Reviews - hamminhaw

As a diehard fan of Halo CE I played this on Legendary difficulty and enjoyed it overall. Kudos to all involved in the making of this project. I hope to see more of this in the future.

Likes:
-Massive pitched battles: I LOVED this. It was really fun to fight dozens of Covenant troops at once with the help of your ODSTs. The maps were also big enough to accommodate multiple routes and strategies.
-E3 references: Elites with handheld shields and that one multi-ramp structure leading down into the cave. Actual animals in the game. Project Lumoria fleshed out something the actual Halo series couldn't accomplish until Reach.
-New enemies: Drones, Elites with fuel rod guns, Golden Elites that throw grenades, etc. I also like the inclusion of Huragok. I always wondered what they would have looked like in CE.
-Hunters are no longer one-hit kills with a headshot weapon which I thought lent some realism to the game.
-Scorpion: Changing the reticle improved the tank's accuracy a hundredfold. The machine gun is also far more devastating without the ridiculous kickback it had in Halo CE. Everything about this redesign was better. I loved that whole section of the campaign as well.
-Grenade throwing felt much more fluid with an easier learning curve, even though lobbing one for miles felt unrealistic.

Dislikes:
-Increased Spartan speed: I always felt that I was sprinting through the entire game. Maybe this was to compensate for the sheer size of the maps but IMO the movement in Halo CE was better balanced.
-Tracking on the plasma pistol shots now feel too accurate (read: unavoidable) which becomes especially apparent when you get EMP'd from across the map by a Jackal.
-Checkpoints were way too far apart. There's no reason to start an entire section killing 50+ enemies over again because you died at the very end. Some of the spawns didn't help either, where enemies spawned on top of you and you had no time to react.
-Lack of ammo and health: I constantly found myself scouring the map for weapons and ammo because the weapon drops simply did not give me enough bullets. With a game this expansive, I would have enjoyed having more supplies.
-Unkillable AI friendlies: Having played Halo Reach I'm generally not a fan of this. I'd much rather have your disposable Halo 2 marines that you could trade weapons with. That being said these AI were the only thing keeping me alive in some moments during the campaign.
-Epic battles: While the best part of the game I also feel like the game began to rely on them too much at some point. The campaign really could have benefited with some variation. I felt that the nature of the encounters was never-changing, and therefore this is not a game I could foresee myself playing for hours on end in six months or a year.
-THE DAMN FINAL BOSS BATTLE which keeps me from being generous and giving this a 7. On Legendary, after dying 20+ times, I can say this is absolutely impossible unless you have certain weapons (i.e. shotgun/fuel rod gun). Even so, no Elite should be able to survive two plasma grenade sticks, six needler supercombines, and dozens of miscellaneous small arms fire plus melee hits. The worst part? Just when you think you've got him, he can just teleport away, at which his shields (and I'm guessing health) will FULLY recharge. Congratulations, TM Mapping Team, you guys just pre-empted Promethean Knights, and I don't mean that as a compliment.
-Voice acting was unconvincing and music was obviously recycled, but I can't hold that against the team.

Overall, this was a fun add-on to Halo CE, but it could use a ton of improvement as well. I believe with these changes we'd have an even more engaging game. Keep up the good work!