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I'd watch it if you're hanging around behind the Warthog on Turf. A regular Halo partner of mine does the same thing, but it can all come to a horrible end if somebody decides to throw a grenade in - something I do as a matter of course now on non-team gametypes.
The shotgun's a problem for non-US gamers. If you're not American, you'll simply come out of a shotgun battle dead. Same applies to the sword and, as far as I'm aware, the battle rifle (albeit to a lesser extent). It's all to do with lag and latency and other things that I sort of understand but also sort of don't. I'm sure somebody else can explain exactly why it happens much better than any half-arsed attempt I could make.
I don't mind the neutral bomb games. If the one team are managing to have somebody waiting at the bomb respawn point while their mates are planting it in the other team's base, then that's the fault of the other team for not being sharp enough to think of it.
It's not much different than having somebody sitting waiting for the flag to return in games of single flag CTF - if I'm on the defending team and the enemy have nabbed our flag, but it's been dropped and there's now a battle going on while they try and pick it up again and we try and stop them from doing it, I always make sure that I stay back in our base, to guard against any sneaky little sod who might be creeping around waiting to get a free flag grab when it returns. Admittedly, though, the only reason I know to do that is because I'm generally the sneaky little sod waiting for the return when my side's on offense.
Mathmaking teamgames are just no fun unless the majority of people on your team know each other and play with each other regularly. Depending who's on my side, I can tell straight away where the weak points are likely to be, where I should be filling in. If I'm playing with so-and-so, whatsisname and thingy, I know that the two of them like to play offensively while the other takes a sniper position, so I'll be best off staying back at base and defending, depending on the gametype, or I'll know which vehicles will be free to take or which weapons to try and pick up. That's where the waiting for the bomb respawn comes from - if you know your team well enough, you'll know if they're likely to do it or if you should be the one covering that angle.
On the whole, though, matchmaking isn't a patch on custom games, where you can lock the party down and know that you're not going to end up getting idiots throwing abuse around or team-killing. They're also just much, much funnier than matchmade games, because nobody's taking them as seriously. Team Training is also pretty good to take a party of eight people into - it randomly mixes the teams and gametypes up, so you never know what's going to come next, and there seems to be less lag in it than there can be in customs.
One of the things that I think has come out of the new maps and updates is an appreciation of just how brilliant Coagulation/Blood Gulch always was. Just two bases, one at either end, with a massive space of open land inbetween and caves either side. It offers carnage and a constant to-and-fro that none of the others get anywhere near to. Sure, neutral bomb games on it can go on forever, but they're always memorable. |
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