> Are you kidding?
>
> Halo Reach for sure has the best or second best enemy A.I of all Halo. Halo 2 was just cheap -Yoink!-, and Halo 3 was too damn easy. Reach rewards you for being good on legendary but still kicks your -Yoink!-. The first time you had to fight Elites on the first mission, Was EPIC, Took me a few minutes on Heroic.
>
> Halo 2 was the game to make the game casual and nooby. There’s 1000 videos and articles about it. FFS there was a friggen website dedicated to how much people HATED Halo 2 “Halo2sucks.com”
>
> So please…
Reach? Superior AI? Absolute nonsense.
Nearly all the stuff you see the AI doing could have been enabled in CE: firing range, rof, fast movement and strafing, plasma pistol overcharging, crouching when shields are down and being attacked, etc. But they didn’t.
Want to know why? You probably don’t but I’ll say this. Because giving them such capability would 1) break balance and 2) destroy distinctions. And that’s exactly what Reach did. All Elites throw grenades. All Elites have fast shield recharge rates. All Elites move at the same speed.
H2 gets a lot of undeserved flak because of minor elements such as Jackal snipers. I’ve played H2 on LASO. It’s not that bad. The AI are far more easier to manipulate. This is cheap? On the contrary, it’s preferable. If it weren’t for the damage, I’d be brawling with the bomb room Elites using positioning.
Reach had more cheaper AI. And combat with them was too repetitive. The plasma pistol was the only Covie weapon that was restored to it’s former glory. The plasma rifle is underpowered against Elite shields on Legendary and the needler is useless against Elites thanks to the absence of shield bleedthrough.
Reach Elites:
-withstand a melee when unshielded i.e. no flinching
-express surprise at the wrong time (when I land among a group of Elites, they don’t even show any surprise. They just run up to me and give me a whack)
-easily dispatched if Grunts and Jackals are out of the way
-withstand plasma grenade sticks (Elite majors and higher)
-berserk too much
-don’t take cover very often
-had bottomless clip = concussion rifle spam
-benefited from Legendary difficulty projectile speed increase
Reach Jackals:
-withstand several melees i.e. no flinching
-withstand frags and rockets
-have absurdly fast shield recharge rates
-shields don’t absorb bullets
-don’t panic when their shield is gone
-plasma pistol overcharge: fast overcharging, can overcharge while in a dropship, can immediately fire plasma pistol bolts after unleashing it
-are moving shields
On a side note, I’ve played CMT SPV3 and I was appalled by the frequent use of plasma pistol overcharges by Grunts. These Grunts already have a swarm tactic where they converge on the player. Giving them overcharge ability is just broken.
These blatant disregard for AI manipulation and infectious love for false difficulty destroys the 30 seconds of fun!! I suggest you read this.
CE Elites:
-they didn’t have 100% tracking so you could go around them for an assassination if you immobilized them or avoided their melee. The removal of a bigger melee range in H2 and addition of reverse melee in H3 made cqc a joke, too slow and less satisfying.
-they weren’t 100% fast (Reach) or responsive (H2) so I could get grenade sticks on them, kill them with even the slowest needle shards, set them up for an easier assassination.
-they were affected by sound. One such example is on AotCR, there’s a patrolling Elite you encounter in the next room. Sometimes, he might be in an inconvenient position but with a little gun fire, I can alter his movement so I can get him into a convenient position. Gun fire could also be used for assassination as it disorientates their tracking.
I loved them because they weren’t cheap (damage sponges, bottomless clip, semi-omniscient, fast shield recharge rates).
The things I loved about naive AI:
And about getting reactions:
-Brutes in H3 notice their dead (and even show concern if they haven’t noticed the player yet, standing over the body)
-Elites and Grunts trying to get plasma grenades off of them
-Brutes in H2 going berserk when their friend died and weep for them
-Hunters in H3 going berserk when their bond brother died
-Some Brutes in H3 responding to the death of their Grunts and noticing
It’s incredible how Reach AI have such omniscience yet don’t even notice the death of their allies. I could beat an Elite through another one and he’d never notice.
It’s also sad how Reach AI lack any sign of emotion or reaction other than surprise and anger (both of which occur too often). They’re like freaking robots, firefight enemies that they are.
And it’s such a disappointment that Reach AI tend to not notice a Spartan III landing right in front of them, being too focused on an enemy or always prioritizing the Spartan III instead of his fellow Noble Team members…
Reach AI are just robots. The absence of panic, the absence of concern, the absence of true rage. All this tells me is that I’m fighting robots.