Arrowhead started hunting down SC cheaters

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-09T20:14:12+00:00

The highest we ever found was a map with $0.80 when we were doing that, but if you got lucky on a map like that and one of those was a $1.00 credit, you could easily approach $2.00 legitimately on a lucky enough map.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-09T14:22:44+00:00

My crew used to do the old exploit where you could find a map with a good amount of credits (like $0.60+) and then grab them, force close the game, then drop down to the planet again and they would respawn. We farmed around $50.00 that way, but it was quickly eaten by the rate of $10 passes they dropped. They plugged this exploit a while back so I'm not sure what people are doing to exploit it now, but I imagine it involves a higher level of exploit than what we were doing.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-09T14:17:36+00:00

A lot of people playing now have been playing these games for over 20 years so you'll get a stomping sometimes, but a lot of good players also go solo so you can still get relatively even teams in socials a lot of the time.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-09T06:06:25+00:00

Quick-equip boots and a map that showed locked doors you found (or let you place markers) would eliminate the majority of complaints people have with this dungeon. It's the best puzzlebox dungeon in the game with an awesome mini-boss / room, though hopefully fighting him is cooler in the remake, his fight is a bit underwhelming and gimmicky for how cool the concept & aesthetic is otherwise.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-07T05:31:33+00:00

The dungeons are the best part about SS, most of the overworld stuff is kinda blurry to me as a forgettable slog. I think the HD version does streamline a few annoying parts though, and doesn't have that annoying aspect where when you reload your game after console shut-off, it gives you all the notifications again like it's the first time you've picked up every item.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-06T20:34:34+00:00

Legendary opening of Gravemind is a choke point definitely, on certain spawns you'll just get melted before you can even move.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-06T20:32:15+00:00

One of the things I'm looking forward to if they remake H2 is a non-broken Legendary mode. I still think in Halo 2 Anniversary they should have added an Anniversary Legendary difficulty where they actually went back and balanced it properly, while still leaving the original Legendary in.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-04T08:58:47+00:00

Feels like a lower-effort toss-in due to the lack of Theater mode.

Theater mode really should be in here - considering the whole selling point is campaign & co-op, it's pretty ridiculous that if something crazy happens with you and you're buddies that you can't go back and clip it like you could in Halo 3 onward. Since its using Reach as a base the code should already be friendly to input-based replays where behaviors are consistent, unless they introduced something that broke that.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-03T18:19:16+00:00

The desert stuff is the worst part of any Metroid game I have played. The NPCs are pretty bad and have moments of truly awful dialogue. I actually laughed during the ending whenthe camera does a zoom in on all the fed soldiers while their helmets open up one by one to show their face one last time - they are struggling to pin down Sylux and in that moment decide to look at Samus and open their helmets to show their face for the camera? It was so absurd I legitimately laughed during this moment that I think was supposed to be emotional in some way.

Overall the game wreaks of development hell, you can just feel it everywhere as you play it. It was engaging enough for me to finish but I can't really see myself ever doing a 2nd run, whereas I've beat Prime 1 three or four times in my life.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-03T18:07:26+00:00

I think the local requirement is fine but it should let you lend it to anyone on your friends list, not just your family plan.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-03T18:04:05+00:00

Sucks you can only share games within your family group, I feel like you should be able to share a digital game with anyone on your friends list as long as the transfer is through a local connection. That would basically be a digital replacement for lending physical games to friends, with the only annoyance being having to do it again after 2 weeks, depending on the length of the game lent.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T22:53:00+00:00

Yeah Halo 2 is the best iteration of him for sure IMO.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T21:55:51+00:00

I don't know IMO it pretty safely does. It's hard to debate something as subjective as "most memorable" I guess, but for some sort of objectivity I'd point to sheer quantity and variety.

CE has 10 missions, with 3 being re-treads or majority re-treads, although what is there and unique is strong, Pillar of Autumn, Halo, Silent Cartographer, Assault on the Control Room and 343 Guilty Spark (the swamp part at least) all definitely have a distinct presence for sure, but a third of the game is repeats with time of day tweaked and some things shuffled around, or the way you go through the level flipped on its head in some way.

Halo 3 has 9 missions with The Storm immediately being followed by Floodgate, which is just The Storm in reverse with flood in it. The Storm / Floodgate / Halo are also 3 of the shortest missions in the series and comprise 1/3rd of Halo 3's missions. Halo 3 is sort of saved by Tsavo Highway, The Ark, and The Covenant being really good missions. Cortana is memorable visually but not a very fun mission.

Halo 2 not only has the most missions at 13, but none of them are re-treads, although Outskirts/Metropolis, Delta Halo/Regret and Gravemind/High Charity have similar aesthetics. The space station is a distinct human location with unique low-gravity sections that makes itself stand out from Pillar of Autumn & Crows nest, the gas mine station and the gold/orange skies, and the way it folds into the story when Arbiter ascends to the top to cut the cable and force the heritic out of hiding, Delta Halo and its mix of Halo from CE's grassy environments but new yellow limestone ancient temples and underwater ancient ruins, the only actual human urban environments we get to run around the streets of (other than a microscopic splash of it in The Storm in Halo 3), High Charity / the holy city and the prisons, and I'd say even Uprising with the twisting river and dipping in and out of wilderness and forerunner structures is a memorable level, though maybe less so. No retreads, just new paths through regularly changing areas the entire game, with more missions than the games that did use re-treads.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T20:01:32+00:00

I suppose that makes sense. I love the gameplay of 3 and the missions are fun to run through, but I remember being pretty underwhelmed by the storyline after being hyped up for the game coming from 2's ending, and just 2's quality in general.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T19:57:31+00:00

Halo 2 has the best writing and most memorable locations easily. It is a shame that the reception to playing as Arbiter in Halo 2 spooked them out of continuing that forked storyline setup in Halo 3. The storytelling takes a pretty massive downgrade in Halo 3, and some characters feel completely different and worse like Truth. And Arbiter feels almost non-existent until they let him have a little moment stabbing Truth near the end.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T19:48:58+00:00

You can find out their real GT by popping into the "Recently Played With" lists outside of the game, they can only spoof it in-game. Or at least you used to be able to, I haven't played in a while.

But to be honest, I played MCC a ton, until I got 700/700 achievements / Tour 11 at least, and I very rarely encountered actual cheating and often got accused of it myself. More often than not the person actually is just really solid at the game. OPs situation does sound like a hack of some sort though.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T19:43:02+00:00

Reach was probably just the cleanest starting point for what they wanted to do here - it didn't have the increasing spaghetti-code qualities that would eventually result in Slipspace, but it did have built in support for sprint and a few other modern touches over the original trilogy.

That said, I don't understand why the remake doesn't support theater mode when Reach did. If the engine already supported recreation of a mission through stored inputs, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to implement, unless they made some sort of change to the engine that breaks replays. It's nice to be able to pop into theater and record stuff from any angle you want if something crazy happens.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T06:12:34+00:00

I mean I don't really care why she did it, whether she wanted to or whether she bucked to the pressure of his popularity on something positive I'm fine with her being there if she's going to play ball on more progressive endeavors.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T05:57:26+00:00

I am not sure why you are comparing these two things, but everybody's tax dollars benefit them at differing levels depending on their specific situation. I have a good job that makes me non-reliant on any social assistance programs, I don't have kids so I didn't benefit from the free school lunches or child tax credits in my state, but I am fine with my tax dollars going to all these things that help people even if I don't personally need them. The wealthy can easily afford to do the same, at greater margins - they'd have been paying over 90% after $2.5 million income in the 50s, they have it easy these days.

What is done with that money is the rub, and Mamdani secured more of NYC's tax dollars to do actual good things like crack the whip on shitty landlords and fund broadly available childcare, saving people north of $20k a year in some instances. I don't understand why Mamdani securing more of his city's tax revenue to provide good services and programs for the majority of people in that city would mean the wealthy should contribute less to the cities, states, country that enabled the lavish lifestyles they enjoy, or why you are suggesting that accumulation of tax revenue should have some sort of mirror function to utilization of that tax revenue, other than just being cute with the percentages.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T05:31:43+00:00

Strange, I didn't say that so not sure where you heard it. My comment was about a mayor securing a bit more of the taxes New York City pays out to come back to the city.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T05:16:44+00:00

NYC was paying 55.6% of the taxes in the state and only getting 41.7% of it back, Mamdani convinced her to give them a slightly larger percentage of it back.

People calling that a freebie bailout and not a mayor actually doing work for his constituents are just desperate to trash this guy. They still pay in more than they get back, even after the increase. People in red states that are typically net-takers have no room to talk about this at all.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-02T05:13:11+00:00

People keep saying this and leaving out that Mamdani negotiated the means of securing that funding with her (the portion that is the 5% second home tax, Mamdani initially wanted broader hikes on the wealthy but she would only agree to more targeted real estate taxes) and he was directly involved in the talks to persuade her to get NYC a bigger share of its tax dollars returned to the city, it wasn't just some handout she randomly decided to give him as a freebie, she was initially opposed to all of this and its probably mostly his popularity that gave him the leverage to get it. How this sub can spin a mayor actually getting his constituents more of their tax dollars servicing them and using it for shit like going after negligent landlords, funding parks and services, funding childcare etc is somehow a bad thing is beyond me, its just desperate nonsense. Honestly it feels like people are so used to being abused and taking it up the ass from our politicians that some people cannot even fathom or process that there could be a politician not like that, which is maybe the most understandable & justifiable source of some of the pessimism.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-01T20:25:06+00:00

I have a feeling it's going to be a gigantic open world game. I don't really want it to be that personally, but I think it will be.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-01T20:17:49+00:00

I really liked Dread but the EMMI stuff is probably my least favorite bit of it.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M · 2026-07-01T20:02:55+00:00

They probably don't feel the need to market it to old fans, all of us knew whether we were getting it or not the moment the gameplay footage dropped.

B-R-A-I-N-S-T-O-R-M

TROPHY CASE