RedStarRocket91

Actually, I'm pretty sure the request here is that we actually get to play the fight, which is completely different from making it a QTE. This section had the potential to be a really fun boss, or at least something engaging, but instead all we get is a cutscene. Definitely a wasted opportunity and a very disappointing way to deal with an antagonist, no matter how minor he is. Care to elaborate on your second point rather than just dismissing it?

I think a sort of tower defence mode would work quite nicely with the REQ system - I'm not so fussed on just clearing one area and moving on, as that's basically the whole campaign and I got sick of it very quickly, but a sort of evolved Firefight mode could be fun. Perhaps it could take cues from Gears of War: Judgement's 'Survival' game mode and you have to hold bases until they fall, or enemies spawn in a central point and every time they capture a base you can't recapture it and they start spawning more powerful enemies. Game ends either after a set time, a set number or enemies, or defeating certain bosses. At any rate, after how disappointed I was with the campaign I'd love to see a new PvE game mode!

It's a simple fact that everybody wants their clan to succeed. Playing together with a regular group of friends, whether for casual fun or hardcore competition, is one of the best experiences in gaming. However, in their haste to try and recruit members to clans, people often forget a few basic things, such as checking the rules thread. If you're looking to recruit for a clan, and haven't already done so - please read it, as it's not just there for decoration. It's pinned at the top of this forum at all times, so ignorance of its contents is no excuse when it comes to any moderation, and it's reviewed regularly and updated accordingly, so for as long as it remains pinned its contents are valid and it hasn't expired. The most common ways that these rules are broken are in violation of rules 1 and 5. The rules on bumping and multithreading are there to ensure that all clans have an equal chance to get people's attention and recruit them - not just those with large numbers. This is particularly prominent among some of the larger clans, and so bear in mind that while you're here trying to recruit for them, you're acting as their representative. If you actions and attitudes reflect poorly on your clan, it could earn a permanent ban on their right to recruit here. So, we don't allow you to bump your own threads, and we don't allow you to make more than one. The question then becomes, 'how am I supposed to get people's attention?' Probably the single most important piece of advice I can give you is that you need to be active - and the best way to do this is to get involved in the community. An account here allows you to do so much more than just post in this forum - we have a large number of other forums for discussion, various forum games, regular Community Events, the occasional site tournament and contest, and of course our live-chat shoutbox, where you can interact with other members in real-time. If all you do is turn up, post a thread, and never log back in except to check it, then unfortunately you're unlikely to get much attention - and of course, if you break our rules, you can get exactly the wrong kind of attention from the moderating team. But by interacting with the community and making a name for yourself, people are much more likely to pay attention to what you post, and your chances of getting those new recruits rises drastically. Remember, you can do things like putting a link to your clan's thread in your signature - nobody is likely to see this if the only place they can find your signature is in this particular forum, but if they can see it in discussions and threads across the whole site, it's much more visible. When it comes to recruiting for a clan, you get out what you put in. If you make little to no effort, you're not likely to get many requests - but if you're willing to make that investment of time and enthusiasm, the chances of people recognising your clan rise substantially. And who knows? Even before people start wanting to join, you might make a few new friends and play a few games along the way!

...I take that as a yes, then?

What did I start with? A Master System 2, which I got in what I think was between 1992 and 1994, followed by a Mega Drive 2 at around the same time. However, I actually started playing earlier than that - some family friends who we used to visit quite regularly had a son who was a few years older than me who had the same consoles, and so it's quite possible that the first time I played a video game I was less than a year old! My favourite console that I've ever owned though was probably my 360, which is just a fantastic piece of hardware and into which I've sunken far too many thousands of hours. I don't really know if I can pick a favourite individual game - I mean, genres are a thing, for a start - but if I were to go with something I could basically just replay over and over for the rest of my life, it would probably be either Fallout 3 or Mass Effect 2.

Pfft. You think that's impressive? I once got a kill with a Mauler. IN MULTIPLAYER.

ALL IS DUST Would you rather be able to go backwards in time, or forwards in time?

Well, 'amazing' is very subjective, but since you asked: Fable II The Gears of War series Mass Effect LEGO Star Wars The Rainbow 6: Vegas series Halo: Reach The Bioshock series Are all pretty amazing games to me. More importantly - this is just the first round of games to be added, there'll certainly be more.

Spoilers below, click at your own risk!

The short version is that 343i have stated that the limitations of the hardware meant that they needed to choose between maintaining 60 frames per second and putting in splitscreen, as there isn't any way to do both. As a result, they chose to drop splitscreen in favour of getting the higher framerate, and there aren't any plans to patch it in.

It's certainly true that a lot of the Forge maps which have made their way into matchmaking over the years have been garbage. But that said, there have been an awful lot of really terrible regular maps, too: Reach had some really atrocious maps in its pool in terms of things like Boardwalk, Sword Base and Reflection, while Halo 4 had garbage like Abandon, Daybreak and Shatter. And bear in mind, these kind of regular maps can't simply be tweaked with a few Forge edits, so they either have to be pulled from the map pool altogether (reducing variety), left in (creating frustration), or rebuilt, which takes time during which we have to put up with one of the first two anyway and then might be broken again. Now while there's no denying that a lot of Forge maps are pretty poor, there are an awful lot of them which aren't. There are always going to be a few really terrible maps which make it into matchmaking (I'm still angry that the person who designed The Cage and Uncaged was paid rather than euthanised), but there are also a lot of really fantastic maps which did: some of my all-time favourite maps have been products of Forge, such as Synapse, which was not only well-balanced and exciting to play but also managed to be incredibly good looking as well. On this very site we have an entire Forge section in which people can show off their creations - and while yes, some of them are pretty poor, a lot of them are fun, fair, and competitive.

I think you're overlooking the most obvious thing here, which is that right now the options for custom games are astonishingly poor, centred as they are around competitive gametypes, and without even the use of Forge to edit maps into more convenient canvases for recording. Throw in the fact that armour has to be unlocked via REQs and most people probably don't even have the stuff they'd need to make their Spartans look correct. Plus? It's been less than two weeks since the launch of Halo 5. That really doesn't leave much in the way of time to write scripts, record scenes and dialogue, and then edit the whole thing together into something presentable.

Jack al Sniper

Literally Hitler.

The automatic weapons only outshoot the precision weapons at close ranges - which is what they are supposed to do. Precision weapons are still perfectly competent at mid-range and long range, they're just not completely dominant in every area now, which makes for a far more interesting game. Why even bother putting the AR, SMG, Magnum, Storm Carbine, and Suppressor in the game if they're just going to be automatically outclassed by precision weapons? More to the point, they're hardly 'background' weapons. Use them at mid-range - their intended role - and they'll still comfortably outshoot an automatic. Put simply? For far too long, precision weapons have been a crutch for bad players who aren't good enough to learn how to use anything else. If you refuse to adapt and stick stubbornly to your BR at close range then you deserve to lose, because you are deliberately choosing to bring the wrong kind of weapon to the fight. This is not 2004 and the disaster that was Halo 2: this is a game where every weapon actually has a purpose, and if you insist on bringing the wrong tool for the job, you have nobody but yourself to blame when you fail.

What about the extra armour from the Champions' Bundle in Halo 4? That added four completely new armours including the Mark V, ODST, Prefect and Ricochet, and while those couldn't be used in Spartan Ops, they were available on base and previously-released DLC multiplayer maps.

Well, the whole reason that Movember exists is to promote awareness of men's health - so we'd sort of be missing the point if we didn't encourage you to do what's medically prudent! I'm sure you'll be joining us in spirit, if not in follicles...

The assassination animation is definitely very cool! I just wish that there was some sort of indicator to show when he actually becomes vulnerable to it - some sort of audio/video cue. Perhaps there is one and I just haven't noticed it, but if so, making it obvious (and thus lettings us more reliably use the assassination) would definitely be appreciated.

Our newest Member of the Month requires no introduction for the veterans of the forums, but for those of you who have just joined us (Welcome!), something of an explanation is in order. This month's MoM is perhaps the single most active member of the forums outside of the staff - a title he's held for quite some time. Indeed, he first arrived on the forums before Halo 4 was even a thing, meaning that he's managed to sustain his frenetic level of engagement for well over three years now. Within just two months, he'd reached the rank of Dedicated Member - and less than a month after that, he'd recorded his thousandth post. But he wasn't content with that, instead continuing to post so frequently that now, he's actually the single most prolific poster on the forums, with over 5,000 recorded comments - and perhaps half that many again in the Offbeat forum. Over the past few months, he's also taken up the Mantle of Responsibility (sorry, I couldn't resist!) for administering the Semi-Weekly Site Polls, in which he invites members of all stripes to join him for a friendly discussion of some aspect of the Halo games and universe: if you want to see it for yourself, you can find the most recent edition here. But not satisfied with simply attaining the highest post count in the forum's history and creating one of our best regular discussion topics, he's even begun to produce a weekly news round-up of what he feels to be the most important stories of the gaming world - and somewhere amongst all of that, he still manages to find the time to be one of the most active members of the shoutbox. Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a very long time coming, and he's worked very hard to earn this. Therefore, please join me in giving a huge and thoroughly deserved round of applause to a man who's truly well on the way to become a forum legend, our new Member of the Month, Caboose the Ace! Congratulations, Caboose! We hope you enjoy your month in the pink, and that you'll continue to bring the same energy and enthusiasm to the forums in the months and years to come!