Can't say I agree with most of that. Sounds like you want Halo 3 to basically be Halo 2.

OT: I think it is more than just a setting of "RB6 lite". The things that stand out to me in CoD4 isn't a sim-lite RB6 knockoff but instead

/ RPG-lite elements
/ Fast rank up
/ Robust&Balanced class/personalization system with perks and weapon unlocks
/ A lot of refined team-objective-oriented modes (Sabatoge, HQ, Search&Destroy, Domination)
/ A fairly large number of very good maps
/ Great netcode

Yeah, the setting is nice and the game mechanics are refined, but IW did a good job of melding together a lot of ideas into a polished package that treads some new ground, steals and improves some ideas, while being true to the essense of CoD style.

IMO it is a good example of keeping the core ideas of what make a game good and adding both depth and quality to broaded/deepen the experience. There are nitpicks, and the game could do more (hello hummers!) and offer more server side customization (e.g. disable helos or whatever) out of the box/easier, but the core gameplay is excellent and offers a lot of fun and replayability.

Being modern combat doesn't hurt, but I don't think that alone is captivating the audiance. The fact I "play one more round" to get to the next level so I can get a new gun or perk is really nice... especially when you LIKE the gameplay modes. I don't even touch TDM or FFA and S&D isn't my thing pesonally (although half the servers are these! Variety!)

And with all the customization you find things you like... heck, I went back to the M16 with a red dot now and am excited because I am doing great with it, especially with stopping power. It fits my gameplay style better.

I see CoD4 holding me over until BF3 or until FFOW gets the kinks worked out. I like the theme IW did with team/objective/class gameplay and the RPG-lite elements. Something old, something new, all great :)

/OT

Onto Halo 3: I know a couple of you are huge Halo fans and are a little frustrated. Maybe a thread with the, "Top 10 Ways to Fix Halo 3 Online" would be in order? I have a lot of friends upset at Bungie :(

I would agree, that, COD4 is no R6 lite. It's like.. CS lite (with more game modes).

Understandable.. I just appreciate what they've done to Halo to make it better at its core than Halo 2. The AR is a much better starting weapon than the SMG, for instance, and I personally think that the balance between melee and other forms of combat are presented in a much, much more interesting way in Halo 3. To me, it's what makes Halo unique, and I think it's really only just now being pushed to the forefront of the games design. If you strip that stuff away, then Halo becomes more and more of a generic run-and-gun shooter, which I think does it a disservice personally.

You also can't just cater to one community--to the hardcore community--as if they're the only group of people who matter. The mauler, for example, is a fantastic weapon and I think that it's plenty useful in close quarters combat, even when you're not camping. So much of Halo 3's combat happens in close quarters (thanks, mostly to level design). What makes the AR+Melee combo so useful, is also what makes the mauler useful. Even the human shotgun would not be useful without that sort of close range combat, so common in the game, since its range is so limited compared to shotguns in many other games.

I get it though.. and I totally see where you're coming from. I hardly touch the game anymore myself, so I wouldn't be too upset one way or another. I'm far too deep into COD4 myself (170 hours and counting) to get worked up over Halo anymore.. but that's actually not totally irrelevant to this conversation. I play COD4 in a competitive fashion, and we use a mod which removed many of the games perks, weapon attachments, and kill streak modifiers. While I much prefer this style of play, I don't think that it would serve the games community on the whole to remove all those aspects of the game. Especially since it caters to only one of the games several game types.

That actually brings me back to an interesting discussion/argument that I've had with Acert multiple times, about a different franchise all together, DICE's Battlefield, which I've also played my fair share of. I've always assumed in that case that what the competitive/hardcore community wanted was best for the game, and I've often expressed anger at DICE for listening too much to what I saw as the whiny, constantly complaining pub community instead. That's a bit different though, because what the pub community wanted in this case was for drastic changes to the games core gameplay systems, which is almost the opposite of what we're talking about here (and is unfair to the audience that plays the game daily!).. so no Acert.. I still think DICE listened to the wrong people in this case ;)

I hear ya though.. your perspective on the game makes a lot of sense.

Comedy, right? Orange Box PC > Orange Box 360. By a fuckton.

Not that it makes it any more on topic!

This just doesn't seem to click with me. Maybe it is because mod tools have been available on the PC for so long that this seems very basic and simplistic, but... I don't get it. Bounce bounce portal boom? There are some really crazy perpetual motion machines out done through mods, so call me jaded :|

Carry on.

I enjoyed that.. but damn.. he must have been bored :P

But I am not :| Having seen perpetual machines and whatnot a decade ago (!) in FPS... I dunno, call me jaded? Considering the tools present it just seems like a bored excercise??

Now I think the Rocket mod is cool... but I guess I don't quite "get it" in regards to this video. Maybe the tools are so limiting that they don't allow more complex and interesting tasks, but this just strikes me as someone being bored doing something more rudementary and trial-and-error than something truly unique or interesting.

Gamers have been making very complex Rube Goldberg machines for a very long time.