A Much Needed Update
Sorry I've been letting my video game blog go to waste. As my only reader knows well (i.e., my wife), it's not that I haven't been gaming. On the contrary, I've been gaming A LOT.
So, what have I been up to? Well, let's see. . . . Mostly a lot of Halo 3. I've been tinkering with the Forge, but I'm not really that good at it. I've been playing a lot of Team Slayer based games, and am really enjoying the Mythic Map Pack.
My favorite map has to be Sandbox--and not just because of its Forgeability. I really like the default layout--it's fun for Slayer and for CTF games. Yes, I actually enjoy CTF on Sandbox, provided I'm not stuck on a team with a bunch of imbeciles (or, alternately, matched up against a team full of Generals and the like).
My next favorite map has to be Assembly--which is a tiny, but incredibly fun map. Team Swat is INSANE on this map--especially when just about any spawn point is already within range of a shooter. At the same time, while there are points that a well-coordinated team can control and use to dominate, it's not a map you can camp on, because it's so small and so symmetrical.
Orbital is probably my least favorite map, but I'm starting--starting, mind you, to get the hang of it. The long hallways make it fun for Swat and BR matches--anything else starts to become painful, because whichever team has the power weapons wields a huge advantage. Despite my suckiness, though, this has to be my favorite for SWAT matches. A team sniper match would be interesting, but probably a little too insane.
Another interesting thing for the ninjas out there is that, despite it's long open hallways, there's a few secret passages that ninjas can use to sneak around in--a nice touch.
It'll be really interesting to see what happens when Mythic is open to the non-Halo Wars LCE owners and becomes part of the matchmaking as a whole. Finally, I hope, I won't be the lowest ranking member of a match (despite being a Captain, Grade 3). I'm getting a little sick of being pwned by Brigadiers and Commanders (not to mention the crazy proportion of Generals in this playlist).
Speaking of Halo Wars, I've spent a lot of time playing that. I haven't finished the campaign yet, so I'm not going to give a full review yet, but here are some of my initial impressions.
Ensemble has done a fantastic job bringing an RTS to the console. You can really tell that they designed this, from the ground up, for the 360 controller. The menus are simple and intuitive, the unit selection is pretty good (all your basic functions are there) and the tech tree is well-designed.
One of the key aspects to any RTS is the balance between the factions. This is one thing that I'm iffy on when it comes to the online multiplayer. In my experience, the Covenant is crazy powerful right at the beginning of the game because of their leader powers. But, if I survive the first 5-10 minutes, I've won probably 95% of the time. Whenever I see the Covenant is my opponent, the first thing I do is build as large an army as possible before worrying about serious upgrades. And even then, if they attack early I still usually lose.
I haven't yet tried playing as the Covenant, because their opening strategy is so cheap it reminds me of my friend Travis' infamous 'Commander Drop' strategy in Total Annihilation (basically sacrificing the Commander to use him as a free nuke). I may try playing them to see if you can win without the cheapness, otherwise I'll stick with the UNSC.
One thing, less so about the Covenant (though, again, I haven't used them yet), that I like is that which leader you pick gives you significantly different strategic choices. Think of the leaders as providing three sub-factions.
I've switched between the three UNSC leaders quite a bit. For a while I was enamored with Professor Anders because of her discount on tech tree upgrades, but against a good opponent the Hawks are just too weak of a super unit (not to mention that the Cryo bomb, her main leader power, is annoying but not truly destructive). Lately I've had good success with Captain Cutter, because the ODSTs are simply bad ass.
The other nice thing is that, with the right combination of units, I can beat up another person's army, then hot drop ODSTs (essentially creating 10 units nearly instantaneously) to use as reinforcements to either pursue the offensive or defend my front base while I rebuild my other units.
Another thing I've noticed is that it--as much as Halo Wars was billed by Ensemble as a fast-paced RTS [and it is]--it really pays to patient. I've learned the hard way that (so far) the best strategy is to wait for the other player to attack, or feint in order to provoke them so that you can fight in the shadow of your own base. Doing that, the turrets provide a significant firepower advantage that will allow a good deal of your army to survive while theirs is beat to shreds. From there, you can quickly re-build (or if you're strong enough), launch an immediate counter-attack.
The other thing that gives Cutter such a huge advantage is that, while you need a good mix of vehicles and air units along with the ODSTs to succeed, your main attack unit is so much cheaper resource-wise than the other two leaders. That gives a huge advantage to Cutter in longer matches that boil down to wars of attrition. I learned that the hard way when I was playing as Anders--I'd repeatedly get pwned by players using Cutter because I'd eventually exhaust my resources building the more expensive units. Plus, the re-build time for infantry (even if you don't hot-drop) is so much faster than vehicles and air units.
Another thing I need to try is 2v2 or 3v3 matches. I can imagine that if you have a good partner, those would be lots of fun. But we'll see.
So, what have I been up to? Well, let's see. . . . Mostly a lot of Halo 3. I've been tinkering with the Forge, but I'm not really that good at it. I've been playing a lot of Team Slayer based games, and am really enjoying the Mythic Map Pack.
My favorite map has to be Sandbox--and not just because of its Forgeability. I really like the default layout--it's fun for Slayer and for CTF games. Yes, I actually enjoy CTF on Sandbox, provided I'm not stuck on a team with a bunch of imbeciles (or, alternately, matched up against a team full of Generals and the like).
My next favorite map has to be Assembly--which is a tiny, but incredibly fun map. Team Swat is INSANE on this map--especially when just about any spawn point is already within range of a shooter. At the same time, while there are points that a well-coordinated team can control and use to dominate, it's not a map you can camp on, because it's so small and so symmetrical.
Orbital is probably my least favorite map, but I'm starting--starting, mind you, to get the hang of it. The long hallways make it fun for Swat and BR matches--anything else starts to become painful, because whichever team has the power weapons wields a huge advantage. Despite my suckiness, though, this has to be my favorite for SWAT matches. A team sniper match would be interesting, but probably a little too insane.
Another interesting thing for the ninjas out there is that, despite it's long open hallways, there's a few secret passages that ninjas can use to sneak around in--a nice touch.
It'll be really interesting to see what happens when Mythic is open to the non-Halo Wars LCE owners and becomes part of the matchmaking as a whole. Finally, I hope, I won't be the lowest ranking member of a match (despite being a Captain, Grade 3). I'm getting a little sick of being pwned by Brigadiers and Commanders (not to mention the crazy proportion of Generals in this playlist).
Speaking of Halo Wars, I've spent a lot of time playing that. I haven't finished the campaign yet, so I'm not going to give a full review yet, but here are some of my initial impressions.
Ensemble has done a fantastic job bringing an RTS to the console. You can really tell that they designed this, from the ground up, for the 360 controller. The menus are simple and intuitive, the unit selection is pretty good (all your basic functions are there) and the tech tree is well-designed.
One of the key aspects to any RTS is the balance between the factions. This is one thing that I'm iffy on when it comes to the online multiplayer. In my experience, the Covenant is crazy powerful right at the beginning of the game because of their leader powers. But, if I survive the first 5-10 minutes, I've won probably 95% of the time. Whenever I see the Covenant is my opponent, the first thing I do is build as large an army as possible before worrying about serious upgrades. And even then, if they attack early I still usually lose.
I haven't yet tried playing as the Covenant, because their opening strategy is so cheap it reminds me of my friend Travis' infamous 'Commander Drop' strategy in Total Annihilation (basically sacrificing the Commander to use him as a free nuke). I may try playing them to see if you can win without the cheapness, otherwise I'll stick with the UNSC.
One thing, less so about the Covenant (though, again, I haven't used them yet), that I like is that which leader you pick gives you significantly different strategic choices. Think of the leaders as providing three sub-factions.
I've switched between the three UNSC leaders quite a bit. For a while I was enamored with Professor Anders because of her discount on tech tree upgrades, but against a good opponent the Hawks are just too weak of a super unit (not to mention that the Cryo bomb, her main leader power, is annoying but not truly destructive). Lately I've had good success with Captain Cutter, because the ODSTs are simply bad ass.
The other nice thing is that, with the right combination of units, I can beat up another person's army, then hot drop ODSTs (essentially creating 10 units nearly instantaneously) to use as reinforcements to either pursue the offensive or defend my front base while I rebuild my other units.
Another thing I've noticed is that it--as much as Halo Wars was billed by Ensemble as a fast-paced RTS [and it is]--it really pays to patient. I've learned the hard way that (so far) the best strategy is to wait for the other player to attack, or feint in order to provoke them so that you can fight in the shadow of your own base. Doing that, the turrets provide a significant firepower advantage that will allow a good deal of your army to survive while theirs is beat to shreds. From there, you can quickly re-build (or if you're strong enough), launch an immediate counter-attack.
The other thing that gives Cutter such a huge advantage is that, while you need a good mix of vehicles and air units along with the ODSTs to succeed, your main attack unit is so much cheaper resource-wise than the other two leaders. That gives a huge advantage to Cutter in longer matches that boil down to wars of attrition. I learned that the hard way when I was playing as Anders--I'd repeatedly get pwned by players using Cutter because I'd eventually exhaust my resources building the more expensive units. Plus, the re-build time for infantry (even if you don't hot-drop) is so much faster than vehicles and air units.
Another thing I need to try is 2v2 or 3v3 matches. I can imagine that if you have a good partner, those would be lots of fun. But we'll see.
