Recent reviews by Tsun

Yes.

Imagine getting people all hyped for your game only to mention once it's out that "hey yeah you need an Epic account to play online. Sorry, not sorry."

Not a good look, y'all.

It feels good to be wanted.

In its current state I can’t really recommend getting into the game unless you’re either a diehard Halo fan like myself or you absolutely nothing better to do.

The season pass system is awful. When they first unveiled it I thought it was super cool! We pay for premium access to each pass and can earn progress in it whenever we want without the stupid time gates that other season/battle passes have. Yet they managed to take one step forward and two steps back. You have to complete the daily and weekly challenges for EXP to progress in the season pass. Simple right? Except some of the challenges require you to do obnoxious stuff like use one of the map guns (most of which are godawful - more on that later), or use a Wasp to kill 5 people in a 12v12. Note that you need to complete these challenges to progress and there is no EXP you get just for playing. Oh, and they’ve outright said they’re not changing the EXP system until at least after launch. Allow me to translate for you, as I’m fluent in 343-speak. That means never. They’re most likely never touching the EXP system and are going to let it burn.

The armor system is trash. Why are the armors separated by armor class? You have the Mark V suit, the Mark VII suit, and the armor for the upcoming event. You can’t use any of the Mark V gear on the Mark VII suit and vice versa. This certainly wasn’t a problem in MCC, so why now? I shouldn’t fail to also mention the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ preset shader system that upset many months prior to launch. You can’t pick your own colors, but you can pick preset color patterns. If 343’s number one goal was to limit the creativity of the player then congratulations, 5 stars! The only good thing they’ve done with the armor is make it so that your armor color always shows even when in a team game (you’re instead surrounded by a green, red, or blue outline).

What in the ♥♥♥♥ did they do to my baby the Battle Rifle? It’s AWFUL. In fact, most of the guns outside of the default Assault Rifle and Sidekick are downright trash. I remember having fun with the Commando in the playtests before this “beta”, so what the ♥♥♥♥ happened? I can run circles around people who have the BR or Commando while I’m just using the Sidekick. Don’t bother picking up other weapons, you’ll come out ahead.

The matchmaking is bad too. You pick ranked, 12v12, or regular 4v4. What? You don’t want to play Oddball again? Get ♥♥♥♥♥♥. You don’t get to pick a game mode playlist. You pick the amount of players you want and then shut up. You get no choices.

There’s some good. For example, I love the new mobility they’ve given us in the maps. Being able to clamber up walls is awesome! And the new equipment such as the grapple shot adds a whole lot more variation for play styles. I also really enjoy the atmosphere of some of the maps, with one that sticks to mind being a huge Banished AA cannon firing at a UNSC ship in the distance.

The music is also phenomenal as always. Hearing the old Halo theme when I opened the game genuinely brought tears to my eyes.

While I was having a blast playing, I couldn’t help but feel heartbroken at all of the changes they’ve made for the worse. 343 has tried to bring Halo back to its roots, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ they just can’t resist putting a “new” spin on it that nobody asked for. I can’t tell you how many threads I saw pop up on the Halo Waypoint forums complaining about the armor coloring system. Did 343 listen? No. They feigned listening (read told us to get over it in PR speak) while sending their forum moderators to silence the masses. Some of their staff care, but 343 as a whole has always been one big bundle of sullied expectations.

But hey, it’s just a “beta”.

Nah. It brokey.

I gave this game a negative review because, while mods have made it one of my favorite VR titles to mess around with, the base game is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ atrocious that it's hard to justify the price tag without the use of mods. Again, WITH mods it's arguably one of the best VR titles out there. But the effort of carefully putting mods together to form Skyrim into whatever sort of game you want it to be is YOUR effort, NOT Bethesda's. They don't get a thumbs up for being lazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It's laughable at best and insulting at worst that they thought it was okay to add basic VR functionality (you're basically a poltergeist floating stuff around and not really interacting directly with the world) that the game wasn't designed for in the first place and then slap another $60 price tag on it. Had they added it for free to the base game like PAYDAY 2 (although that VR actually works amazingly) then I wouldn't have much room to gripe.

Just another case of Bethesda charging full price for a broken game and expecting the community to give enough of a ♥♥♥♥ to fix it. I'm shocked.

I'll never forgive the Japanese!

Would be perfect if Halo 4 wasn't included.

Draugr isn't a hard boss, you're just bad.

I'm not one to get super into BRs unless I have friends to play with, but this game caught my attention the moment I had seen the trailer for it. All good fun, and the matches aren't super long even if you make it to the finale so it's easy to get a lot done or just play a few before you have to go somewhere. Have yet to try it with friends, but I can only imagine the mayhem that would ensue.

Only gripe I really have is team games. Whenever you're on a winning streak it seems like it's up to the gods of luck if your team is competent or if one of the other teams just happens to have it out for your color for no particular reason. Super good idea in theory, but it sadly doesn't work out too well. Maybe make it so you only get team games if you queue with a party? Or make it an optional checkbox? Idk. I'm not a fan.

Oh there were also the server issues on day 1, but who is really gonna complain about that? The servers got overloaded because an overwhelming amount of people took interest in the game! Is that really a negative? Twitter says yes, but who trusts Twitter anymore?