Let's Be Like Halo! Wait... what?

[garjian]

halo reach had non-regerating health with regenerating shield... and health packs... like the first.

just thought id point that out.

i disagree that games should copy anyone,
i agree that FPSs should at least copy someone else however... too many CoD clones.

They could just bring out the exact same Call of Duty out every couple of freakin' weeks with a different box art and title and it would sell like hot cakes.

(and with a new name (or Modern Warfare n+1))
and yes, it believably would. :/

 

[Netrigan]

2. Bring Back Health Meters:
Halo 1 has a shield meter and a health meter. It also features health packs that you walk over to trigger, just like the 'old school' FPSs everyone whines about. Halo 2 onwards also had the shield meter, which actually functions about the same as a health meter, and since you died very shortly after your shield went down it might as well have just been a health meter. Further, it had an in-story reason for the shield (your health) regenerating.

I recently decided to give Halo another shot after bailing less than half-way through the first. Halo: Reach has a health meter below the shields... and I'm mostly finding it functionally the same as just recharging health, at least on Normal difficulty. The shields are powerful enough that I'm never worried about my low health in the rare instances where it gets knocked down. When I die, it's pretty much insta-kills, where I go from full health and shields to death in under a second.

I mentioned this in another Halo thread and someone told me that's pretty much normal. Death doesn't come from a thousand cuts, it comes from a well-placed shot or two. Mostly I play the game in the same overly-aggressive manner I play all games with recharging health. Only when I encounter an enemy with the insta-kill ability to I play more conservative on the second play-through.

4. Stop Ripping Off Aliens:
Aliens features squads of grizzled marines of various ethnicities and grizzledness, all wizecracking their way through the various scenarios they find themselves in, like a lot of mainstream first person shooters these days. However, Halo featured a lone, silent protagonist (like Gordon Freeman) with very little personality assigned to him aside from what can be gleaned by the way the enemies react to him and his squadmates treat him. The closest Halo comes to Aliens is the crypod sequence but one shout out does not a ripoff make.

The whole space marine thing is the ALIENS rip-off. Doom was shameless about it, but has about as much in common with the premise as Halo does. Mostly Doom just tried to duplicate the lighting. But absolutely everyone knows why space marines are the go-to guys in FPS and it's all about how fucking cool they were in ALIENS. And quite a number of games utilize the face-hugger in some way, with a smaller monster visibly possessing regular characters. Halo has the Flood and Half-Life has the Head-Crabs. *cough*alien*cough*

The other movie that creeps up a fair bit (and whose novel most likely inspired ALIENS) is Starship Troopers. Pretty much every space marine cliche is from one of those two movies. Halo is a bit unusual in that they liberally borrowed from Ringworld, which is really only well-known in sci-fi fandom, which is more than most space marine stories ever bother to do.

 

[mad825]

But now I read again what you say at the bottom of your response "Halo is a good console FPS, so it does contain a lot of auto-aiming...", it makes no sense to say Halo has a lot of auto-aiming when only the three weapons, the needler, sticky launcher, and rocket launcher, have barely what could be seen as auto-aim. The other weapons in the game have absolutely no auto-aim.

So, taking in how many weapons there are in the game, Halo has hardly any auto-aim. Nothing but my own fingers and some luck has helped me get a few headshots with the sniper rifle or DMR.

You are assuming, in many cases Auto-Aim can be hard to notice and can only really be seen by looking at the raw code.

On the Halo wiki [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Auto-Aim] there is a table showing what and how Auto-aim is determined.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

snip

The whole space marine thing is the ALIENS rip-off. Doom was shameless about it, but has about as much in common with the premise as Halo does. Mostly Doom just tried to duplicate the lighting. But absolutely everyone knows why space marines are the go-to guys in FPS and it's all about how fucking cool they were in ALIENS. And quite a number of games utilize the face-hugger in some way, with a smaller monster visibly possessing regular characters. Halo has the Flood and Half-Life has the Head-Crabs. *cough*alien*cough*

The other movie that creeps up a fair bit (and whose novel most likely inspired ALIENS) is Starship Troopers. Pretty much every space marine cliche is from one of those two movies. Halo is a bit unusual in that they liberally borrowed from Ringworld, which is really only well-known in sci-fi fandom, which is more than most space marine stories ever bother to do.

I guess that's kind of the point though. 'One source is plaigarism, many sources is research.' Other bad FPSs (Yahtzee's example being Turok) only take from Alien, or Starship Troopers. They pick the one movie and stick with it. Halo references many, some quite obscure, and so is more an homage to science fiction in general rather than a rip off of one.

Maybe it's again just a matter of perspective but that's how I see it. Also, as you rightly mention everyone from Half Life to Haze has ripped off Aliens in some way, so you can hardly blame Halo for being the one game that did it worse than anyone else.

 

[Thaius]

I love you.

I really think the vast majority of the hate Halo gets comes down to impressionable sheep trying to be cool by disliking what's popular. It cannot be denied that Halo had a huge influence on console shooters, but 1) that makes it a good game, not a bad one, and 2) as you pointed out, most of the issues that people hate in shooters now really aren't present in Halo.

I love the series for its gameplay, its visuals, its music, and most of all its story. But people tend to look past all that in favor of bashing it for asinine reasons without ever giving the series a real look. Thank you for not doing that. You're awesome.

EDIT: Holy crap, I just noticed your avatar too! Basil of Baker Street! You are my hero.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Though then again Halo was one of the first games to have any form of auto-aim, which pretty much every FPS has in some way nowadays.

This is the kind of bullshit that gives Halo a bad name.

Halo is far from the first game to have a form of auto-aim. There were games on the N64 with auto-aim.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I do like Yahtzee but he does tick me off sometimes and the Turok episode was one of those.

You see, there was something you missed OP. In his Turok review he made all these 'Let's be like Halo' assumptions, yet in his Halo 3 review he confessed to having NEVER PLAYED A HALO GAME BEFORE. So in his Turok review he was making an assumption based on having only played one game in the series by that point, the game that even most Halo fans confess to be the worst...

He's entitled to his opinions, so long as he's basing them on actual fact, rather than just half baked assumptions.

 

[Vrex360]

[HEADING=1]THANK YOU[/HEADING]

Seriously, I've been trying to say this for so many years now. To this day I still hear people telling me that Halo is a grey cover based shooter populated by big beefy dudes and rips off aliens. I honestly get sick of it.
I don't mind if people don't like it but they could at least do their homework before condemning it, half the things people accuse Halo of aren't even it's fault.

In fact it was after playing Halo: Reach, when I jumped something like eight feet into the air firing rockets at an alien tank, using the force of the rockets to keep me up while I fired it that I stopped and thought to myself:
"Man, the people who say Halo inspired gritty realism are completely full of shit."
I can't think of a realistic war situation where someone carrying the rocket launcher would jump eight feet into the air to blow up a tank on ground level. But in a match of Halo it's a common sight.

Thanks for being frank about this, I agree with virtually every point here. Halo is not grey (Halo 3 was one of the most vibrant and colorful shooters I've ever played), it is not gritty realism, it doesn't have messed up control sensitivity (it's actually the smoothest shooter I've ever played) and it being set in space doesn't automatically make it a rip off of aliens.

 

[Baradiel]

The blast radius of a hand grenade in Halo is ridiculously low in all installments.
I can't think of any game with grenades that have less splash damage than Halo's.

Halo: CE grenades were mini-nukes. If an enemy was in the same room as one of them, they were dead (slight exaggeration, but whatever)

Sorry to follow the crowd, but I always considered CoD grenades to have quite a small blast radius, and Bad Company 2 grenades need to be nestled against an enemy's foot to kill them.

Although I agree about the frags not actually fragmenting much. Spike grenades from Halo 3 were more fragmentation grenades than the frag grenades.

 

[Megacherv]

Keep in mind that this was waaaaay before everyone started copying Call of Duty, which seems to be the current standard

 

[Zantos]

Its pretty much generally accepted that the Halo series has poor characters and a crappy story, just like a lot of shooters.
You know somethings up when even the most hardcore Halo fanboys admit theres flaws in it.

There's nothing wrong with a game where the fans are willing to admit flaws. Besides, there's an astounding difference between what you're saying (poor, crappy) and what actually gets said (simple, unoriginal, cliche). Yeah there was plenty they could have done to make it a better game but everything more or less holds up and covers itself even if there are no gripping plot twists and deep relationships between characters.

[HEADING=1]THANK YOU[/HEADING]

Seriously, I've been trying to say this for so many years now. To this day I still hear people telling me that Halo is a grey cover based shooter populated by big beefy dudes and rips off aliens. I honestly get sick of it.
I don't mind if people don't like it but they could at least do their homework before condemning it, half the things people accuse Halo of aren't even it's fault.

In fact it was after playing Halo: Reach, when I jumped something like eight feet into the air firing rockets at an alien tank, using the force of the rockets to keep me up while I fired it that I stopped and thought to myself:
"Man, the people who say Halo inspired gritty realism are completely full of shit."
I can't think of a realistic war situation where someone carrying the rocket launcher would jump eight feet into the air to blow up a tank on ground level. But in a match of Halo it's a common sight.

Thanks for being frank about this, I agree with virtually every point here. Halo is not grey (Halo 3 was one of the most vibrant and colorful shooters I've ever played), it is not gritty realism, it doesn't have messed up control sensitivity (it's actually the smoothest shooter I've ever played) and it being set in space doesn't automatically make it a rip off of aliens.

Haha word. Also a special shout to the people that complain about it being too unrealistic. "That could never happen in real life" Yeah we know. It's a game about how 500 years into the future humanity goes to war with a giant collection of alien scientologists and Khan has to stop them and along the way they accidentally release The Flood (I can't even think of anything for that). Realism wasn't top of the list in the first place. Now watch as I launch this ghost into that elite after attaching a grenade to the front and heroically diving out.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Mostly agreed, except for auto-aim. I hate auto-aim with a passion I'm not articulate enough to describe, so at least include the option to turn it off.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I just think it's amusing that while Yahtzee likes to pick on the Halo series, when push comes to shove he'll admit it's not as bad as he makes it out to be.

If you go back and watch his Halo 3 and Halo Reach reviews, he doesn't say the games are bad at all. He found Halo 3 to be average, and he thought Reach was kind of fun with a good ending. Sure he disliked Halo Wars, but that can be chalked up to the fact that it was an RTS game, a genre he's never been interested in.

 

[repeating integers]

Is it just me, or is the Halo hatedom on the Escapist quietly fizzling out?

Because all I've seen in the past few Halo threads is reasonable, intelligent discussion between people who like the games and people who don't. A far cry from the old "You like Halo, therefore you suck and so does your dog" threads I'm used to. I'm liking this change.

I suppose this is because the hatedom's now almost completely shifted focus to Call of Duty.

 

[nexekho]

They copy Call of Duty today, but I don't feel there were ever any TRUE Halo clones

Nova for iOS. Not played it but seen my brother playing it, looks like a crossbreed of Halo and Metroid.

4. Stop Ripping Off Aliens:

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_References_to_Aliens_in_Halo

 

[bue519]

I love when people say games copied Halo. They didn't.

They copy Call of Duty today, but I don't feel there were ever any TRUE Halo clones. Halo was Halo, you either liked it or didn't. Nothing looked like it was straight stealing from it. Developers took some ideas (just like every hack and slash action game cribs from DMC and God of War to some extent), and games moved on. The only "Halo" trends I see are regenerative health and the idea of holding two weapons at a time. Both of these aren't even copied wholesale in most games (Gears lets you hold four weapons)

Totally in agreement with you, Mr. Topic Creator

True, I thought Halo kind of reminded me of the Unreal Tournament series (talking about UT 2004, not the "Unreal 3") Both of those games had the crazy jumping, decent vehicles, and weapons that take a couple hits to kill.(granted, there are no throwable nades in UT04) I just remember feeling those games were mildly simliar when as I played them when they first came out.
As of the OP, I think that these suggestions are great, but Halo has really more Call of Duty in it than it's first release.(a sign of the times I suppose)

 

[Mysten]

I most definitely agree.

A lot of the dislike for Halo I see on the internet comes from the new definition of FPS that has developed in the wake of the Call of Duty explosion. The term FPS has little to do with the actual first-person perspective and the gunplay (I cringe every time someone calls Gears of War a FPS), it's now just a blanket term for 'macho guys with guns do macho things with guns while everyone feels macho in a brown-grey world of chest-high walls and completely unrealistic scenarios' and all of the negativity that that brings along with it.

Halo has a much deeper story than anyone gives it credit for, especially if you pick up one of the novels and delve into the expanded universe. The fiction recently got turned on its own head with the release of Halo: Cryptum which essentially redefined everything we thought we knew about the Forerunners, Precursors, Flood and Humanity's shared past and it's all the better for it.

I love Halo. For me, that's enough. If people on the internet feel like rolling out the ol' "Halo ruined shooters, Halo sucks" argument on the forums, I'm not going to argue when I can just pick up my controller and stick grunts with plasma grenades for half an hour instead. Time better spent.

 

[KaosuHamoni]

I love when people say games copied Halo. They didn't.

They copy Call of Duty today, but I don't feel there were ever any TRUE Halo clones. Halo was Halo, you either liked it or didn't. Nothing looked like it was straight stealing from it. Developers took some ideas (just like every hack and slash action game cribs from DMC, God of War or Ninja Gaiden to some extent), and games moved on. The only "Halo" trends I see are regenerative health and the idea of holding two weapons at a time. Both of these aren't even copied wholesale in most games (Gears lets you hold four weapons)

Totally in agreement with you, Mr. Topic Creator

Fixed it for you =]

 

[AwesomeFerret]

Edit: OT: Yeah, I never got why people thought Halo started the bland shooter trend, especially in the color department. I don't see how Halo could have started the bland gray and brown shooter trend, when Halo has always been more colorful than most shooters that came after and even some before it.

I completely agree with you. Heck, all the colours and general fun over-the-top-ness is what makes me prefer Halo to Call of Duty.

Spoiler: Off-topic rant against my Google Chrome browser

Screw you Google! I don't care if you're American dictionary spells colour as "color", I'm British dammit! I like tea and cake and watching Doctor Who on a Saturday night! And I spell colour as "colour", the way it's supposed to be spelt!

 

[Irridium]

Well if that is the case of the term, then I really don't consider Halo to have any auto-aim. With the regular projectile weapons, I have never had the reticule stick to a target and follow it, I'm the one doing the moving of the reticule to stay with the target. If the target moves too fast for my thumb moving the targeting-directional-view thumb-stick, then I won't hit it because it will run out of the reticule.

I don't see how people can complain about the three I mentioned, needler, sticky launcher, and rocket launcher.

The needler has always had homing capabilities with the needles coming out, but I have never had the needler reticule stick to the person I am firing at. Yes it turns red when I am in range for homing shots, but the reticule has never followed the person I targeted.

Even with the sticky launcher, it does have a slight lock, but once players press the charge up button, they have to follow the target manually before the reticule turns red and locks(for only a brief moment), then homing after fire. But it is the only weapon in the game that purely locks to anything.

The rocket launcher is like the sticky launcher in that players have to keep aim manually while the lock on mechanism syncs up for rockets to home, but even with that, the rocket launcher only locks on and homes in on just vehicles, it won't do it with people.

So that is why I was puzzled by what the other poster said about auto-aim in "Halo 3/Reach being completely overkill", when only three weapons only show slight if any auto-aim and really it isn't auto aim, it is just homing after the fact of shooting. Besides two of them are alien weapons and I would expect something like that from race that is somewhat more advanced.

The DMR, Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Pistol, and other weapons human or alien that aren't the three I mentioned, have never had any auto-aim when I used them.

But now I read again what you say at the bottom of your response "Halo is a good console FPS, so it does contain a lot of auto-aiming...", it makes no sense to say Halo has a lot of auto-aiming when only the three weapons, the needler, sticky launcher, and rocket launcher, have barely what could be seen as auto-aim. The other weapons in the game have absolutely no auto-aim.

So, taking in how many weapons there are in the game, Halo has hardly any auto-aim. Nothing but my own fingers and some luck has helped me get a few headshots with the sniper rifle or DMR.

Halo doesn't really include auto-aim(which I believe is automatically aiming for you like the snapping-to-enemies mechanic seen in Call of Duty, Red Dead, and GTAIV). But it does have quite a bit of aim-assist. In a recent GameInformer Magazine, Bungie explained how their auto-aim system worked. It was described in their Battlefield 3 issue(March, I think it was).
Halo makes use of friction and magnetism. Friction slows your turning speed when the reticle is over an enemy. Magnetism keeps the reticle trained on the enemy when the enemy or you are moving. The only weapons in Halo that have no aim-assist are un-zoomed sniper rifles. Every other gun has its own special settings, with some heavier than others. But its there.

The difference with Halo is that Bungie did it so well, its hard to notice unless your actively paying attention to it.