Before There Was Halo
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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I guess I'm just curious as to the purpose of the addition to this post? Just for amusement at a second meaning to a commonly used term?Sidereal said:
I take it you never played Doom, Quake, AVP et al?Cassita said:
Space marines have been around in shooters far longer than Halo.
I prefer Bad Company 2/MW2 depending on what I'm feeling like. That doesn't mean Halo is crap. You should look at what it brought 10 years ago, not now.
It did play differently. Previous PC shooters had been about circle straffing till one guy fell down. Rocket launchers with a single clip carrying every rocket you owned, all 86 of them. Instantly flicking between your 10 weapons, and never using weapons 2 or 3 after the second level. You still took an unbelievable amount of damage, you just had to make a 10 minute trek to get the health packs at the start of the level. I can still remember reading (before it was heading to xbox) that you would be able to go from a large outdoor environment to inside a bunker with no loading screens or end of level screen. You would be able to hop it a vehicle with your friends at will. I thought it was all hype and not posible at the time, it seemed so alien.
Yes CS (and action quake which I prefered) broke this mold too, COD4s multiplayer owes a lot to these games.
The biggest shift for me was a FPS on a console that wasn't a port of a game designed for PC. With weapons designed to fit neatly over 1-0 and ideally played with a mouse. Halo felt more streamlined, like it belonged on a console. I defy anyone who played it when it was new not to have had a blast split screen co-op with a scorpion.
I can understand older FPS players not liking the changes from the classic games, but these changes seem to have stuck. FPS's are far more accessable now, the changes have brought new people in. A lot of the hostility is snobbery because someones pet hobby has become popular.
I bit like when someone was "into" *insert band name* when they were underground. Then talks about how bad they are because others have heard of them.
It's funny, I've been playing video games since before a lot of you were born, and I always used to hate FPSes. A while back though I noticed I was actually starting to like some of them. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure it started not long after Halo came out. I even got Halo and quite enjoyed it years later when I got my 360. (At least the first one. 2 was pretty meh, and I still haven't played the third.)
I suppose that must be because I have the twitch reflexes of a sloth on Valium, while I actually have pretty decent timing. Funny how Halo basically turned FPSes into something I could enjoy and I didn't realize it until now. I wasn't going to bother with Halo: Reach before I read this article, but now I'm wondering if maybe I should give it a try.
I suppose that must be because I have the twitch reflexes of a sloth on Valium, while I actually have pretty decent timing. Funny how Halo basically turned FPSes into something I could enjoy and I didn't realize it until now. I wasn't going to bother with Halo: Reach before I read this article, but now I'm wondering if maybe I should give it a try.
Your article instantly lost all credibility before I even read the first paragraph.
Halo reinvented FPSes for the worst. It has created an insufferable crowd of bastard offspring children with hideous birth defects, or to be more coherent, the neverending brownification of future FPSes that didn't come from Valve.
Halo reinvented FPSes for the worst. It has created an insufferable crowd of bastard offspring children with hideous birth defects, or to be more coherent, the neverending brownification of future FPSes that didn't come from Valve.
As a skilled UT and Quake player, I find this very offensive and uninformed. I can understand that most people wouldn't appreciate the complex intricacies of a duel, but the basic concepts behind winning them do not necessarily include aiming.Shamus Young said:
There are multiple ways to play a game, but to do well, you need much, much more than aim. And even if you have exceptional hitscan/aim, you can still perform very, very poorly due to other factors.
Some of the concepts involved in dueling in nearly ANY FPS include map control, positioning, timing, prediction, weapon choice, range control, ambushing, and using sound to observe the arena.
Something specific to Quake or UT would include the movement - learning to strafejump or time your jump-dodge/wall-dodge is its own challenge, its own skill, not involving aiming at all, and some mods are based completely around Quake's unique movement system (see: DeFrag)
Halo took aiming out of the equation, but it did not put anything else in. If anything, it took strategy and thinking out.
In order to win a duel in UT2K4, controlling the shield belt and big keg o' health are essential to maintaining a strong health/shield stack. Or in Quake, picking up the megahealth and armor vests before your opponent does is crucial to survival.
In Halo, it seems that there is much less emphasis on health/shield pickups, as shields regenerate. Therefore, a player who is behind does not need need to time item respawns to maintain a stack or retreat to a certain section of the map to gain their health back - hiding anywhere for a few seconds will do. This removes an aspect of a duel that would require more thinking than aiming or 'timing precision.'
In Halo, only two weapons can be carried at any time. This makes map control mean much less, as even if a player has access to control, say, 5 or 6 weapon spawn locations, the player can only use two of them at any time. While he can still deny your opponent a weapon, he cannot use it himself, lowering the impact of map control.
In Halo, health seems to be much higher than with other games. While aiming which is generally not-as-necessary as in other games, this high amount of health removes some of the impact of positioning. Getting the jump on someone has much less of an impact considering it takes more than a full clip from most weapons to get a frag. Couple this with the fact that shields regenerate, and hit-and-run attacks are much less useful. Perhaps a player can get a few shots off on his opponent - but not enough to break his shields. As mentioned earlier, his opponent will regenerate his shields after breaking line-of-sight and grenade range, and the attack ends up being a waste of ammunition and time. In an old-school FPS, a player who is behind might be able to chip away at his higher-stacked opponent slowly from high ground (or another better position), and force his enemy to go on the hunt for armor instead of him.
In Halo, it seems that there is much less emphasis on health/shield pickups, as shields regenerate. Therefore, a player who is behind does not need need to time item respawns to maintain a stack or retreat to a certain section of the map to gain their health back - hiding anywhere for a few seconds will do. This removes an aspect of a duel that would require more thinking than aiming or 'timing precision.'
In Halo, only two weapons can be carried at any time. This makes map control mean much less, as even if a player has access to control, say, 5 or 6 weapon spawn locations, the player can only use two of them at any time. While he can still deny your opponent a weapon, he cannot use it himself, lowering the impact of map control.
In Halo, health seems to be much higher than with other games. While aiming which is generally not-as-necessary as in other games, this high amount of health removes some of the impact of positioning. Getting the jump on someone has much less of an impact considering it takes more than a full clip from most weapons to get a frag. Couple this with the fact that shields regenerate, and hit-and-run attacks are much less useful. Perhaps a player can get a few shots off on his opponent - but not enough to break his shields. As mentioned earlier, his opponent will regenerate his shields after breaking line-of-sight and grenade range, and the attack ends up being a waste of ammunition and time. In an old-school FPS, a player who is behind might be able to chip away at his higher-stacked opponent slowly from high ground (or another better position), and force his enemy to go on the hunt for armor instead of him.
Note that I am not saying that these basic concepts do not apply to Halo. I am saying that they apply to other, old-school FPS games even more than Halo. I am trying to show that these basic tactics have been applied (and will continue to be applied) in old-school FPS games in any gametype from Duel to CTF. (That said, playing flag defense in CTF can be like running a duel map - grab armor, grab weapons, find good position, etc.)
I am also trying to show that while it is possible to play through UT on Novice using only the Impact Hammer or Quake 3 using the LG and running directly at your enemy, the games have AI and design which facilitates a much more tactical, positional style of game - even moreso than Halo.
A player in both of these games will not just 'benefit from' using such tactics, but needs to use them in order to not be wiped against the floor and finish a duel with a score of 20:-2 against any player who is somewhat experienced.
I could explain why FPS games with double-jumps, strafejumping, and jump-dodging (see: Warsow) have a higher "skillcap" than a game without them (see: MW2), and my whole position on Halo "moonjumping" but that would be going a bit too far.
Suffice to say, watching a match would explain it much better than I can.
Skip to 1:45. This is part 2 of a 30 minute vid, and 1:50-11:50 is roughly the duration the match.
Zero4, while having 41% railgun (ie: "sniper rifle") accuracy to kmrey's 18% accuracy, gets outplayed by rey who uses several advantages other than aim to win.
Just to get that right: Halo's supposed to be an IMPORTANT game, because it shifted from a PRECISION-centered generic shooter to a TIMING-centered generic shooter and gave "inspiration" to a lot more boring, generic, franchise-milking shooters with the pinnacle of it so far being todays XBLA (or Ksbla)-generation?
And to achieve that development to the "better" (I'm sorry, I can't even think that with a straight face) we sacrificed what was supposed to be the first really good non-franchise-shooter with a strong narrative and excellent Team-AI of the time.
I'd like to ask some people to step down from this currently popular "Let's find diamonds in poo"-train. I agree that some shitty games were very important and influential. Won't argue with, for instance, Tomb Raider being very important for the medium despite being (in my eyes) a bucket of crap with boobs painted on. And I can live with that.
But Halo's value for the medium? I'd put a biiiig question-mark behind that. Because even in your 2-page article, Shamus, the part were you point out the positive effects merely makes up what? 10% of the article? And even the stuff you pointed out is so...meh that I honestly think even if Halo never came to be, another shooter would've done it not much later.
Yes, pretty sure that this "innovation" could've been brought very soon by any other Studio at the time.
And this comes from someone who, despite being relatively young, lived and consciously followed the scene at the time.
Ultimately I have to disagree with the message of that article. I think the medium would be a whole lot richer as a whole if Halo would've become what it was supposed to be. Weighting a rich, intelligent and well-narrated shooter against a simple standard franchise-shooter where the gameplay-focus is shifted and being asked which of the two I'd sacrifice to get the other....the decision wouldn't be very hard to make.
So, in agreement to a previous poster, the only thing I'd miss if Halo would vanish into oblivion would be Red vs. Blue.
And only that.
And to achieve that development to the "better" (I'm sorry, I can't even think that with a straight face) we sacrificed what was supposed to be the first really good non-franchise-shooter with a strong narrative and excellent Team-AI of the time.
I'd like to ask some people to step down from this currently popular "Let's find diamonds in poo"-train. I agree that some shitty games were very important and influential. Won't argue with, for instance, Tomb Raider being very important for the medium despite being (in my eyes) a bucket of crap with boobs painted on. And I can live with that.
But Halo's value for the medium? I'd put a biiiig question-mark behind that. Because even in your 2-page article, Shamus, the part were you point out the positive effects merely makes up what? 10% of the article? And even the stuff you pointed out is so...meh that I honestly think even if Halo never came to be, another shooter would've done it not much later.
Yes, pretty sure that this "innovation" could've been brought very soon by any other Studio at the time.
And this comes from someone who, despite being relatively young, lived and consciously followed the scene at the time.
Ultimately I have to disagree with the message of that article. I think the medium would be a whole lot richer as a whole if Halo would've become what it was supposed to be. Weighting a rich, intelligent and well-narrated shooter against a simple standard franchise-shooter where the gameplay-focus is shifted and being asked which of the two I'd sacrifice to get the other....the decision wouldn't be very hard to make.
So, in agreement to a previous poster, the only thing I'd miss if Halo would vanish into oblivion would be Red vs. Blue.
And only that.
I'm wondering, how did Halo cause brown by having light colors and bloom? If anything, CoD4 COULD have caused the, as you say, brownification(AKA, modern war shooter)due to it becoming more famous than Halo, and people eager to copy it's success.Cid SilverWing said:
I'm, impressed that while you pointed out you didn't like halo, you didn't proceed to just bash it like so many other people (professionals or not). Thank you for that, it's rare to see someone on the topic of halo accept that in ways it was good even if it wasn't their personal preference.Shamus Young said:
Whatever... The first Halo game was good. Though it seems like it's just getting worse and worse for every release. It's pretty much just a grenade spammer right now. They are even implementing two grenade-launchers in Halo: Reach. I guess they figured everyone was just using the grenades, might as well turn the weapons into it as well.
Sorry Shamus, but when you say that Halo was the one who built the FPS Console house, you lost all credibility with me. DooM was the game that built the FPS genre, PERIOD. Wolfenstein 3-D was the progenitor/beta-test for FPS, but DooM made it what it was. Then along came GoldenEye007, which finally brought the FPS game out of the PC Dominated market, and made it a financial success on the consoles. I know of at least three people who bought an N64 solely so that they could play GoldenEye007.
The Call of Duty games, while not as mega-successful as GoldenEye007, also cemented the FPS genre's place on consoles. Halo, on the other hand, is a bland, formulaic Sci-Fi based FPS game starring a faceless, emotionless mannequin as the protagonist, with an above average sound track that would make John Williams proud. In fact, if it hadn't been for Xbox LIVE, Halo probably would have drifted off into the mists of time, never to be heard from again. Halo 2 had some of the glitchiest, most unbalanced online multiplayer every to come out.
The fact that most real Gamers consider the Halo series to be the second piece of the Unholy Gramer Triad should give you an idea of just how overvalued the series is as a property. Even Bungie, the studio that made it and made billions of dollars of off it, said they were done with it and wanted nothing more to do with it.
The Halo series is a teat that's been milked too hard AND to death. The blood is starting to mix in with the milk, and the product won't last much longer until it becomes the level of self-parody that Devil May Cry achieved with number 4, and to a lesser degree, number 3.
The Call of Duty games, while not as mega-successful as GoldenEye007, also cemented the FPS genre's place on consoles. Halo, on the other hand, is a bland, formulaic Sci-Fi based FPS game starring a faceless, emotionless mannequin as the protagonist, with an above average sound track that would make John Williams proud. In fact, if it hadn't been for Xbox LIVE, Halo probably would have drifted off into the mists of time, never to be heard from again. Halo 2 had some of the glitchiest, most unbalanced online multiplayer every to come out.
The fact that most real Gamers consider the Halo series to be the second piece of the Unholy Gramer Triad should give you an idea of just how overvalued the series is as a property. Even Bungie, the studio that made it and made billions of dollars of off it, said they were done with it and wanted nothing more to do with it.
The Halo series is a teat that's been milked too hard AND to death. The blood is starting to mix in with the milk, and the product won't last much longer until it becomes the level of self-parody that Devil May Cry achieved with number 4, and to a lesser degree, number 3.
The moment you said "real gamers" was when you just showed yourself to be an elitist prick. I mean, "real gamers"? What the hell is that supposed to mean, you are more of a gamer then other people because you play certain games?CronoT said:
I'd say that Medal of Honor started the gritty serious warfare (Thanks to the director of Saving Private Ryan)DiscoAtThePanic said:
Halo went the same route as previous shooters and tossed in a shield (Thats a very simple way to put it). But it is a oneofakind due to the unrealism in the game. Most others choosing to go by the MoH CoD route. And in the end you end up with a ton of different gritty dusty arcade shooters with numbers and the letters (KILL STREAK AWard, FIRST BLOOD, SAVIOR!) popping up to kill the immersiveness every time you get a kill.
Out of FPS i prefer Battlefield due to the fact that you can play in a squad with your friends. In Halo and CoD (Not including MoH since its been dead for ages) you seem to be rewarded for going alone most of the time.
With Shamus talking about Halo and Bioshock, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect in Spoiler Theater, I get the feeling that he just doesn't know where to look to find really good games. Although I completely agree with him about his feelings about The Path, not one time do I ever hear him talk about those other PC darlings like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., King's Bounty, Sins of a Solar Empire, ArmA II, The Void (which if he liked The Path, he'll absolutely adore this), Cryostasis, or Dawn of War II.
Mmmmmmmm I dunno Looking at halo 1 level design was not corridor terribly centric(fable 2 was and 3 is worse),AI was better than most shooters and the sparatic one liners from the AI was great,vehicles were a bit under developed but I liked how they did not blow up rather the rider,ect just died. Other wise the only other thing it has is forcing you to make hard weaopn choices which at the end of the day I liked it but wish you had an option to say screw it let me carry anythign I want.
Halo just expanded on shooters that were a few years before it Duke, Blood, quake 2, Unreal,Unreal tournament and on the consoles Turok each of these games tried to up the anti on AI and pushing the system of the day without losing to much level creativity. These days levels are cut and past and mechanics striped to not lose time,money or support from the witless masses.
Halo would have done better if they launched it on the PC/Mac and the Xbox but for MS the Xbox needed games and they pushed them onto the Xbox, sometimes at the detriment of the game.
Halo just expanded on shooters that were a few years before it Duke, Blood, quake 2, Unreal,Unreal tournament and on the consoles Turok each of these games tried to up the anti on AI and pushing the system of the day without losing to much level creativity. These days levels are cut and past and mechanics striped to not lose time,money or support from the witless masses.
Halo would have done better if they launched it on the PC/Mac and the Xbox but for MS the Xbox needed games and they pushed them onto the Xbox, sometimes at the detriment of the game.
I don't think Halo reinvented the genre. It did a lot of things right, but it wasn't that amazing. People bought into the hype and since the game was good, it got elevated to a status it perhaps didn't really deserve.
There were plenty of good shooters before Halo. Here's a partial list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FPSChart.svg
System Shock and Deus Ex stand, for me, as much more influential than Halo. What about Half-Life or Golden Eye? Counter-Strike? Anyone can take a look at the time line I linked to and see which classics they prefer over whatever Halo supposedly contributed.
There were plenty of good shooters before Halo. Here's a partial list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FPSChart.svg
System Shock and Deus Ex stand, for me, as much more influential than Halo. What about Half-Life or Golden Eye? Counter-Strike? Anyone can take a look at the time line I linked to and see which classics they prefer over whatever Halo supposedly contributed.
The term 'Gramer' was coined, ironically enough, by ScrewAttack, to refer to someone who is something of a bandwagon jumper when it comes to video games. They don't get respect because they don't deserve it. It's like a 'fan' rooting for a sports team halfway through the season, because they're winning.
A true fan stays with something, through the good times and the bad times. Nintendo survived the lean years of the N64 and the GameCube by staying true to what the hardcore fans wanted, and the fans responded in kind. It's been said over and over that if video games start to tank, Sony and Microsoft will drop them like a bad habit and never look back.
The only people who still buy LP's, aka, Records, are the ones who appreciate the format and what's been lost through the 'improvement' of the media. So, if someone is only going to play the games that are popular and/or are hyped beyond all reason, and turn their collective noses up at some of the more meaty examples of video games, such as RPG's, Action/Adventure, and deeper, better made FPS games, then I'd rather they just get their s#*& and get out.
Here's an idea/dare for you. Go to a local video games reseller, such as GameStop, and ask a clerk what the usual turnaround times are for games such as Halo, CoD, Madden, and GTA. I'll bet they'd tell you that most are brought back in for reselling in less than three months. Then ask them how high the resell rate is for games like BioShock, RPG's, and high quality Action/Adventure titles like Super Mario Galaxy. The reason those resell games go for so much is because people rarely part with them.
A true fan stays with something, through the good times and the bad times. Nintendo survived the lean years of the N64 and the GameCube by staying true to what the hardcore fans wanted, and the fans responded in kind. It's been said over and over that if video games start to tank, Sony and Microsoft will drop them like a bad habit and never look back.
The only people who still buy LP's, aka, Records, are the ones who appreciate the format and what's been lost through the 'improvement' of the media. So, if someone is only going to play the games that are popular and/or are hyped beyond all reason, and turn their collective noses up at some of the more meaty examples of video games, such as RPG's, Action/Adventure, and deeper, better made FPS games, then I'd rather they just get their s#*& and get out.
Here's an idea/dare for you. Go to a local video games reseller, such as GameStop, and ask a clerk what the usual turnaround times are for games such as Halo, CoD, Madden, and GTA. I'll bet they'd tell you that most are brought back in for reselling in less than three months. Then ask them how high the resell rate is for games like BioShock, RPG's, and high quality Action/Adventure titles like Super Mario Galaxy. The reason those resell games go for so much is because people rarely part with them.
In my opinion, Halo is a decent game, good to kill time with, but definitely not the Second Coming of Christ that people sometimes praise it as. I don't honestly care "Who did it first", I care about "Who did it right".
Do I feel that Halo is overrated? Yes, absolutely. Especially the sequels. Do I hate it? Absolutely not, just beat Combat Evolved on Heroic last night. It's a great game, the sequels are sort of mediocre, but the first game sits within my top 20 shooters, for sure.
My 2 cents, tip your waitress.
Do I feel that Halo is overrated? Yes, absolutely. Especially the sequels. Do I hate it? Absolutely not, just beat Combat Evolved on Heroic last night. It's a great game, the sequels are sort of mediocre, but the first game sits within my top 20 shooters, for sure.
My 2 cents, tip your waitress.
Well, IMO, I thought Halo was just an OK game and it was far better than Half Life 2, which was horrible. That's right, I said it!
You know how everyone complains about the library level in Halo? Well in Half Life 2, the whole F***in game is like the library level! There's one path, then enemies, then health & ammo, and repeat X 1,000,000.
You know how everyone complains about the library level in Halo? Well in Half Life 2, the whole F***in game is like the library level! There's one path, then enemies, then health & ammo, and repeat X 1,000,000.