I remember H2 having some egregious texture pop-ins and sometimes Waterworks taking up to 5min to load them. Was that related?

Different revisions of the Xbox used different chipsets, RAM, hard drives, and DVD drives. Apparently, it was just different enough that pop in was far worse for some xboxes vs others.

3. Enter Destiny & Destiny 2: these games are live service. When Bungie says 'no more' and shuts em down, that's it. They won't be the first games to go through that and won't be the last. So, let's say 10 years from now you're feeling nostalgic and want to play Destiny\2, you have the disc and whatever data is on your hard drive but the game never loads because the servers are gone. How does that make you feel today, after 10 years with the game?

For some reason I was looking at my Playstation Profile page the other night, and the cover photo was a screenshot I took ages ago during an Eater of Worlds raid and it really bummed me out. That raid was freaking fun.

The encounter before the boss is probably the coolest raid section ever. Dunno if anything surpassed it because I gave up this game six years ago.

I still think opening the shield and the boss encounter are peak raiding. There are enough mechanics to manage that failure is a real possibility, but there's also enough cushion built in that individual failures can be totally recovered by someone who is on the ball and paying attention. The enemy density is also just about perfect--enough to have to be managed without being overwhelming. I'd reinstall Destiny 2 tomorrow to play that raid again if it was an option.

That was always what I thought the best raid encounters were all about - something that was challenging, yet lets you recover from a mistake if you could pull out a great play.

Yeah and the opposite is a damage check

Only reason for those would be to encourage the grind.

I never got enrage timers either. Who cares if you take a long time to beat a boss?

3. Enter Destiny & Destiny 2: these games are live service. When Bungie says 'no more' and shuts em down, that's it. They won't be the first games to go through that and won't be the last. So, let's say 10 years from now you're feeling nostalgic and want to play Destiny\2, you have the disc and whatever data is on your hard drive but the game never loads because the servers are gone. How does that make you feel today, after 10 years with the game?

For some reason I was looking at my Playstation Profile page the other night, and the cover photo was a screenshot I took ages ago during an Eater of Worlds raid and it really bummed me out. That raid was freaking fun.

The encounter before the boss is probably the coolest raid section ever. Dunno if anything surpassed it because I gave up this game six years ago.

I still think opening the shield and the boss encounter are peak raiding. There are enough mechanics to manage that failure is a real possibility, but there's also enough cushion built in that individual failures can be totally recovered by someone who is on the ball and paying attention. The enemy density is also just about perfect--enough to have to be managed without being overwhelming. I'd reinstall Destiny 2 tomorrow to play that raid again if it was an option.

That was always what I thought the best raid encounters were all about - something that was challenging, yet lets you recover from a mistake if you could pull out a great play.

Yeah and the opposite is a damage check

Does anyone other than me remember how halo 2 early-batch OG Xboxes? I don’t think there was a fix, and I ended up buying a new

Nor the anecdote, for that matter

Whoops, must have posted mid-edit and forgot about it. Let me try again.

Does anyone other than me remember how halo 2 multiplayer wouldn't work correctly on early-batch OG Xboxes? I don’t think there was a fix, and I ended up buying a new xbox to play.

3. Enter Destiny & Destiny 2: these games are live service. When Bungie says 'no more' and shuts em down, that's it. They won't be the first games to go through that and won't be the last. So, let's say 10 years from now you're feeling nostalgic and want to play Destiny\2, you have the disc and whatever data is on your hard drive but the game never loads because the servers are gone. How does that make you feel today, after 10 years with the game?

For some reason I was looking at my Playstation Profile page the other night, and the cover photo was a screenshot I took ages ago during an Eater of Worlds raid and it really bummed me out. That raid was freaking fun.

The encounter before the boss is probably the coolest raid section ever. Dunno if anything surpassed it because I gave up this game six years ago.

I still think opening the shield and the boss encounter are peak raiding. There are enough mechanics to manage that failure is a real possibility, but there's also enough cushion built in that individual failures can be totally recovered by someone who is on the ball and paying attention. The enemy density is also just about perfect--enough to have to be managed without being overwhelming. I'd reinstall Destiny 2 tomorrow to play that raid again if it was an option.

That was always what I thought the best raid encounters were all about - something that was challenging, yet lets you recover from a mistake if you could pull out a great play.

3. Enter Destiny & Destiny 2: these games are live service. When Bungie says 'no more' and shuts em down, that's it. They won't be the first games to go through that and won't be the last. So, let's say 10 years from now you're feeling nostalgic and want to play Destiny\2, you have the disc and whatever data is on your hard drive but the game never loads because the servers are gone. How does that make you feel today, after 10 years with the game?

For some reason I was looking at my Playstation Profile page the other night, and the cover photo was a screenshot I took ages ago during an Eater of Worlds raid and it really bummed me out. That raid was freaking fun.

The encounter before the boss is probably the coolest raid section ever. Dunno if anything surpassed it because I gave up this game six years ago.

I still think opening the shield and the boss encounter are peak raiding. There are enough mechanics to manage that failure is a real possibility, but there's also enough cushion built in that individual failures can be totally recovered by someone who is on the ball and paying attention. The enemy density is also just about perfect--enough to have to be managed without being overwhelming. I'd reinstall Destiny 2 tomorrow to play that raid again if it was an option.

The only regret I have in quitting is not being able to experience those with everyone here.

same

The encounter before the boss is probably the coolest raid section ever. Dunno if anything surpassed it because I gave up this game six years ago.

Deep Stone Crypt's Descent and Vow of the Disciple's Exhibition both scratch that same itch, imo. And these 3 are by far my favorite encounters too.

The only regret I have in quitting is not being able to experience those with everyone here.

The encounter before the boss is probably the coolest raid section ever. Dunno if anything surpassed it because I gave up this game six years ago.

Deep Stone Crypt's Descent and Vow of the Disciple's Exhibition both scratch that same itch, imo. And these 3 are by far my favorite encounters too.

3. Enter Destiny & Destiny 2: these games are live service. When Bungie says 'no more' and shuts em down, that's it. They won't be the first games to go through that and won't be the last. So, let's say 10 years from now you're feeling nostalgic and want to play Destiny\2, you have the disc and whatever data is on your hard drive but the game never loads because the servers are gone. How does that make you feel today, after 10 years with the game?

For some reason I was looking at my Playstation Profile page the other night, and the cover photo was a screenshot I took ages ago during an Eater of Worlds raid and it really bummed me out. That raid was freaking fun.

The encounter before the boss is probably the coolest raid section ever. Dunno if anything surpassed it because I gave up this game six years ago.

3. Enter Destiny & Destiny 2: these games are live service. When Bungie says 'no more' and shuts em down, that's it. They won't be the first games to go through that and won't be the last. So, let's say 10 years from now you're feeling nostalgic and want to play Destiny\2, you have the disc and whatever data is on your hard drive but the game never loads because the servers are gone. How does that make you feel today, after 10 years with the game?

For some reason I was looking at my Playstation Profile page the other night, and the cover photo was a screenshot I took ages ago during an Eater of Worlds raid and it really bummed me out. That raid was freaking fun.

Tt's been 20 years since I've played OG Halo on an OG xbox on a CRT as it was intended. I'm gonna have to remedy that I think!

'Member playing 4 player split screen on a 20 inch CRT?
'Memmmbbeerrrr?

lol - I 'member playing 4-player split screen on a 13" screen. ;) IT WAS TERRIBLE

Tt's been 20 years since I've played OG Halo on an OG xbox on a CRT as it was intended. I'm gonna have to remedy that I think!

'Member playing 4 player split screen on a 20 inch CRT?
'Memmmbbeerrrr?

Tt's been 20 years since I've played OG Halo on an OG xbox on a CRT as it was intended. I'm gonna have to remedy that I think!

2. (Cody question) When the 360 came out, I can't remember if anything was lost with backwards compatibility for Halo & Halo 2....was there?

There were a variety of little quirks.
And one extremely extremely annoying quirk with Halo 2 specifically: sometimes a "ghost image" of sorts would get caught up in the rendering pipeline, and act a bit like a stationary transparent image over your screen unless you quit out and restarted things.
There was also an issue specifically with Backwash, where the framerate would be obliterated on 360 whenever a cloaked player fired a weapon. That's part of why the map got pulled from the matchmaking rotation.

People sometimes claim that the emulation increased the rendering resolution, but this is false. Image quality was changed by the addition of MSAA, but the base resolution was still 640x480.
This is very easy to confirm via pixel-counting in areas where edges are defined by straight lines in textures, like the floor grating at the start of Halo 2:

I know the MCC and Halo CE Anniversary editions used the PC version of Halo and some things were lost as a result like effects and textures.

The biggest-ticket items for me are the broken atmospheric effects, and a variety of missing or modified aspects of the lighting. Although the patches in 2021 largely fixed these in the MCC version.

I don't recall the same thing happening with the jump from OG Xbox to 360, but maybe I'm forgetting? I feel like if you had the discs and a 360, you got the original experience still.

The 360 emulation is far, far closer to the original game than the 2003 Gearbox port (and original version of CEA's "classic" graphics).

Although, both are missing CE's animated fog effects.

2. (Cody question) When the 360 came out, I can't remember if anything was lost with backwards compatibility for Halo & Halo 2....was there?

Just a decent framerate. Some chugging in single player but it’s borderline unplayable on coop.

I think graphically everything was fine, but I remember there being minor audio issues.