Halo 3 - multiplayer

Last week, I gave you my thoughts on the Halo 3 singleplayer campaign. As promised, here are my impressions of the multiplayer.

As I said last week, the multiplayer is good. The game is a very fast paced FPS and has a completely different feel from Gears of War, which had a much slower pace. Having said that, after a couple of weeks play, I realised that you can't just run around like a maniac (unless you want to get killed very quickly) and that the game does a good job of mixing in teamwork and tactical play.

To be honest, there really isn't much I can say about the multiplayer gameplay for H3. If you have ever played a fast paced FPS before, then you know exactly what to expect. And if you haven't, then quite frankly, you would be better off going to one of the professional review sites rather than reading the brief commentary that I would have on it on my blog. Suffice to say, the gameplay does everything right - nice controls, smooth action, well balanced weapons etc etc. Nothing earth-shatteringly innovative (with the possible exception of equipment) but definitely polished into an extremely fun package. As I said, if you want to know how good the multiplayer is, read one of the professional reviews - they do a much better job of telling you how good the multiplayer is.

One of the things which is groundbreaking (imo) is the theater function. As I mentioned before, the game automatically records games which you can then go back into and watch. This is a really cool feature. So far, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in the theater rewatching some of my matches (look out for more gameplay examples in future!).

One of the other great functions of the game is that Bungie keep detailed stats of your game. I won't talk too much about that here as I have blogged about it before.

So, onto the faults and other stuff that I didn't like.

First off (and this is no fault of Bungies) - damn, I really hate 90% of people on Xbox Live! You see, my favourite gametype is team objective games. This is stuff like Capture the Flag, Plant the Bomb etc. In these kinds of games, you really need to play like a team if you want any chance of winning. However, in most of the games I play on Live, the people on my team don't even bother to connect the mic. Or even when they do, they don't bother speaking.

What the f*$k is the point of playing a team game if you aren't going to communicate with your team!!! It is so incredibly frustrating to start a game of Capture the Flag and then find everybody runs around on their own to get killed in piecemeal fashion. I know how good this game could be based on the rare times that I actually managed to get a group which spoke with each other. Unfortunately, these games are the exception.

Its gotten to the point at the moment where I rarely play team objective games anymore. Nowadays, I mainly play team slayer which is basically team deathmatch. In these games, talking to your teammates, although beneficial, isn't essential so I can still have a good game of H3 without all the frustration from the lack of communication in the team games. One unexpected benefit of this is that my kill/death ratio has been rising recently as I'm focusing on getting kills instead of focusing on trying to meet the team objective (and dieing miserably in the process).

The second really annoying thing (and this is Bungies fault) is that there is no way to search for the kind of game that you want to play. There are a lot of default game types (including zombie game types). Furthermore, the Forge function in the game really allows you to be very creative in coming up with new gametypes. The problem is that there is no way to search for these gametypes so it becomes really hard to play them.

The matchmaking system in H3 only gives you random maps and random gametypes within certain specified parameters. So for example, I can specify a team objective game type or a team slayer game type. However, the exact game type and map are chosen at random. However, these random game types are limited to several game types only and ignore some of the game types which come as standard. For example, Bungie created a zombie variant of the game which doesn't come up in matchmaking.

This means that in order to play a zombie game, you have to setup a custom game. This in itself is no big deal. The problem is that you can't search for custom game types when you want to play - which means that if you want to play a zombie game, you either need a lot of real life friends who can play with you or you need to hope that random people you meet online are willing to join you for a game of zombies. Who the hell thought that was a good idea!!??

Just to give you an idea of how bad this is, some gameplayers have created their own custom gamefinder online. Basically, you can register a profile and create an entry for your custom game. People who are interested can register for the game and join in at the appropriate time. Although this kinda solves the problem, I'm not really interested as I can't be bothered running back and forth between my PC and my Xbox between every game for the purpose of registering for another game!!

The third thing about the game I'm unsure about is the melee system. In order to try and eradicate host advantage (host advantage is the fact that the host doesn't have lag), Bungie made an "interesting" decision about the melee system. Basically, they created a rather large window whereby if two people both melee each other within that window, then the person who has the most health wins.

To understand the issue with this, you have to realise that melee in this game is absolutely lethal. A couple of rounds from an Assualt Rifle coupled with a melee attack will kill you. The melee system which Bungie have adopted basically results in a situation where, if two players are running at each other and firing, the player with the slower reaction time will win.

Let me repeat that - the player with the slower reaction time wins. Why? Because the person with the faster reaction time hits melee as soon as they are within melee range. The person with the slower reaction fires off a couple more bullets first before starting his melee. As the melee system has quite a large window, the person with slower reaction time is still within the melee window. However, as he fired off a couple more bullets with his weapon, he has more health and wins the melee. The "better" player (ie player with better reaction time) ends up dying.

As you can imagine, this has pissed off a lot of people on the forums. Its also an issue which Bungie have acknowledged and are looking at again. I guess the problem is how to resolve the issue. Possibly, just a reduction in the window time may be enough to fix this problem. In any event, lag in an online game is a very real issue and how to deal with it can cause problems. Anyway, the fact that they tried to account for lag has already made H3 better than GoW where the host advantage was quite severe (and well documented).

One last point before I log off - despite my primarily harping on about the faults of H3, please remember that I do really enjoy the multiplayer aspect of it. I think Bungie have done a great job with H3. The only reason I haven't waxed lyrical is that there are plenty of professional reviews online which can do a much better job than me in telling you how good this game is.