Top 10 Things Bungie Screwed Up With Halo 3

This is a good read and most that have played this game will agree with almost every point.
Especially online connectivity, weapon balance and melee combat (horrendous). I hope Bungie reads this and gets on it fast!

http://www.mygen.com.au/article.php?page_id=97525974634716456&se_id=29&format=2&page=1

Halo 3 has sold millions of copies and broken records all over the globe. With all these success Microsoft allowed Bungie to go "Freelancer" by selling Bungie Studios back to its shareholders. Since then we have not seen a single improvement to the reliability of matchmaking or their website.
We have listed 10 issues which Bungie needs to address or have completely screwed up with the production of Halo 3. In no way are we anti-halo or anti-Bungie, we gave Halo 3 with a 9.7/10 in our review and are just pointing out the obvious flaws in the Halo 3 game.

Number 10: Bungie.net Site Integration
The Bungie.net website was brilliant with Halo 2, it hardly skipped a beat and every game was posted just about instantly. Halo 3 may have took Bungie by surprise with the amount of numbers in the first week flooding their servers, but now it has been almost a month and nothing has changed. Games still take their time to upload to Bungies site, File Shares often time out whilst uploading and Screenshots. still don't work.
Some of my matches from 2 weeks ago have still yet to show, I assume they have been lost forever, but has anything been done to fix these issues? Probably not, I still notice most of my games not appearing at all or appearing about 12 hours after I played the match. When you view a screenshot on your Xbox 360, it is supposed to automatically upload to the Bungie website and place itself in your "Hi-Res Screenshots", I have two in there of the 50 or so I have actually viewed. Maybe it's time to fix some of these issues.



Number 09: Team Voice
Most games on Xbox Live allow you to talk to your whole team without pressing a button no matter how many people are in the game. Halo 3 only allows you to talk to your whole team without pressing a button if there are 8 or less people in the game. Which is completely fine

because most of the playlists are 4v4 team based games. But if you take your team into Social Slayer or Big Team Battle or even have a custom game going, if there are more than 8 people in the game you are required to press the D-Pad to open a voice channel. This is simply one of the stupidest mistakes, if people don't notice this, they may be talking the whole match. yet no one can hear them.

Number 08: Maps/Playlists
Without a custom game server list you need to jump onto matchmaking where Bungie has set playlist and map combinations specific to each playlist type. Whilst we respect the time and effort Bungie has put into their map creation and playlists, they honestly plain old suck. You go into matchmaking, get Shotty Snipers on Narrows, veto it and get punished with Team Slayer on Snow Bound.
The maps in Halo 3 are nowhere as good as the ones feature in Halo 2. There are seriously only two or three evenly balanced maps, High Ground, Valhalla and Last Resort. Oh wait, it just seems they all featured in a multiplayer beta, be it internal or external, they were and still are the best maps in Halo 3. The other maps are kind of decent but badly balanced; especially construct which is camp central.
If the weapon locations and spawn points were updated, maybe we wouldn't be vetoing half the games on Halo 3. Which also brings me to the point of Big Team Battle, where are all the larger maps for this playlist? They don't exist.

Number 07: Weapon Balance/Changes
With a new Engine and Maps, weapons need to be balanced based on the engine changes and map layouts. Some of the existing Weapons which were in Halo 2 have been toned down, hardly improving gameplay in anyway. New weapons added in Halo 3 are overpowered or don't work as they should off host.
When you switch weapons to the Energy Sword, Gravity Hammer or Shotgun there is a delay until you can use them, sure they are the power weapons in the game, but that was the fun in Halo 2. you could jump someone switch weapons and hit them straight away. The Energy Sword also uses a new combat system, if two players strike at the same time, the weapons will clash doing a minimal amount of damag e to each player. This takes out the skill of this weapon, before the fastest strike kills, now you have time to "block" you don't need to even lunge.
Other weapons are completely over powered, but hardly work unless you have a full green ping, the Needler is no longer dual wieldable but is ridiculously over powered, it can blow someone up with a few needles and the Mauler, a dual wieldable shotgun packs a great deal of damage. However these weapons are only effective when you have a good ping, if you are lagging, don't expect them to do anything for you.
One of the key weapons in Halo is the Sniper Rifle and they have also been destroyed by bungie. Their collision detection is shocking, if yo

u look at the replay after a game, you notice a lot of bullets pass through the enemy head but don't actually do any damage, bungie replied to this with "The sniper is harder to use now, so sack up, it requires more skill". Requires More Skill? Maybe you just need to fix the collision detection.



Number 06: Online Multiplayer Net Code
Halo 2 was always great for its Online Multiplayer, the matchmaking service was always pretty decent and with minimal lag. Halo 3 however has some of the worst lag seen in an AAA title's multiplayer. When playing people close to you there isn't much lag but there is still the apparent host advantage, but this can be easily looked over. The main problem is the overseas net code, now I live in Australia and when I play on an American host sometimes the games fine, but other times it is unbelievable what's happening. Being shot through walls, sticking someone and not dying, bullets doing no damage what so ever are all part of the shoddy net code.
It gets worse, we are much closer to Asia than we are to America and Japan has better connections than the states yet we get some of the worst pings imaginable. Half the time people are teleporting all over the place.
Bungie seriously need to fix these issues.
Number 05: Playlist Ranks
When playing in a ranked playlist by yourself it is apparent that your rank increases at a faster rate than if you are playing in a party. Which is completely bollocks, why must you be penalized for playing with your mates? When there is such a huge focus on the Party side of things in Halo 3.
Winning several games in a row by a large margin doesn't increase your ranks, it may be the whole "play with a team and don't advance" or bungie totally screwed it up. Several times I have won ten or so games in a row, lose one then lose my rank. WTF is going on Bungie? I would prefer to have it like Halo 2 was, the whole if you win, you get rewarded with progress to your next rank, not Bungies new system. "Behind the scenes, we're calculating all manner of information about your play style, skill, foes and party mates." What the hell does this mean? Change it back please.
Number 04: Melee Combat System
This is possibly one of the worst changes in Halo 3, the normal melee battles are generally determined on first strike, if I strike first I kind of expect the kill, its common sense. But Halo 3's melee system is atrocious. As you can see in the below video found on youtube, it isn't about who strikes first, it's about who has more health. Even if you are up to a second late on your melee, if you have more health than your opponent does you will be the victor. now this is one thing which DEFINANTLY needs to be fixed. The amount of times I strike my opponent first but die as a result of their delayed melee is unbelievable it happens so often and is extremely frustrating, especially after finding out lag isn't the factor; it's the games actual code.



Number 03: 640p Native Resolution
Now you would expect Microsoft's biggest game since the launch of the Xbox 360 to run native 720p minimum or even 1080p, but in fact we have been short changed 80 pixels. Halo 3 runs native at 1152x640 pixels even after it clearly says "HDTV /720p/1080i/1080p" on the back of the game disc.
Sure, they have a half decent reason for cutting us 80 pixels, which allows more resources for the lighting renderer, but that isn't good enough. This is supposed to be a HD Generation Console running 720p native at least, Microsoft's top AAA title couldn't even do it.
Okay, we admit 80 pixels isn't going to make much of a difference when up scaled to 720p by the Xbox 360, but it does create a lot more Jaggies than usual.
Number 02: Frame Rate Issues
Halo 3 not only suffers from Frame Rate issues in Single Player but some Multiplayer Maps also have some noticeable Frame Rate issues. Sure if you have a lot of enemies on screen at once and grenades going off everywhere you might give some leniency for some frame rate issues but they should have all been ironed out. This doesn't always occur in battles though, if you run around some maps at times you will notice some drops in frame rates even if there is nothing going on around you.
One of the biggest problems and biggest disappointments is frame rate issues in multiplayer, especially The Pit. The Pit suffers from huge frame rate problems at times, considering it's a pretty small map I don't see why this is happening. Other multiplayer maps also suffer from them, not as much as The Pit but they are still there.



Number 01: Halo 3 Ending *Spoilers*
"Finish the Fight" is what was supposed to happen at the end of Halo 3, whether it was completed by Master Chief destroying the covenant race or dying to save the universe, we were waiting for it. Instead the fight has hardly been finished, the Legendary Ending After the Credits sets us up for what could be another Halo Series. With Master Chief floating in space towards what appears to be a forerunner structure.
There is nothing wrong with setting us up for another Halo series, but we were promised we were going to "Finish the Fight" not do something we did in Halo 1, blow up a Halo and you go off on your merry way.
Halo 3's ending is the biggest disappointment of Halo 3 and something which was massively overhyped by Bungies "Finish the Fight" phrase.

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