Recent reviews by Luca

My review as someone who's been playing Halo since 2001. That's 23 years...

It will never be Halo. I try every time they release a game, praying it's not just another Reach with terrible everything.

This ones not it boys and girls.

Check back next time with another $60 purchase and ever decreasing hopes.

The bits I like:
-The movement in this game feels far more fluid than I thought it would do, which certainly is a positive given how clunky previous titles have felt, pre-sprint and all the other dumb nonsense that got added.

The bits I don't like:
-No one from EU plays this game so you're constantly stuck on 90+ms just to get a game. Keep the MM searching to local and expect ridiculous queues.
-DMR's have been crow-barred into this franchise worse than your mum into her 4th wedding dress. Stop pretending you enjoyed Halo Reach for the gameplay and really only enjoyed it for the customisation. You're giving the devs fake feedback.
-The new melee lunge distance makes me feel like stretch armstrong on a bad day, totally unnecessary and causes incorrect feedback loops in players trying to learn the game and become better.
-Sprinting was a terrible idea to begin with and should have been taken out and never re-implemented. Sprinting has caused maps to be created on larger scales as not to make them feel small by crossing the terrain too quickly, which in turn has caused the maps to be filled with useless areas that only serve as pointless ground clutter. I'll get to the maps in a minute...
-What on earth is the point in all the new guns, that are essentially just bad versions of the old sniper rifle. They serve the same purpose but only offer a different sound and name to make it feel like you have new things in the game.
-The recoloured and skinned maps with extra bits added. Why? Not only are half of them Red or Orange, making one team slightly harder to see glowing across the map like an angry firefly, but you added random parts to the maps that completely breaks the flow of play. You took perfectly acceptable maps and did the game version of VLONEPREDATOR "Here's what halo 3 would look like if it were black or Chinese".

The bits I hate:
-Or rather, bit. The Maps. I don't know what water you're adding to your hydroponic mushroom grow that's the sole feed given to the frogs you have jumping on keyboards, randomly generating your maps from presets, but you need to pass that recipe to the dutch, they're far more likely to get some ♥♥♥♥ done with it than you guys are. Whichever frog is in charge of your map design needs to be chauffeured to the nearest pond and retired like a 6 year old police German Shepard after completing it's duty, let it live out the rest of it's life doing something natural.

I can't even begin to explain how completely unhinged and off-colour the map design is for this game. The only logical explanation I can come up with, is the movement mechanics have played an integral role in their creation. You find map controlling landmarks bathed in vast empty, nothingness filled areas that play no part in any setup or gameplay whatsoever. Halo is an Arena shooting game where gameplay is centred around controlling certain areas of the map so you're in a position to fight for power weapons, camo and overshields. You would also aim to leave the other team spawning in specific areas to take control of the game. Now, I don't know how you can watch this process and methodology playout through the games history for over a decade, before you got to this point now, where every map has 9 random rooms, 16 walkways leading to nowhere, 18 nameless and pointless trees and 14 levels of elevation in a single map.

To illustrate my point of how terrible the maps are, I will use "The Pit" as an example of what a map should be like, and the differences we see today. Why, you may ask? Well, only because that poor map has been revived and played in every iteration of Halo imaginable to the point where it has a higher revival rate than Zombie no1 from round 1 Kino-der-toten.

If they were able to create maps even slightly competitive or at least running with the theme of the game, why has this map lived longer through the series than the battle rifle? Surely over the years a replacement could be made to switch it out? No?

Halo is once again, an arena shooting game. The Pit is comprised of two equal sides, in both distance and elevation. The middle of the map contains all power weapons bar the sniper which spawns in two places, one on each teams spawn in the bottom of the sniper tower. No matter who you are, how good you are at the game, your time spent playing on the map specifically or your overall arena shooter experience, you WILL be able to pick up The Pit at a very fast rate. The map will make sense when you play it. The map will teach you how the spawn system works. The map will teach you how map control itself works and the map will always be fun. The callouts are simple and easy to learn as it mirrors on both sides. the most important part of what makes this map good, is how seamlessly it moulds into what the game is trying to create gameplay wise. Without ever trying, the gameplay will evolve in a way on that map to the point where it's one team on one side, the other on the other, fighting for control of the important objectives, or pushing to take a physical one. To be clear, I'm not saying I expect every map to be mirrors on both sides and play the exact same as The Pit would (although even that would be better than the current ones). I just think it's objectively clear how terrible the random walkways map number 7 doesn't belong in the franchise at all.

There is not a single new map that has any sort of flow to it where this naturally occurs. There is no clear cut side to take on ANY map. The only map that you could argue comes *somewhat* close to this is Live Fire. Forest belongs in call of duty blackops 1. When I first loaded into Streets I thought I had accidentally booted up Escape from Tarkov.

Truth be told you'll only experience most of the nonsense if you play outside of the ranked arena mode, and given how incredibly unfun most of the game is, if you're still playing this garbage you probably don't even know what I'm talking about.

Don't play it, don't entertain this companies nonsense monetisation techniques, and just wait to be a hypocrite like I am the next time a Halo comes out. Spoiler, it won't be good either, but we can hope.

You can buy nice cars and go over budget in the career, then just choose to rest your staff every single week and never get fired. This also means you never have to do a rally on the garbage tarmac physics.

10/10

Another terrible PC port. There seems to be a lot of input lag, that you will notice if you're even slightly competent with FPS games.

I really wanted to enjoy this game again, but it's still Reach so it's terrible. If you're a casual FPS player, you will enjoy it. If you're a Halo fan, it's going to be as terrible as it always was.

I'm really hoping they correct the input lag issues for when the good Halo's are launched.

This game taught me that my girlfriend is mentally challenged. 10/10

Potentially fantastic game ruined by a terrible PC port. Controlls are unbearable. Had a completely different experience from most others in that I could ONLY use a controller and my mouse did not work at all, nor is there any function for a keyboard (which in a game where you move in straight lines is utterly stupid?)

Thumbstick would register double movements with a single stroke and often send me in directions opposite from where I moved the stick.

This game would literally be 2x better if you could use WASD and mouse propperly.

Really wanted to like this game but gave up after "completing" it due to frustration with ♥♥♥♥ controls.

This game takes so long to load up, that by the time it pops up you've already forgotten how ♥♥♥♥ it is.

10/10