Poll: Alright guys, settle a bet for me. Half Life, Halo, or CoD?

[Sixcess]

Halo. I'm indifferent to Halo 2, but Halo: CE is one of my top 5 FPSs of all time. It is not perfect, but it is well presented, extremely easy to pick up and play, and has one of the best levels ever: 343 Guilty Spark. Also, it's just fun.

I haven't played HL2, but HL1 has great story telling and atmosphere, but exhibits many of the hallmarks of bad 90s shooter design - like the terrible platforming and insta kill environment hazards.

CoD I've never played, but I've never played any modern day military themed shooter - just has no interest to me as a genre.

 

[Snotnarok]

It only took 6 minutes for the poll post to go through, wasn't the site redesign an amazing idea?

I'd say Half Life because of how they went about telling the story in 2 and such, the story may have been simple but rather than out right telling you through dialogue people are suffering and the earth is being ransacked for it's resources you SEE it.

While Halo and CoD have stories they've never been very deep beyond their earlier incarnations, especially CoD, World at War was wonderfully told however the later games was just trying to be as much an action movie as possible.

 

[Gardenia]

I can combine my answer with a misogynistic comparison:

Spoiler: Here be offensive text

*CoD is the fat old whore, who still thinks she is hot shit, even though she has 7 different kinds of cockbreath.

*Halo is the normal girl, who while being average in every single way still is enjoyable and fun to hang around, although she has clearly been "slutting up" the last 3 years.

*Half Life Y U NO PUT OUT?

So, in my opinion, Halo is the best overall, although in quality (adjusted for the time in which it came out), Half Life 2 wins.

 

[Magnus]

Half-Life every time for me IMO, COD's got too much of the 'set-piece' thing going on and as far as Halo goes I don't think over-arching narratives work well in a trilogy, they're too fleshed out in middle and rushed at the end.

 

[Thespian]

Haven't played CoD, hated Halo (despite loving it in theory... Just couln't have fun with it) and I enjoyed Half life, sorta.

 

[Terminate421]

I go with Halo,

To put it simply, Halo is what I look for in an FPS. Open feeling, scale, epicness, fun and unique guns, balanced multiplayer. I love they story in halo much more than half life.

 

[Smeggs]

I love how all of the earliest comments say CoD or Halo, but the poll clearly shows Half-Life comes out on top.

The HL series is easily king over Halo or CoD when it comes to single player. I've had enough generic Space Marines and Evil Russians to last a lifetime. Doesn't help that Halo's Flood are easily taken from Half-Life's Headcrabs.

All this talk of Half-Life has made me nostalgic. Gonna redownload and boot up 1 and 2 on Steam.

 

[Smeggs]

OP: You might as well go and tell your cousins to give you your $25 now. Pretty sure that over a hundred people aren't suddenly going to vote for CoD or Halo.

 

[StorytellingIsAMust]

I prefer Half-Life because Valve took the time to make a three-dimensional world populated by three-dimensional characters on top of fun run and gun shooting wahey.

Call of Duty takes second place because I actually had fun playing through it's campaign, but it does fail for trying to play too much like a Saving Private Ryan knock-off. Plus, zombie mode is fun.

Halo fails massively for me mainly because it thinks that a competitive multiplayer is all that matters when it comes to game design. The campaign is terrible, the heroes are faceless people I don't care about, the bloom is blinding, and the vehicles are useless and terribly controlled.

 

[Dfskelleton]

I really don't care for any of them, but if I had to answer, I'd say Half Life. Out of those 3, Half Life has the best single player campaign, and since I've made an oath to myself not to play Halo or CoD online (for reasons I'm sure many of you know), I'm not judging any of these games by their multiplayer.

 

[thirion1850]

Half-life or Halo, simply for the 'old school shooter' factor. I hate ironsights.

 

[CptRichards]

Question: Are we talking as a series, all expansions included, for all these or just the original Half-Life vs. the original Halo? Since you mentioned Orange Box I'll assume series. By that standard I have to say Half-Life all the way. If it was just Halo 1 vs. Half Life 1 though I would say Halo. Half Life 1 was fantastic all the way up until you went through the portal to the borderworld. After that I feel that it descended into a massive pile of shite and shattered dreams. But other than that it is no contest. Half Life all the way whoo.

 

[lewwatt]

First post here so hi everyone!

I'll go with Half Life, the first one is brilliant but I don't enjoy playing the sequel or episodes quite as much - no particular reason just don't enjoy it.

Halo could've been so much more, the first two were amazing, I had so much fun with them and it was my first experience with online. Then Halo 3 came out and it left a bitter taste in my mouth, followed by ODST. Reach was a little better but still nothing on the first two. It's got an uncertain future from my point of view and I don't think 343 can do anything spectacular.

CoD 4 is my all time favourite FPS but needless to say what they've done to the franchise nowadays just negates that fact and sets it as 'worst thing that has happened to gaming' in my books.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say your cousins are sugar snorting hyper active teens?
At that age I would probably also pick CoD because it was made for them, it's just different games for different tastes.

Uhh, I choose CoD because it's the best shooter out of all of those. Half life is a good game, yet the gameplay hasn't aged well and Halo is pretty slow paced.

Yes, we all understand that it's the "cool" thing to be a cynic on this site, but people tend to forget that CoD has stayed where it is because it's still one of the best at what it does.

 

[MrJKapowey]

HALO fails because of its bloom and "blank slate" main character.

And Half Life doesn't have a character who's a blank slate?

Doesn't help that Halo's Flood are easily taken from Half-Life's Headcrabs.

Aliens that eat your head and turn you into a zombie, aliens that burrow into your chest and turn you into a zombie. Enough linkage to be able to claim 'inspired', but not similar enough to say 'stolen', 'ripped' or 'taken'. There's a whole load of other links possible: Flood spores eventually turn you into one of the massive spore-growers, which will then explode causing more spores to burst from it's swollen chest cavity and torso - like Alien.

 

[bauke67]

I've never actually played a Half-Life game, so I wouldn't know about that, but I'm going with halo, since it's pretty much my favorite franchise. I liked modern warfare 2(the only CoD I''ve played), but everyone knows the campaigns are.. fun, but too short, and lacking a decent plot, and I liked the multiplayer, but eventually it got me both extremely frustrated and bored at the same time, so I decided Halo multiplayer was betterfor my walls and mental health.

 

[Snake Plissken]

I'm not going to vote because I, like them, hate Half-Life. HATE. I thought the game was fucking awful. Then again, I don't like the other two franchises much either, so I don't really want to vote in a poll that leaves me with a "least shitty" option.