Poll: Halo or Half-Life?

[Hero of Lime]

They are very different games. There is no way to compa-Halo please!

I haven't played much Half-Life to be honest, but Halo is one of my favorite series. I just find it super fun to play as opposed to most other shooters. I do want to finish Half-Life 2 at some point, but I already love the Halo universe enough to outright say I enjoy it better.

Plus, no matter what anyone says, at least there is a Halo 3.

 

[J Tyran]

Both, I like both. Half Life probably has more varied gameplay but like you say Halo has the better AI, there is little contest when it comes to multiplayer though but the characterisation in Half Life makes up for that. Halo doesnt have that many characters to begin with and they are not that great, Breen, Kliner and all the rest are much more memorable.

 

[Olas]

Having only played a few levels from both I prefer Half-life because it's on PC. I only played Halo for an hour when it first came out and my thoughts were "It looks like a generic PC shooter with horrible controls. Why did they put this on a console?"

There are PC ports of the first 2 Halos. I know because I've never owned an Xbox and that's the only version of the game I've played.

For that matter you can also buy the Orange Box for Xbox360.

But I still agree, while Halo may have good combat mechanics, that's about all it has.

 

[Dosvidonya]

Halo is a generic "sci-fi" shooter thats completely devoid of original content. Its basically "Starship Troopers" or any other space marine movie you've EVER seen.

Half-Life was the first game to bring story to the FPS genre.

Without Half-Life, there would probably be no Halo.

So Half-Life wins by default.

Halo was/is a revolutionary shooter that changed the FPS genre in ways that are still being felt today. If it's "generic" it's because almost every fps copied it after its release much in the same way almost every fantasy writer has copied Tolkein's works. You might not like the changes it brought but that doesn't make it generic.

As for Half-Life being the first FPS to bring story? apparently you're forgetting System Shock, Marathon, Deus Ex, SW: Dark Forces all were story driven FPS's, all came out before the first Half-Life. Now if the argument is that Half-Life was the first to feature a "strong" narrative that's a fine argument. Otherwise, saying that it brought "story" to the FPS is broad and ultimately inaccurate. Also Halo would have probably existed without Half-Life, most of HL's innovations were in the narrative department not mechanics, and Halo's story draws more upon Space Opera's than Half-Life which draws upon Golden Age Science Fiction for most of its influence.

 

[white_wolf]

Half life as a whole is better then halo is to me the latter has become far too repetitive and most of it originality is gone giving me a few new moves or things to fight isn't bringing me back. Half life 2 had characters that I wanted to fallow or learn more about, a rich world, tossed in with some brutal combat, I like the narrative way more and even though both leads are mutes (in the case of Halo 98% mute)its their worlds, plots, characters, and chosen battle sequences that keep me around or not. I want another HL I think Halo should die.

 

[Evonisia]

I love Halo more, I've always found it's gameplay more entertaining than Half-Life's, and honestly I've never really been bothered by the whole USA... in SPACE! attitude of Halo. It's actually got a really interesting universe, especially on the Covenant's side. What I liked about it in the last gen was the fact that it stood up on it's own. Nothing in the past 5 years has made Halo redundant in the gameplay department, especially since pretty much all the Halo rip-offs of 2007-2010 had worse gameplay.

Besides Half-Life 1 I've never really been a fan of the series, and if I'll be honest Half-Life 1 hasn't aged well. Not that Half-Life is bad or anything.

 

[Moonmover]

I have too many fond memories of playing co-op with my brother to not vote for Halo

 

[Moloch Sacrifice]

Plus, no matter what anyone says, at least there is a Halo 3.

Nurse! Get this thread to the burn ward!

OT, I think the two are very different beasts with individual merits that are not exactly analogous. Halo excels in both online and local multiplayer, and the sandbox approach to combat keeps things fun and unpredictable.

On the other hand, Half Life's structure and characterisation help to really keep the story gripping, even as it teases you with details and hints. It wasn't afraid to use old school mechanics to keep tension up and really make you feel like the underdog guerrilla against a vast, superior enemy.

 

[socialtangent]

This isn't a fair comparison.

Halo and Half-Life are both sci-fi shooter franchises, but that's about all they really share in common. Halo is a military themed action shooter that takes cues from Alien, Starship Troopers, and softer sci-fi, while Half-Life is a much more grounded adventure/shooter more in line with hard sci-fi and dystopian fiction.

But to answer the question, I enjoy both just fine.

Half-Life was the first game to bring story to the FPS genre.

And this is just inherently wrong. The FPS game Marathon had a very deep sci-fi plot, and that game was released in 1994 (4 years before the first Half-Life). The kicker is that Marathon was made by Bungie Studios.

 

[mindfaQ]

Damn, selected the wrong category accidently.

Good quality PC shooter vs good quality console shooter. Not a hard decision - PC wins it easily.

 

[lacktheknack]

How about "I played both of them way too long after release, so neither impressed me"?

They're both a bit meh, as far as I can tell, from my ten-years-later perspective. If we look at later entries in the series-es, well, I don't own a console, so...

 

[Dosvidonya]

I miss the days where versus threads weren't allowed here...

OT: Halo, I guess. Half Life garnered more acclaim but I never got into it. Halo 1-3 were some of the best experiences I had in gaming, mostly multiplayer though. Back when LAN was still a thing.

I've said this before but I didn't really mean this as a "which is better thread" more as "which do you prefer". Both of these series changed the genre in incredibly dynamic ways I was just wondering which one people prefer, which I was then hoping would lead to a conversation about the merits and shortcomings of each? a flame war is the last thing I want. Their is always the option of "both" and "other" anyway.

 

[Snotnarok]

Halo 1 was interesting and did some fun things to really make going further in the game interesting, the rest of the series not so much.
Half Life felt more like an experience with shooting involved so I favor that ...also for other reasons.

Halo had just really dumb enemies, really really dumb, the little grunt doods were like shooting muppets "he's here! WAAAHH!!" and the elites "grahhh!!! wuba-dahh!!" no enemy in that game can be taken seriously, and the Aliens inspiration was not subtle.

Half Life had things you could believe in some regards, I didn't think anything was too far fetched.

 

[Terminate421]

Halo.

Half-life is boring. You play it once and you forget about it later.

Halo has replay value, not just in multiplayer, that and far more intelligent enemy AI.

Let me put it bluntly: HALF-LIFE IS BORING HALO IS BETTER

 

[Barbas]

I like the sound design and quality of Half-Life more. It's just more iconic to me. There's something about that squeak of booted footfalls down an office corridor, or the distant alarm klaxon of the testing labs. The harsh static that preceded a clatter of boots and boom of a shotgun heralding the entrance of a squad of HECU marines, or the bestial roar of a Gargantua. I've played both games, but haven't found any moments in Halo that could offer me something of that calibre.

 

[Cmdr Keen]

Halo is a generic "sci-fi" shooter thats completely devoid of original content. Its basically "Starship Troopers" or any other space marine movie you've EVER seen.

Half-Life was the first game to bring story to the FPS genre.

Without Half-Life, there would probably be no Halo.

So Half-Life wins by default.

Look up Marathon, then hang your head in shame.

 

[mirage202]

Going purely on the original games I went with both.

I hugely enjoyed Half-Life and also had a great time with the original Halo. If I was meant to answer on a series basis then I would have chosen Half-Life. Halo 2 on did nothing for me.

 

[Terminate421]

Halo is a generic "sci-fi" shooter thats completely devoid of original content. Its basically "Starship Troopers" or any other space marine movie you've EVER seen.

Half-Life was the first game to bring story to the FPS genre.

Without Half-Life, there would probably be no Halo.

So Half-Life wins by default.

Marathon.

Marathon is the correct answer to that question. I'm sorry you missed it, please try again.

Also what the fuck was Halo supposed to do for Sci-Fi? I haven't seen another Half-Life game in OH WAIT. At least Halo has something.

 

[Headsprouter]

Timesplitters.

Those two aren't the only good FPS games in existence, you know. And Half-Life has a similar level of deadness.

I've only played the first part of Half-Life 2 and the campaign of Halo 3. I'd pick Half-life of the two of them, but...yeah. Pretty sure Timesplitters will always be more my thing. It was Halo's competitor back in the day, y'know! Or at least that's what Free Radical seemed to think...

Silly.

 

[Dense_Electric]

Honestly, I've always found vanilla Half-Life and Half-Life 2 to be dreadfully boring. Forgettable 1999-style shooter gameplay (I understand it's an older FPS, but that doesn't magically make it less boring), very average storyline, the only remarkable thing about the series being the way the story is told directly through the gameplay and the level design instead of cutscenes. Other than that, I'll play it with tons of mods or not at all.

Halo though, at least with the first couple of games, had a somewhat more interesting story and infinitely more fun gameplay. I must have played through Combat Evolved and Anniversary twenty-plus times, and at least five or six each for 2 and 3. By comparison, I played through Half-Life 2 with no mods once. I didn't finish Half-Life 1.

Halo is a generic "sci-fi" shooter thats completely devoid of original content. Its basically "Starship Troopers" or any other space marine movie you've EVER seen.

Half-Life was the first game to bring story to the FPS genre.

Without Half-Life, there would probably be no Halo.

So Half-Life wins by default.

You're kidding, right? Watch this:

"Half-Life was every generic alien/zombie movie in a laboratory setting you've ever seen. Half-Life 2 was '1984 The Video Game'.

Halo was the game that made FPSs truly viable on consoles - every console FPS since has been based on Halo's control scheme.

Without Halo popularizing the genre for a more mainstream audience, there probably wouldn't be a Half-Life 2.

So Halo wins by default."

Do you see how none of what I just said makes Halo better than Half-Life? The points you're making barely even address the question (except the first one, but as I pointed out, it's equally true of Half-Life).