The Halo Den00bification Project
In recent months as the quality of games and my accompanying interest in them continue to deteriorate, there’s been only one thing that’s kept me going in the gaming world, and that’s my renewed design efforts with Halo 2.
Basically, it’s a mod I’m developing geared towards removing persistent skill-mitigating features and balance issues in the Halo series, making it a more respectable shooter, rather than purely a concession to casual gamers.
This sort of venture has taken on more of an appeal to me lately compared to simply writing gaming opinion, as you’re really putting your money where your mouth is. Rather than ranting about why a game is bad and what it should have done instead, and just relying on people to get the idea from reading your article, you can physically make the game the way it should have been. Then it’s right there for people to play it and see for themselves whether your criticisms are on target and the game is really more enjoyable to play the way the developers didn’t actually do it.
At some point I may write a whole article explaining what I’m doing with it and why I think it’s a better way to play Halo, but for now I’m just going to link you to the most recent public release, the extensive readme doc that comes with the mod, and a bunch of gameplay videos my friend and I recorded in order to give you an idea of how the game plays with these changes.
The Full Explanation
The Gameplay Videos
More Gameplay Videos
The Download (6.7k)
You know…I’m probably one of the only people in the world who feels this way, but I really like the Needler. In every Halo game. I found it to be extremely useful, actually, and I got a lot of kills with it, though it was a bit more difficult to do so in Halo 3’s multi-player. But I also liked the Arbiter, so maybe I’m just crazy, ha ha. I’ll check out the review now man.
I really like what you’ve done with the needler; it looks as if it’s best used as a melee gun, like the shotty. Impressive, dude!
I don’t play halo 2 on pc I do play halo 3 , but I usually end up pissed of and quit playing for a week.
NintendoTheory - Wait, you actually had a harder time killing with it in Halo 3? Most people agree that it’s far more effective in Halo 3, with such fast needles that unless you jump behind cover the split second someone starts shooting it at you, it’s a guaranteed kill with little to no aiming needed.
I think the old Needler had some place in the game as a “gateway drug” weapon for newbies. Both my sister and my ex-girlfriend put some hours into Halo 1 and 2’s campaigns and used the Needler almost exclusively. They loved it. It allowed them to get into the game and make some impressive explosions while they were still learning their basic aiming skills. Once they got the hang of it, I gradually coaxed them into using some of the other weapons, but were it not for the Needler, they might have gotten frustrated and quit early on. At the same time, in multiplayer in Halo 1 and 2, the Needler was weak enough in proportion to the low amount of skill required to use it that it didn’t feel overpowered.
There’s only so many concessions you can make to newbies though. If I was making a Halo 3 mod, then I would probably take the Needler from my Halo 2 mod and make it the Spiker instead, then make the Needler closer to it’s Halo 1 iteration with homing and what not. However, since there’s no Spiker, the old Needler gets the boot and the new one comes in. For experienced players, I think the new Needler is far more satisfying and useful to use.
Frogpond – Thanks. This sort of design is somewhat uncommon but I think it was worth bringing to the table. I always had fun being one of the few people that knew how to use weapons like the UT Pulsegun, the Quake 4 Nailgun, and the Doom 3 Plasma Rifle properly, so I wanted to bring the feeling of that sort of weapon into Halo. There’s not enough slow-moving, prediction-based weapons that are actually effective in Halo, so I wanted to make the Needler the epitome of that sort of weapon.
Get online GnAm and let’s play!
Soon DarkAssasin, soon…
BTW sorry you got stuck with the stupid tomato avatar, lol.
I must say that your mods completely destroy halo entirely. It was made as an unbalanced weaponry game because in real life weapons aren’t balanced. Some are better than others, and that’s the reality. I’m suprised that someone like you hasn’t realized this yet.
Hahaha, Halo’s weapons are balanced by default, they’re just balanced in a clumsy and skill-mitigating manner. With such a simplistic argument, you can’t possibly know anything about FPS weapon balance. Also, the idea that Halo is based on reality is a total joke which invalidates your claim even further.
Read up here and maybe you’ll start to understand what balance is about:
http://juliangnam.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/gnamsmod-readme.doc
Two things I’d like to touch on.
One, I understand that Halo is no where near realistic, however, it’s based off reality. Sure they could’ve made it like COD4 where every weapon is practically as effective as the other, however that wouldn’t be realistic. While they didn’t want comeplete realism, they had to incorporate some of it, mainly including gun physics. There are power weapons, and there are weak weapons. You mods destroy this concept, largly with weapons such as the SMG, Beam Rifle, and Rocket Launcher. The SMG is a weapon which fires at a fast rate, giving it a lot of kickback, and this contributes to why it’s fire is so spread out. It’s more realistic. A rocket blowing up 8 feet away from you will kill you, not just give you a heat rash, as you seem to want in your mods. The beam rifle…good god your dumb on this one. It’s a fucking covenant sniper. Of course it’s almost a carbon copy of the Sniper Rifle, because it’s a fucking sniper you idiot. Removing the scope and reducing the fire rate completely eliminates the original point of the weapon: as a sniper. Oh and another thing. The needle is how it is because it’s an alien weapon. Aliens have different technology than us. Of course they could make a weapon with homing capabilities. And it’s cool and great having that in there, it’s one of the reasons Halo is unique. But again, you have to ruin it to make it suit yourself, instead of keeping the originality.
Secondly, I’ve read your mods readme document, and quite honestly, it’s pathetic. You’ve completely ruined Halo, and have turned it into another boring Counterstrike type game. It makes me laugh to see how you can’t accept any originality, and insist upon picking the game apart piece by piece, and turning it from something unique into something repetitive and seen many times before. There is a reason that the Halo series is the number one all-time video game series, and you destroy that. And you seem to think that your mods den00bify Halo? Anyone who’s got any skill can take out a needler or rocket whore. You don’t have to go modding the stupid game to do so. You need to freaking learn that you’re going no where with your argument.
Hahaha, Budders, you’re full of it. The “weak” and “strong” weapons in Halo are not made that way because it’s realistic, they’re made that way for the sake of map control. The way COD4 does it is actually more realistic you moron.
SMGs fire pistol rounds which have much lighter recoil than rifle rounds, therefore the muzzle climb is actually much less than other weapons regardless of how many rounds are fired. If a spartan soldier is strong enough to fire a Battle Rifle or Sniper Rifle with no muzzle climb at all, then he’s surely strong enough to fire an SMG with no muzzle climb. In stock Halo 2, a 3 round burst from the SMG recoils more than a 3 round burst from the BR, even though they have the same cyclic rate of fire – which makes no sense. I have fired SMG’s in real life, and there was nowhere near the amount of recoil as in Halo 2, and it stands to reason that a cybernetic soldier with superhuman strength would control it ever better – I mean he can lift a tank for Christ’s sake!
The damage of a rocket explosion is entirely debatable when you have sci-fi energy shields and armor. What works best for gameplay is what goes, and faster-firing weaker rockets take more skill and make for a more balanced game.
The Beam Rifle still works from long range with my modification, it just takes more skill. It’s only no longer a “sniper” weapon if you’re too much of a n00b to kill people with it,
The Needler was a stupid weapon; homing takes absolutely no skill, so it’s out of the game.
Budders, you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. You’ve probably never played an FPS other than COD4 and Halo, and have no clue what goes into weapon design and weapon balance in an FPS. To boot, you’ve got your so-called “realism” facts completely wrong so hard that you think Halo is more realistic than COD4, which is the biggest joke ever.
Here’s a tip for you dumbass, my mod actually makes Halo more like competitive fantasy shooters such as UT and Quake, which are the complete opposite of tactical shooters like Counterstrike and COD4. Of course, you’d never understand this, cause you’re the worse kind of internet idiot there is.
And if you want to actually learn what’s realistic and what isn’t, take a look at this, dipshit.
http://dslyecxi.com/bestoftactical.html
Also, FYI, this is how real men handle SMGs:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4uo-ewPQx2w&feature=related
This is how Mastercheif handles the SMG in Halo 2 (except even worse than this):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zh8qfyGYZ9k
I must agree with Budders on this one, Halo is a good game as it is, and you really have no right to go tromping around saying that it is horrible and you can just magically fix it. Not all games can be the same, and it would be stupid if every gun was even. So sorry, but I completely disagree with your aims. However, I do think it’s a great idea for you to do this project, and for you to try new things. I just don’t think you’re publications and aims were very well thought out.
Cant wait for my AR to get here so I can finally play what seems to be what Ive been waiting for.
Bjorny - On the contrary, my “publications and aims” are very meticulously thought-out and you clearly don’t really know enough to judge. The mod is not about making everything even, in fact the hierarchy of weapons has been very fine tuned, the differences between weapons even more pronounced than in a normal Halo game. Try actually learning about
1) Weapon Balance in general
2) The features of my mod
and then try to comment.
Kairu - Thanks, hope you enjoy it man.