Toon Zone Talkback - "Halo: Legends": Halo, I Must Be Going

Halo 3 earned $170 million on its opening day alone in the US. I can forgive a little 'for the fans only' material, depending on how they go about it.

From the review, it's a little difficult sometimes to discern whether Halo Legends contains too much exposition or relies too heavily on information that 'noobs' won't understand. There is a slight difference, I think, though there might be some overlapping.
 
He wasn't talking about the review being positive or negative. He's probably referring to how reviews are being handled lately, with a lot of analysis ignored or thrown out solely to hammer home the reviewer's judgment of the show.

I mean, I read this and didn't feel any more educated about the product than if I just watched a commercial. The only difference is this one was being quite condescending.



You might want to reread it. He spends the first 2 or 3 paragraphs straight out bashing the franchise and its fans, which shouldn't really be a factor in a review for this product.
 
Honestly, I'm not seeing where the reviewer is going off on fans, unless I skipped something or I just didn't catch onto it. (Both tends to happen a lot, and I'm also slow so stuff has to be pointed out to me)

Now would I call the reviewer's argument bias? Probably, but at the same time I do think it's justifiable as well. He's stepping into a series which he didn't care for from the getgo, although, starting with Halo: ODST probably wasn't the most beneficial thing to do since Chief is pretty much Halo (in my eyes anyway). I think you should've started with either 1 or 2.

I mean the reviewer is a newbie to the franchise, and if the movie didn't appeal to him then all he can do is give his opinion on what he didn't like about it. In a sense, it's like telling someone whose a newbie and don't care for rpg's to watch Advent Children and then do a review about it. (And we all know that you have to play the game in order to understand what's going on there)

I'm a Halo fan and I don't have much of an issue with this review other than the reviewer trying to be funny and failing at it. But then again, I'm not the sensitive type nor do I take these reviews seriously since it's only there opinion. I'm still going to watch it though, because I'm a fan of Production I.G. (Although I don't like Blood+)

Off-topic: (I think)

One thing I don't think I'll ever understand is the whole "repetitive" argument used against FPS. "Duh" of course the genre is repetive since all you do is go around shooting at people and maybe use a grenade/explosive here and there. What exactly are people looking for in the genre?
 
The point which I brought up, though, is: why would he force himself to review something that he had no real interest in to begin with? I have no problems with him stating his honest opinion about the game and the anime spin-off, but a review such as this is meant to be both helpful and informative about the subject matter so that people know whether the product is worth their time or not. Save for the very last paragraph of the review, the rest of the review was neither very helpful nor very informative, IMO, and then in that case the reviewer pretty much would have just been better off saying that the anime would only appeal to Halo fans and nobody else, as it would save him a lot of time writing up a review for soemthing that he clearly hates.



What really ticks me off is that people use this criticism for A LOT of games in many different genres in general, these days, when its clear that most games are repetitive by nature. Its how good a game does what it sets out to do with its gameplay that determines whether the repetition is worth it or not. This has been a feature of gaming since it started decades ago, and in all honesty things haven't changed too much in terms of how a single-game can still be very repetitive in nature (even open-world/sandbox games and RPGs have their fair share of repetition aside from their story-lines or such, whether people are willing to acknowledge that or not).
 
RPGs are the absolute worse for repetition. Repetition is how they pad their playtimes. I've played RPGs where I've killed the same small handful of monsters, using the same tactics, hundreds of times, over and over, every three steps or so. If you're lucky sometimes they pallette swap them to mix it up. In a good FPS the enemy encounters can go different ways depending on how you approach them and how the AI responds. So I don't see why they are so often hit with the "repetitive" label.
 
I don't know if it applies here or not, but some of the sites I've been to in the past had it set up like reviewing is/was a job (of course I think it was more of a task since I don't think they get paid for it), and the site creator sends you so many dvd's to review or something of that nature. I'm only speculating here though so don't quote me on that. :sweat:
 
Likewise, the same goes for many other types of games that get criticized for repetition as well. I mean, some people will bash modern beat-em-up and hack-and-slash games for being too repetitive, but they completely seem to ignore the fact that these types of games usually offer far more enemy variety than most other games in other genres, and also give you multiple different weapons with tons of combos and abilities to experiment with (at least the good ones do, like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta, and such). The only reason that sandbox games and RPGs don't get basehd for this nearly as much is due to their "non-linear" structures, but one thing that I have come to notice over the years is that non-linear doesn't always mean "better gameplay," since sometimes a linear and fast-paced experience can be much more fun than a game that just lets you roam around-freely in a very boring world where there aren't many motivating goals to try and accomplish.

That's why I find this "repetitive" nonsense that most reviewers spew out about most games these days to be utter-crap. Because, just like you said with FPS games having good AI that can make fights always turn out differently, so too do many other games have their own little perks that can make the gamepaly feel more enriching if the design put into the game was developed well enough. Some more modern (as in, within the last decade) examples of this, for me, are games like Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Max Payne, Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden II, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (one of the very few RPGs that I actually ever cared for enough to play all of the way through), BioShock, and many, many more. The point is that even though each of those games can easily be consider "repetitive," they still offer more than enough within their gameplay to make the repetition actually feel fun and worth my time.

**Ahem**

Anyways, I went completely off-topic there, so my apologies for that.

Back On-Topic:

Is there anyone else here who has seen the Halo: Legends episodes who can share their own personal thoughts on it?
 
I've seen them, and I thought they were pretty decent. There is a large variation in quality, but they're generally pretty interesting. I actually liked the pseudo-documentary parts (Origins I and II) - it was an interesting look at the world of Halo and its history. (Then again, I like history in general, and I find documentaries decently interesting, so you could take that with a grain of salt)

The Duel was fairly interesting, but the animation style is very off-putting. If you can get past the animation, it's pretty decent. It's the only one of the shorts to really focus on the Covenant and the Elites. The next one, Homecoming, was probably one of my favorites. It delves deeper into the history of the Spartan II's, and now they came to be Spartans. This one might be less enjoyable to those who don't already know the general gist of how the program started and how the Spartans developed, but even then, it's still a very emotional and poignant short. I showed this one to several of my friends (who know nothing about Halo whatsoever) and the majority of them enjoyed it. They were a bit confused about some parts, but that is understandable. Halo Legends is not supposed to be a standalone series - you're expected to know something about the series to get the full effect out of it.

The fifth short (Odd One Out), the one made by Toei, may be the only point I agree with the reviewer on. It was light, hilarious, and just overall awesome. The director of the short is the same director who directed Dragonball and Dragonball Z - it has very similar humor. (and a similar art style) It's not canon to the Halo universe, so you don't really need to know much about Halo to enjoy this one. Besides, how could you not like a guy whose official designation is 1337?

The sixth short (Prototype) was also very good. In my opinion, it had the best animation out of all of the shorts. After the 4th and 5th shorts, it's probably my third favorite. It doesn't require a great amount of knowledge of the Halo universe, but knowing something about it makes it more enjoyable.

I actually don't remember much about the 7th short, other than the fact that it had decent animation... it wasn't one of the better ones, at least in my opinion.

The eighth short (The Package) may have been my least favorite - the fully CG artstyle didn't really impress me, and the plot of the short wasn't that great.

In order of quality, shorts 4,5, and 6 were very good. The first two (the Origins) shorts were decently interesting, but it may not be something you want to show to someone who knows absolutely nothing about Halo - it may just bore them. The Duel was fairly good, but I can see the artstyle alienating a lot of people. (including me... I had kind of a hard time watching it because of the whole "filtered stained glass look")
 
The TZ review wasn't great, no, but I think I still gleaned what I needed to know from it. Basically, if you're not into Halo, the DVD probably won't change your mind about it, and parts may be confusing. Some shorts are better than others. Some are exciting and some are kind of boring. The varying animation is hit or miss, though more hit than miss. Etcetera.

The snark crossed the line into obnoxious a couple of times, but still, I think I get the point that was being made.

Now I'm reviewing the review for God's sake :yawn:


It's not repetition that's my problem personally, it's the fact that there's a whole glut of extremely similar FPS games out there. And they've taken over the market to the point where the big development bucks aren't being put into a whole lot of games in other genres, outside a few. And you have to look at Top 10 lists for games of the year, and always at least seems like well over half of the games on the list are FPSes.

Though it really just boils down to personal preference. FPSes, nine times out of ten, just plain don't interest me at all. Nothing to do with quality or anything, I'm just not interested. I've given plenty of them a chance, they're just not grabbing me. It's just sometimes I feel like the games I like are getting squeezed out by them. But maybe I'm just imagining things.
 
Honestly, I've never bought into the argument of FPS games somehow being the cause of other genres of games to have less effort put into them. That's not true at all, even these days. Its just that the big gaming sties and magazines put tons of focus on the FPS genre, thereby giving FPS games much more exposure than any other single genre of gaming. Even so, there are still tons of great non-FPS games out there for people who care to look for them. They just don't usually get as heavily advertised, and therefore its a bit too easy for many of them to get passed under the scope for most people and never truly get noticed. But, in all honesty, I could easily name tons of great non-FPS games from this generation alone.
 
For what it's worth, we generally try not to blindly assign review copies to people, but it doesn't always work out that way. We get titles that nobody wants or where the best person for the job has too many other assignments on their plate to handle. Most of the truly orphaned titles usually go to me or Maxie, which is why we're the only ones who have ever reviewed Dora the Explorer DVDs, for instance. For Halo: Legends, Maxie was the only one able to take the title, and he has an Xbox and I don't.

That said, I don't think that being assigned a title has any bearing on our reaction to it. The aforementioned positive Druaga review was an orphaned title, and Maxie had some genuinely nice things to say about Dora's Christmas Carol even after blasting earlier Dora titles. I've asked for things that I ended up not really liking as much as I thought I would (Solty Rei and Heat Guy J, to pick two off the top of my head). Samurai Horror Tales: Goblin Cat and Freedom were other orphaned titles that I picked up, and those turned out to be two of my favorite anime releases in the past decade. Nobody accused any of those reviews of bias at the time, and I can't imagine that anybody could read them now and see them any differently even knowing how they found their way to specific reviewers.

All of which is a long way of saying that we're not as closed minded or biased as some of you might want to believe. I know this blows a whole lot of theories about the review staff and this review in particular, so I expect it will be ignored or dismissed as spin or entirely too inconvenient fact by people who would like to believe the worst of us, and I'm OK with that. It comes with the territory.
 
It always seems Toon Zone gives reviews to people who don't like a genre or don't understand a franchise which leads to a lot of undeserving negative reviews. But its not like anyone actually reads the front page of TZ (TZ Has a front page? :p) so it doesn't matter much.
 
I think what set so many people off about this one is that you generally do set the level of professionalism pretty high and that's what they expect. But this review went for an overly snarky, Angry Video Game Nerd-type hit job that, in tone at least, feels like it's trashing not only the video but also the source material and its fans without giving it an open-minded fair shake. The insulting descriptions of first person shooters as being like carnival games and less complex than PacMan, the references to Halotosis and Halo Heads, the negative title, saying that someone who takes the backstory seriously should "get a girl," the exaggerations and the hyperbole overpower the few bits of constructive criticism that are in the review and seem out of place here.

I suppose he was trying to be funny but it didn't sound funny, it just sounded insulting, close-minded and dripping with negative bias, not the kind of thing people generally expect from rabroad.
 
Comparing the Freedom review and this, The Halo one goes much, much farther outside the actual content than the former. I guess in comparison, the actual review of Halo legends are a bunch of snippets in ratio with the whole backstory of preparing for the review in the first place.

That's my take on the problem, anyway. The more you stray away from the actual material itself, the more you open yourself to criticism on that. At least 4 long paragraphs on the Halo franchise and snarking on that, instead of snarking on the material itself. I don't even get the complaint that it shouldn't be so alienating to non-fan viewers when it's common enough in general (especially anime movies like the DBZ films)
 
Just a question:

Was the voice cast good? Seeing as I'm still excited for the ADV Films voice actors returning for something like this.

I'm also curious if any of the cast has ever played the game.
 
(Emphasis mine.)

Hmmmm. "Always" seems like a rather strong word to use in this case, don't you think?

- Please check over the post that GWOtaku was nice enough to put a lot of work into that looked at the past 3 months worth of rabroad News reviews, which came out 28 positive, 11 negative, and 9 so-so, and explain to me how ALL of them (or even a great majority of them) represent assignments where the staff said something like, "Hey, who doesn't like superheroes? Let's give them Planet Hulk."

- For the THIRD TIME now, please check the reviews that I've linked to in this post and this one and explain to me how it is that not knowing anything about those franchises or titles or genres led to positive reviews if our assignments are "always" to people who don't understand or appreciate franchises, or that not knowing about the franchises ahead of time means you won't understand or appreciate them properly. Or are those reviews invalid despite being positive?

- Explain to me how I can state right up front that Star Wars: The Clone Wars drives me nuts and yet give the season 2 premiere episodes a positive review, especially since it's obvious (to you, apparently) that I was assigned the title because I have no love for science fiction or Star Wars (and if you actually knew me, you'd realize how completely ridiculous that last statement is).

If you can actually prove all these things to me, then you may say that we "always" seem to give "reviews to people who don't like a genre or don't understand a franchise." Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to pull an Inigo Montoya on you and say, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
 
This I'll agree is somewhat legit. I always read from start to finish, but I did end up hurrying through the beginning to get to the review of the anthology itself. The ODST stuff I didn't find ultimately important.

One thing worth noting is that two shorts did get reviewed positively based on their merits. I'm not sure if that'll make me rent and hope that one or two more are better than the review makes em sound, but it's something.



But I was limiting the list to three months (December 2009 - February 25th, 2010). Those were written in June and August, respectively.
 
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