Angry Robot

Halo Marathon

2:37pm
Assault on the Control Room. I had a video uploaded but the aspect ratio was messed.

4:09pm
The Library. We’re definitely not on a speed run here. Nadine had to be ‘relieved’ (playing for 5 hours straight will do that to you) and then two of us who prefer inverted sticks had to play a level non-inverted. Keystone Chiefs here.

4:41pm
Some discussion over whether the flood can be described as “space zombies”. In my view, they can. That makes the little ones “zombie sacs”.

Chris: “Guilty Spark is starting to get on my nerves.”

6:20pm
Flood cra-z-ness. Shit gets laggy in co-op. The mid-to-late levels get repetitive, but it’s all worth it for that flood moment. Also, Guilty Spark. I suppose Chris is right to say he’s a little C3POish, but he has his unique charms. The singing, say.

We’ve eaten Chinese food and I may need to get into the Redbull stash. I’m too lazy to pick up the camera.

7:07pm
The last level – the warthog race against time level. Third try or so, a couple near-misses happened. So it’s taken us 8 hours so far. Not a speed run by any means, but not terribly bad.

Here’s some video we shot earlier, it’s sooo out of date now, but all the video stuff takes a while when there’s halo to be played…

I’ve shot more, and maybe I should be digitizing it soon…

UPDATE the full video is here, and you may prefer to watch it instead of what’s embedded here since it contains most of this first part anyways.

8:20pm

Finally, the first Halo is done!

9:20pm

After a brief break during which we purchased additional energy drinks, it’s on again for Halo 2. We’re really bombing through it: we’re mid-outskirts right now. The tunnels. (Or is that a different level already?)

In my opinion, the cinematics are better in Halo 1. They really add drama to the gameplay, whereas the Halo 2 cinematics don’t do the same thing. Better to use a cinematic to set the stage for an exciting sequence, as Halo’s first cutscene does, rather than have a cinematic take over a stage’s most dramatic moment, like when the Chief guides a bomb into the Covenant ship at the beginning of Halo 2 – and you don’t get to control him.

11:41pm

Delta Halo, towards the end. It does help playing these back to back, in terms of Halo 2’s story making more sense. It does, and I maintain belief that it is a good story.

God bless Marty O’Donnell and his millions of dialogue lines. As always, I’m hearing lines from the marines & covenant that I’ve never heard before.

Pretty sleepy here. Which energy drink, the Redbull, the “monster” or the “rockstar”?

1:30am

The important thing is, these games are fun. I mean we’ve been playing for quite some time now and we’re still laughing, getting a kick out of firing brute shots at brutes n’ such. I think that’s it for the video for today, we got plenty more footage but it’s too much of a pain in the ass to edit / encode / upload all on the fly like that.

We’re toward the end now, where the Covenant civil war is raging and the Flood are infesting High Charity. The only part I really resent of Halo 2 is the library, it’s just too much of a retread. But at least you don’t have to go through it twice, like parts of Halo. Other than that, some levels are really great – notably Outskirts and Delta Halo.

3:05am

And with that brutally sudden cliffhanger ending, we’re all done! I’m updating this the following morning because after completing it we all crashed hard. Total runthrough time for both games: approx. 16 hours.

Yes Halo 1 is better than 2 in terms of overall story, quality of levels and (especially) historical significance, but simply because of all the multiplayer, Halo 2 feels like home to me. The gun balancing, the way the vehicles handle, the HUD, all the little details.

We’ve got to push on as we’re off to play a bit of Halo 3 shortly, but we’ll have more updates later today.