The angry basic items rage thread against H4

Games Other Halo
1

I’ll precursor my rant here with the fact I understand I’m old. Yes, I bought the SNES when it first came out. Yes, I buy only a handful of games a year. However when I received H4 as a present from my wife this xmas she knew… oh let’s see how I can tick him off…

So. This isn’t a -Yoink- about the gameplay. It’s not a rant against lag, the DMR vs the Piston, playlists or anything else. It’s about the basics… starting with…

#1. NO INSTRUCTION MANUAL. Are you kidding me? It’s 2012, and you sell a $60 dollar video game with NO INSTRUCTION MANUAL? I open it up and I have no idea…Do I insert disc 1 or disc 2? How…why… Anyone? Some of the best games ever made had classic instruction manuals… Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers, ect. This involves further…but what a cheap move. Seriously. I Bought 4 other games this year…Madden 13, GTA, Tiger Woods 12 and Assasin’s creed Brotherhood. ALL of them had an instruction manual.

#2. BUTTONS. Why did the buttons change? I played this game and seriously thought the Crouch option was eliminated. LEAVE THE BUTTON CONFIGURATION ALONE. Yes, yes, I know. I can change them… but you know what of REALLY helped? AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL SHOWING ME THE NEW CONFIGURATION.

#3. TERMINOLOGY: Again, INSTRUCTION MANUAL. When playing the campaign all the words I hear are TERMS. Forerunner, Didact, Promeatheans, Composer… How about an explaination of this terms, you know… with a MANUAL.

#4. INFINITY: All I have to say here is. see #3. IT WAS CALLED MATCHMAKING. LEAVE IT ALONE. How the hell am I supposed to know when I turned the F*cking game on Matchmaking is now called infinity? Oh where’s that GAME MANUAL. Oh it doesn’t exist. Nice.

I swear its all about being so cryptic you have to spend 20 minutes google searching the point systems, the storyline terms, ect. No. I doesn’t need to be this nerdy.
In real life I deal with Tech terms all day long. Ports, Dongles, Dynamic DNIS’s, Ping and latency, FLIR, ect. But you know what? In the end it comes down to customers who don’t get these terms. So I have to translate into normal speaking terms what the issues/items are. I’m the customer here, and when I buy YOUR product I shouldn’t feel like I’m so dumb@$# who feels like “oh you should know this”. No.
Make a webpage with an instruction manual. How about that. Too hard to uncomplicate things? Then stop trying to be so nerdy nobody cares about your sequel to a game that the predecessor of the series decided they didn’t want to make so you took the money and ran with it.

2

Go to HaloWaypoint.com.
Click Halo 4 Intel
All your questions/concerns are answered/solved.

3

> Go to HaloWaypoint.com.
> Click Halo 4 Intel
> All your questions/concerns are answered/solved.

http://www.xwallz.com/user-content/uploads/wall/o/49/sheldon_cooper_bazinga_wallpaper.jpg

Basically what he said, but true. I did find it a little odd that there was no Game Manual because all I saw was the ugly wall of text that was on the back of the Halo 4 picture on the cover.

4

> Go to HaloWaypoint.com.
> Click Halo 4 Intel
> All your questions/concerns are answered/solved.

Yea. Thanks. Click on “Basics” and you know what it shows? NOTHING. NOTHING. Not even the “basic” controller button layout.

It’s RIGHT THERE. Oh wait. IT’s NOT. I shouldn’t have to click on 3 webpages to learn the BASICS.

5

Lack of manuals don’t really bother me because most popular games these days have their own Wiki. I’ve spent hours just reading backstory on the Halo and Mass Effect Wiki’s. Regarding the buttons, I forget the name, but there’s one layout that’s similar to Halo 1 called Recon I think. I still use it, because I never wanted to get used to Bumper Jumper. There is a small difference or two between Recon and the classic Halo controls, but it’s easy to get used to.

Most of the terminology can be picked up in-game, but I’ll be honest, when the Didact was introduced, I had no idea what he was, so it probably hurt the experience for me. I just categorized him as “bad dude standing in my way” and had no respect for his backstory or purpose.

I have no problem with Matchmaking being called Infinity because it takes 10 seconds to figure out and then you never forget.

6

> Lack of manuals don’t really bother me because most popular games these days have their own Wiki. I’ve spent hours just reading backstory on the Halo and Mass Effect Wiki’s. Regarding the buttons, I forget the name, but there’s one layout that’s similar to Halo 1 called Recon I think. I still use it, because I never wanted to get used to Bumper Jumper. There is a small difference or two between Recon and the classic Halo controls, but it’s easy to get used to.
>
> Most of the terminology can be picked up in-game, but I’ll be honest, when the Didact was introduced, I had no idea what he was, so it probably hurt the experience for me. I just categorized him as “bad dude standing in my way” and had no respect for his backstory or purpose.
>
> I have no problem with Matchmaking being called Infinity because it takes 10 seconds to figure out and then you never forget.

I agree with a majority of your post. A lot of my rant deals with the changes made by 343. There are literally thousands of things to be angry about (see my thread re: Change swat scoring back to kills).

I don’t mind 343 trying to reinvent the wheel slightly. However, you change the basics such as control schemes, BASIC names such as matchmaking or disc layout (Halo Reach Disc 2 was Matchmaking) the minimum you could do is give us a Heads Up.
I changed my contoller scheme to Recon, yet still that melee button is not the same has Halo reach. I’ve played about 50 games of Swat and still haven’t meleed anyone. Why? I simply can’t get use to the B button being the melee button. RB was that button forever. Leave it.

Game manuals. They are like the Rule books for games. I am so frustrated when I have to wiki stuff when this should be available to me in TEXT form when I purchase a game.

in conclusion-look at this. The manual for Legend of Zelda on NES:
http://zs.ffshrine.org/legend-of-zelda/english-instruction-manual-scans.php

What an amazing display. No way did the game look that good… But it included all the required info to play the game.
Something that this game couldn’t bother to spend 5 minutes or 10 cents to include.