Ah, finally have some time to mention the spoiler points I didn't want to mention in the review. And please feel free to argue anything here or the review with whatever point you want, talking about this kind of stuff is so much more interesting than talking about the death of X system or whatever fanboy flamebait that goes on in most threads.
Spoiler text below (nothing too huge except the last paragraph.
As I said above, I had a problem with their general attempt at level design and their failure at leading the player in the right direction. The first problem was that everything just looks the same, even in the really nice outside areas. This part isn't so much a spoiler but it is a noteworthy problem. There were very many times that I got completely turned around in outside and inside areas just because everything looked exactly the same. It's like they just copy and paste areas in the same level, in fact, I know they do this in some cases. When you're shutting down the three towers on the ark (I forget the name of the towers), those areas are exactly the same. Even then fight at the end is pretty close except they just cloak the enemies at the end of the second one.
For the inside areas, they were just in general confusing. Not only did they use uninteresting textures amd shapes, but once again every place looked the same. In the first base you enter I got hopelessly lost for a good while before I finally found my way.
The place I got lost the worst and by far the least enjoyable area of the game was the high Charity (I think that's the name of the ship) when you rescue Cortanna. It was really a shame that the level was jsut so bad because it could have been so good. The dark places were far too dark and the light places should have been darker and moodier. The enemies just weren't fun, confusing, and in general too strong and quick. The level itself was more confusing than any place in the game. This level alone accounted for the biggest drop in the gameplay section because it just did so much wrong. It wasn't as bad as Fort Fermatta in Eternal Sonata, but it was still pretty shitty.
I think the infested ship was a really cool idea that could have been pulled off really well with just a better base design and lighting. Many places were just lit wrong and ruined much of the mood the level could have had. I was also just upset during this area because I was hopelessly lost. I spent a lot of time in the twisting areas getting turned around because there just weren't many landmarks. I really didn't have a way to mark most areas so I found myself quite a few times going backwards without realizing. The only way I ever knew I was going forwards was when I saw the loading...done or checkpoint...done in my HUD.
If the level itself wasn't bad enough I hated the Flood here. I like a hard game and I like challenging enemies but these were ridiculous. There was one particular Flood creature that bothered me more than any-- the spikey one that could shoot at you from across the room. Not only were these frustrating because you couldn't always see them until you're getting shot by five of them, but they were extremely tough. I could hit these things with 3 straight on brute shots and they would still be alive. I know I spent two sticky grenades to kill one. It was just insane how tough these were and how many of them there were. These would have been fine if they didn't have so many of them or if they just decreased their health. Strong ranged weapons were already pretty limited and these were always trouble because I always had to use a lot of ammo killing them.
While on the topic of enemies, lets talk about the scarabs and puzzles. Since I didn't play through Halo 2 I guess I didn't get the tutorial on how to kill these things because one just appeared and nobody gave me any hints on how to kill it. After many failed attempts I finally had to refer to FAQ and apparently you *could* stop it by using a rocket launcher and shooting the joints many times but since rockets weren't easy to come by (I could never find enough to take it down) that way just really wasn't an option. The preferred way to kill it was to just drive around and let the AI kill it. Oh! Why the fuck didn't I think of that? I'm sorry, but you shouldn't ever let the AI play the game for you. Fighting the Scarabs in the flying vehicles was fun, on the ground sucked because I had no real artillery and just had to let the AI wear it down. Really not cool.
There were other puzzles that made me angry though I can't really remember which ones other than the one on the High Charity. You had to press a button to expose some pillars and then destroy these pillars some how. well I pressed the button and my radar lit up with objectives. I went to each little pillar and looked for a button and found nothing. I jumped to my death a few times just trying to figure out what to do. I finally accidentally melee'd the stupid thing out of frustration and apparently that's what you were supposed to do. It really doesn't matter that I can't remember the other puzzles because that pretty much sums them all up for me.
The final upset for me was the final area. What could have been a really cool experience just turned into a really dull one. Now I'm told that the final level in Halo 2 was the exact same thing of driving the Warthog to safety but I didn't play Halo 2 campaign so this still sounded cool to me. I started playing this level, fell a few times but it was a lot of fun. I got through the first tunnel expecting to jump to safety only to find...the exact same area copied and pasted that I had to go through. After getting through that I had to go through any three or four of the exact same areas and every one of them just made my excitement level drop by A LOT. It's bad enough they apparently used the same ending from Halo 2, but they beat it to death by making it ridiculously long. If they had just ended it after that first tunnel, maybe the second, it would have actually been fun and a decent last level.
Anyways, feel free to disagree with any of that or anything else.
