Poll: Halo: Did anyone actually enjoy fighting the flood?

technoted

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I always enjoyed the Flood, a swarm enemy, completely unorganised just swarming and raising the dead into a parasitic host. I really liked it...
 

Soviet Heavy

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northeast rower said:
2: Quarantine Zone (though I may be wrong here)'
You are definitely wrong there. The main advantage that Quarantine Zone has over the others was vehicles by the truckload. Nothing was more fun that launching a two pronged scorpion assault on coop against the guardians and the flood as the same time.
 

ZeroMachine

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First off:

Thaius said:
In Halo Wars, that was just an unforgivable betrayal of canon. It made no sense at all for the Flood to show up then. Humanity had no idea the Flood existed until the events of Halo, so for any humans to discover their existence before then is just a horrible canonical failure. That's what happens when Bungie completely withdraws from a project; it made sense to have it designed by Ensemble, but they should have had their own creative team do the story and music.
The Spirit of Fire was labeled as "lost with all hands" after the events of Wars, so the UNSC couldn't know what they encountered. Also, there was NOTHING that stated the Flood outbreak of Installation 04 was the only outbreak. The Flood may have been biding their time on that shield world for the past 100,000 years.

The ONLY thing that Wars messes up on canon-wise is the fact that three Spartan II's went missing when only 3 (I think) were MIA/KIA by the events of the Fall of Reach.

But, in Halsey's journal, she mentions lying about some of the Spartans, so hell, she may have lied about them too.

/nerd

To actually answer the question of the thread, I absolutely loved fighting them in the original Halo. Their strength was in numbers, and if you didn't get them, you'd be swarmed. They were wild and awesome.

Halo 2 made them powerhouses, so they were annoying as hell. Halo 3 turned them into wimps other then the pure forms, and even they're easy by comparison.

Also, and I will stand by this, Halo Wars' representation of the Flood, although weird, was well done. There were a ton of them, none incredibly powerful, and you just need to make sure you don't get swarmed. Like in the original.
 
Oct 2, 2010
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Depends what you mean by "the flood."

In Halo CE, they're used brilliantly on both a storytelling and gameplay basis (the latter doing a good job of supporting the former). When the storytelling needs to be chaotic and oppressive, the flood's aggressive AI and drop-right-in style was perfect for the job. It put pressure on the player without being cheap; some situational awareness and aggression could get you through. Even The Library, which I used to hate, can be kind of mesmerizing in its own way.

Jump to Halo 2. Until the end of the game, they felt completely shoehorned in. And they fought a lot like Covenant but less interesting, and were frustrating not just due to some jackal sniper equivalent, but on a basic level.

Jump to Halo 3, where they have high damage but low health (esp to melee), and very little aggression, and some of them have long-range weapons. So if you try to mix things up a bit and play aggressively, you'll be murdered. But if you hide in a hole and take them out bit-by-bit, it's ridiculously easy. Eeeewww, lethargic gameplay!



They started out amazing, probably could have been cool in Halo 2 if Bungie hadn't spent the first two years post-Halo CE doing everything except develop a functional game engine, and were awful in Halo 3.
 

EinTheCorgi

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loved fighting them in the first and second games halo 3 felt weird and i loved halo wars so ill leave it at that.
 

garfoldsomeoneelse

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I didn't really have a problem with them, considering how important they were in the overall story. However, nothing, in all the Halo games combined, has scored as many kills on me as a flood combat form with a rocket launcher.
 

Double A

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I found fighting the Flood to be fun, however, I hated some of the levels they were on. The Library in Halo 1, the Arbiter levels in Halo 2 (you know the ones), and Cortana in Halo 3 were all very unfun to play through. The first encounter of the Flood in Halo 3 was tolerable, as was in Halo 1 and 2. I also liked the last two levels in Halo 3, because they weren't in Flood environments. The enemy is fun as hell, but usually the levels are either too hard or too brown and gloomy.
 
Oct 2, 2010
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Double A said:
I also liked the last two levels in Halo 3, because they weren't in Flood environments.
Wait, what? The second-to-last level in Halo 3, Cortana, is the only level in the series that takes place pretty much entirely inside passageways of flood goo, and it's also probably one of the worst levels in any game ever.
 

Dwarf_Ninjas

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I felt that the more Halo games there were, the less interesting the flood got.

In CE, it was very startling the first time encountering them. The anticipation leading up to the first encounter was very well done, and the fact that Elite flood didn't really resemble its "infected host". Once I saw the human counterparts, it was a shock. Even today, the build-up to the floods first appearance is done very well. The flood them selves are also pretty unique compared to the covenant. An "in your face" ass strategy and those things on their arms that could kill you if you weren't paying attention.

In 2; I liked how they updated the flood's way of infection, but hated the difficulty. Don't get me wrong, its still hard getting though the Arbiter's levels on legendary because of a single infection form, but the fact that the sword could stop a flood from getting back up kind of nuked the difficulty curve. If anything, the only thing I wish is that they either showed MORE flood driving vehicles in later stages/games, or just take it out. A perfect way to make the flood seem even more threating, and it wasn't touched on much.

3 Didn't do the flood much justice. Sure it was creepy to see them infect LIVE hosts and uninfected corpses rather then the whole "incubation thing" they did with Keyes, sure adding the Brute forms made them seem more threatening, but if anything that killed the threat of the flood: it was the Tank forms and the Gravemind. It was never explained what the Tank forms were (i think only one of their forms is called tanks, but I don't know, and thats how much I care about them), but it just seemed like they had little inspiration on a decent flood enemy. Also, the Gravemind. It existed in 2, but I never understood. Is there more then ONE gravemind, did every ring have one, why did that one choose to head to the Ark immediately? Personally, story wise, I never understood it.

I also felt that they nerfed the flood the more games they had. Very few times was I killed by flood in Halo 3, even on legendary. High Charity, the flood level in 3, attempts to mirror the Library, and almost does except for the difficulty. That and in 2 and 3, they just got too easy to dismember, which practically nuked the threat. In CE, while a flood form could only get up one or two times if its arms were in tact, it was still annoying and even felt wasteful to shoot corpses arms off, but it was better then having it come back and kill you when you least expected it. In later games however, just punching them enough and they explode like confetti.

And like Thaius said: Their appearance in Halo Wars was like someone attempting to sell furry porn at an art auction. Aside from the story side, I felt that at that point, Halo Wars was trying to be Starcraft in all but Species. While the Covenant and Human sides had an intersting story and unique game play, it just felt that the flood were too out of place.

Thankfully there were no flood in Reach or ODST (weird to say, but after Halo Wars, I admit I had my doubts about the two). But what I will say is that the flood were a unique enemy. Personally, after Combat Evolved, they just got too easy.

But one thing I will always miss is having a Combat Form with no arms follow me around in Halo: CE. That was always fun. (I call them Stumpy :D)
 

Double A

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Tupolev said:
Double A said:
I also liked the last two levels in Halo 3, because they weren't in Flood environments.
Wait, what? The second-to-last level in Halo 3, Cortana, is the only level in the series that takes place pretty much entirely inside passageways of flood goo, and it's also probably one of the worst levels in any game ever.
Whoops, I meant the Covenant and the last level. I haven't played Halo 3's campaign in over a year, so I kinda forgot.

In my post, though, I said Cortana sucked.
 

Peteron

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They are really a downer in the game. You just owned all these covenant soldiers and then a giant ship that looks as if it is covered in human excrement crashes, and get what? The moment is gone. The flood are annoying, fast, and those tiny little jellyfish ones are annoying to kill. I am surprised they don't all have troll faces on. "Lol, U mad?" The only time I find these levels tolerable is with tons of energy swords present as well as a fully loaded shotgun.
 

TilMorrow

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Jul 7, 2010
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When I first encountered the flood, they scared the shit outta me seeing as they were the first actual zombie type enemy I had ever had come across in a game so no I didn't like them as a enemy. However If you are asking whether I enjoyed fighting against them than yes I did as they proved to be a complex evolving enemy as the series pushed on albet mixed with the Horde Rush manouever used by zombies.
 

Fidelias

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Um, I didn't mind them. I mean, sure, I liked fighting the Covenant MORE, but that's just because I didn't like the Flood's pure creepiness.(Shut up, they're creepy) I didn't think they were bad to fight at all, just different.

Also, the level they first appear in(I think it was called 343 Guilty Spark) was AWESOME! Definately one of the best levels of any FPS game I can think of. Just so awesome how they managed to change the game from making you feal like a badass one minute, and a very exposed idiot the next.
 

SantoUno

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megs1120 said:
The covenant AI was good for its day
What is that supposed to mean? Are you seriously implying that the AI in Halo 1 is dated by today? I seriously disagree with that, but that's not the point here.

I didn't ENJOY fighting the Flood, but they sure as hell create a chilling atmosphere. Why? They were the only enemies that actually stroke fear into me.
 

Mike Richards

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It seems I'm the only one who liked them the best in Halo 3. They were annoying in the first one, but in a lovable kind of way that made the experience interesting if not necessarily truly fun.

The second game was the worst offender, simply because they appeared to have exactly the same stats as in the first game but with the chance of coming back to life once you were done with them. And with no way that I ever figured out to stop them the system quickly overbalanced and turned the second Library into more of a nightmare then the first, excluding the welcome addition of Wraiths.

But in the third one everything carried over with some very fun new forms and best of all: a way to stop them coming back. The 'gun-punch-to-ensure-death' thing added a new level to all your encounters with them, a new piece of tactical consideration to keep things fresh. And was reinforced by the fact that the combat had already been overhauled to the point that melee attacks were actually useful for basically the first time in the series.

I'm not entirely sure when or why people started hating the sequels or 3 in particular, but I actually thought it was the best of the bunch up until ODST came out, which was then later dethroned by Reach. By comparison the first one sort of sucks now.

I don't know, maybe that's a discussion for another topic.
 

Nouw

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Co-Op with friend was pretty fun and hilarity ensued.

They're not the best of enemies to fight and I certainly didn't enjoy fighting them.
 
Oct 2, 2010
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Dwarf_Ninjas said:
3 Didn't do the flood much justice. Sure it was creepy to see them infect LIVE hosts and uninfected corpses rather then the whole "incubation thing" they did with Keyes,
Eh, that's easily one of my least favorite things about the way the flood are shown in Halo 3. In Halo 1, the extent to which they only hinted at things allowed the flood to be, if not directly scary, somewhat horrifying; it's basic fear of the unknown. But with clean animations like that, the horrifyingness is limited by an animation rather than imagination. Even with a good animation, it has far less potential than the old method. But I don't think the animation is even that good; I laughed the first time I saw it, especially when the silly model swapping happened. It just doesn't look consistant with the graphical style.