Apparently, I’m not that good at it.
And not just the online version, either. I started the single-player campaign of “Heroic,” which is one notch above normal, and am now ruing it. I’m considering restarting on “normal,” or perhaps even looking to see if there is some easier setting, perhaps named “creampuff Casper Milquetoast”.
But it sure is pretty.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Halo, a lot. It’s pretty much a rock solid implementation of “the 3d multiplayer deathmatch shooter.” It’s Quake 3 with a pace that isn’t stupidly painful, and with much, much better designed maps. But but but: I like the pace of Counterstrike better. I like that if you die in Counterstrike, you have to sit out for a good long time. It lends an air of gravity to the proceedings: actions have consequences. Whereas the 3-2-1-respawn we find in Halo and its ilk leads to a completely different style of gameplay.
I’m not whining that Halo has the gameplay that it has; I’m wondering why Counterstrike seems to be the only shooter that adopts the opposite position. Counterstrike is the most popular game of its genre. Wouldn’t you think that someone else would at least try to imitate it?
I also started on Heroic. Eek! One nice thing is that once you complete a chapter, you can quit, and then restart the campaign on that next, newly unlocked chapter, on a wussier setting. I think that’ll be my plan.
I had done most of the first level on Normal the night before, and tried it over again on Heroic last night. After about an hour of abject failure, I was only about 1/2 of the way through. So I restarted in Normal and played the whole level in 20 minutes.
The Elites seem to be inordinately hard to kill on Heroic. And, you only have about half the amount of time before your shields are gone.