Hey guys, feel free to post your opinions about the weapon sounds of Anniversary in this thread. 
The first order of business is the Pistol! This thing is godly. I’ve always thought it sounded godly, too. Something about it has always satisfied. That said, I must also say I’m impressed with the update to its sound. It sounds different, but the good kind of different. Reloading sounds more detailed, as do melee attacks. This is going to sound strange and slightly unintelligible to some, but…I feel like I can feel the Pistol in the Master Chief’s hand. It’s calling my name, like that sweet foreign girl I met on a trip to Germany. The one with the…Well, that’s a story for a different time. The point here: The Pistol is sounding GREAT! I would say it’s not quite up to par with my nostalgia, but it’ll never be, so for the most part, just improve it where you can, but keep on this path with it.
Second, the Needler. I’ve always loved the Needler. I think any machine that can pack a body so full of pure, pink love crystals that it explodes on the spot is the definition of a real man’s weapon, so the Needler’s always been my “girl on the side” - the one I can lean on should my old girl, the God Pistol, fail me. So when I loaded up this video, I awaited with an eager sense of anticipation as they gave my faithful weapon a new voicebox, and I have to say this: It was hard to hear. First of all, the weapon firing sounded spot-on, how I imagined it updated. I want to congratulate your hard-working men and women there, 343 Industries. After this, however, the situation suddenly spiraled out of my control. I noticed the crystals didn’t look anywhere near as bright and illuminating as they did ten years ago, first. This took away the mood. Then further things went wrong when I couldn’t hear the needles bursting in the rock. I thought to myself, How strange… One can hear it fine in the 2001 portion of the video. So I replayed both versions, and I noticed that in 2001, the crystals would burst before the player reloaded, creating two separate sounds. In the 2011 version, however, the crystals burst as the player reloads. Here’s the difficult thing: I can’t tell if the reloading is drowning out the bursting sounds, or if they’re just really quiet bursting sounds. I listened multiple times just to make this distinction, and came to the conclusion that either way, this weapon still needs quite a bit of audio work. Further, the reload sounds off to me. It reminds me of a pulsing sound. Like they put a heart in my old friend, and at the beat of that heart, new needles pump out. This would be cool, but it’s never given me that very distinct impression in previous iterations, so I was thrown off. In my opinion, it just needs to be further iterated. Melee sounds perfectly cool to me, though. In conclusion, some of the things about the Needler were freaking sweet - I loved the sound of unloading the pure, pink love crystals into the rock, and the sound of the thrust of the weapon into dead air in a melee maneuver. But those two things aside, this weapon still needs some work as well. The audio of the bursting needles needs to be mixed better (to be a bit more prominent), and reloading needs to be altered. Good work, but not there yet.
Now, we have the Plasma Rifle. I have to admit that I was apprehensive about this weapon. I’ve never been a huge fan of it, plain and simple. I was wrong to feel like this, though, as I was still able to recognize differences in the versions quite distinctly. I will sum it up like this: Anniversary has it all wrong thus far. Pulling the trigger won’t give you the same sound it once did. Instead, it sounds similar, but foreign. Each ball of plasma sounds more individual, for one. But I can hear the original audio in there. The thing that throws me is that a new layer seems to have been added. It gives it more bite, sure, but it also makes it feel just a bit less familiar. That said, melee sounds fine, in my opinion. But cooling the weapon sounds off as well. One can now seemingly hear heat seething out of the vents, but at the same time, it doesn’t sound like this. It’s strange. I do appreciate the mechanical sound of the flaps moving back into place; that’s a good touch. But it’s the actual cooling sound that needs to be a bit altered, in my opinion. Conclusion: Anniversary makes the Plasma Rifle sound familiar, but not familiar enough. It has more bite, and the new sounds are manageable, but I’d simply prefer a bit more familiarity, myself. Also, cooling down should be redone; add the cool blue plasma effects back along the barrel, while eliminating that too-audible hissing sound. Keep the mechanical returns, though.
