Good article, plus it helped me understand why I enjoy pc FPS's but generally dislike console FPS's..
Before There Was Halo
- Thread starter Shamus Young
- Start date
Well now, you know what I did? I went and actually played Halo 1 on PC after reading the article.
I got as far as the copy-paste hallways of the ship. Hasn't aged well is an understatement.
In contrast, I've played System Shock 2 or Deus Ex more times than I can count, in recent times as well (last month or so?) Nevermind playing Doom or Quake regularly. The point is not that people are hating on something popular, it's that the something popular (for the wrong reasons) is screwing up what we used to find great advancements in the genre.
And here's something different, but related!
http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74
Read, learn.
I got as far as the copy-paste hallways of the ship. Hasn't aged well is an understatement.
In contrast, I've played System Shock 2 or Deus Ex more times than I can count, in recent times as well (last month or so?) Nevermind playing Doom or Quake regularly. The point is not that people are hating on something popular, it's that the something popular (for the wrong reasons) is screwing up what we used to find great advancements in the genre.
And here's something different, but related!
http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74
Read, learn.
Incorrect. "Re-invent" does not require all instances of the old to disappear; merely that a new template has been created that is widely used.The_root_of_all_evil said:
After examining the article carefully, something struck me.
Really? No, really? Like, seriously?
Which, as we previously established, didn't happen. It just started off a bandwagon.BloodSquirrel said:
You're trying to have a semantic argument here, but your definitions have no discernable basis.The_root_of_all_evil said:
If it wasn't Halo, someday some guy would have developed an different FPS that would re-invent the genre, too, maybe in an kind of different way, where is the bad thing in that?
It's like "Without X you wouldn't have Y" like there would be no chance in hell someone else would do Y or only Y is good.
It's like "Without X you wouldn't have Y" like there would be no chance in hell someone else would do Y or only Y is good.
May I point you to the answer from Shamus to my original question where we decided that "Yes, there was a difference in text"?BloodSquirrel said:
If you want to argue further, fine, but we've already sorted this out.
Yeah, sure. Halo (fittingly along with Marathon) is one of the few if only scifi franchises that treated the whole 'humans vs. aliens' thing in a new way. The aliens weren't some evil species bent on wiping out humanity for no good reason, they had dimensions to them. For one, it was a conglomeration of different races, brought together and enslaved by essentially an intergalactic extremist religious sect. Hell, they could even be called a suicide cult (the activation of the halos would kill everything, but in their eyes it would send them into the new kingdom or some such nonsense). That felt realistic to me, hell that happens in the world we live in.GeneticallyModifiedDucks said:
Then we've got internal politics to this alien cult (really, how often do we see this outside of sci fi novels?) leading to the defection of one group to the other side! In the second game specifically we're shown half the game from an entirely new (alien, 'enemy') perspective. If I can knock the franchise for anything, it's Bungie chickening out with the third game from all of the backlash of the risks that the second game took. Could've gone somewhere even more interesting, somewhere even half as crazy as Marathon Infinity would've neat as shit, instead it pulls its punches. Also the MC didn't need to be such a cypher for the player, in such an interesting world it would've been neat to play as an interesting personality (not another Gordan Freeman). At least the machismo was toned down a bit from most FPS action heroes. Lastly, The Flood (while they had an amazing introduction) managed to devolve half of every single goddamned game to a Doom throwback.
Then we've got the aesthetics and the little touches, the colourful quality of this sci-fi world, where else did we see that? Most developers equated 'sci fi' with sleek shiny metal surfaces or brown dirty metal surfaces. Halo gave us organic environments, grass, beaches, alien worlds that looked colorful and interesting for a change. When we came to earth it was New Mombasa, sit on that for a sec. New Mombasa in Africa was the center of most of the earth action we saw. Appreciate the novelty, when nearly every other developer would've given us New New York, Halo considered the idea that the Earth of the future might be quite a different place. And then there's ODST which gave us the Halo universe from the perspective of the grunt troops. Nice seeing Bungie not holding onto the MC for dear life.
Not a Halo fanboy. Can't remember the last time I touched the multiplayer, and I don't even own an 360 anymore. But I'll never understand how people can sell the originality of the setting short. When nearly every other FPS gave us dark n' gritty, Halo gave us fucking Spielberg (oldschool Spielberg). It was a breath of fresh air to any FPS fan willing to admit it. I love Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock as well mind you (these games have been brought up quite abit) but their strengths don't really take away from what set Halo apart and vice versa.
What about Call of Duty? I know Infinity Ward took pointers from Halo in tuning the gameplay to suit consoles, and Halo had been evolving into a more multiplayer-focused game, but from where I'm standing, it was with Call of Duty that the pseudo-realistic anti-colorful stuff that people seem to hate about modern shooters got started, or at least where it got popular enough to be imitated by almost every other FPS developer.DiscoAtThePanic said:
Plus Call of Duty has completely eclipsed Halo in popularity, and what is most popular is most imitated and therefore has the most effect.
Sadly, being the best turd for the turdiest console and spawning an entire genre of turds, teaching a generation of gamers to like nothing but steaming turds, doesn't make up for the fact that it was, and still is, a turd. No matter if the controls worked well.
Yeah... I'm not buying this article. Everything except for people bouncing in vehicles had been done two years before in Perfect Dark. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and the Timesplitters games that followed were the ones that defined how a FPS could control perfectly on a console. Halo just threw it out and emulated the PC tactic of rooting the crosshair to the centre, which is far better suited to a mouse than a gamepad. Let's look at it this way:
Goldeneye brought us:
*Fluid, console tailored controls
*Variable zoom aiming for different guns
*non-linear and highly varied level design
*Huge arsenal of weapons, all of which could be held at once
*Different objectives for each difficulty setting, with unlockable levels for higher difficulties
*Cheats, unlockable by completing difficult specific speed runs, and would not let players advance through the story when activated
*Split screen multiplayer for four people, including five modes
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Dual wielding weapons
*Emphasis on stealth and objectives over brute strength (though it was still possible)
Perfect Dark added:
*secondary functions for all weapons
*Dual Wielding in multiplayer, four years before Halo 2
*Six modes in multiplayer
*up to 8 computer controlled bots in multiplayer, with everything customisable from skill level to tactics and preferred weapons. Friendly bots could even be ordered around during a match.
*Larger interior and exterior locations
*level starting spots and other factors dependent on actions performed in previous levels
*Co-operative mode
*Counter-operative mode
*Various single and multiplayer challenges
Halo introduced:
*Better graphics and levels being larger still
*Enhanced flanking enemy AI
*Better vehicle physics
*Regenerating health
*ported PC/Mac controls
*LAN support with up to 16 players
and so Halo removed:
*Console tailored controls
*non-linear level design
*All weapons being held at once
*Dual wielding
*Different objectives for each difficulty
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part)
*Secondary functions
*Down to 5 multiplayer modes again
*Multiplayer bots of any kind
*A lot of the multiplayer customisation as seen in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, and The World Is Not Enough
*Counter operative mode
*Singleplayer and multiplayer challenges
If anything, Halo pioneered a few forward steps in the console FPS market (side-steps, in the case of regen health), and the rest were big steps back in the development of the genre. Due to it's popularity, however, rivals sought to copy the bare minimum approach Halo adopted, and as a result, console FPSes have been lacking the earlier pioneering features ever since.
Hell even The World is Not Enough and Timesplitters 2 are in some ways better made games than Halo, and they both came out beforehand.
Goldeneye brought us:
*Fluid, console tailored controls
*Variable zoom aiming for different guns
*non-linear and highly varied level design
*Huge arsenal of weapons, all of which could be held at once
*Different objectives for each difficulty setting, with unlockable levels for higher difficulties
*Cheats, unlockable by completing difficult specific speed runs, and would not let players advance through the story when activated
*Split screen multiplayer for four people, including five modes
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Dual wielding weapons
*Emphasis on stealth and objectives over brute strength (though it was still possible)
Perfect Dark added:
*secondary functions for all weapons
*Dual Wielding in multiplayer, four years before Halo 2
*Six modes in multiplayer
*up to 8 computer controlled bots in multiplayer, with everything customisable from skill level to tactics and preferred weapons. Friendly bots could even be ordered around during a match.
*Larger interior and exterior locations
*level starting spots and other factors dependent on actions performed in previous levels
*Co-operative mode
*Counter-operative mode
*Various single and multiplayer challenges
Halo introduced:
*Better graphics and levels being larger still
*Enhanced flanking enemy AI
*Better vehicle physics
*Regenerating health
*ported PC/Mac controls
*LAN support with up to 16 players
and so Halo removed:
*Console tailored controls
*non-linear level design
*All weapons being held at once
*Dual wielding
*Different objectives for each difficulty
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part)
*Secondary functions
*Down to 5 multiplayer modes again
*Multiplayer bots of any kind
*A lot of the multiplayer customisation as seen in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, and The World Is Not Enough
*Counter operative mode
*Singleplayer and multiplayer challenges
If anything, Halo pioneered a few forward steps in the console FPS market (side-steps, in the case of regen health), and the rest were big steps back in the development of the genre. Due to it's popularity, however, rivals sought to copy the bare minimum approach Halo adopted, and as a result, console FPSes have been lacking the earlier pioneering features ever since.
Hell even The World is Not Enough and Timesplitters 2 are in some ways better made games than Halo, and they both came out beforehand.