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

[Thaius]

You're missing the point. The Flood was not there because they made for good gameplay, the Flood was there because they made for a good story. The first time playing through Halo, fighting them was fine for someone paying attention to the story because they were a mysterious and scary enemy, the ultimate secret held by these ancient constructs. Thankfully, some small things about how they were fought in each game made them bearable on the first playthrough. Subsequent playthroughs not so much, but anyone who cares about Halo's story (because it is a great sci-fi war story) didn't mind on the first time through.

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.

This would be true if the Flood actaully made any sense in the story. They didn't.
The forerunners built and activated the Halo Network to kill all sentient life in the galaxy to starve the flood to extinction.........BUT kept samples of the Flood ON halo? WTF? How did they even survve on halo without having anything to eat for a 1 million years or whatever?
I believe the reason cited for this was: They were kept for further research purposes. Research by whom? The forerunners died off when the Halo network activated, so who's going to research them?

If they kept them for research, it makes perfect sense to think that in the course of the research, there was an uncontrollable outbreak. They wouldn't keep the Flood in hopes of researching them after they die, they would keep them to research them, then activate the rings when things get out of control.

As for how they survived, it is seen in the games that the flood spores can enter the bodies of other previously flood-infected bodies. Considering the size of the outbreak in the days of the Forerunners (that is to say, freaking HUGE), it would make sense to think that they could survive off each other for a long time to come in the areas most densely populated by them (mainly the rings themselves and other Forerunner structures used to house them).

Not that hard to explain.

 

[phantasmalWordsmith]

when I first played halo, the flood terrified me despite not knowing what it was. Then somewhere between 2 and 3 I wasn't scared and learnt about them via the wiki. Plot wise, very frightening concept to me. Gameplay wise, they could be annoying when you got swarmed on heroic or legendary difficulty but they weren't that entertaining to fight either just spray and pray with the automatic weapons or bust out the shotgun

Personally, I think they were a decent plot device in the main games but I was glad they were left out of reach and just quit Halo:wars entirely once they showed up

 

[Connor Lonske]

First game was fun, if not repeditive, other games were crap.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

I loved them in the first game. My dad and I were playing through the game co-op, but I decided to continue solo, and just happened to start the flood level. Scared the hell out of me.
Of course, that was back when Halo had a chance of being scary, not just an action sci-fi shooter >.>

 

[Dygen Entreri]

Wow. I think I'm the only one on this thread who will say this: I liked the Flood in Halo 3 best. In CE I just got annoyed by the swarm tactics, and in 2 they are tougher, but I actually didn't have too much trouble with them. When you play as the Arbiter, two weapons you should always carry are the sword and a Needler. Sword for all of the Combats, and use the needles on the carrier forms. It blows up them and their payload!

But in three, that was when I saw the greatest variety in the Flood, and I liked that. In all of the missions, you can usually find an effective weapon against them, and swarm tactics from low health enemies make sense to me. I even enjoyed most of the Cortana level (much more then the Library) other then the parts where you get trapped in a corridor with five Pure forms in their ranged mode shooting at you.

They do form a huge part of the story, but I'm glad they weren't in Reach, just because during that time the Covenant were still supposed to be the worst thing out there. I would have liked to see them show up for a level in Firefight, and make it like COD's Zombie game modes.

 

[Tupolev]

This would be true if the Flood actaully made any sense in the story. They didn't.
The forerunners built and activated the Halo Network to kill all sentient life in the galaxy to starve the flood to extinction.........BUT kept samples of the Flood ON halo? WTF? How did they even survve on halo without having anything to eat for a 1 million years or whatever?
I believe the reason cited for this was: They were kept for further research purposes. Research by whom? The forerunners died off when the Halo network activated, so who's going to research them?

Forerunner AI could research the flood. As it happens, the comments about Halo being a flood lab are from The Library, told to us by the Forerunner AI, 343 Guilty Spark:
"This installation's research facilities are most impressive! Perhaps we'll have time to see them later."
"Why naturally the Flood is simply too dangerous to release, and mass sterilization protocols may again need to be enacted. Of course, samples were kept here after the last catastrophic outbreak... for study. It seems... that decision may have been an error."
"The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood."

It's 100,000 years, not one million years.

As for how they would survive, the Halo rings are seeded with life. They could have had food brought to them.

It's not like the Halo rings are unique as having labs implimented, either; the Forerunner gas mines near Threshold as seen in Halo 2 had flood labs as well.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

The only time I enjoyed fighting the Flood was in Combat Evolved. The Flood just got less and less interesting and more annoying with each subsequent game.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Forerunner AI could research the flood. As it happens, the comments about Halo being a flood lab are from The Library, told to us by the Forerunner AI, 343 Guilty Spark:
"This installation's research facilities are most impressive! Perhaps we'll have time to see them later."
"Why naturally the Flood is simply too dangerous to release, and mass sterilization protocols may again need to be enacted. Of course, samples were kept here after the last catastrophic outbreak... for study. It seems... that decision may have been an error."
"The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood."

It's 100,000 years, not one million years.

As for how they would survive, the Halo rings are seeded with life. They could have had food brought to them.

It's not like the Halo rings are unique as having labs implimented, either; the Forerunner gas mines near Threshold as seen in Halo 2 had flood labs as well.

Yes, all of that is fine and dandy except: Why would you need to research them (with machines) after your race has been wiped out? If the Forerunners were killed off.....then no amount of research is going to help them; since they are Dead.
and the flood weren't running rampant on Halo when the Humans and covenant found it. They were locked in sealed Lab vaults. and then the Elites release them. and then shit hits fan. I meant how did they get food to stay alive INSIDE a vault?

 

[Azaraxzealot]

they were just bullet sponges that ate my ammo...

NO! I FUCKING LOVED FIGHTING THEM SO MUCH I WANTED TO GO INTO THE GAME AND GIVE EACH AND EVERY ONE A FUCKING HANDJOB! /sarcasm

 

[Tupolev]

Yes, all of that is fine and dandy except: Why would you need to research them (with machines) after your race has been wiped out? If the Forerunners were killed off.....then no amount of research is going to help them; since they are Dead.

They either died or left when they fired the Halos. The reason the Halos existed was to preserve the galaxy by eliminating the flood. The whole point was that, if the flood couldn't be annhilated conventionally, they would kill everything and then reseed the galaxy with life specimins that they had preserved prior to the rings firing.

The Forerunner had a code or set of obligations that was mentioned a lot in Halo 3's terminals known as "The Mantle"; they saw themselves as sort of keepers of the galaxy. This shouldn't be too surprising since, if they didn't have an obligation or motive to help, why would the Halos even exist?

There's also a slight possibility that not all the Forerunner are actually dead, but whatever.

and the flood weren't running rampant on Halo when the Humans and covenant found it. They were locked in sealed Lab vaults. and then the Elites release them. and then shit hits fan. I meant how did they get food to stay alive INSIDE a vault?

You can get produce in an urban area despite there being no farmland nearby. In the course of studies, the Forerunner AI's presumably fed their test subjects.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

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.

I don't really know that it was non-canonical. There might have been humans that met the flood, but they were all just wiped out. In Cutter's case it could have been that the Spirit of Fire was never recovered, or it malfunctioned and everyone died, thus keeping the flood a secret until the events of Halo 1. Or they could have been recovered after Halo 1. I mean, the Covenant kind of knew about the Flood in the first game.

ok, in the canon series, the flood are released in the ring in the first Halo from the research area, this is the firt "Breach" in security of the blasted things since the rings were used last, "Thruth" knew about them (my guess?, the same reason he knew about the ring, exploring ancient tec), and only him, and the fear of them escaping was because the only way of really killing all of them was to destroy all the viable host for it (the whole plot of the rings for the game)

IF the spirit of fire was never recovered, then the flood would had being able to get into a host and make it travel.

and well, the malfunction might work... but i would have to know more about the game, i have never actually played "Wars"

other than that, i dont really care if they used "Flood" in the game, because i never thougth of "Wars" as a "Canon" game, with the "Bungie" team gone from the thing, it seemed obvious they had to "respect" the original material, and that included at least one level of Flood, thats what happens when you give a developer a game and tell them "Make an strategy game out of this!!" they will make sure everything is added to keep it faitfull to the source, but i dont think they actually were familiar with the whole story.

Long Story short for Halo Wars (only the beginning of it)

Spirit of Fire goes to Arcadia to help the Pillar of Autumn, Pillar of Autumn random jumps into hyperspace (how Halo 1 started) Spirit of Fire follows a captured scientist's signal to an unknown planet in which the surface is infected by the flood.
This is actually possible as we don't actually know how long the events surrounding Halo 1 took and we don't necessarily know how long the defense of Arcadia took. It's completely plausible that Halo happened while the crew of the Spirit of Fire was helping to save Arcadia and that the flood found some means of transport towards the unknown planet.
If Halo didn't happen before Cutter found the unknown planet, it's completely possible that the flood had already existed there, but didn't have an extra source of hosts and ships that they needed to leave. Keep in mind that it is a forerunner planet, and there were sentinels there in order to keep the flood from entering the inside of the planet where they kept a massive fleet.

The only problem I have with Halo Wars is that there were Spartans defending Arcadia. I thought they all died on Reach save for 117.

 

[kirbowshi]

Oh god no! I hate fighting the bloody Flood. They're endless, annoying, strong, jump everywhere, barely have a head and they look like mushy piles of vomit (pardon my English).

Yes I understand they are part of the Halo story/canon. Yes, they are supposed to be scary, strong and practically impossible to stop, but please do tell, did anyone really enjoy fighting the flood in High Charity in Halo 3?

Especially those creepy needle-shooting-impossible-to-kill-transform-into-a-bigger-enemy-when-you-thought-i-died-bugs? I mean you've equipped me with shotguns and energy swords to one hit kill practically every flood, but now you're going to make me fight an enemy that shoots at me from across the map? And when I manage to find a weapon that can actually shoot it, the thing crawls up the ceiling, behind a wall and hides. And if I manage to kill it, it's not actually dead but will just transform into a behemoth that I CAN'T kill with a ranged weapon.

...Yeah sorry for the rant...to answer you're question, I did not like the flood very much.

 

[Tupolev]

Long Story short for Halo Wars (only the beginning of it)

Spirit of Fire goes to Arcadia to help the Pillar of Autumn, Pillar of Autumn random jumps into hyperspace (how Halo 1 started) Spirit of Fire follows a captured scientist's signal to an unknown planet in which the surface is infected by the flood.
This is actually possible as we don't actually know how long the events surrounding Halo 1 took and we don't necessarily know how long the defense of Arcadia took. It's completely plausible that Halo happened while the crew of the Spirit of Fire was helping to save Arcadia and that the flood found some means of transport towards the unknown planet.
If Halo didn't happen before Cutter found the unknown planet, it's completely possible that the flood had already existed there, but didn't have an extra source of hosts and ships that they needed to leave. Keep in mind that it is a forerunner planet, and there were sentinels there in order to keep the flood from entering the inside of the planet where they kept a massive fleet.

The only problem I have with Halo Wars is that there were Spartans defending Arcadia. I thought they all died on Reach save for 117.

I'm not sure you're familiar with the circumstances of Halo Wars; it takes place over twenty years prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.


The reason there's not information on the flood later, according to what happens in Halo Wars, is that the SoF loses its slipspace drive and can't get back to human space for a long time.
But yeah, I agree that having flood in Halo Wars is kind of dumb.

 

[superbatranger]

After killing so many of those green fucks, it gets tiring man. But, I didn't really mind. They were part of the story after all.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

Long Story short for Halo Wars (only the beginning of it)

Spirit of Fire goes to Arcadia to help the Pillar of Autumn, Pillar of Autumn random jumps into hyperspace (how Halo 1 started) Spirit of Fire follows a captured scientist's signal to an unknown planet in which the surface is infected by the flood.
This is actually possible as we don't actually know how long the events surrounding Halo 1 took and we don't necessarily know how long the defense of Arcadia took. It's completely plausible that Halo happened while the crew of the Spirit of Fire was helping to save Arcadia and that the flood found some means of transport towards the unknown planet.
If Halo didn't happen before Cutter found the unknown planet, it's completely possible that the flood had already existed there, but didn't have an extra source of hosts and ships that they needed to leave. Keep in mind that it is a forerunner planet, and there were sentinels there in order to keep the flood from entering the inside of the planet where they kept a massive fleet.

The only problem I have with Halo Wars is that there were Spartans defending Arcadia. I thought they all died on Reach save for 117.

I'm not sure you're familiar with the circumstances of Halo Wars; it takes place over twenty years prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.


The reason there's not information on the flood later, according to what happens in Halo Wars, is that the SoF loses its slipspace drive and can't get back to human space for a long time.
But yeah, I agree that having flood in Halo Wars is kind of dumb.

So you're telling me that the Pillar of Autumn's random slipspace jump that led them to Halo took 20 years? The PoA jumps right after the SoF enters orbit around Arcadia. Yes, there's lots of things that don't connect, but if you look at both of my posts before this you'll see I've stated quite a few ways that the Flood could have logically been in Halo Wars. I didn't like them in it as the AI uses tactics similar to the Zerg AI and I hate the Zerg. The flood were a useless add-on, but they did lead to an awesome mission where you cleanse the SoF with the help of the Forerunners.

 

[Crankafoo]

I only "didn't mind" fighting the flood if I had a shotgun or something. Otherwise, it'd a repetitive and tedious task in which I rather didn't enjoy.

 

[Agayek]

I actually quite liked the Flood in the original Halo. They made a great contrast to the Convenant, and were genuinely fun to fight (though the Library sucked ginormous donkey balls).

That said, in every other Halo game they've just been terrible. Once they started using vehicles, weapons and tactics it just got stupid, both from a gameplay and story perspective. They essentially became new skins for the Covenant, and it was stupid. They're supposed to be mindless zombies bent on consuming everything, they shouldn't be capable of piloting vehicles or doing anything more complicated than "go there and smash stuff".

 

[Tupolev]

So you're telling me that the Pillar of Autumn's random slipspace jump that led them to Halo took 20 years?

No, I'm telling you that you've got the wrong jump. Yes, the Pillar of Autumn fought at Arcadia. But its leaving Arcadia isn't the jump that brought it to Halo. The jump that brought it to Halo was from Reach 21 years later in 2552, during which time the PoA went through mothballing and refitting.



You can look up the information I'm telling you anywhere. A good chunk of it is even in the Halo 1 game manual.

 

[trophykiller]

In my opinion, they were the funnest part.

Also, when they appeared in the first, they proved what horror games can and should be like.

 

[CrustyOatmeal]

the flood were really only done well in halo 1 because they popped out of nowhere alot and you couldnt effectively get into melee combat with them, plus the fact that they just kamikazied straight at you just freaked you out. after halo 1 they just went down hill. halo 2 was ok but by this point most of the weapons just turned them to dust and every time you fought them there was usually help. for me though, halo 3 ruined the flood: the best tactic was to get into melee combat with them, they became less like zombies and more like drunken guys with guns, and the complete redesign made them less creepy and much more brighter

did i like facing the flood? yes and no, i loved how they instilled fear in me the first time i ran into them and the panic i would feel when cornered by a pack but with every passing game the flood became less intelligent and more like drunken fools you need to knock over on your way to the next checkpoint