I believe that splitscreen in Halo is important. I have spent the vast majority of my time with the Halo series playing its local 4-player splitscreen. Or rather, that was the case until Halo Reach was released. Apparently sometime after the release of Halo 3, Bungie decided that splitscreen was no longer important. The evidence of this can be seen in just how terribly Halo Reach plays in splitscreen.
Where to begin? The graphics are horribly degraded when playing splitscreen with any amount of players. Blood, bullet marks, foliage, and lights all disappear in splitscreen. Objects get impostered if you are a few meters away from them. The Spartans are smaller then they have ever been, making them more diffuclt to see, as well as making all that pretty armour pointless because you can’t even see it. Antialiasing gets reduced, turning the game world into a jagged mess. The framerate is constantly dropping.
Not to mention that the entire game just doesn’t play as well on the smaller maps that have always been the core of splitscreen play. Countdown is the only non-forge map could be considered viable for a fun splitscreen game. Forging smaller maps isn’t a solution because the game can’t handle even the most basic forge world maps in splitscreen.
Sluggish movement + horrible blooming weapons + horrible melee system + terrible maps + horrible framerate + terrible graphics design = NOT FUN.
I could go on and on, but simply put, the game just doesn’t perform well in splitscreen, especially when you compare it to the last three games. I had played thousands of 4 player splitscreen games in the first three Halo titles, and I have played maybe 50 games of Reach splitscreen due to how horribly it performs.
Halo 4 should bring back the level of quality in splitscreen games that the first three Halo titles had. Smooth framerates, clear visuals, greats maps and gameplay, etc. Not everyone plays this game exclusively online. Or maybe they do, but they’d also like to have some friends in the room playing with them. 343I, please tell Microsoft to not underestimate the value of having an exclusive AAA title that has 4 player local multiplayer (whats the point of owning 4 controllers if the local mutiplayer sucks?). And tell your designers that splitscreen isn’t an afterthought that people will play regardless of its quality. Halo 3 should be the bar that you’re aiming for. Every map and mode ran flawlessly in that game, and Halo 4 should offer that same level of quality.
> they had to make a compromise if they wanted split-screen to work. Tho I do agree that it was kinda bad.
It was kinda bad. Like the worst in the series bad. As in “we are making a sequel which is supposed to improve upon this game” and it actually is much, much worse than any previous entry in the series - kind of bad.
If they can’t get it to perform as well in split-screen, maybe they should just cut the feature. I used to play splitscreen all the time too, but then I got a second xbox, and it’s so much better. I can understand it’s difficult to get an xbox to process double. As it stands now, all split-screen accomplishes is making MM terrible.
> If they can’t get it to perform as well in split-screen, maybe they should just cut the feature.
If it’s part of the design document (ie, they were specifically thinking making it work well from the start of development), and the team knows what they are doing, it could run better than it did in Halo 3. That’s what I’m hoping.
I’d be very sad if they cut it, as I’ve been playing splitscreen Halo for almost ten years. I have friendships today that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Halo splitscreen.
This should be blamed on the six year old Xbox 360, not Bungie. With Reach’s graphics, it’s a miracle that it runs smoothly even without splitscreen on the 360.
Devs have two choices. Make the game look as good as possible for one player or make it look alright for one player and alright for split screen. Ever wonder why every console announced has two video outputs but that feature always gets cut? Because devs don’t want to split their processing resources between two video outputs. Split screen is the same thing. You can’t make single screen look as good when you have to account for split screen play.
My solution would be to have some maps be made to play well in split screen and put them in their own playlist online. This way if you want to play split screen you can but everyone else is not punished with inferior graphics on every map because of it.
Its annoying that stuff happens, but hey, online people who splitscreen ALWAYS get hos, so you cant complain too much…it makes no sense how someone with 4 people on one xbox, who split the hosts connection into 4, always get host, regardless of how bad the connection is.
The only upside to split-screen is you get host a lot.
I’m from Australia and last time I played split-screen at a friends it was vs. a bunch of Swedes, I rolled host and they lagged terribly despite being green-bar.
Split-screeners seems to get priority when it comes to host which is illogical IMO.
> You can’t make single screen look as good when you have to account for split screen play.
No, but you can make it run well. The first three Halo games proved this. Bungie just bit off more than they could chew graphically in Halo Reach.
Look at Halo 3. Does that game have bad graphics? When you played Halo 3 in splitscreen, the reductions in graphics that were made to gain the required extra processing power were much more subtle.
I have my theories as to why that is, but it doesn’t really matter. Bungie didn’t plan the local multiplayer modes in Reach well, and the quality of the game is what paid the price.
> > You can’t make single screen look as good when you have to account for split screen play.
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> No, but you can make it run well. The first three Halo games proved this. Bungie just bit off more than they could chew graphically in Halo Reach.
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> Look at Halo 3. Does that game have bad graphics? When you played Halo 3 in splitscreen, the reductions in graphics that were made to gain the required extra processing power were much more subtle.
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> I have my theories as to why that is, but it doesn’t really matter. Bungie didn’t plan the local multiplayer modes in Reach well, and the quality of the game is what paid the price.
Bungie obviously didn’t even know how to use The Forge well. Look at Asylum, there is Z-fighting on the center structure (where it flashes back and forth between objects). This is not good for frame rate but single screen can get past it for the most part. There are remakes by experienced forgers that do a better job with frame rate. They also had time, after the game was released, to mess with forge and figure out what worked and what didn’t.
All you people need to stop forcing the gaming industry to put graphics at the top of their list of priority’s. I could play on N64 graphics for the rest of my life.
> All you people need to stop forcing the gaming industry to put graphics at the top of their list of priority’s. I could play on N64 graphics for the rest of my life.
I don’t have a problem with good graphics inherently. It’s just when they ruin or hinder the gameplay.
> > All you people need to stop forcing the gaming industry to put graphics at the top of their list of priority’s. I could play on N64 graphics for the rest of my life.
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> I don’t have a problem with good graphics inherently. It’s just when they ruin or hinder the gameplay.
I have a problem with good graphics because it takes away focus from more important aspects of the game, like a functional forge or splitscreen.
Graphics do absolutely nothing for gameplay except maybe in RPG’s where it adds to the immersion of the world you are in.
I could care less how pretty the world looks when I am poopin on noobs.
Honestly, I think Bungie -Yoinked!- up with a lot of Reach, but the split screen is really not their fault. It is MS and the 6 year old 360. Do you remember what the first 360 Games looked like? And now what they look like? Graphics have improved IMMENSELY on the SAME HARDWARE. The fact that you have to install Reach to not get any frame rate issues, and what split screen looks like is clearly evidence of that. It’s REALLY going to suck if H4 comes out for the 360 and xbox doesn’t update it’s -Yoink-. Which is probably what will happen.