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halonachos wrote:I looked at the metacritic ratings and had some fun with it. I know some people hate metacritic because of their scoring system, but it works for the most part.

Halo: 97
Halo 2: 95
Halo 3: 94
Halo ODST: 83

CoD United Offensive: 87
CoD Big Red One: 77
CoD 3: 83
CoD 5: 85
MW Reflex Edition for Wii: 76

What I get from this is that the Halo games while good, are overhyped and are gradually falling to pieces, now that Bungie works for Activision I doubt they will make anymore Halo games.

I also get that Treyarch made a fantastic PC game, but suffered on their first console game. They have continued working on it to improve the game for the consoles. Unfortunately they made the Wii version of MW, which got a lower rating which is most likely due to the Wii being the Wii. I use the ghosbusters game as an example.

I find it amusing that your data misses out the scores for Modern Warfare (94, 92 and less for other handhelds and PC) World at War (84) and Modern warfare 2 (94, 86 for PC).

Also haven't Bungie said that this is the best game yet about all of the Halo Games, and they have been getting worse and worse reviews.

Soladrin wrote:Wait... 83 is a low score for you people? YOU BE CRAZY!

It's not low. It's just not spectacular. And the Four Point scale is a real phenomenon. It happens because if a reviewer gives a game from a major publisher too low a score, the Publisher stops sending them games to review. The most blatant example is how Game Spot I believe it was, was denied access to Assassin's Creed 2 for review because their critics had given poor scores to other Ubisoft Games (EDIT: It might not be Game Spot. I can't seem to find the article. It was Game ____ I just need to find the right reviewer). A German reviewer was also propositioned by Ubisoft with the opportunity to review the game before any of its competitors if a good review was given. The reviewer turned it down.

One reviewer, Game Informer, even ADMITS the scale exists by stating in their own reviews section that a 7.5 is to be considered average, an 8.0 as good, 8.5 as great, 9.0 as amazing, 9.5 as spectacular, and a 10 as perfect.

EDIT: This isn't to say you can't use reviews. You just need to recognize that this scale is in place and adjust to it. I read Game Informer, so I got used to it years ago.

I find it amusing that your data misses out the scores for Modern Warfare (94, 92 and less for other handhelds and PC) World at War (84) and Modern warfare 2 (94, 86 for PC).

I believe that he was try to focus on the Treyarch titles. Infinity Ward's have always gotten much higher scores from users and critics.

Also haven't Bungie said that this is the best game yet about all of the Halo Games, and they have been getting worse and worse reviews.

Yeah. 97, 95, 94. You can really see the quality slipping away a point at a time. Everyone knows ODST sucked, but Bungie didn't want to make ODST, and the game itself was mostly pushed and designed by Microsoft with Bungie doing the leg work. Most Halo fans knew the game wasn't going to be that good (Or at least I did. I've been playing Video Games for 20 years. You get a sixth sense about these things ). I honestly doubt that Reach will score as high as the Halo Trilogy, but I think that the game will score higher than ODST. There are some interesting ideas in the game, but I'm iffy on how well recieved they'll be. Will the game be good? Yes. Will it be mainstream good and thus get thousands of stellar reviews for being another face in the crowd of FPS games that clone each other over and over like MW2? Probably not.

I would like to point out Halo is the father of the Modern FPS game. Advanced Enemy AI, ally AI, recharging health, kill bonuses, interface design, online leader boards? Halo brought all of these into the mainstream market. Call of Duty, does not exist, without Halo.

Actually, ODST was something they wanted to make.

It's the fact that Microsoft pushed them to make it as a kind of "expansion" to Halo 3 that they didn't want.

IMHO i think that Cod4 is better than Cod6
and reach is going to own black ops no matter what
if you cant see your legs or the shadow of your legs when you look down even if theres a lot of equipment so thats why you might not see them halo is more realistic (cept for the high jumping aliens lasers and shields)

IMO ODST's Campaign was a million times better then Halo 3, Halo 1 is still the best though IMHO. But, Reach is taking a step back along with it's steps foreward, in the Beta it felt more like Halo 1 then halo 2-3 to me, which I loved!

They changed grenade arcs though which was annoying...


Also, reason why reach will own black ops: Focus rifle, f yea

So, the reason Halo will beat Black Ops is due to its unrealistic/ sci-finess? Just say that and I'll be pleased as a peach.

And no Kanluwen, flamethrowers were not just used by the allies in eastern front or pacific theater and no D-Day was not the exception. D-Day just had more flamethrowers than normal due to bunkers/trenches/mg nests/ etc. To say that besides D-Day, flamethrowers were not used on the western front is foolish,because history says they were used.


I like that about zombie mode though, its easier to survive and easier to get a longer game out of it. You can revive a fallen buddy, get perks for more health and faster revive, and as long as one guy manages to finish the round the game goes on. I can assume that if you play with idiots on firefight then you will also lose and that it is possible for one person to carry the group as well. That point has nothing to do with the game, just the players and by the sounds of it you take it rather seriously.

I open the doors I shouldn't open in zombie mode for people like that.

Guy: Halo, don't open that door. If you do we'll lose.

Halo: Whatever.

Guy: No don't open the door we need to...

*beeps*

Guy: I can't believe you did that, now we're all going to lose because of Halo. Halo you are

*beeps*

Guy: HALO STOP OPENING DOORS

Rage quit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, goliath I didn't put MW2 and such in there because Treyarch didn't make them, that was IW.

halonachos wrote:So, the reason Halo will beat Black Ops is due to its unrealistic/ sci-finess? Just say that and I'll be pleased as a peach.

Actually no, the reason Halo will beat Black Ops is due to Treyarch absolutely sucks at making games. If Black Ops weren't being released as a Call of Duty title, it would be a flop.

And no Kanluwen, flamethrowers were not just used by the allies in eastern front or pacific theater and no D-Day was not the exception. D-Day just had more flamethrowers than normal due to bunkers/trenches/mg nests/ etc. To say that besides D-Day, flamethrowers were not used on the western front is foolish,because history says they were used.

Actually, again...you're wrong.

I made the statement that flamethrowers were not present in previous Call of Duty games because of the fact that they never really portrayed any battles where flamethrowers were used.
Flamethrowers were not used heavily on the Western Front outside of D-Day by Allied forces. I'm sure you can find absolutely obscure operation where they were used to clear a path for tanks or something, but they did not see combat outside of Normandy. The British and American forces mostly used flamethrower tanks. Those were far more effective than any kind of man portable system, to the point where German command protested their usage and German forces tended to execute any flame tank crews that were captured.
That's what history says.


Now, as for the Germans...

The Germans used them during the assault on Fort Eben Emal and a few times of putting down revolts in the ghettos. They then moved in the more logical way that everyone else was heading and begin development of vehicle mounted flamethrowers.

Kanluwen wrote:

halonachos wrote:So, the reason Halo will beat Black Ops is due to its unrealistic/ sci-finess? Just say that and I'll be pleased as a peach.

Actually no, the reason Halo will beat Black Ops is due to Treyarch absolutely sucks at making games. If Black Ops weren't being released as a Call of Duty title, it would be a flop.

And no Kanluwen, flamethrowers were not just used by the allies in eastern front or pacific theater and no D-Day was not the exception. D-Day just had more flamethrowers than normal due to bunkers/trenches/mg nests/ etc. To say that besides D-Day, flamethrowers were not used on the western front is foolish,because history says they were used.

Actually, again...you're wrong.

I made the statement that flamethrowers were not present in previous Call of Duty games because of the fact that they never really portrayed any battles where flamethrowers were used.
Flamethrowers were not used heavily on the Western Front outside of D-Day by Allied forces. I'm sure you can find absolutely obscure operation where they were used to clear a path for tanks or something, but they did not see combat outside of Normandy. The British and American forces mostly used flamethrower tanks. Those were far more effective than any kind of man portable system, to the point where German command protested their usage and German forces tended to execute any flame tank crews that were captured.
That's what history says.


Now, as for the Germans...

The Germans used them during the assault on Fort Eben Emal and a few times of putting down revolts in the ghettos. They then moved in the more logical way that everyone else was heading and begin development of vehicle mounted flamethrowers.

yeah, listen to him, he happens to be an expert at the subject...in fact, he invented history.

IG_urban wrote:yeah, listen to him, he happens to be an expert at the subject...in fact, he invented history.

He also has the advantage of being right.

All the major participants in WWII used their various man carried Flamethrowers and used them, but it was mostly the Germans and the United States, and the United States did not use them much in Europe. The British and Japanese are notable for almost never using the ones they had (Not that the Japanses had many to start with, they were fighting a modern war using outdated tactics and technology almost universally). And yes, most militaries switched to tank mounted flamethrowers because the effective range of the weapon is between fifty and seventy feet depending on the model. A man is libel to be shot before he reaches his target and many were. A tank on the other hand? Much more effective.

There is however a much simpler explanation for why we never saw a Flamethrower before CoD5. Maybe they just didn't think of it? Or possibly they couldn't build it into the game without causing problems. Go play WaW, turn on your console and type /cg_drawfps 1 (I believe that's the command). Fire a flamethrower and watch your FPS get cut by a lot depending on your card. I have a Nvidia GTX 275 and normally play the game at 300+ frames. Turn on that flamethrower though and the particle effects drop my FPS to 90. Of friend of mine crashed his game firing the flamethrower. His graphics card couldn't handle it XD.

The Germans also followed a scorched earth policy and loved to use the things in the western and eastern fronts. I think they would've used them in the Africa Campaign if they could.

In fact they had several variations of the man portable flamethrowers. One was small and fit on the lower back to allow another pack of not flamethrower to be carried.

The germans also protested the use of the shotgun and being caught using a trenchgun resulted in immediate execution. The japanese would pick of medics, the russians hated the germans, each army had their own pet peeves. This doesn't mean they wouldn't use the thing causing them though.

There were a lot of bunkers in europe and no doubt at least some of them have a few scorch marks from a flamethrower, but the CoD games could've at least had the germans using them.

As to the FPS thing, it was used in just about every GTA game ever made and some of those had huge cities running at the same time.

I wouldn't use FPS as a major contributing factor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also Kanluwen, how come I have yet to see a flamethrower used in a D-Day invasion? Medal of Honor didn't have it and neither did CoD.

halonachos wrote:As to the FPS thing, it was used in just about every GTA game ever made and some of those had huge cities running at the same time.

I wouldn't use FPS as a major contributing factor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also Kanluwen, how come I have yet to see a flamethrower used in a D-Day invasion? Medal of Honor didn't have it and neither did CoD.

FPS is a means one can measure how well the game is running on a machine. Higher FPS typically means the program is running faster; Unless there is a bottle neck in the RAM or the Processor. This usually doesn't happen though, most people have their bottleneck in the graphics card. When FPS goes down, its because the card can't process all that's going on, and the processor has to take over some of the work, slowing down execution. It's not the most valid, but it's the simplest to explain. Low FPS = lower system performance. Smoke is also very taxing on processing, a reason the map Ambush was not very popular in CoD4 was that the smoke effects in game lagged players, so a lot of servers removed it from the server list. Pretty much anything requiring a large amount of particle effects will tax a system. You can even see grenades cut in on your FPS for the brief moment they're exploding. I'm not saying they were worried about players having low FPS, but they were worried about the game running well on as wide a range of machines as possible. FPS was just my means of trying to explain that. YOu don't make a game and pray it runs. You make a game, test it, tweek, check driver compatibility, run OS tests, networking tests, and do every other thing you can think of so that the game runs smoothly.

So yeah. Flamethrowers can be very taxing on the system running the program, especially when using high end graphics. GTA is not a good example. Have you seen GTA4? Or even Red Dead Redemption? Rock Star's games are not graphically strong. GTA4's graphics are five or six years old, and RDR's are two or three. The flame effects are also no where near as complex as those present on CoD5's flamethrower. Even in GTA, I'm willing to bet FPS and performance slowed. The human eye can't perceive more than 30-40 FPS (EDIT: Some say the max is 60), so you may not notice that it's happened but it probably did.

As for D-Day, I already explained the technological limitations caused by not making the flamethrower effect a red blob, and I once again suggest maybe the game makers didn't think of it. Their game developers not historians. Maybe they just didn't think it was worth developing a flamethrower. A lot of WWII games at the time released because of Saving Private Ryan made WWII popular again in pop culture, and many game makers thought, let's make a Saving Private Ryan game. I haven't seen it in awhile, but I don't think we saw any flame throwers. Doesn't surprise me a genre of games inspired by the film don't feature them heavily. Hell, Spielberg wrote the story for the first Medal of Honor! This is especially evident in CoD, in that every campaign in COD seems to be ripped from some movie somewhere;

Call of Duty ( A Bridge too Far, Enemy at the Gates; blatant scenes ripped from EatG, and the British Campaign is ABtF copy paste job)
United Offensive (Band of Brothers)
Call of Duty 2 (Saving Private Ryan, The Desert Fox, Enemy at the Gates)
Call of Duty 4 (Anything written by Tom Clancy or his large cast of ghost writers, Black Hawk Down; there is blatant scene rip from Sum of All Fears)
Call of Duty 5 (Wind Talkers, more Enemy at the Gates)
Modern Warfare 2 (More Tom Clancy, I was waiting for Sam Fisher, Rainbow Six, or the Ghosts to show up. Oh, and lets not forget RED DAWN)

It's almost blatant really. Infinity Ward and the CoD series have been taking its cues from various films since forever. They especially seem to have an abnormal love for Enemy At the Gates and a Bridge to Far, going so much as to copy paste entire scenes of the films into their games. I'll also point out that the people who made Medal of Honor and the people who made Call of Duty? Same people. A lot of the Call of Duty developers came from the company that made Medal of Honor. Just like how we'll likely find many similarities between whatever Respawn Entertainment produces in the next few years and Infinity Ward's CoD titles.

EDIT: Damn. I look at that and I read it over and I just think "What was my point?" XD

LordofHats wrote:

IG_urban wrote:yeah, listen to him, he happens to be an expert at the subject...in fact, he invented history.

He also has the advantage of being right.

...and?

Funny... My Grandfather had plenty of stories about running into Allied Flame Tanks (Churchills mostly) from the war. I think the big reason Flamethrowers aren't portrayed in as much in games is because of how horrendous they were as far as inflicting injuries go. It's one thing to lose a leg stepping on a mine. It's entirely another to have your skin and muscle actually burned away to the point where it's coming off in chunks. Grandpa saw, first hand, some flamethrower victims. And he said that out of everything he witnessed during the war, they were the most terrifying sight of all. So, again, that's probably why they weren't in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, IG.

But the fact that they don't exist in Viddyeah-game levels doesn't mean they weren't used in reality.

metallifan wrote:Funny... My Grandfather had plenty of stories about running into Allied Flame Tanks (Churchills mostly) from the war. I think the big reason Flamethrowers aren't portrayed in as much in games is because of how horrendous they were as far as inflicting injuries go. It's one thing to lose a leg stepping on a mine. It's entirely another to have your skin and muscle actually burned away to the point where it's coming off in chunks. Grandpa saw, first hand, some flamethrower victims. And he said that out of everything he witnessed during the war, they were the most terrifying sight of all. So, again, that's probably why they weren't in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, IG.

But the fact that they don't exist in Viddyeah-game levels doesn't mean they weren't used in reality.

I made a point to mention that, Metalli The Western Allies went to great lengths to avoid using man-portable flamethrowers in Europe, except in extreme circumstances. But they used the hell out of flame tanks.

The allies did, the germans embraced the fething things.

My Great Grandfather had stories of running into underwater tanks, still haven't seen any of those in a WW2 game. In fact that's what we need to revitalize the WW2 genre, underwater tanks and customization. Halftracks with machine guns, halftracks with anti-tank weapons on them. Panzer General eat your heart out.

metallifan wrote:Funny... My Grandfather had plenty of stories about running into Allied Flame Tanks (Churchills mostly) from the war. I think the big reason Flamethrowers aren't portrayed in as much in games is because of how horrendous they were as far as inflicting injuries go. It's one thing to lose a leg stepping on a mine. It's entirely another to have your skin and muscle actually burned away to the point where it's coming off in chunks. Grandpa saw, first hand, some flamethrower victims. And he said that out of everything he witnessed during the war, they were the most terrifying sight of all. So, again, that's probably why they weren't in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, IG.

But the fact that they don't exist in Viddyeah-game levels doesn't mean they weren't used in reality.

you have no argument from me, I just think Kanluewn can be a know-it-all, and I was giving him a hard time.

halonachos wrote:My Great Grandfather had stories of running into underwater tanks, still haven't seen any of those in a WW2 game. In fact that's what we need to revitalize the WW2 genre, underwater tanks and customization. Halftracks with machine guns, halftracks with anti-tank weapons on them. Panzer General eat your heart out.

Underwater tank is a bit of a misnomer. They weren't really fully submersible. It would be cool in a game, but since we've taken the stance that the games must portray realism (for some reason) you'd need the tanks to sink as they approached Normandy, drowning the crew and the player and thus ending the game.

I kid. It would be cool to see a new WWII game some day; hopefully one that isn't so European centric. Granted, I'd love a game that protrayed the war from the German perspective. I'd like to see more of Africa, or maybe the early stages of the war where Germany pwned face on everybody. You can only do Stalingrad, Operation Overlord, and Market Garden so many times before it gets really really old. The market got a little over saturated with all the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty clones, like how we now have all the Modern Warfare clones. Might be awhile before we get something good. I'd like it if Respawn decided to make another WWII game. That group of designers has always succeeded in that genre above and beyond others.

IG_urban wrote:

metallifan wrote:Funny... My Grandfather had plenty of stories about running into Allied Flame Tanks (Churchills mostly) from the war. I think the big reason Flamethrowers aren't portrayed in as much in games is because of how horrendous they were as far as inflicting injuries go. It's one thing to lose a leg stepping on a mine. It's entirely another to have your skin and muscle actually burned away to the point where it's coming off in chunks. Grandpa saw, first hand, some flamethrower victims. And he said that out of everything he witnessed during the war, they were the most terrifying sight of all. So, again, that's probably why they weren't in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, IG.

But the fact that they don't exist in Viddyeah-game levels doesn't mean they weren't used in reality.

you have no argument from me, I just think Kanluwen can be a know-it-all, and I was giving him a hard time.

I do know it all, so I've definitely got that going for me.

As for the "underwater tanks"--there's two kinds of examples. The Germans converted a small number of medium tanks for experimenting in the hopes of invading England.

Needless to say, that idea bombed heavily.

Then of course, the other kind...which LordofHats mentioned. The Allies converted a large number of Shermans to be used during the Normandy beach landings to provide fire support for the landing troops.

The story from my great grandpa could actually be a cool cinematic.

He was in an anti-tank halftrack when all of a sudden they heard and felt rumbling. The lake next to them had ripples coming from it and next thing they knew, a panzer with a snorkel device attached came right out of the lake.

The D-Day invasion via Snorkel tank would be cool, the main character in any WW2 game that participates in D-Day always almost drowns so it would fit.

Back to the topic guys