Stealing kills for skills: Halo 3 Online retake

(tags game, Xbox 360, Halo 3, FPS)

My intent last weekend was to finish the Halo 3 Campaign on Legendary. I did get through most of the stages through a combination of run and gun, praying for the words "Checkpoint... saved". In fact I only have two more stages to go. But I had an online date with some IRC channel #insertcredit regulars and that got my online mania started.

Halo 3 online matchmaking is a cesspit of vulgarity and cursing, at least the voice chat part is. In about 150 social matches, I've only remembered one time when the voice chat was useful for identifying rallying points. The other time were just silence or even worse, distracting IRC-like talk which had nothing to do with the game. The pre-game trash talk is random and sub-witty, mostly consisting of "woo woos", "your mama", racial stomping, etc. Its my take though, when I am severely out ranked (lieutenants, captains, etc) that the trash-talking outranker wants to see some challenge from you. In the social matches I decided to detach my mic/headset because it was useless. And I know how to use the mute feature but I tire of using it every match. Maybe I should be pulling up my end of the game by voicing but I need to memorize the names areas of the map. "2 camping the sword spawn" "laser snipe on the center hill" etc. There is so much meaning in those simple phrases.

Still, despite the lag and random chance of punching success, it is more fun than I gave it the first time. In fact, the combination of playing against and with other people and being able to replay my moves and other's moves in the Theater mode has improved my FPS thinking, such as which enemy to prioritize, how to cover my teammate, how to understand the rhythm of my regenrating shields, how to use elevation to my advantage, (how to steal kills, heheh) etc. Definately I can see some room for improvement when watching my own killing sprees and cannon fodder runs in Theatre mode, but it has taken a game like Halo 3 to make the deficiencies visible. I saved some clips where I think I play good but they are probably embarassingly mediocre. In the voice of that Crackdown demo announcer, "Remember! [Stealing] kills for skills." Hahah.

I can see that for the Halo games, you need to keep one eye on the radar at all times. Its really training wheels, a crutch that is no substitute for being one with a map and the enemy. Its only a two dimensional display though, so you can play some mind games. Unfortunately, this feature can be exploited in sparingly few locations, but there is at least one point on each map.

Its frustrating to see Halo 3 so restrictive in some things such as maps and open-ended in others. There are so few maps. One of the things that attracts me to DM/Slayer in FPS is epiphany from learning a new map. I can see that the PC will still be my preferred FPS platform. My UT99 mods and user maps folder is almost a huge 5 GB, in an era where maps were about 1 to 5 MBs. But the Theatre mode is really good. I met a 3-star Major in a social match, and I was able to watch his file share stuff and learn. I suppose because Halo 3 is a mainstream game, you need to dumb down the knobs and controls. You really don't need more maps, you need to play this map better.

Now that I'm a "Gunnery Sergeant Grade 2" with about 65 Rating Points (RP) and the game says I need 85 more RP to get one more rank up when it previously said only 10 RP more for the next level, I think the game is telling me to get out of the Social lobby and into the Ranked lobby, which means become an "Officer" instead of staying "Enlisted". This page by Gruntsrus is really useful. Unfortunately, the period of easy kills is pretty much over. Anybody staying in this game for longer than two weeks is probably skilling up as well.

Am I going to play more? I'd like to. But it can wait for Legendary.