Recent reviews by zbee

The "Emotions" category has 2 emotions in it ("Drunk"?), and the Hobbies category is half things used in hobbies and the other half mundane tasks ("Unpacking"? "Gas"?), and otherwise just random words or things you do or things you become. It is not a user-submitted category.

All the user-submitted categories are typo-ridden things submitted by 11-year olds that are too abstract or only applicable for their friends.

A fun drunk game if you only select the built in categories (except "Emotions" and "Hobbies")

TL;DR: I only bought for the campaign, campaign is cool, it's too buggy to play and 343i doesn't care - Halo is no longer worth buying for the campaign.

I can't recommend this game despite enjoying the story. I have enjoyed it a lot actually, but its cons far outweigh its pros.

I bought it for co-op campaign after *numerous* delays, and bugs are way too common such as things blocking progression until we die and re-do a fight, performance is not amazing in co-op (despite preforming perfectly in single player for both of us), crashes are even more common than bugs, and the biggest of all: there STILL seem to be issues with saving progress in campaign (co-op and solo) despite such issues being common a year ago, there's not even work-around "solutions" like allowing manual saving or showing an error when saving is not working currently.

The campaign's great, I like the Assassin's Creed-esque busy work to do, it manages to be much more interesting, and the story is incredible as always. I love marines actually being marginally useful, the ammo fills are very nice, the new enemies are interesting and challenging, the bosses are just awesome. The weapons are a blast too, the variety is nice, and a lot more feel viable and useful than some other titles in the franchise - especially nice since eventually you are forced to swap up your weapons over the course of some of the longer missions.

I haven't touched multiplayer at all, probably won't. Playlists for game modes is just ridiculous, the 'progression' is a joke, just not even worth my time.
It handily beat COD -the old argument- for a long time in my opinion, and then it shot itself in the face. Repeatedly. Particularly this entry.

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The fact that **SAVING PROGRESS** doesn't work in a pseudo-open world game I managed to put 26 hours into trying to explore and do side objectives before even reaching 50% completion is utterly absurd. Saving has worked in games for 37 years, but I guess fixing a game-shattering campaign bug that's seemingly been an issue in one form or another for the entire release of the game ranks lower than "Text on loading screens will no longer change size when the UNSC emblem appears in the bottom left corner of the screen" (a bug fix in the most recent patch notes).
Not to mention that they clearly don't care about the issue, it seems there has not even been a response to saving issues despite it being so prevalent that in the support ticketing system "Stat or completion tracking issue" is a category - seemingly they just put that there to know which tickets they don't have to reply to. "Stat or completion tracking issue" being one of a company's bug tracking system's very few canned options (versus being immediately and wholly addressed in very high priority) should be a pretty clear indicator of 343i's stance on campaigns going forward.

I'll just stick to the books and cutscene-compilation videos from now on.

I have loved where 343i has brought the story, I have loved Halo since I was a child, but where they've brought the franchise games is not worth money anymore; Just another title shamelessly heaped onto the "AAA" money-at-any-cost cursed development cycle pile of garbage.

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Edit: they replied to my ticket about saving issues, after some back and forth clarifying the issue, "We currently do not have a workaround for this issue but the report has been logged with the development team to help with the investigation." They have no solution for this issue that's been in since release, took more than a week for them to even reply in the first place, didn't even apologize for the issue, nothing.

I don't understand the complaints with the invasion, my friend and I love the challenge - it's very interesting, and adds a lot of difficulty to the missions the NPCs can't really.
Edit: Nix that. Dying to camping has happened for the first time. That is really f****** stupid. Everything else about it is fine and interesting, even as the invader - really cool; but no camping ... That's half of what a sniper does, are you kidding me?

Overall, the game is very similar to SE4 though the maps are way, way bigger and more engaging.

The addition of full campaign co-op instead of set parts of it or specific missions is awesome.

The gun customization doesn't feel a lot more impactful than before, but at least there are more options - can't say I really care for any of the weapon skins currently in the game though, and presently the total selection of rifles is fairly disappointing.

Especially if you're a fan of the franchise: it's a buy.

This has been the most involved I have ever been with an MMO with the greatest amount of respect from the developers for the community. There just truly is no competitor.

This has been one of the most enjoyable co-op games since the likes of Army of Two.
I really am loving most every part of the game, but I especially love difficulty levels and general functions similar to Dark Souls types of games (but it seems better harnessed, more focused on bosses and elites rather than every enemy being brutal) and the way in which randomness is added to the maps (with multiple different possible 'hub areas' for each region).
This adds a lot of variance and immediate replayability to the game, and I love that.

I am enjoying the game. I really like a lot of the ideas here, the narrator, the world, and the little choices you get to make throughout. The combat feels pretty good, and better than most other rpgs, and I've enjoyed pushing through the game, I've also experienced no performance issues of any kind at max settings and I've just got a 1070 and a 2700x lol.

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Previously I was softlocked, it was not the cleanest of launches, but I've had no issues since; additionally we've also received a lot of fixes for bugs, bug reports are handled fairly promptly, and lots of QoL improvements!

Now that I've played more, I've had an absolute blast! The combat is a hoot, I've enjoyed the story, and I love the sights

This is one of the best RPGs I've ever played, all throughout it really gave me the general vibe of the excitedness of Skyrim before we all played hundreds of hours of it.

There's all your basic boring RPG grind components, but the tools you get to progress through the grind, the environment, and the combat all makes it a lot more enjoyable.

The only real qualm I can come up with is the distinct lack of outfitting options you really get, I never felt like any of my outfits were super awesome; of course this comes down to personal taste, but there's only like a dozen total options, and instead of variety, there are numerous tiers of the same outfits.

Even collecting collectables doesn't feel so bad, because as you are going through finding them, you're getting to experience the awesome combat.

This is probably the most boring RPG I've ever played; in berating it I've taken to calling it an RPG simulator, because that's all it seems to aspire to be.

The most interesting thing I did was a side quest line for your first companion, and I felt like I had to drudge through the story just to advance the game enough to complete the quest line, and as soon as you're done with it you get given thee most basic fetch quest ever, and no good information to efficiently complete it with even - no markers, no objectives, just 3 names of outfits to wear in the description of the quest that seems like it will take you 30 seconds, if you can find where they will be.
That seems pretty well indicative of how the whole game will play out: interesting stories completely surrounded and enveloped by the most boring and basic RPG I've played.

I was very hopeful from the get-go because it seemed to have aspects of Fallout but better all around it, but it's just Fallout with a more interesting base-story but the most boring possible quests to get through it.

This is an amazing continuation of the franchise, breathing fresh air into 2 that HD simply didn't, with mod support, actually improved graphics, better multiplayer, new and generally improved campaigns, and of course actual new content like civilizations and campaigns.
I love the game being revamped, particularly in a useful way unlike hD.

I have very much enjoyed this game.

I think there's polish to be added, such as i currently have like 40 bots following me, and that's great, but sometimes I don't want to have my screen be 90% bots but sucks for me.
I haven't seen a lot of replayability in it, though I have gone through it a few times, it just lacks what many other similar games have with a generated map or variability in playthroughs, you basically do the same thing each playthrough really. Would love to see an option to generate differing maps instead of following the story.

Overall, however, I ended up stay up way too late playing this game far too many times, and really loved the art, style, and frequent updates.