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Digg: TeamXbox.com: “Halo 3 Sucks” - An Analysis

Many of my original readers came from TeamXbox.com.  It was in the TeamXbox forums in early 2005 that really escalated my passion for the brand, and got me started on what eventually became UNSCleric.com.  Many of the people in the TXB forums were very well-informed and always had great opinions and information to share.  However there were a select few who made the experience very rotten far too often.  Within a couple weeks of the Xbox 360 launch, I was permanently banned from even viewing the TeamXbox forums due to being positive about the system.  I spent many hours exposing people with “problems” as frauds who didn’t even have the hard to find console, and when I ended up doing that to someone who was a long-time anti-Xbox vet of the forums, I was done for.  It didn’t help me that many of the TXB staff did not own Xbox’s by their own admission and did not think fondly of the Xbox 360.  This is not what this post is going to be about, but I thought some back story was in order. 

I have asked why I was banned, and the only answer I get is that it is permanent.  I actually thank TXB for their actions, as it got me to make my site even better, get a real site domain, and start a campaign against the corruption in the industry, which TXB is a part of.

Here are some excerpts from TeamXbox’s Xbox 360 Wireless Controller review, way back from November 2005.  The article is written by Cesar, who does nearly every article for the site, especially the negative ones.

“I believe Microsoft has gone about the wrong way.

The most critical one is the proximity between both triggers and the respective shoulder buttons. Close in distance and aligned at the same depth, both pairs tend to be confused between each other, resulting in a wrong button press.”

“Then, my second complaint with the Xbox 360 controller is the triggers.

“For some reason, the new triggers feel too short. They feel to me like just another pair of buttons and not like two gradual increase analog inputs.”

“I also have a problem with the closeness between the Start and X buttons. If the controller had as large a surface as the one found on the Duke, it would be fine, but in such a small space, those two buttons are too close.”

This is almost comical, I know, but we have a long way to go, and here’s the kicker:

I don’t know if the next-generation begins with the Xbox 360, but I do know that with this gamepad the wireless controller era starts.

He doesn’t know if the next-generation starts with the Xbox 360…it’s almost too ridiculous to even counter.  The fact that the Xbox 360 has more superior technology in many areas when compared to the PS3, and had a custom GPU that wasn’t even available on the market when the Xbox 360 launched seem to have flew right over his head.

This was just the warm-up for the real story though, here’s what “Cesar”, the golden boy of TeamXbox had to say yesterday in a 3-page article slamming Xbox 360’s biggest game of the year.

First, he uses his assumption that the game would be released in the month of November to condemn the game, and Microsoft, time and time again.  He says that Bungie does not feel comfortable with Halo 3, and that Microsoft has forced them to set this deadline.

I refuse to believe Bungie was so comfortable with the development of Halo 3 that it let Microsoft know the game would be ready a couple of months earlier. If there’s something all developers love to have is more time to polish and fine tune their games…and it happens that “more” is never enough in game development.

Most of the time, it is the publisher that imposes some sort of deadline for developers to meet, and only a few game developers enjoy the “when it’s done” blank check.

He then goes on to say that Grand Theft Auto IV would steal all of Halo 3’s thunder, and that Microsoft is terrified of that.  Could someone tell this guy that Halo 2, on a system with an install base of less than 30 million, sold more in 24 hours than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas did in its first two weeks, with a console with a supposed install base of 100+ million?  (GTA:SA sold two million in October, Halo 2 sold 2.38 million on its first day)  Don’t worry, he’d just refuse to believe that fact as well.  It’s GTA that needs to be worried about Halo, and that is possible reason for GTA’s recent delay to mid-2008, besides the fact they were hampered by the PS3’s development tools.

Frankly, it’s pretty likely that, if Rockstar shipped an empty box with GTA IV on the front, the package would still sell millions and steal any game’s thunder.

After that comes the flood of gushing over Call of Duty 4, which people tell me Cesar has been doing non-stop.

We saw Halo 3 behind closed doors and, although the game looks better than what you saw in the multiplayer beta, it doesn’t look as good as last year’s Gears of War, and it definitely can’t match Call of Duty 4 in terms of visuals and realism.

Since Microsoft is the platform’s maker, it has access to all the games that are being developed for the system, so after seeing the pre-alpha code of Call of Duty 4 we all have seen—and knowing that Activision plans to ship the game between October and November—just maybe the software giant decided along with Bungie that the best month to release Halo 3 would be September.

After both games are out, we’ll be able to tell if Call of Duty 4 was indeed the game that forced Microsoft to release Halo 3 before November.

How will we be able to tell exactly?  Possibly the sales records that Halo will once again break might be a good indicator.  We’ll see if and when TeamXbox ever decides to report on that though.

Cesar then goes on to number three of his ridiculous list, and claims that the three-year old port of Half-Life 2 with its expansion packs (aka The Orange Box compilation) are the biggest threat to Halo 3.  This is the same guy that will go on to attack Halo 3 as Halo 2.5 and as a rehash later in the article, how ironic.

Like any other game in development for the system, Microsoft has access to the titles and it could have realized that The Orange Box could be a real threat to Halo 3.

Right, let’s move on to the next one.  He goes on to say that Halo 3 is coming out on September 25th due to Microsoft’s stock and its fiscal quarter ending on September 30th.  I’ve been called a conspiracy theorist on this site before, but this guy is way out there compared to me.  Microsoft has shown in the past that it doesn’t really about profits when it comes to the Xbox division, and is certainly not going to rush its biggest game of all-time because it might give them a $100 million boost at the end of a quarter.  Absolutely ridiculous.

This would help the ill-fated Xbox division make those huge red numbers (such as those generated by the extended warranty) smaller.

Ill-fated Xbox division huh?  Is that why Xbox 360 has lead the next-generation for as long as it has existed?  Maybe Cesar doesn’t consider that though, since he doesn’t know if the Xbox 360 is next-gen or not.

Cesar then goes on to say the following,

Halo 3 Sucks—It’s Just Halo 2.5…and Microsoft Knows It
From the very first moment I learned about Halo 3’s features, I was a little concerned the game would be a rehash of the Halo 2 leftovers.

Halo 3 is a rehash, but Call of Duty 4, Grand Theft Auto 4, and the port of a three-year old game (which was also a sequel), are its biggest threats?  Hypocrisy at its finest, but wait, it gets better.

Even Bungie has acknowledged that it committed many mistakes in the development of Halo 2.

I think I speak for all of us: we all expected a giant leap forward with the first Halo game for the Xbox 360. After seeing games such as Gears of War or Crysis, the bar for next-generation games has been raised to a new level, and I expected Halo 3 to reach that level.

First of all, he links to an old article that Bungie themselves have condemned as being blown way out of proportion.  Even with that aside, Bungie is saying that Halo 2, one of the greatest selling games of last-generation, was a product of them not planning well and not polishing a game.  Halo 3 has had months and months of polish, with Bungie’s team nearly tripling in number back in early 2005, and work being done on the game for years, whereas Halo and Halo 2 had less than a year of dev time each.  Of course Cesar will overlook these  facts to push forward his agenda of slamming the Xbox 360’s biggest game of the year on a supposed Xbox fan-site.

 He then goes on to compare Halo to Gears of War, which is one of the most over-used subjects in gaming today.  Once again, they are completely different games, with completely different gameplay, developer visions, game engines, focus, everything.

In an interview with Swedish magazine LEVEL, Brian Jarrard said (with bold emphasis being mine):

“We definitely have another strategy than Epic Games when it comes to graphics. We’ll never engulf our game environments in lots of details like that. GOW looks absolutely fantastic, but we want to avoid compromising Halo’s unique visual style. That’s why we’re making a clean, sharp game as opposed to one with insane amount of details.”

I completely disagree with such a claim. After watching the Halo Wars trailer and seeing such rich level of detail in the Covenant armors and weapons, as well as in the UNSC marines, I expected for the first Xbox 360 Halo game to have more detailed visuals; obviously with a minor LOD due to the fact that the Halo Wars trailer was made of pre-rendered CGI while Halo 3 is made of real-time graphics.

Yes, let us compare and draw conclusions on Halo 3 to a CGI-trailer for an entirely different game made by Ensemble Studios.  Is this a joke or what?  This article has quickly degraded into the kinds of trash you would see on a poorly-run gaming forum, but since this article is highlighted on a very prominent Xbox website, it needs to be picked apart, and I have a feeling no one else is going to do it.

So after condemning Halo 3 for not looking like a CGI video created by the ‘Blur’ CGI graphics team, he moves on to the (other) tired argument of Halo not having multiplayer bots.

When asked about bots in multiplayer, designer Jaime Griesemer would have justified the lack of bots in Halo 3 as a result of being an “immense undertaking.” According to translations found across forum boards, Griesemer told LEVEL magazine (and, again, bold emphasis is mine):

“A lot of people ask us about bots. They think that the AI in Halo was pretty damn good, and would work well in MP as well, but it’s really not that simple. The enemies in Halo are optimized for encountering the player in large numbers. They would be a lot worse at abstract thought AI like ‘I have to defend my flag’ and so forth. In short, to create bots for Halo would be an immense undertaking, and we rather put that time into making new levels, weapons and net code.”

Well, that excuse is not valid in my opinion, because it sounds like the lack of bots in Halo 3 is actually a problem of human resources rather than a technical barrier to create computer-controlled players like those seen in Unreal Tournament. If this info is accurate, why didn’t Bungie hire more engineers and put them to work on AI code for bots, instead of on such things as Saved Films?!

Once again, Cesar compares Halo to a game it has very little in common with to try and make some ridiculous point.  Unreal Tournament, a game that involves nothing but running and spraying bullets from whatever gun you’re holding, probably isn’t hard to create bots for, as its core gameplay is over a decade old and bots for that kind of game have been mastered.  Halo, on the other hand, has such intricate level/weapon layout, not to mention game types, that having bots that are actually fun to play with is not a possibility, at least not one that is worth the resources and time.  Cesar then goes on to say that Bungie should have scrapped the Saved Films feature, of the most innovative and amazing features of Halo 3, in return for the massively pointless bots.  Ever heard of Xbox Live Cesar?  Check it out some time.

Cesar then goes on to say that some people from Bungie left after the first Halo game was done, like it has had some kind of effect on anything.  All the main guys in Bungie are still there, and that is the reason why he doesn’t name the people who left, since it matters 0%.

Next, he quotes two “anonymous” game editors that he contacted for their opinion on Halo 3.  I think it is safe to assume that these quotes were either made up by Cesar himself, or are the opinion of fellow anti-Xbox/Halo TXB staff members.

Am I the only one who thinks all this? I contacted other game journalists and two of them shared with me the following comments. (Bungie has publicly acknowledged they have ninjas, so these two editors want to remain anonymous.)

Anonymous Game Editor #1

Does Halo 3 live up to the hype? No.
Does Halo 3 look better than Gears of War? No.
Halo 3 = HD Bunny Hopping Combat.

Anonymous Game Editor #2

Here’s what I think: Bungie had a “Bring Your Kid to Work” day…but then the parents never came back. So the kids found an old build of Halo 2 in development and finished Halo 3 based on that.

With those additional childish comments done with, Cesar moves on to finally finish this miserable excuse for an article.

Much as the conclusions of these two editors, I’m afraid that Halo 3 will be just more of the same stuff we saw in Halo 2—something that for many of you must be good news, but in the end, it means Halo 3 is just a sequel and not a revolutionary installment that pushes the series again to the forefront of console gaming.

If that’s the case, Microsoft knows better than anyone what Halo 3 is and, more importantly, what it is not. This may have caused the software giant to release the game well before some other big titles, such as Call of Duty 4, The Orange Box, Unreal Tournament 3, Crysis and the publisher’s own Mass Effect.

This Christmas, all these games will be out and the 2007’s Game of the Year awards will confirm if I was wrong or damn right. Until then, Halo fans, feel free to flame the messenger!

That last line says it all, this article was flame-bait, which IGN/TeamXbox and its staff obviously get off on, not to mention the attention they garner from their ridiculous statements.  As you can see, TeamXbox (and IGN) is loaded with ads, and more hits = more $$$.  At the end of this article, Cesar once again compares Halo 3 to Crysis, a game tailored for high-end computers for release this fall.  I cannot even wrap my head around how Crysis, a game aimed at hardcore PC gamers, has anything to do with Halo 3.

This is just another example of how the mainstream gaming media is a pathetic joke.  I’m not going to flame Cesar himself, as I’m sure he gets paid well to write the things he does, but don’t expect everyone to stand by and take your articles as gospel.  I know you’re playing to your small core of anti-Xbox/Halo staff and readers, but this article will be looked at as baseless trash by the masses, something more suitable for a gossip magazine than a prominent gaming site.

(Also posted on Bungie.net)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Site News, Xbox 360 News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.