I saw this post and had to re-post it.
Rollingcone posted…
I think the gaming culture is a victim of its own ignorance. Now, I’m not knocking all gamers, just the vast majority of us. The issue is, players are too pre-occupied by what they immediately interact with in their games. That is, what guns they are using, what kind of perks/power-ups they have available to them, what the enemies they combat against look like, e.t.c. As integral as those elements are, they only comprise half of the experience, arguably less. The often unnoticed characteristics in a game (at least unnoticed by the masses), the subtle friction, is what makes most great games. While the typical gamer will muse about how "rad " it is to “ram your car into hookers”, or “break the legs of some jerk mob boss” whilst playing GTA 4, they don’t consciously take notice of how substantial Liberty City its self is to the experience. The convincing ebb and flow of traffic, the spunky radio broadcasts and the cement-populated sky line bind the core experience, which would just be a loose thread without them. To surmise, a game is much more than what can be derived from the core action. Gamers must begin to recognize this, otherwise vapid game play additions (I’m looking at you, retro lancer, and you strike packages) will continue to be considered acceptable.
Applying this principle to Halo; it is not the armour permutations, nor the armour abilities that make Halo what it is. Its the smoothness of that 1-2 grenade to BR punch, or that AR to melee whack. I am not implying that adding to the established formula is some form of divine blasphemy, but rather, I am critical of the sloppiness of merely tagging on features for the sake of fattening up the experience. Throwing a monkey in the wrench because the wrench got rusty. Don’t arbitrarily mess with the wrench, polish it, organically add on to it to restore it to its original glory. For instance (strictly hypothetical here), give players the ability to jump off of walls in order to expand the movement game. (The Pit: Run straight down for Rocket, skip it, throw a ‘nade, hop off of the wall, pop the enemy in the head with your BR.). Or, allow players to latch onto the side of objects, improving the stealth game. (See the enemy heading for that Warthog? Latch on underneath and when they fill it up with three, stick ’em with a plasma ‘nade, then stop, drop and roll.) As you can see, adding onto an established formula allows for organic and dynamic game play. So far, Halo 4 has seemingly been going down the wrong road. I suppose we’ll just have to wait for the final product before we judge though, shouldn’t we?