Halo MCC/Infinite/general Griefing thread - Six months, two maps, no refunds

[The Doom Slayer]

Not having seen said screenshot since nobody posted it in the thread and I'm too lazy to go find it myself, my guess for the context is that the Halo Online permutations are launching without a toggle to disable them, but the dev team is looking into implementing a toggle at a later date. The original dev was probably only talking about current plans and was either unaware of future plans or didn't want to discuss things that might not be added to the game.

Again, all speculation on my part, but if I were to make an educated guess on the whole kerfuffle, that would be it.

ETA: I looked up the original screenshot:
Ver archivo adjunto 1802375
And yeah, now that we have more posts about it, I think the initial wording was just unclear. Farns was explaining that a skin toggle is much easier since you're just flipping a texture on or off, and that's why there isn't an armor toggle launching with the Halo Online sets. Then he later clarified by saying that a toggle was something that was being looked into. Would've been better to avoid the confusion from the get-go, but it makes much more sense now.

Yeah that's the screencap I saw originally.

Honestly I'm fine with it then. They can add all the garbage skins they want if there's a toggle to turn them off. It's what they should've done originally in Halo 5 when they started inserting stupid shit like infamous pizza/french fry skins. And I really hope they'll do the same thing in Infinite.

 

[King Dead]

Two personal Halo things from me. While I was Christmas shopping, I stumbled across a copy of the Halo 2 Limited Edition at an antique mall for $15; since I never had one before, I snatched it up. There are some spots where the steelbook has rusted a little, but apparently that's not uncommon, and certainly better condition than some I've seen pictures of. It still had the sleeve as well, a little cracked but no big deal. Everything on the inside was in great shape, and it even still had the 2-month Xbox Live Gold trial flyer inside (sadly that expired 15 years ago). Man, those were the days before Microsoft got super cheap and only gave out 48-hour trials. Overall, a nice Christmas gift to myself.

Second, I wrapped up my MCC Legendary speedrun achievements last night with Halo 4, and I'm glad that's done. Learned a lot about Halo speedrunning over the past few weeks, more than I ever knew before. Some thoughts on those:

Spoiler: autistic rambling about speedrunning

• If I were to rank the achievements in order from easiest to hardest, I'd say ODST, 4, 1, 2, 3, Reach:
  • ODST I got completely on accident while doing other achievements, so it's definitely the easiest.
  • I knocked out 4 in one night, and rarely needed to restart a mission.
  • 1 and 2 are about even, made easier through the Save/Quit glitch; on these games only, if you Save/Quit and resume, you'll start your last checkpoint at the time you initially reached it, making it easy to recover time if you keep messing up a particular section. Most of Halo 1 was alright, but some levels were a challenge.
  • 2 is slightly harder due to the extra levels (and fucking Jackal Snipers), but I had more fun doing its speedrun thanks to all the tricks. It's hilarious how many ways you can break that game.
  • 3 tested my patience repeatedly, especially The Ark and The Covenant; clearing those Scarab battles quickly is a pain.
  • Finally, Reach can suck a dick. The super-aggressive AI makes for a major challenge. Long Night of Solace remains the bane of my existence.
• I actually made up a spreadsheet to keep track of my times as I played through each level. That way, I could figure out what levels I could save the most time on and how close I was to getting the achievements done. Considering how finding these stats in-game is a little convoluted, it was good to have my times recorded in one place. (I think they might be easier to find on the Waypoint website, but I didn't bother checking.)
• Favorite and least favorite levels throughout this adventure:
  • Halo 1: The big skip levels like The Silent Cartographer, Assault on the Control Room, and Keyes are great. Truth and Reconciliation, The Library, and Two Betrayals were a major pain, although I actually didn't replay The Library for this run. I followed a speedrun guide my first time through and got an okay time, and I decided to avoid replaying it if possible. Luckily, it was.
  • Halo 2: Again, levels you can really break were my favorites, like Outskirts and Delta Halo. Special mention to The Oracle's invincibility glitch, I love doing that every time. It was a pain to learn the Regret god despawn, but once I got it down, it was hilarious to see how much I skipped; I even got Regret down the first try, still don't know how. I saved Gravemind for last because fuck Gravemind; I had plenty of time banked up so I just needed to clear it in under 40 minutes, which I did.
  • Halo 3: Tsavo Highway, Floodgate, and Halo were my favorites this time around. Sierra 117, The Ark, and The Covenant were the most challenging; I had to replay The Ark and The Covenant a couple times each before I got a decent run in.
  • ODST: I got this achievement by accident so I didn't really do a speedrun for ODST. But Tayari Plaza, Uplift Reserve, and Kikowani Station are all fun to speedrun anyway. There aren't really bad levels per se, but Data Hive and Coastal Highway are liable to take the longest.
  • Reach: Nightfall, Exodus, and New Alexandria were fun to speedrun. Long Night of Solace is the worst by far, but The Package and The Pillar of Autumn were hard as well. I couldn't get some of the skips right on Pillar of Autumn and I already had an okay time logged, so I just went back and shaved a bit more time off some other levels instead.
  • 4: There are a surprising amount of ways you can break this game as well. Forerunner, Reclaimer, and Shutdown were all fun levels to do. Composer had some more difficult tricks, but it was still fun. Infinity and Midnight were the more challenging levels, but I'd banked plenty of time so I had something like 50 minutes to complete Midnight.
• If you're doing these and the achievement doesn't unlock when you know you're under three hours, give it a couple minutes, then load any mission in the campaign. It should pop while the level loads.

Aside from a few miscellaneous achievements, all I have left for campaigns is LASO now. One day I may actually do those, but probably not for a long time.

Oh, and if you don't already have them, you can make progress on the Destination Vacation and Elder Signs achievements today. Look at the sign on the beach in Zanzibar for the former, and look at the sigil on the Forerunner wall in Valhalla for the latter. The next Valhalla sigil will be next week, January 1st, and you need two different sigils for the achievement. After that, the next one is April 22nd. I mean, you could always change your system clock and get them that way, but you wouldn't do that, would you?

 

[Quintex96]

Aside from a few miscellaneous achievements, all I have left for campaigns is LASO now. One day I may actually do those, but probably not for a long time.

LASO is arguably easier in some aspects as you can use the speedrun tricks and aren't constantly racing against the clock. although be warned, Halo 2 is absolutely gruelling on LASO

 

[King Dead]

LASO is arguably easier in some aspects as you can use the speedrun tricks and aren't constantly racing against the clock. although be warned, Halo 2 is absolutely gruelling on LASO

Trust me, I've heard lots about how bad 2's LASO can be. And now I can link this video and watch it again:

 

[Endu]

A friend and I have been going through all the LASO's this year, and we've done everything except 2. A few days ago we finished Gravemind, and the last three levels (Uprising, High Charity and The Great Journey), are piss easy in comparison. I wholeheartedly recommend watching guides and doing this with someone who knows the strategies.

Ranking each LASO from least-to-most challenging, this is probably how I'd do it:

Spoiler

1. ODST. The easiest LASO by far, three friends and I completed it in a single day. The only level which sucked hard was Coastal Highway where you need to keep the Olifant alive. Since you have the infinite rocket launchers from having Iron on, the final part was a cakewalk, but getting to it was incredibly frustrating.

2. Halo 4. Most missions could be run through without any big problems, but you just gave to grit your teeth on Infinity, Composer and Midnight. The first few missions have a lot of fun de-spawns and skips you can do, and they're not that hard to pull off. Due to the Catch skull, Knights throw grenades at you and have a really long animation, so you can run behind them and get the backstab most of the time. Watchers fucking suck and are the most poorly-designed enemy in the series.

3. Reach. We did this at the beginning of the year and I don't remember it being that tortuous. Basically, noob-combo the elites and needle the brutes. On the last level you can get on the MAC cannon early and take out some phantoms, but you need like three people for that. LNoS was the worst mission of the bunch, the space-combat section sucks.

4. Halo CE. The changes to Black Eye are definitely welcome and the inclusion of Grunt Funeral make the first few missions really entertaining. Not to mention Blind isn't included, so you don't need tape on your monitor. There are a lot of fun skips you can pull off that are extremely helpful, but a few missions (Library and Two Betrayals can rot) stand out as pains in the ass. Truth and Reconciliation was the worst one, though. My friend and I put a few hours in multiple runs before we finally got it.

5. Halo 3. This campaign was never super difficult in comparison to the others, but to balance it out there aren't that many crazy skips you can do. The final level is a lot of fun because you skip a lot of fights and get an infinite spartan laser. Be sure to follow the guide for Cortana closely and not make that any more of a ballache than it is.

6. Halo 2. This one is pretty obvious. One of the benefits is that you can use Black Eye to not only refill your shield, but get up to a 2x overshield, which you'll need. Some missions are, dare I say it, kind of fun with the exploits you can pull off (Outskirts, Metropolis, Delta Halo, Uprising), but Regret and Gravemind will test everything you know. The only reason we got through Gravemind is because of a co-op glitch which allowed my friend to skip the entire jail section. I'll be glad when we do the last three levels and finish it for good.

Right now the only achievement that's causing me grief is getting 100 Legendary medals in matchmaking. I believe that includes Perfection, Steaktacular, Triple Double, Killionaire, and a few others which are near-impossible. Grinding these out is so difficult because you just need to get lucky and hope the enemy team is full of children. Thankfully you can grind this out a lot easier if you have a friend (You both search in 1v1 Halo 2A and take turns getting Perfections).

 

[King Dead]

A friend and I have been going through all the LASO's this year, and we've done everything except 2. A few days ago we finished Gravemind, and the last three levels (Uprising, High Charity and The Great Journey), are piss easy in comparison. I wholeheartedly recommend watching guides and doing this with someone who knows the strategies.

Ranking each LASO from least-to-most challenging, this is probably how I'd do it:

Spoiler

1. ODST. The easiest LASO by far, three friends and I completed it in a single day. The only level which sucked hard was Coastal Highway where you need to keep the Olifant alive. Since you have the infinite rocket launchers from having Iron on, the final part was a cakewalk, but getting to it was incredibly frustrating.

2. Halo 4. Most missions could be run through without any big problems, but you just gave to grit your teeth on Infinity, Composer and Midnight. The first few missions have a lot of fun de-spawns and skips you can do, and they're not that hard to pull off. Due to the Catch skull, Knights throw grenades at you and have a really long animation, so you can run behind them and get the backstab most of the time. Watchers fucking suck and are the most poorly-designed enemy in the series.

3. Reach. We did this at the beginning of the year and I don't remember it being that tortuous. Basically, noob-combo the elites and needle the brutes. On the last level you can get on the MAC cannon early and take out some phantoms, but you need like three people for that. LNoS was the worst mission of the bunch, the space-combat section sucks.

4. Halo CE. The changes to Black Eye are definitely welcome and the inclusion of Grunt Funeral make the first few missions really entertaining. Not to mention Blind isn't included, so you don't need tape on your monitor. There are a lot of fun skips you can pull off that are extremely helpful, but a few missions (Library and Two Betrayals can rot) stand out as pains in the ass. Truth and Reconciliation was the worst one, though. My friend and I put a few hours in multiple runs before we finally got it.

5. Halo 3. This campaign was never super difficult in comparison to the others, but to balance it out there aren't that many crazy skips you can do. The final level is a lot of fun because you skip a lot of fights and get an infinite spartan laser. Be sure to follow the guide for Cortana closely and not make that any more of a ballache than it is.

6. Halo 2. This one is pretty obvious. One of the benefits is that you can use Black Eye to not only refill your shield, but get up to a 2x overshield, which you'll need. Some missions are, dare I say it, kind of fun with the exploits you can pull off (Outskirts, Metropolis, Delta Halo, Uprising), but Regret and Gravemind will test everything you know. The only reason we got through Gravemind is because of a co-op glitch which allowed my friend to skip the entire jail section. I'll be glad when we do the last three levels and finish it for good.

Right now the only achievement that's causing me grief is getting 100 Legendary medals in matchmaking. I believe that includes Perfection, Steaktacular, Triple Double, Killionaire, and a few others which are near-impossible. Grinding these out is so difficult because you just need to get lucky and hope the enemy team is full of children. Thankfully you can grind this out a lot easier if you have a friend (You both search in 1v1 Halo 2A and take turns getting Perfections).

When I get around to LASO, I'll probably look to see if I can find some others to do all of them with. I dunno if four players make LASO easier than two (more people means more guns, but more potential deaths and resets), especially for Reach (and 4?) where they turn up the difficulty when you have more players. I'll look at others' opinions and see what they say.

As for Legendary medals, yeah, it's a little tough; I'm at 39/100 myself. Steaktaculars are gonna be the bulk of your medals just because they're so much easier in comparison to the others, especially in BTB since the score goes to 100. Triple Doubles aren't too difficult either, as long as the game goes on long enough for you to get enough kills/assists/headshots. Killionaires in Firefight count for the achievement, though they're still pretty rare; you're lucky to get one a game at most, usually during the bonus round. The other medals you forgot are Unfriggenbelievable (40 killstreak) and Extermination (wipe out the enemy team with at least an Overkill), and yeah, they're tough. I've gotten lucky and managed a couple Exterminations, but my best streak is a Rampage. Pretty much only doable if the enemy team has a bunch of AFKs.

Action Sack is not a bad idea for grinding Legendaries, to be honest. I've been restricting my search to Halo 1/2 Action Sack for a bit (mostly to grind other medals that games like 3 and Reach don't have, and I'm less fond of 2A and 4's multiplayer), and there are a number of Slayer gametypes that aren't too difficult to earn Steaktaculars on. Team Muskets and whatever the one is where everyone spawns with Fuel Rod Guns in 1, Brute Shoot in 2, and Fiesta in either are pretty good if you've got a good team, although there's certainly an element of luck in Fiesta. I'd say I get a Steaktacular about once every two to four games. The downside is that you do have non-Slayer gametypes mixed in that you can't get Steaktaculars, but it's an option if you're tired of normal Slayer playlists.

ETA: The other alternative is if you can get a 4v4 boosting group going. With four-player teams, you can get an Extermination every time you wipe them out. You can also get an Unfriggenbelievable after ten team wipes, and a Steaktacular and Perfection when the game ends. And you can combine it with grinding other medals as well, like the obscene 500 Grenade Kill medals or the 100 Splatters/Environmentalists in H2A. Harder to do that on PC thanks to no splitscreen (hurry up 343), but it's probably the fastest method if you get a group together.

 

[Endu]

Good idea with some of the Action Sack playlists, you're not always going to get a gamemode you can grind in but at least it's not constantly getting lucky with Slayer.

I ended up mostly getting Perfections and Steaktaculars in Halo 4 matchmaking, but that required me to play a lot of Halo 4 matchmaking. My advice is to play Big Team Slayer, make a loadout where you get req drops easily, and rush any anti-vehicle weapons at the start. You can basically jump from power weapon to power weapon because of that faster req drop ability.

It would have been nice to have a larger group to grind this out with, but either way that's finally taken care of. Unrelated, but at this point I have like 60 season points so whenever the next season drops (which will probably just be all that shitty H armor), I don't have to think about "working" toward it.

 

[King Dead]

I decided to put my autism to good use a while back when I got to wondering what map had been remade the most over Halo's existence, which also led to the question of how many map remakes there have been over the series' nearly two-decade run. After going over every map and sorting it all out, here's what I found.

Spoiler: concentrated autism

First, what constitutes a remake? Clearly not every map that gets ported from one game to the next has identical geometry, mostly due to how engine and gameplay changes would affect the original layout. Some maps are listed as "spiritual successors;" do those count as remakes? I decided to go with a relatively unscientific approach and just say that a map was a remake if it felt close enough to the original. If I had to quantify it, I'd say that if the new map has at least 80% of the DNA of the original, then it's a remake. For example, Avalanche doesn't have all the teleporters and high ridges that Sidewinder does going all the way around the map, but the general horseshoe canyon layout and massive size makes them close enough to where I'd call it a remake. Conversely, Guardian may have been inspired by Lockout, but the layout is sufficiently different to categorize it as its own map; this decision was made even easier due to the fact that Blackout, a legit remake, was also released for Halo 3.

Now that that's out of the way, we can get into the details. There's a lot to go into, so I'll break it down by game.

Obviously, being the first game in the series, Halo 1 has zero remakes in its original thirteen maps, as well as the six released for Halo PC. I guess you could say Death Island is a remake of The Silent Cartographer, but that's just splitting hairs.

Halo 2 launched with twelve maps, two of which were remakes of Halo 1 maps: Beaver Creek (Battle Creek) and Coagulation (Blood Gulch). A third map, Foundation, was actually a remake of the Marathon 2 map Thunderdome, so I guess Halo 1 could have had remakes if Bungie had wanted to. DLC packs added eleven more maps, including four more Halo 1 remakes: Warlock (Wizard), Elongation (Longest), Desolation (Derelict), and Tombstone (Hang 'Em High). A fifth map, Gemini, was a remake of the Marathon Infinity map Duality; this is the last Marathon remake so far. Halo 2 Vista had two exclusive maps, neither of which were remakes.

Halo 3 launched with eleven maps and only one remake: Last Resort (Zanzibar). Thirteen more maps were added through DLC. These included two Halo 1 remakes (Cold Storage (Chill Out) and Avalanche (Sidewinder)) and two Halo 2 remakes (Blackout (Lockout) and Heretic (Midship)). Valhalla might be a spiritual successor to Blood Gulch, but again, I'm not counting that as a remake.

Halo: Reach only launched with nine distinct maps to begin with, and only one was a remake, Reflection (Ivory Tower). However, Forge World came with five presets included by default, and since they come with the game, I've decided to count each as their own distinct map. Of the five presets, three are remakes: Asylum (Sanctuary), Hemorrhage (Blood Gulch/Coagulation), and Pinnacle (Ascension). Another eleven maps were added in DLC, and while the first two packs were all new maps, the Anniversary Map Pack was nothing but remakes, fittingly enough. These included Battle Canyon (Battle Creek/Beaver Creek), Breakneck (Headlong), High Noon (Hang 'Em High/Tombstone), Penance (Damnation), Ridgeline (Timberland) and Solitary (Prisoner).

Halo 4 included thirteen maps to begin with, and only one was a remake: Ragnarok (Valhalla). Of the twelve maps added through DLC, again, only one remake: Pitfall (The Pit). 343 apparently didn't want to revisit older levels for whatever reason.

Halo 2 Anniversary is obviously nothing but remakes, and the initial release included six maps that had each been remade at least once before: Bloodline (Blood Gulch/Coagulation/Hemorrhage), Lockdown (Lockout/Blackout), Shrine (Sanctuary/Asylum), Stonetown (Zanzibar/Last Resort), Warlord (Wizard/Warlock), and Zenith (Ascension/Pinnacle). A seventh map, Remnant (Relic), was added shortly afterward.

Halo 5 has a lot of maps and DLC packs, and sorting through which ones came out when proved to be too much for me to care about. There are a couple dozen maps in total, some of which were created in Forge, but if I'm going to include Reach's Forge presets, I'll do the same for 5. That said, I counted four remakes among them: Deadlock (Standoff), Guillotine (Headlong/Breakneck), Mercy (Haven), and Truth (Midship/Heretic). This doesn't include Halo 5's remixes of its own maps, but if you want to include those, then add another six.

So after going through all that, here's the summary and some other miscellaneous tidbits:

• Of the (by my count) 148 maps released across all Halo games, there are 34 remakes in total (35 if you count Halo 5's Regret as another Midship remake). Just under a quarter of Halo maps are remakes.
• Not really a shocker, but Blood Gulch is the map that has been remade the most, in 2, Reach, and 2A. No other map has been remade three times. If you include Valhalla/Ragnarok, then this map or its spiritual successor has appeared in every Halo game from Halo 1 all the way through 4 and 2A.
• Halo 1 maps that have been remade twice include Battle Creek, Hang 'Em High, and Wizard. Halo 2 maps that have been remade twice include Ascension, Headlong, Lockout, Midship, Sanctuary, and Zanzibar.
• Only three Halo 1 maps from the original Xbox release have never been remade: Boarding Action, Chiron TL-34, and Rat Race.
• Halo: Reach has the most remakes of any Halo game at ten in all, due in large part to the six Anniversary maps. Halo 2 comes in second with eight, two of which are Marathon remakes. Then it's H2A with seven, Halo 3 with five, and Halo 5 with four. Halo 4 has the fewest remakes, just two.

There you go. If you ever had the same questions I did, now you have the answers.

 

[Vault Boy]

I decided to put my autism to good use a while back when I got to wondering what map had been remade the most over Halo's existence, which also led to the question of how many map remakes there have been over the series' nearly two-decade run. After going over every map and sorting it all out, here's what I found.

Spoiler: concentrated autism

First, what constitutes a remake? Clearly not every map that gets ported from one game to the next has identical geometry, mostly due to how engine and gameplay changes would affect the original layout. Some maps are listed as "spiritual successors;" do those count as remakes? I decided to go with a relatively unscientific approach and just say that a map was a remake if it felt close enough to the original. If I had to quantify it, I'd say that if the new map has at least 80% of the DNA of the original, then it's a remake. For example, Avalanche doesn't have all the teleporters and high ridges that Sidewinder does going all the way around the map, but the general horseshoe canyon layout and massive size makes them close enough to where I'd call it a remake. Conversely, Guardian may have been inspired by Lockout, but the layout is sufficiently different to categorize it as its own map; this decision was made even easier due to the fact that Blackout, a legit remake, was also released for Halo 3.

Now that that's out of the way, we can get into the details. There's a lot to go into, so I'll break it down by game.

Obviously, being the first game in the series, Halo 1 has zero remakes in its original thirteen maps, as well as the six released for Halo PC. I guess you could say Death Island is a remake of The Silent Cartographer, but that's just splitting hairs.

Halo 2 launched with twelve maps, two of which were remakes of Halo 1 maps: Beaver Creek (Battle Creek) and Coagulation (Blood Gulch). A third map, Foundation, was actually a remake of the Marathon 2 map Thunderdome, so I guess Halo 1 could have had remakes if Bungie had wanted to. DLC packs added eleven more maps, including four more Halo 1 remakes: Warlock (Wizard), Elongation (Longest), Desolation (Derelict), and Tombstone (Hang 'Em High). A fifth map, Gemini, was a remake of the Marathon Infinity map Duality; this is the last Marathon remake so far. Halo 2 Vista had two exclusive maps, neither of which were remakes.

Halo 3 launched with eleven maps and only one remake: Last Resort (Zanzibar). Thirteen more maps were added through DLC. These included two Halo 1 remakes (Cold Storage (Chill Out) and Avalanche (Sidewinder)) and two Halo 2 remakes (Blackout (Lockout) and Heretic (Midship)). Valhalla might be a spiritual successor to Blood Gulch, but again, I'm not counting that as a remake.

Halo: Reach only launched with nine distinct maps to begin with, and only one was a remake, Reflection (Ivory Tower). However, Forge World came with five presets included by default, and since they come with the game, I've decided to count each as their own distinct map. Of the five presets, three are remakes: Asylum (Sanctuary), Hemorrhage (Blood Gulch/Coagulation), and Pinnacle (Ascension). Another eleven maps were added in DLC, and while the first two packs were all new maps, the Anniversary Map Pack was nothing but remakes, fittingly enough. These included Battle Canyon (Battle Creek/Beaver Creek), Breakneck (Headlong), High Noon (Hang 'Em High/Tombstone), Penance (Damnation), Ridgeline (Timberland) and Solitary (Prisoner).

Halo 4 included thirteen maps to begin with, and only one was a remake: Ragnarok (Valhalla). Of the twelve maps added through DLC, again, only one remake: Pitfall (The Pit). 343 apparently didn't want to revisit older levels for whatever reason.

Halo 2 Anniversary is obviously nothing but remakes, and the initial release included six maps that had each been remade at least once before: Bloodline (Blood Gulch/Coagulation/Hemorrhage), Lockdown (Lockout/Blackout), Shrine (Sanctuary/Asylum), Stonetown (Zanzibar/Last Resort), Warlord (Wizard/Warlock), and Zenith (Ascension/Pinnacle). A seventh map, Remnant (Relic), was added shortly afterward.

Halo 5 has a lot of maps and DLC packs, and sorting through which ones came out when proved to be too much for me to care about. There are a couple dozen maps in total, some of which were created in Forge, but if I'm going to include Reach's Forge presets, I'll do the same for 5. That said, I counted four remakes among them: Deadlock (Standoff), Guillotine (Headlong/Breakneck), Mercy (Haven), and Truth (Midship/Heretic). This doesn't include Halo 5's remixes of its own maps, but if you want to include those, then add another six.

So after going through all that, here's the summary and some other miscellaneous tidbits:

• Of the (by my count) 148 maps released across all Halo games, there are 34 remakes in total (35 if you count Halo 5's Regret as another Midship remake). Just under a quarter of Halo maps are remakes.
• Not really a shocker, but Blood Gulch is the map that has been remade the most, in 2, Reach, and 2A. No other map has been remade three times. If you include Valhalla/Ragnarok, then this map or its spiritual successor has appeared in every Halo game from Halo 1 all the way through 4 and 2A.
• Halo 1 maps that have been remade twice include Battle Creek, Hang 'Em High, and Wizard. Halo 2 maps that have been remade twice include Ascension, Headlong, Lockout, Midship, Sanctuary, and Zanzibar.
• Only three Halo 1 maps from the original Xbox release have never been remade: Boarding Action, Chiron TL-34, and Rat Race.
• Halo: Reach has the most remakes of any Halo game at ten in all, due in large part to the six Anniversary maps. Halo 2 comes in second with eight, two of which are Marathon remakes. Then it's H2A with seven, Halo 3 with five, and Halo 5 with four. Halo 4 has the fewest remakes, just two.

There you go. If you ever had the same questions I did, now you have the answers.

Thanks for reminding me that I want Blood Gulch to return to Infinite. Actually, bring back a lot of BTB maps like Waterworks (seriously underated map) and Sidewinder. Warzone won't be around to hog the spotlight anymore now that lootboxes have become radioactive, so BTB needs a whole lotta love.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Blood Gulch was primarily why Halo fan content even stayed out of the cutting room floor, it's no surprise it was often brought back.

 

[Endu]

Man, reading you list all those map names off reminds me of how few of those I've actually played in MCC matchmaking. The weighting is so favorable to only a handful of maps that those are all that you play.

 

[The Last Stand]

@King Dead take a picture of your LE copy of Halo 2. I love seeing uncommon copies of games.

 

[King Dead]

@King Dead take a picture of your LE copy of Halo 2. I love seeing uncommon copies of games.

From what I gather, the Halo 2 Limited Editions are pretty common to find because they made so damn many of them. You can go on eBay and find bunches of copies for about the same price I paid, and in about the same condition. If mine was mint I'd be happy to show it off, but a slightly rusty steelbook isn't all that special when there's a lot out there in the same boat. Still happy to own a copy though.

I'm just glad it wasn't this bad:


When my brother visted for Christmas, we got to talking about the MCC and playing together sometime, and he mentioned his old Halo 3 Legendary Edition. For some reason, he'd stashed it up in my parents' attic with other stuff and never got around to reclaiming it. So I went up and dug it out for him so he could take it back to his house and display it proudly. It was still in fairly good shape and the helmet is pristine, although I think some silverfish nibbled at the interior of the sleeve. Someday I'd like to get one of those for myself, it would go nicely with my Reach Legendary Edition. Maybe I'll dig that out and take a pic, I love that Noble Team statue.

 

[Endu]

Oh man that reminds me, I found these two beauties a few days ago digging through my parents' house:

A few buddies and I also spent New Years Day playing Halo 2 4-player FFA. It was my first time using a Duke and that thing is an absolute beast.

 

[The Last Stand]

Halo 2 is THE defining Halo game. Halo 3 streamlined what Halo 2 brought to the table.

In short, Halo 2 aged like fine wine. Halo 3 modernized Halo for that generation.

 

[King Dead]

Couple Halo-related things:

1. Should've made a post about it yesterday, but if you signed into the MCC yesterday (1/17), you got a free "117 Day" nameplate. My bad.

2. For those who wanted a toggle for the Halo Online permutations, you can rest easy. Postums confirmed that an updated toggle is being worked on, letting you turn off the Halo Online perms as well as weapon/vehicle skins. Note it's an all-or-nothing deal; you can't have skins on and perms off, for instance. If you have the toggle on, then anyone using Halo Online perms will instead look like they're wearing Mark VI armor. The wording's unclear whether this is coming with the start of season 5 or later, and there's no indication yet as to when season 5 will launch. Still, at least you'll be able to avoid the new armors if you want to.

3. @The Last Stand, since you asked, here's some pics of my Halo: Reach Legendary Edition. Hopefully this will be more interesting than a slightly beat-up Halo 2 Limited Edition! Apologies for some blurry pictures, I have an old phone and I didn't notice until I put everything away again.

Spoiler: I'm probably a decade late to do an unboxing on this one

The case itself is pretty damn massive, bigger than Halo 3's Legendary Edition. It's stylized like a UNSC storage crate, and it even has a convenient carrying handle.


The sleeve mentions what all is inside, including the digital goodies: the Legendary flaming helmet armor effect, the Officer Elite armor, a toy Falcon avatar prop, and a Halo: Reach developer documentary. I honestly never even realized that last one was part of the package, since it was apparently unlocked through the old 360 Halo Waypoint app, as opposed to being included on a disc or something. You can watch the whole thing here if you're interested.


Remove the sleeve and pull off the top, and you've got the entire Halo: Reach Limited Edition on the left, with a letter and assembly instructions for the statue on the right. The letter is dated 2610, decades after the events of the Halo series thus far, and talks about how this is a scale replica of the new Noble Team memorial statue on Reach, as well as talking about the contents of the ONI security container enclosed on the left.


Moving onto the Limited Edition, this is where you'd find the Halo: Reach game and case on top (not pictured because it's boxed up with my other games at the moment). Lift up the cardboard to find a bubble-wrapped package beneath with top secret labels on it.


Inside is Dr. Halsey's personal journal, chock full of details about the SPARTAN program and AI development. Various items like news bulletins are also inserted between the pages, and I've left them where they were originally located.


In the back is a pocket containing a bunch of other goodies, including Halsey's ID badge, a SPARTAN patch, a map of Reach, photos, and more.


So that's the Limited Edition contents. Back to the big case. Lift off the styrofoam top and you'll find the statue underneath, along with Noble Team's weapons in a side pocket. Some assembly is required, but right away, you can easily see the detail. It's a really great display piece overall.


I dunno if it's due to age making the rubber/plastic a bit tougher to manipulate, but some of the guns were a bit uncooperative. In particular, I realized that when I boxed this up a few years ago, I accidentally took the sniper out of Jun's hand, when it was supposed to detach at his wrist like Jorge's minigun. Took some finagling to get it back in properly, but it still feels a bit loose. Nevertheless, here's the front with the weapons attached (very blurry, sorry), and the back without (since I'd taken the weapons off before realizing I forgot to take a back pic).


And there you go, the full Reach Legendary Edition! Once I have a spot to display this again, I'll keep the statue unboxed. But for now, back into the crate it goes.

On a side note, I just remembered how there was a stash of Halo: Reach Limited Editions at my local Walmart in college for literally years after the game came out. I can't remember if they ever had them on a discount or if they were still trying to sell them full price, but any time I wandered through the vidya aisle, they'd still be there. They probably got rid of them at some point, but I almost wonder if I'd still find them there today, just waiting to be taken home.

 

[Endu]

That Legendary Edition is so sexy, you've taken great care of it. I was only able to afford the Limited Edition, which had some cool stuff, but nothing like that.

 

[King Dead]

That Legendary Edition is so sexy, you've taken great care of it. I was only able to afford the Limited Edition, which had some cool stuff, but nothing like that.

Yeah, it helps that I've kept it in a closet and not in an attic or garage for the past few years. I always try to take good care of my things, and I have quite a few old collector's editions that are in good shape. I could dig out my Halo 4 one at some point, but that's nowhere near as snazzy.

Two MCC things:
1. Looks like I was slightly wrong about the 117 Day nameplate. As long as you sign into the MCC before 4PM PST tomorrow, you'll unlock the nameplate, so you've got one more day!
2. Season 5's launch date has finally been announced: next Wednesday. Still no word on whether the updated toggle will also be included on that date, so we'll see.

 

[9263900263]

Other than Destiny, has anything come along similar to Halo's sandbox FPS approach yet? It seems ripe for a rip off.

 

[King Dead]

Other than Destiny, has anything come along similar to Halo's sandbox FPS approach yet? It seems ripe for a rip off.

Back when Halo was at its peak popularity, various games were accused of being Halo clones; off the top of my head, the Killzone and Resistance series both had that label applied to them. I can't say whether that was applicable or not since I haven't played either, but there was definitely a trend for several years of different companies putting out sci-fi shooters in a similar vein, copying various Halo mechanics like regenerating health and limited weapons (much to the chagrin of Quake/UT fans). I don't think any really got close to the same feel, however.

Destiny is probably the game series that gets closest to Halo's feel, which isn't all that surprising considering both were developed by the same studio. Still, there's enough setting it apart that you don't really get the Halo experience while playing. The gunplay is very similar, but between all the space magic abilities, the various double jumps, exotic weaponry, and the practically nonexistent vehicle sandbox, it really ends up being its own beast.

Spoiler: Some additional Destiny thoughts

As a fan of both series, I've also been thinking recently about why Destiny's PVP feels so much less satisfying than Halo's, which became all the clearer when I picked up the MCC last year. Halo's strength is that it has a fairly simple sandbox that supports an endless variety of different game rules. In most cases, all players have the same movement and health, all guns deal the same damage, and all vehicles operate the same way. Not only does this mean that a firefight between two players with the same guns will mostly come down to skill (though there's certainly some luck involved), it also means that you can create all manner of gametypes on top of this sandbox, from pure deathmatch to objective-based to more off-the-wall types like Grifball or Rocket Race, supported in no small part by its robust custom game options. Add in Forge, and the possibilities are endless.

Destiny, meanwhile, has a comparatively complex sandbox. Each of the three classes has its own special ability and movement options, and each subclass (now four for each class) has a variety of grenade, melee, and super abilities to choose from. Every player can hold three different weapons (kinetic/energy/heavy), with dozens of options for each slot across a variety of weapon archetypes. Most weapons also have random rolls, so two copies of the same gun can potentially behave quite differently. Armor has a variety of stat points that affect health, regeneration, movement speed, and ability cooldowns. Then you have exotic weapons and armor; one of each can be equipped at any time, and they generally have effects that can drastically change up a player's build. Add all of this together, and it is virtually impossible for two players to be identical to each other.

In Destiny, Bungie has been unable to really support PVP beyond a bunch of different flavors of deathmatch. They've tried to include more objective-based gametypes before, but with the recent expansion, all of these have been purged. The only one left that's even slightly objective-based is Control, but controlling zones merely supports your ability to get more points per kill; though difficult it's theoretically possible to win a match without capturing a single point. I believe this is primarily due to the nature of Destiny's sandbox. Because there's so much variance between different players' loadouts, it's practically impossible to balance an objective-based gametype around practically infinite possibilities. It's also why you don't see many custom game options in Destiny, where you can generally only modify things like time limit and score limit. Tweaking things like gravity and movement speed could end up seriously amplified by any number of gear options, resulting in something that's either not fun to play or not fun to play against. They also gave up on including vehicles in PVP early into D1's lifespan, since it turned out that vehicles were practically useless against any player with a rocket launcher or a super ready to go (so, almost all the time).

And that's without getting into how Destiny PVP feels, especially nowadays with the new Stasis subclasses. Being frozen constantly is pretty much the definition of unfun, but that's what you're gonna run into pretty much every match. Add in various cheaters that Bungie still can't fully get rid of due to their insistence on keeping the peer-to-peer networking model, and it's just not a good experience. Meanwhile, I can load up the MCC, play a massive variety of gametypes across six different multiplayer modes, and have fun most every game, changing things up when I'm in the mood for something new.

I get what Bungie was trying to do with Destiny's PVP; they wanted to create a game where your character would play the same no matter where you took them. I just think that it was a huge mistake in retrospect, especially since rebalancing weapons and abilities for PVP usually has negative repercussions in PVE as well. They probably would have been better served making a carbon copy of Halo's multiplayer instead.