Halo: MCC (XSX|S/XB1/Steam/Win10) - Combat Evolved GR games on Wednesday nights.

It’s opinion but I thought lots of areas in the OG CE we’re far too dark, not the night parts where it’s understandable but if you’re running around a covenant ship or forerunner building it feels counter intuitive that these would be so dark, especially covenant ships and structures internally.

Just fired up Two Betrayals and while some of the new texture work is overly complex the reflections and shine on things again lends itself better to the ‘other worldly’ aesthetic, in comparison, the bulk of these areas look like they made out of precast concrete.

Of course opinions are gonna opinion, but I disagree!

The first visit to the Truth and Reconciliation is made all the better by how dark and mysterious it feels - you know you are somewhere different, somewhere you do not understand and are not meant to be - it's dark and hard to navigate which helps to add to the tension. With the new graphics it's like being in a neon strip mall with how bright everything is.

The same goes for the Forerunner structures you encounter - they feel dark and oppressive - cold, clinical, sleeping labyrinths that you have stumbled upon. There's a tangible sense of being inside something dormant waiting to be re-awoken, the darkness makes it feel larger than it is, more unsettling - but again the new graphics blow this all out by adding both too much light and too much detail. Both the scale and lack of detail on the structures is a sign that they were constructed by someone or something that doesn't conform to the standard "human" proportions of the UNSC or Covenant. What could possibly have moved and constructed such massive, clean, uniform blocks of metal? It all makes the player feel uncomfortable and incompatible with the locations. But the new graphics just make it look like lots of standard sci-fi panels and prefabs blobbed together which loses much of this feeling for me.

EDIT: Also I forgot, another plus of the original Forerunner location look and design is that these spaces often evoke an almost temple/church feel with their shapes and use of space - this is also something that is reduced by the newer graphics.

Yep, I agree with Jenuall and, I'd argue, the general opinion about the remastered graphics in general.

The are too bright and too garish. They go overboard with the textures, the lighting is off and the image on screen is often too "busy".

The "alien-ness" of Halo's environments were never in the abundance of detail and textures, but in the stark architecture of its worlds and constructs. It conjured up a feeling of advanced alien tech through simple sleekness or imposing blocky buildings and towers.

Some of this was the graphical restrictions of the time, but there was something futuristic, alien clinical in its simple textures and shapes. The remastered graphics lose sight of this and try and do too much. It's often a problem with remasters as they think everything that is not up to modern day standards needs to be buffed as much as possible.

Do you reckon the supposedly advanced Covenant ever have any down-time, or are they just always ambling about, waiting to kill something?

Its been a while since I've played the original Halo, and Halo 2. This thread reminded me I bought it during lockdown 1 but never really got stuck in.

I love it. It stands up well still, it is fun.

Having played a bit this morning. I love the nostalgia hit from flicking between graphics, but I prefer the updated graphics.

I've taken some side by sides:

Shame Halo 2 campaign still has choppy framerates on Series X during busy combat sections. The performance doesn't seem to have improved much since playing on X1X

Those Halo 2 comparisons look more faithful than the CE upgrade so that's promising!

Finally gotten round to putting a good chunk of time into this over the course of yesterday evening and today and it really is a great collection :wub:

I’m playing through the campaigns in chronological order, so Reach was up first and while you kind of knew where the story was heading (it is a prequel after all) I thought it was very good! Think I paid £3 or so more to have Reach and ODST unlocked which was still a steal when I bought it (all 6 games for £18 or thereabouts). Did the first level of CE before calling it a day, quite liking jumping too and from the original graphics to the updated ones, for a 20 year old upscaled game, CE’s original graphics look really good in places, I imagine I’ll keep jumping between the two over the course of playing the game, the upgraded graphics look really good in places too as well though. I’ve not played any Halo in years so getting to revisit it in its current state is rather good :wub:

Not sure how much I’ll jump into the multiplayer once I’ve finished all the campaigns, might leave the online side of it till Infinite launches, rather than jumping into this so late (or is social relativity good at matchmaking newer players?) then I might be at least on a level footing, just not with the FPS skills mind :lol:

For the love of god get Gamepass, it’s triggering you’re paying for things we all have through GP!

I have got Game Pass now :lol:

runs out April 2024! Bought it when I just had 3 months of standard Game Pass to test it out and it was on sale for that price over Christmas last year so just bought it.

Started halo ce, which is the first time i’ve played it since the original xbox. Love how you can switch between the old look and the new look with one button press. The old looks brings back vibes and in some ways has better atmosphere, or maybe its nostalgia. The series x is a big fat nostalgia machine anyway, but with the work they have done on the upgrades, its so much bette than that. I do like that the ce version has markers on the floor to aid the casual gamer and the overall look is decent. I just hope infinite looks a lot better and runs at 60fps.

twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1387757151477714956

Not bad.

It's the thing that I've probably spent the most time on since getting GPU, it's great to have (virtually) the whole series just sat there ready to be played

Jenuall wrote:It's the thing that I've probably spent the most time on since getting GPU, it's great to have (virtually) the whole series just sat there ready to be played

It’s awesome. Very excited for infinite. I hope we get chance to preload it, which has been there for other games.

Halo 2 is a little better than I remember, but it's probably due to it being 4k/ 60fps and having nicer graphics, although not as great as I thought it would be. Looking forward to playing the others after this on GPU.

twitter.com/Halo/status/1679184492207153152

*Bump*

Hey guys.

As some of you are no doubt aware, for the past five months (Christ, has it been that long :lol:

) I've been running weekly retro-fps multiplayer games, with a focus on deathmatch.

We've played through a lot of classics in that time, and even a few surprises (Soldier of Fortune was unexpectedly great).
But I've always hated how restricted to PC we've been.
Only the first two Quake games were available to console players which meant once we moved past them, they weren't able to join in.

Well we've decided that our next three games will all be available to our Xbox owning forumites as well.
I know Cumberdanes had been asking about this as well so I wanted to make sure we got around to it at some point sooner than later.

Starting on Wednesday 13th, and for two weeks, we will be taking on Halo: Combat Evolved via the Master Chief collection. It's the easiest way to play it that's available to the most people. Especially being crossplay with PC.
After that, we will do a couple of weeks of the XBLA port of Perfect Dark. The port had an excellent multiplayer mode with even more options than the original game.
Then, wrapping things up we'll be heading back to Master Chief Collection for Halo 2.

Personally I'm looking forward to not having to write up instructions for everyone. That and manually setting up and configuring servers is a lot every week. :lol:

It'd be great to see some of you there. I know we had some really active Halo players back in the day and it would be fantastic to see some of you back.

You can find the retro-shooter thread in my sig, or just talk about it here. I'm interested to hear suggestions for what we can do for each game. I'd like to play stuff as close to the original game as possible in terms of game types and maps but I'm not as familiar with Halo as I am the PC shooters of the time.

How long do you usually play for? I probably couldn't get on until 10, 930ish at the earliest.

Halo 1 MP is horrible but I'll play....throw in Halo 2 and Halo 3 maps though, they are all old after all

Plus you can literally click on the games you want included in playlist randomly.

Ste wrote:How long do you usually play for? I probably couldn't get on until 10, 930ish at the earliest.

We usually start around 8 then go until 10-10:30ish. But there's nothing to stop people playing later if the mood takes us.
We get people starting at all times so you should be fine as long as you're not too late.
Certainly the more players we get, the more chances the games will last longer.

I also know Cumberdanes was specifically asking when we were doing these games, so there's a good change him and/or Pedz will be streaming it and I imagine that'll go on for a while. :lol:

Photek wrote:Halo 1 MP is horrible but I'll play....throw in Halo 2 and Halo 3 maps though, they are all old after all

Plus you can literally click on the games you want included in playlist randomly.

I think I only once played the original Halo in MP once. Pretty sure it was splitscreen on a tiny CRT. :lol:

Was good fun from what I remember though and I've played a decent amount of later Halo games online.

Halo 2 is the plan for after Perfect Dark. For all the games we've done so far I'm trying to keep the gameplay as "vanilla" or close to their original versions as is feasibly possible given the platforms and versions available.
So for the Halo CE weeks I want to limit us to just Halo CE maps, modes etc. Then same idea with Halo 2 once we get to it. Part of the reason I've been running these games is to see how they hold up, warts and all.

Halo 3 is a bit outside the scope of the "retro" vibe for me. I've mostly been going for (and excuse the term) Boomer shooter type games and Halo is already stretching that definition to breaking point as it really does signify the shift away from that type of game. The weapon limit, regenerating health etc. Anything that was "HD" when it came out is too new. :lol:

I am interested in knowing how to set up the games. Looking at it I (Or someone) would need to set up a custom playlist and then start a game while we're all partied up? It's been a long time since I did any console MP. :lol:

Halo: MCC (XSX|S/XB1/Steam/Win10) - Combat Evolved GR games on Wednesday nights.

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