertag, StephenMTV, and download the runs your system. The game's Theater will render the runs. With your controller, you will be able to fly through the levels with a free camera, watching the action from any angle. Send me screenshots of all the mistakes I made.)
Bungie didn’t grade me on a 10-point or five-star scale. They did take notes, though, during the 14 hours it took me to clear the game on heroic difficulty in a hotel suite in Times Square two Mondays ago. I had conquered the game by playing co-operatively across two connected TVs with my Vs. Mode partner N’Gai Croal.
"They’re not sexy notes," warned Luke Smith, writer at "Halo" developer Bungie and eyewitness to my game, when I sat down with him to discuss my performance fewer than 48 hours after I had beaten the title.
They were notes nonetheless. I wanted to see them. I wanted to learn what he had learned watching me, in the hopes that the readers of this blog might…. learn… something about "Halo 3" and what its like to be watched by a game creator as you beat their game.
“I think you guys did pretty well all things considered,” Luke told me, as we sat down the Wednesday after my play-through for a lunchtime chat.
Luke is a “Halo” whiz, so I didn’t think he’d ever sound terribly impressed with my skills. What I didn’t know is that he could be so tactful: “I know you guys aren’t terribly comfortable FPS players. You wrote a whole Vs Mode on it.” What he means is that N’Gai and I wrote a few thousand words about how bad we are at “Halo.”
Well, what made him proud? “The way the two of you played, it started off very singular. You both weren’t really playing together and over the course of the 14 hours -- or whatever it was -- you actually saw the strategy. The strategy began to form between the two of you. You eventually each had a headphone lifted off of one side of your head so you could communicate.”
He’s right about that. Early on, I was going it alone. So was N’Gai, who according to Smith’s notes, “loves the dual plasma pistols.” N’Gai had been “John-Wooing” it, as Luke said its called. Luke explained that it happens with a lot of players early in the game: they find a second pistol and run around with one in each hand. He said it’s “completely visceral and fun, but as far as killing enemies, you’re not really going to get to kill anything.”
Other Luke notes on me and N'Gai include:
- They solved the difficult room in spoiler name of level very quickly.
- The way that the flamethrower is introduced into the game was successful. When it was found it was an exciting moment. N’Gai sort of freaked out.
- Had trouble identifying if the spoiler name of vehicle was damaged or unusable
No, he didn't make fun of us at all. He said that's because he was working.
I think I disappointed Luke a couple of times. Apparently I did a poor job watching the game’s cutscenes. “I look over and your headphones are in your lap,” he told me. “You’re texting your wife, which is probably not what we want to see. But like you pointed out, your wife needed to know that you love her very much.” Guilty.
He also said I resorted to gunplay too much. “I didn’t see you melee enough,” he said. “I saw a lot of missed melee opportunities which makes me wonder: so are the guns too fun? We really want it to be 'melee, grenades and gunplay' and now also 'equipment.' It’s really interesting seeing people use equipment or not use equipment. You see a lot of situations where if a player deployed equipment they would have survived.” By equipment, he means new “Halo 3” gadgets like the deployable cover, the bubble shield and a gravity lift that can bounce a player up to a higher level (I used that lift to levitate a semi truck on one of its short ends, which Luke told me he thought was intentional; I confessed it wasn’t).
I think I most impressed him with my keen sense of navigation. The game’s hardest room – pictured here – appears late in the game. And it’s not the hardest area because I said so. It’s Luke’s assessment and it has nothing to do with being loaded with enemies. The room is hard because it is confusing to get through. “In this room the only way to go out of it is to go up,” Luke explained, “But the way you go up in this room is to first go down. The first time I played it, it completely vexed me. I was totally confused for probably an hour. And this is back when the enemy count in the room was way higher. Overall it was a longer clear.”
The truth is Luke Smith can probably fire a rocket into my nose at will in “Halo” multiplayer, but apparently I could lose him in a maze. That hard room was a cinch for me (check the movie of the level ending in the letter "a" for proof). Luke saw it himself. “I was standing behind watching,” Luke said. "You guys got through it pretty much immediately and in tandem. …. I think the reason you did well is you followed the golden rule of navigation, which you pointed out was to stay along the wall.”
Think about that. The people who make a 15-hour game know where the hardest 30 minutes of the game are. They know which part of which level is the most challenging, even if it happens to be a random room in the middle of a level. They know, and in sessions like the “Halo 3” demo where N’Gai and I played, it’s irresistible to watch.
“It’s hard to sit and watch when you know there are a bunch of ways to solve this puzzle and it can get frustrating,” Luke said. He didn’t feel that way about how we tackled that so-called hardest room, but there were other moments where he had considered saying something. I asked what it was like to sit in a room full of new players who don’t know exactly what they’re doing. I wondered if it was like being a parent watching their kid struggle through math homework. Kind of, he said. The game is supposed to be the teacher, not him. “Instead of standing over, thinking 'I could solve this for you,' I’m wondering, 'Is this something that’s not being taught?' That’s what all the guys at Bungie when they’re watching the play-tests and reading the feedback, that’s what they’re trying to make sure of: that we’re telling people the right way to do things.”
Understand that Luke recorded his observations of my session while sitting in the room where I played for three straight days. He served as the sole Bungie rep in a suite the would host six to 10 reporters at a time, cycling through, playing bits and pieces of the final game or marathoning the entire thing like me and N’Gai. Luke worked the full shift each day, from 9AM to 2AM. He fielded questions, assisted players (other players) through tough spots.
He even perked his ears up for a troubling sound that could be coming from any one controller: “I should rarely be hearing two triggers firing at the same time,” he told me, referring to “Halo”’s version of non-strategic button-mashing. "When the room is getting loud with clicks and clacks I get up to walk around and see what’s going on.”
Luke took the notes on players like me somewhat for his own edification. The game was complete when he was watching me, and the discs that people can buy starting midnight tonight were already being pressed. Still, he said, the feedback will trickle back. “I’ll definitely talk to the mission designers and talk to those guys about what I saw. They’ll be super interested in that feedback as well.”
One thing he may have tell back is how radically innovative N’Gai and I proved to be. Late in the game there is a particularly dramatic encounter Luke has seen tackled more than 40 times back at the office. Never, he said, did anyone try it the way N’Gai and I did. Without giving too much away, just know that the level was set up for two players to each take a flying vehicle and begin an assault on enemy forces. After our first try of it, my vehicle was destroyed. We re-started and surprised Luke. “Instead of trying to find other vehicles -- of which there are several to choose from -- one of you is flying [one of the vehicles]. N’Gai is flying. And you’re on the wing! You’re paratrooping into this encounter over and over and over. It had never even dawned on me to try to solve it that way, which is a perfectly valid solution. Watching it all unfold it was hilarious. It was a really good idea actually.”
Luke did say that N’Gai and I weren’t cooperating enough early on, so who’s complaining?
(If you can handle spoilers that reveal what N’Gai and I were flying and what we were attacking, you can see screenshots of our innovative "Halo 3" strategy at Bungie.net. Again, look up my Gamertag. The shots in question are labeled "Strategy 2" A through E).
Like other Bungie developers I have interviewed, Luke had been adamant that I play "Halo 3" on heroic difficulty. But that Monday, his doubts grew. “I didn’t think the game would break your will but I didn’t know if you would finish it on heroic,” Smith told me. At dinner time, after a tough level, N’Gai and I had paused. Luke had suggested we consider dropping to normal difficulty. “You guys probably had hand fatigue and eye fatigue. You’d been running the marathon that is 'Halo 3.'” Instead we made our observer proud.
We left Luke with some ideas to bring back to the team. Maybe the guns are too fun. Maybe paratrooping is a winning strategy. And maybe watching people play “Halo 3” for 17 hours a day is a wise idea. Then again, maybe not. Still, he said we did pretty good.
Guess what, Luke? You Bungie guys did pretty well yourselves. Great job.
(Sharp readers my notice that my Bungie.net profile does not show that I've completed "Halo 3." Similarly, the downloadable films of my run with N'Gai display my player name as "Stephen", which is not my Gamertag. That's because the entire session I played in front of Luke Smith was played without my official Gamertag. That's the last time I don't pack my HDD.)
Comments