Game:

Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Duration: 9:35

98 views

3

Gen's Battlescape v0.7.5 is a bit tricky to fully figure out in terms of its PoA gameplay experience quality. In fact, with this mod I did about ten runs of PoA in total and tried out a few of the other levels too while gradually making my way towards a final conclusion.
In short, this is a rather simple overhaul mod with both good and bad changes.
Tuning is everything in this mod. There's glaring issues, but strong potential as well.

First of all, I find that pretty much all weapons in this mod have significant problems compared to their Vanilla counterparts. Most weapons feel varying levels of bad to use due to how they were tuned, while the Plasma Rifle completely dominates and invalidates other weapons in most Covenant combat situations due to it generating heat about three times slower than it should while boasting a massive increase in rate of fire.

Therefore as seen in this video, using the Plasma Rifle as your main weapon is overwhelmingly the most optimal approach and brings out the best possible gameplay experience when it comes to this mod's Covenant combat. The Assault Rifle is too ineffective to be a main weapon due to its slow rate of fire, small magazine size, and low max amount of spare ammo; but it works decently as an accurate health damage support weapon to complement the Plasma Rifle when some ranged accuracy on health material targets is in order.

One smaller thing I gotta mention is that grenades are a bit too volatile in this mod. Enemies seem to drop more grenades, basic Elites now also throw grenades, and it seems like the explosion range is increased as well. It's not a bad approach per se, but the execution causes player death by unexpected grenade explosion chain reactions to happen too often to a noticeable degree.
Not a highly prominent issue, but it definitely does no favors for the gameplay experience.

Now despite what I've said so far, in this mod's Covenant combat there's a sort of hard gameplay feel, compared to Vanilla where combat feels more soft. Not hard as in difficulty (that aspect is about the same), but hard as in density, since during combat it feels like the sandbox elements such as enemies and weapons are made out of harder materials; which actually makes the game world feel more real and engaging.
This density is caused by a combination of various small modifications here and there, but it ultimately boils down to the modder likely having a sense of what they want the game to feel like.
Then, intentional or not, any and all changes can naturally and easily end up working towards that.
That might be a bit of an unclear way to put it, but gameplay feel can be difficult to describe.

I'm actually a big fan of this increased density in gameplay feel, which is why I feel so conflicted about this mod. The tuning does have its fair share of issues, but I do also feel hints of potential with this design approach for an interesting version of CE that feels a bit more tactical in nature while still remaining true to the general style of Halo gameplay flow.

The gameplay experience quality kinda crumbles if you venture outside of this mod's meta combo of Plasma Rifle + Assault Rifle, and this meta is pretty much the only properly enjoyable way to experience Covenant combat in this mod's PoA, with said meta coming closest to exemplifying the potential of this mod's game design style; so the rank I've given to this mod in the list below is based on the experience of using this meta weapon combo in particular, while also of course taking into account how limited the amount of adequate combat options is in the end.

Mod page: https://www.nexusmods.com/halothemasterchiefcollection/mods/287

The rest of this video series is linked below, ordered from top to bottom according to my personal ranking of specifically the Legendary PoA gameplay experience quality in each version of CE.

Infinite Evolved v1.3: https://youtu.be/P-YiZaBWLdY
Ruby's CE v2: https://youtu.be/JKN7pwTeO1Q
Combat Revolved v2.7: https://youtu.be/5LRjV7SGTp4
Super Campaign v2.1: https://youtu.be/oaRTWo0PBFE
Yanrensheng CE v1.1: https://youtu.be/8gyHqlYiPBg
Gen's Battlescape v0.7.5: »You Are Here«
Massive Mod v1.5: https://youtu.be/1rybsFmoZWo
Vanilla CE: https://youtu.be/NpGtTQeFFAg
Ruby's CE v3: https://youtu.be/A-25ne9Hwfc
Vanilla CEA: https://youtu.be/kUTEy5N9mn4
Corrupted Vanilla CE: https://youtu.be/52XpMVBreVk

This is a video series where each video is a playthrough of the first level of Halo CE on Legendary difficulty without dying; showcasing a different version of CE each time. The point of this is to have a place to easily compare the infantry combat game design of different versions of CE from a fairly skilled Halo player's perspective.

Other Statistics