#riley plays halo: ce spv3

[veeranger]

ok here are my thoughts on SPV3.2′s rendition of Halo CE’s first level: The Pillar of Autumn, which i played last night. 

please keep in mind these are my subjective opinions based on my single playthrough of the level on normal difficulty, and that i have nothing but respect for the obviously large amount of effort put into this mod by its creators. 

first of all its great that this level skips the camera orientation shit even on normal difficulty, thank god. 

so basically the level plays out exactly the same as it did in the original game with the exception of the weapons behaving differently, until you get to that one staircase room that was a nightmare on legendary in the original game. its clever actually because the enemies are positioned on the same side as you but above so you run up the stairs and turn around to find yourself face to face with....a brute! not an elite but a brute in the halo 2 style. 

with the brute comes their signature brute shot, brute plasma rifle, a new brute plasma pistol, and a new weapon called the shredder, a brute version of the needler that lacks the projectile tracking of its sister weapon but has a much higher projectile speed making it very fun to use and extremely deadly to unshielded foes including the brutes, who all lack energy shields like the halo 2 and halo reach variants, which makes sense. gameplay wise they’re much less of damage sponges than they were in halo 2 however i did notice that theyre markedly less aggressive again compared to their halo 2 iteration. i have yet to see a brute do its signature charge, but im going to chalk this up to engine limitations and not developer oversight, for all i know these brutes are probably just reskinned elites with no shields. brute chieftains are also missing alongside their iconic gravity hammers, though i assume this is engine limitations preventing something like that from existing. 

 now all this said i am sorely missing the spiker as the brute’s signature weapon because way too many of these bastards are carrying brute shots which can make encounters a bit frustrating at times, while paradoxically making other encounters far too easy due to the weapon’s ability to one shot weaker enemies and carry much more ammo than its halo 2/3 counterparts. it also makes vehicle segments suck sometimes because there are 2-4 brutes with these things knocking your warthog around but thats for the next level.

anyway back to the level, it quickly takes a turn into uncharted territory with a major detour that has you going through large storage areas and a lot more hallways before you finally end up back on track in the original level. i dont hate this per say and it certainly spices the familiar levels up but i can’t say i love how long these new areas are. i think i spent at least 30 minutes on this level and most of that was the new areas. now this isnt bad per say and the areas were not explicitly poorly designed, though i wasnt the biggest fan to be honest, its more so that the level becomes a slog after a while with no end in sight. i also think this addition muddles the intended game design of a tight corridor shooter than blossoms out into a massive open sandbox in the second level but that is not relevant really so i will not actually put stock into that opinion. 

after getting through the new stuff you just drop back into the original level and the rest of it plays out basically the same as it would otherwise, new sandbox notwithstanding. if this level and the second level are showing me any kind of pattern, its that i can expect every level to just suddenly branch into new content before eventually falling back on the original level path and playing out like that. more on this in other level reviews i’m sure. 

all said it was not the best level ive ever played and it dragged on too much but i wouldnt say it was all bad. i had fun more or less and i will say the level ran together pretty organically even with the new additions. oh yeah theres a few extremely minor environmental manipulations you can do like turning gravity down in some areas giving you moon physics and turning on auto turrets in some battles. nothing major but still cool. 

i dont think i want to speak on weapons yet because i havent gotten to use everything yet but i dont like this mod’s assault rifle. it added the smg from halo 2/3 (which i also dont like in this mod) so now the ar is the 32 round variant with a severely nerfed rate of fire which doesnt feel very good to me. the smg has way too much kick to fill the roll of the original ce assault rifle so i feel a little lost without a reliable spray and pray gun, but i suppose comparing and contrasting to the original game is a bit pointless considering this mod really wants to be a totally different experience. still i dont like the ar and im not crazy about the smg. 

i will speak on grenades though, there are two new ones, a clusterbomb which is self explanatory and a gravity bomb, which pulls enemies into it and then weakly explodes, killing weaker enemies and usually dropping elite shields. interesting additions to the sandbox but i feel like the clusterbombs make frags redundant.  

this mod has armor abilities now like halo reach, taking the place of your flashlight when equipped. i assume this has to be this way otherwise i would want to berate them for making me kill my flashlight for sprint or VISOR, which is basically just the detective vision mode from odst but in a really displeasing color pallet. now im nitpicking but yknow. the game is still very dark in a lot of places thanks to this mod still using halo ce’s original lighting engine or just respecting the fact that it was like that for a fucking reason unlike anniversary edition, so losing the flashlight is a real pain sometimes. 

oh also this mod changed the HUD, now your shields and health are where the should be, in the top middle of the screen like in every halo game starting with 3.  

anyway i think thats all i have to say about level 1, not a massively successful first impression but it was not bad and i did not hate it. pretty so-so for me. the next level i’ll have more positives to talk about i think

[veeranger]

 my thoughts on SPV3.2′s rendition of Halo CE’s second level: Halo, which i played about 30 minutes ago. 

please keep in mind these are my subjective opinions based on my single playthrough of the level on normal difficulty, and that i have nothing but respect for the obviously large amount of effort put into this mod by its creators.

i liked this one :)

as you may or may not know, halo (level 2) was where halo (the game) really opened up. level 1 was a lot of tight corridors and claustrophobic rooms, this was intentional game design to get you used to the controls and sandbox in a smaller controlled environment before level 2 drops you into this big open area and says go fucking get em. 

SPV3′s rendition of this level contains this feeling excellently, opening up the game in a big way and letting you run around large open areas even more so than the original. the new content in this mission comes in the form of a large open area with three towers guarded by a ton of enemies and turrets at each, and your objective in this area is to rescue three squads of marines from these towers. gameplay in this area is fun and tight, driving around in the warthog or the gungoose from halo 5 is a blast, just as fun as it should be. its classic halo vehicle combat.

this level’s new content doesnt end there though, there’s another area that’s even better. introducing wraiths very early, this area contains 3 of them all at once as well as a number of ghosts and ground troops for you to mow down. the area features a lot of forerunner structures including an interior area you have to advance up in to hijack an anti air wrath and use it to blow up some dropships. the whole encounter felt like halo at its best, i honestly could see this section right at home in halo 3. as a nice bonus there are plenty of extra hogs scattered all around and tons of marines to fill your seats if you lose a hog or a gunner. its cool to see so many friendly ai around a battlefield even if they didnt seem to be doing much most of the time and still cant drive warthogs due to ai limitations. which is a real shame because it really feels set up to be this huge vehicle battle but alas. 

the gauss hog makes a debut here as well, though it feels a bit powered down from its genuine article counterpart, and it doenst give you a chance to use it until after the vehicle vs vehicle combat is over, unless im dumb and missed it earlier. would not recommend bringing this thing into a battle against foot troops over the chaingun hog, your gunner doesnt seem to be a very good shot with it. still its fun that its in the game and im hoping it will get time to shine later.

as i discussed last time, eventually the new content feeds back into the original stuff, and the mission continues as normal from there, save for new enemies and such. this is where the level starts to drag but thats honestly probably because i dont actually like level 2 all that much anyway, like the normal version i mean. 

oh i also wanted to point out that enemy encounters seem larger on average which is nice, and walking through the battlefield with just like dozens of covenent bodies littering the place was pretty fuckin cool. 

also this mod added back in something from the old 1999 macworld demo back when halo was an RTS, fauna on installation 04! right from the second the level starts you’ll find these big toothed large dog sized animals in packs roaming around. usually theyre neutral and im not sure what set them off but i saw a bunch of them attacking and killing a brute squad which was fucking amazing to see so major props for putting that together. i was never hit by them and i couldnt tell if they were every trying to get me but i think some of them were running at my hog with murderous intent so, thats fun. very very excellent to see something like that added in. 

so bottom line this level was pretty damn good overall. hoping to see some more like it next time i play