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Halo: Waypoint Preview
With Bungie slowly moving away from the Halo franchise, Microsoft have recognised the need for a new destination for Halo stats and content, hence Halo: Waypoint has arrived, a new program that comes free to Gold subscribers.
By 343 Industries, Halo Waypoint is set to become your one stop shop for everything Halo. From here, you are to get daily updates from 343 Industries, Bungie, other Halo related people like “Red vs. Blue” and even the Halo community with its user-generated content. You will also be able to keep track of your Halo career with a new meta-game created as a way to spark competition and interest in you getting all the achievements possible to be the best of the best.
The slick presentation and metallic colour pallet are nice aesthetic choices to give the feeling of Halo, although we think the ability to listen to the critically acclaimed soundtracks would have been a clever move. It is powered by “cloud” technology and thanks to this, you will be able to stream and view content without having to fill up your hard drive or need to install updates for new features in the future. Just logging on is all that is needed for the service to synchronize. From a technical aspect, Halo Waypoint seems to be a smooth experience. Streaming videos such as Halo 3 ViDocs takes seconds for it to load without stuttering. The same can be said for your initial synchronization of your Halo achievements to fill the meta-game career card. In honesty, the service isn’t powering much but for what it does, it does well enough.
The meta-game is a way to see just how good you are at the Halo franchise. It spans Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo Wars; for some reason Halo 2 PC was ignored even though it has achievements. In the same style as TrueSkill, you are given a milestone level for how many achievement points you have scored across all three games. With 40 levels and 184 achievements to collect, for most fans it will take a while to fill up the cards.
To add an extra element to the game, there are specific Waypoint “awards”. You can earn these medals for getting achievements of a specific nature. For example, the “Special Weapons” award has achievements based on specific power weapons like “Get 5 sticks in ranked FFA” from Halo 3. There are tiers for each award as a way to get the medal quickly but just because you have, it does not mean you are done. There seems to be no standard to the tiers system as different awards have different maximum levels to get. The true completionists now have extra incentive to get everything, which was probably 343’s intention.
All this sounds nice for Halo fans; however, it is not as big a fan service as it sounds. The meta-game is useless due to the omission of a leader board or a way to compare with friends. The only true awards you get are avatar awards, although none are that impressive. This is the only way you can make your avatar an ODST, so some fans will jump for that. The fact that only I can see how well I am doing except for the career milestone makes it pointless to care for any of this. Add the fact that the hardcore fans that will likely use this service (such as myself) will most likely have most of the Halo achievements meaning they “beat” the service instantly and have no need to use it again.
Granted, it is only the first day. Yet, the content provided so far is nothing new whatsoever. All the videos are streamed in standard definition making it look blurry on a nice HDTV. Then consider that almost every video that can be streamed can be download in high definition from the marketplace. What is the point in providing content in a lower resolution? There are also blurbs to tell the story of each game and book for fans to catch up on the saga despite the fact that the blurbs are lacking in any detail and barely scratch the surface of what the Halo Universe can provide. Hardly relevant to the hardcore Halo audience.
That’s pretty much Halo Waypoint in a nutshell. It’s a great idea for fans of Microsoft’s biggest franchise. Still, there is no reason to actually load the application due to an absence in original content and an oversight in the dedication of its community in getting achievements. It is likely in time some original content will appear and the meta-game will increase its level cap with the upcoming Halo: Reach so there is potential.
The service is relevant to those just getting into the franchise but for the people in which the program was created for, the hardcore, you are wasting your time. Just stick to Bungie.net.
By 343 Industries, Halo Waypoint is set to become your one stop shop for everything Halo. From here, you are to get daily updates from 343 Industries, Bungie, other Halo related people like “Red vs. Blue” and even the Halo community with its user-generated content. You will also be able to keep track of your Halo career with a new meta-game created as a way to spark competition and interest in you getting all the achievements possible to be the best of the best.
The slick presentation and metallic colour pallet are nice aesthetic choices to give the feeling of Halo, although we think the ability to listen to the critically acclaimed soundtracks would have been a clever move. It is powered by “cloud” technology and thanks to this, you will be able to stream and view content without having to fill up your hard drive or need to install updates for new features in the future. Just logging on is all that is needed for the service to synchronize. From a technical aspect, Halo Waypoint seems to be a smooth experience. Streaming videos such as Halo 3 ViDocs takes seconds for it to load without stuttering. The same can be said for your initial synchronization of your Halo achievements to fill the meta-game career card. In honesty, the service isn’t powering much but for what it does, it does well enough.
The meta-game is a way to see just how good you are at the Halo franchise. It spans Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo Wars; for some reason Halo 2 PC was ignored even though it has achievements. In the same style as TrueSkill, you are given a milestone level for how many achievement points you have scored across all three games. With 40 levels and 184 achievements to collect, for most fans it will take a while to fill up the cards.
To add an extra element to the game, there are specific Waypoint “awards”. You can earn these medals for getting achievements of a specific nature. For example, the “Special Weapons” award has achievements based on specific power weapons like “Get 5 sticks in ranked FFA” from Halo 3. There are tiers for each award as a way to get the medal quickly but just because you have, it does not mean you are done. There seems to be no standard to the tiers system as different awards have different maximum levels to get. The true completionists now have extra incentive to get everything, which was probably 343’s intention.
All this sounds nice for Halo fans; however, it is not as big a fan service as it sounds. The meta-game is useless due to the omission of a leader board or a way to compare with friends. The only true awards you get are avatar awards, although none are that impressive. This is the only way you can make your avatar an ODST, so some fans will jump for that. The fact that only I can see how well I am doing except for the career milestone makes it pointless to care for any of this. Add the fact that the hardcore fans that will likely use this service (such as myself) will most likely have most of the Halo achievements meaning they “beat” the service instantly and have no need to use it again.
Granted, it is only the first day. Yet, the content provided so far is nothing new whatsoever. All the videos are streamed in standard definition making it look blurry on a nice HDTV. Then consider that almost every video that can be streamed can be download in high definition from the marketplace. What is the point in providing content in a lower resolution? There are also blurbs to tell the story of each game and book for fans to catch up on the saga despite the fact that the blurbs are lacking in any detail and barely scratch the surface of what the Halo Universe can provide. Hardly relevant to the hardcore Halo audience.
That’s pretty much Halo Waypoint in a nutshell. It’s a great idea for fans of Microsoft’s biggest franchise. Still, there is no reason to actually load the application due to an absence in original content and an oversight in the dedication of its community in getting achievements. It is likely in time some original content will appear and the meta-game will increase its level cap with the upcoming Halo: Reach so there is potential.
The service is relevant to those just getting into the franchise but for the people in which the program was created for, the hardcore, you are wasting your time. Just stick to Bungie.net.