Halo 2s Controversial Combos

The relationship between intentional design and emergent tech is one of the most interesting facets of game design, this is a great video.

And the melee spamming glitch in halo infinite makes this looks graceful by comparison

I've been WAITING for this video for 15 years

the joke about "souls-like" is funny but i was expecting it to be roguelike since that's at the point where most people have zero clue what the original game even was

"or the hemlock for your apex zoomers" Titanfall players: and I took that personally

That thumbnail of a Spartan doing Ken's roundhouse kick is amazing! I love this video. It's an interesting discussion on how unintended exploits can become a big part of a game's importance. And it's also an interesting discussion of how things like cancels don't work with every kind of genre.

I think it's important to note that preforming rocket jumps is a curve. You get gradually better and your rocket jumps improve. Unlike double shots which are a boolean, you either succeed or you fail. I feel like this is very important to a player's motivation to get better as well as player expression.

"Doom, Quake and... Blood?" Duke Nukem: Guess two alien genocides wasn't enough

I have been waiting for the new Guilty Gear lore.

Ah, the double/quad shot explains soo much why I struggle so much more in Halo 2 than the rest of MCC

Ah yes halo 2, its like the melee of shooters but even more crackpot and broken then that implies

Never in my life would I see an image of a Spartan doing the Daigo combo.

I appreciate the inclusion of amazing TF2 examples. Most of the tecs came with a drawback unlike these combos. Trimping took charge and rocket jumping took health (not including rocket jumper)

Yo I hear your dig at Halo 3 machinima aging poorly and I agree, but damn it was cool that people were making stories in a video game like that. I don't think any game since then has had tools as good as Halo 3 for machinima which is why it died out as a medium, but it was an amazing era of the internet at the time though, so much creativity with people like DigitalPh33r and those guys that made the Matchmaking series. People sincerely trying to tell a story like that nowadays would just get torn down for being 'cringe', and kids nowadays don't seem to care for stortelling like seen in machinima, they just want to make strange memes with punchlines I don't understand 😟

If your wondering why Cortana says it's not natural like that, when Jen Taylor did the voice line she couldn't see the final release tunnel. Originally it appeared as just a rock cave but this was changed before launch. So it would have made sense

I feel the rocket jumping analogy is great, intentional well designed high skill ceiling option. This combo system reminds me of L-Canceling for Smash. L-canceling that halves aerial lag should be built in and not be a barrier. There's never a reason you wouldn't want to halve your ending lag aside from execution error. Wave-dashing on the otherhand is the extra skillful expression even though it wasn't intentionally designed to be in the game. WD has various usages and WD lengths.

0:17 god I hate the term "Smash clone" when there's already a dozen of them and the name "platform fighter" is used by everyone inside any of their communities.

I mean hey if I was going to use modern equivalencies, you just Roman canceling your BR shots into another BR shots

I think one of the most important things to consider with these kinds of emergent tech is the way these exploits can ripple out into other areas of the game. Quick melee exploits make weapons like the sword and shotgun less useful because what is supposed to be their niche is now something everyone can do at base. Stuff like double shot makes the player less incentivized to hunt down weapons because their starting weapon outclassed them (even more than it does by default with the br being blatantly overpowered in halo 2). Even in the example of rocket jumping, it can add a significant amount of mobility to a game that might not be balanced/designed around such high mobility. While it’s perfectly possible that such a game is still balanced/fun with said mobility. It’s also possible that it isn’t, or that some people might prefer the original version. For an example of this see bunny hopping in counter strike. It’s something that adds a good chunk of depth and skill to the game, which is very appropriate for counter strike’s competitive environment. However the extremely high mobility it granted didn’t fit in with the design of counter strike as a slow tactical shooter. As such it was heavily nerfed in global offensive.

The similarities between Halo 2 and Smash Melee are so abundant it's crazy. Both are the second games to release in their respected series. Both included "game-breaking" techniques and work arounds that raised the skill ceiling and kept their communities alive and coming back for more. And both series would go on to remove the tech in these games in later iterations to appease to the majority casual audience. Halo 2 is my favorite of the series, and Melee is my favorite smash game. Sure, Infinite looks fun and I love play Smash Ultimate, but I think the extra options provided in these titles gives the games so much more personality and gives the players more ways to express themselves through their game. I completely understand the other side's arguments against both games. But I'm just glad both have been able to live on not in spite of the tech available, but because of it.