Sounds like I need to find my own group. If anyone is interested in tackling this a little bit at a time, let me know.

Speaking of lighting, the game’s main source of friction outside of puzzles is managing your inventory.

Cody, CheapLEY, and I hit credits on it last night. There’s still more to do, puzzles and locations we haven’t discovered yet, and we intend to play on until we see them.

Big Walk is a co-op puzzle game. It’s not like Lethal Company or Peak, which are more roguelike, but it does share the proximity voice mechanic. It makes use of this in both predictable and surprising ways. It does an excellent job of slowly ramping up difficulty as you progress- I use the analogy of Destiny having Story Missions at first, then Strikes, and then Raids.

But the game luxuriates in giving you and your friends downtime. Sometimes an objective will have you trekking over a large mountain or valley in order to complete it, and there’s nothing to occupy yourself with aside from your own discussions. Natural discovery is another big hook; stumbling across new things on your own volition is extremely rewarding.

It’s very visually interesting; serene, realistic landscapes are juxtaposed with bright playground-like equipment or structures to indicate points of interest. The lighting and shadows are great, and it gets very pretty during dawn and sunsets.

Speaking of lighting, the game’s main source of friction outside of puzzles is managing your inventory. When it gets dark at night, it’s VERY dark. You’ll need a flashlight or some equivalent way to illuminate the surrounding area. Each player can only carry one thing in their hands at a time, so choosing what your party’s inventory looks like is a very deliberate process. Everything has some purpose, so you’re always making trade-offs.

Getting separated from your friends is distressingly easy because of the short fall-off of your voices. Again, this feels intentional. The game provides a few ways of signalling your location to your friends, but keeping track of each other is a skill that it forces you to learn.

It’s the most fun I’ve had with a game so far this year. Highly recommended that you pick it up if you have a friends group you can play with. It supports from 2 up to 12 players, but we ran with just 3 for most of the game and had a blast.

Overall, I liked the game. I played through everything on Heroic, and I had a genuinely good time. I haven't really felt the desire to go back in, though, which is fine.

I think lots of the changes are good, like the reworked levels. While Assault on the Control Room and The Library are the biggest obvious changes, I really loved the way they reworked The Maw. The Warthog run is really cool now, and I just love how much it genuinely sells running/driving through the crashed Pillar of Autumn.

Agree.

I miss the scale, though. Everything feels smaller. Standing on the cliff outside the crashed escape pod on Halo just looks like standing on a normal mountain now. In the original, it felt like you were miles in the air. Likewise, The Truth and Reconciliation feels tiny. It feels like an aircraft carrier 200 feet above you, rather than a truly incomprehensibly massive ship thousands of feet in the air like it used to. The big jump during the Warthog run is gone, too.

It's funny that you say that, in that I don't think it IS smaller. I wonder if there's something about visual perception involved. There is so much to attract the eye that maybe scale is perceived differently? The OG was genius in the way it used technical limitations to serve the game, with the unnaturally smooth structures, for example. Maybe they brought T&R closer in the new game because they could do so believably. And I really think they lost opportunities with the cutscenes. For example, the first entry into the control room is all closeups, unlike the original, which makes the master chief look tiny in that space (that might be my favorite original cutscene). And although I like what they did with the flood spaces, all the flood detritus everywhere made things a bit claustrophobic.

I think it's a totally fine remake of the original game that did some really cool things with some other missteps, but it's ultimately something I don't think I'll spend any more time thinking about. I have no desire to go grab all the skulls or find the terminals. Again, totally fine. I got my $50 worth out of it, and I think that's enough.

I paid $70 and it's been totally worth it. Just finished a co-op playthrough this past weekend, and look forward to another one soon.

I think lots of the changes are good, like the reworked levels. While Assault on the Control Room and The Library are the biggest obvious changes, I really loved the way they reworked The Maw. The Warthog run is really cool now, and I just love how much it genuinely sells running/driving through the crashed Pillar of Autumn.

I miss the scale, though. Everything feels smaller. Standing on the cliff outside the crashed escape pod on Halo just looks like standing on a normal mountain now. In the original, it felt like you were miles in the air. Likewise, The Truth and Reconciliation feels tiny. It feels like an aircraft carrier 200 feet above you, rather than a truly incomprehensibly massive ship thousands of feet in the air like it used to. The big jump during the Warthog run is gone, too.

I think it's a totally fine remake of the original game that did some really cool things with some other missteps, but it's ultimately something I don't think I'll spend any more time thinking about. I have no desire to go grab all the skulls or find the terminals. Again, totally fine. I got my $50 worth out of it, and I think that's enough.

Now that I've completely finished both the campaign and bonus missions (on heroic), I understand more of the disappointment, but I don't understand the degree, except that on the internet, only extreme hate or love gets any attention. It's a beautiful game in its presentation. I thought the lighting and the art was pretty great throughout. I thought the new recordings of the principals' lines were mostly okay, and if not necessarily better than the original, at least as good in most cases. One would be right to ask why do it in that case, and I bet that the tweaks and additions to the script would have been considered more jarring had they not, and there were improvements made. There were clarifications added and places where they pumped up the emotional resonance for those who are well acquainted with the trilogy (what they did with Keyes pistol was a good example). Based on the credits, our own Grimbrother One may have had a hand in that, and I liked it! The other important thing to say is that the game felt like Halo to me, which is no small feat.

I liked other things, too, such as:

• The selection of weapons from the later games.
  
• How pickups could be saved for later activation
  
• Vehicle jacking and disabling with an overcharge
  
• Changes to the maps (especially The Library and AOTCR) to make encounters more interesting.
  
• The flood are better and scarier—more like Halo 3.
  
• The hunters are scary again (I didn’t like this at first.) There’s no quick solution (unless you have a sword, but like the original magnum solution, it’s tricky).

Some things I didn’t like:

• No more breaking glass. Assault on the Control Room just isn’t the same.
  
• No ice to skate around on.
  
• No going underwater (in the ocean or where fuel had pooled on Keyes)
  
• The removal or change to some cutscenes that had sweeping camera angles that I thought better showed off the environments in the original.
  
• The cutscenes not being in-engine.
  
• Inexplicable boundaries—especially behind the big rock after your cross the first bridge on Halo.
  
• Completely new music. Granted, I remember hearing this only once.

Some things I have mixed feelings about:

• Elites speaking English. I missed backward David Scully but the switch does kinda fix Keyes' line about overhearing the Covenant talking about Halo. (Yes, I guess the grunts could have been talking about it, but the Elites doing it makes more sense, especially since they are the guards.)
  
• Sprint. I mostly didn't mind it. It wasn't that much faster than the original and in my opinion did not break the game.
  
• Terminals and skulls. I just found the last of the terminals, and haven’t yet read them all, but I like what I’ve read. I am glad these are text, as opposed to those waypoint films in Anniversary, which I had very strong feelings about. I wish they appeared in the game as they did in Halo 3, but at least they don’t take you out of the game.
  
• Finding the skulls (with guidance of course—I’m not crazy!) was a nice metagame once I’d finished. I do think that the skulls that allow you to change back to traditional settings should be among the freebies they give you once you’ve found a few (or even just let you have them from the start).
  
• Markers/waypoints. I didn’t mind the markers on remaining enemies too much, although I’m sympathetic to the argument that they break immersion. Waypoints also seemed a bit aggressive, but as someone who easily gets turned around (as anyone who has raided with me can attest), I have to admit I appreciated them. In the original, it was very common for me to get disoriented inside the Truth and Reconciliation, for instance.

Game features/bugs:

• I wish the game had mutilple saved game slots. The ability to save co-op checkpoints would be nice, too.
  
• Quick Resume is buggy on Xbox. I find that if I don’t completely close the game and restart, I might get a black screen during cutscenes.
  
• I found the menus confusing and not well labeled. More than once I forgot which submenu I was in, since they all mostly have the same options past the top level.

More about central characters

I thought the new Keyes was good, and although I didn’t know until I looked it up that it was no longer Pete Stacker, I cannot help but want to hear HIS new recordings.

About Cortana, Jen Taylor’s new line readings were fine, and I liked some of the new animations (the 50-foot woman scene in AOTCR was particularly effective). I’ve seen comments about the new Cortana being ugly. No accounting for taste or how mean the internet can be, but I liked her. It doesn’t hurt that I really like Kathryn Hahn, who she reminded me of, but I thought she was attractive (more attractive than the original) without veering into Playboy Playmate territory like they did in Halo 4. What I didn’t like was that at times her facial expressions did not match the seriousness with which I thought she should be saying the things she was saying.

I thought that Keston John as Johnson did a good job of sounding like David Scully (and it’s worth remembering that the first Johnson was a riff on the Sergeant from Aliens). To be honest, though, this was my least favorite part of the remake, and I don’t blame the voice actor. I blame the animation and writing. They would routinely have him look at the camera and mug. They made Johnson high on his own supply and it broke immersion for me, especially in the bonus missions, where almost everything out of his mouth was some cliched action movie quip. I know Johnson always did bring a bit of comic relief, but nearly gone was the pathos that took full bloom in Halo 3.

About those bonus missions

Playing the bonus missions could poison the well for this game, and I think it might have for those who played them first. I enjoyed the gameplay, and I even appreciated what they were trying to do with the story, but it was just overwrought and overacted. To be honest, some of the original Halo was a bit overdone, too, and the irony is this probably wouldn’t have the received the criticism it has had it been 2001, but our standards have changed. I didn’t hate it, but I did cringe during parts, along with many apparently. Still, the gameplay was better than it was Halo 4 or 5. Forerunners are my least favorite Halo enemies.

Finally

If you love Halo, it's a nice trip down memory lane. I look forward to four-player co-op, which, as I think some of us said, was worth the price of admission. I'm glad it exists. Parts of it will make your eyes bleed, and I mean that in a good way.

Kerm

crosspost

Thanks for doing this, Cody. It's already come in handy. Apparently, if you use Quick Resume on Xbox, it's iffy that the cutscenes load. I've had a few load in as black screens with only subtitles.

I wonder why that is? Maybe because it always needs to be online? If I put my PS5 to sleep while paused in the middle of a level… WHOOPS. Disconnected, back to the title screen when you wake up! I'll bet something similar messes with the cutscenes.

It sucks so much ass.

P.S. You're welcome.

I've rarely had a good experience with quick resume. You should see what it does to your Golf with Friends session.

Thanks for doing this, Cody. It's already come in handy. Apparently, if you use Quick Resume on Xbox, it's iffy that the cutscenes load. I've had a few load in as black screens with only subtitles.

I wonder why that is? Maybe because it always needs to be online? If I put my PS5 to sleep while paused in the middle of a level… WHOOPS. Disconnected, back to the title screen when you wake up! I'll bet something similar messes with the cutscenes.

It sucks so much ass.

P.S. You're welcome.

Who wants a copy of the game for PS5? I don't need it anymore! You must have a disc drive.

I’d be eager to give it a run, then pass it on.

I was already told Bigarm would want it, but if that doesn't happen it's yours.

Who wants a copy of the game for PS5? I don't need it anymore! You must have a disc drive.

I’d be eager to give it a run, then pass it on.

It would be cool to play co-op with you.

Sorry man, not gonna happen. I am never playing this game again in my life.

http://halo.bungie.org/news.html?item=42790

5.1 surround sound, but 1080p, because I guess rendering the pre-rendered cutscenes in UHD was too expensive.

Seriously, though, the new legendary ending was the ONLY thing you thought was better?

1. The flood infection spreading in the environment in the library and two betrayals
2. The maw run really looked like the ship was on the verge of falling apart
3. I didn't say the legendary ending was better, just that it was more canon.

TIL that the guy who owns isnotcanon.com doesn't actually attach value to canon.

4. 60fps mostly
5. Rally points

I’m kind of scared of legendary.

If you can beat Truth and Reconciliation on legendary, you are golden. It's by far the hardest this time around.

Thanks for the clip.