The Spartan Laser in Halo 3: Why I think it’s Overpowered

Now I have debated this at, well, length with the people on the Bungie Forums (Forum link). As you can see, that didn’t exactly end well, but then again, debating with Bungie Fanboys never does. Many of them didn’t even read the thread. If you look, I suggested replacing the Laser with a Gauss Rifle, which would mean that you would have to lead your shot in order to hit an enemy with it. And yet even near the end pages of the thread people are like “BUT LASERS TRAVEL AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT LOL”. Yeah, read the fucking thread, moron. I even updated the original post to include that detail and people still gave the “Lasers travel at the speed of light” argument when I was basically saying “”Replace it with something similar”.

The funny thing is that Bungie could actually adpot my idea and remove the Spartan Laser from the Halo Sandbox and suddenly everyone would change their minds on the matter.

So, deciding that arguing with idiots is, well, idiotic, i’ve decided to create this blog post. Feel free to make comments in the box below because i’d like to see what informed opinions people could make for/against this without mindlessly accepting everything that Bungie does. But anyway, on to my point. Though it’s worth mentioning that what i’m about to type is pretty much the same as what’s been discussed in the forum thread.

First of all, lets take a look at some typical Spartan Laser usage, this isn’t the best example in the world, just some gameplay footage from a game that I played earlier this morning. I missed a shot, but still, lets take a look at how many kills I rack up using this one weapon, which is pretty much given to me for free at the beginning of the game:

So that’s a total of six kills, right off the bat. Two Choppers and Two Warthogs, which, on this particular map, is every single vehicle that a team spawns with, with the exception of a Mongoose, which is pretty much worthless in Slayer games because it hasn’t got any offensive capabilities. So great, a map that is supposed to focus on the use of vehicles does exactly the opposite because this weapon spawns right next to each team’s base right at the beginning of the game. Also it’s worth remembering that this map has other anti-vehicle weapons as well, such as the Missile Pod. So if the Laser wasn’t enough to deal with, you’ve got that too.

Of course, if the Spartan Laser was actually somewhat difficult to use, this wouldn’t be an issue, but the problem is that this thing is hoprrifically easy to use. When you’re not zoomed in, the crosshair is enourmous, and when you are zoomed in, there’s so much sticky-aim that it pretty much aims itself. Vehicles only really stand at chance evading it if they’re out of the weapons range (Like with the Banshee in the above video), which the majority of the time, is not the case.

So what constructive criticism can I provide here? Make the crosshair smaller. It’s supposed to be a Sniper Rifle for Vehicles for christ sake, that crosshair is far too big for that. Additionally, remove/reduce the sticky aim that you get when you zoom in. Or alternatively, like I mentioned, replace the Spartan Laser with a Gauss Rifle that would mean that you would have to lead your shot, making the weapon harder to use.I haven’t read the book, but I have heard that Sergeant Johnson used a Gauss Rifle in Halo: Contact Harvest. This Gauss Rifle would have the same power as the Spartan Laser, but would be more difficult to use. Thus, preventing vehicles being complete death traps.

My next point relates to lag. As you all probably know, the Fuel Rod Gun and Fire Bombs have been excluded from Halo 3’s matchmaking (I would have included the Flamethrower in there too, but that’s not strictly true as it’s on Construct).

Why aren’t these weapons used in Matchmaking? Because the visual effects cause the game to lag (Yeah, I guess Bungie didn’t learn from Halo 2). While the Spartan Laser isn’t as bad as the aforementioned weapons, it can still lag pretty badly. Now before you all say “Your Internet connection sucks”, i’m on a 20Mb/s Fibre Optic connection, and this happens in most games in which I get Lasered. In these games, nothing else lags, just the effects on the Spartan Laser. Take a look at the below video:

As you can see, the game isn’t lagging. Shots register, nobody is suddenly jumping from one place to another. I don’t know why, but the Laser just lags. It’s irritating just driving a vehicle and suddenly exploding out of nowhere. If the Firebomb and Fuel Rod Gun are removed from Matchmaking due to lag, then shouldn’t the Laser be as well?

Now do I completely hate the Spartan Laser? No, I honestly think that it’s a brilliant step forward from the Rocket Launcher in Halo 2, which homed in on Vehicles. Certainly, in comparison to that, the Laser is a Godsend. As you can see, the Rockets from Halo 2 pretty much aim themselves (This is in a campaign level as finding multiplayer games on Halo 2 right now is difficult, and even if I found a match, there would be no guarantee of me getting the Rocket Launcher):

The Spartan Laser was certainly a step in the right direction, but in my opinion, it could use a little bit of improvement. What does everyone else think? Obviously I don’t expect anything to change in Halo 3, but what about for Halo Reach?

~ by pokeh on July 1, 2009.