Poll: Halo or Half-Life?

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

....This is gonna hurt. Talking about both of these games is going to set these forums on fire.

And it didn't take long for the sparks to begin, either.

OT: I've never been able to get into Half-Life. The first Half-Life I probably got three or four hours in before the old-school FPS mechanic of health scrounging just really pissed me off too much to continue playing, and Half-Life 2 has never been able to hold my interest for very long past Ravenholm.

On the other side, I love the universe that Halo built up. The war between humans and the Covenant that expands into the Covenant Civil War, the battle at Reach, the three-way conflict between the forces of Earth, the Covenant, and the Flood, and Cortana's foil to Master Chief's limited personality. The characterization may not even be in the same galaxy as Half-Life, but even still it just remains more interesting to me.

yupp couldn't agree with this more, I'm not sure what it quite is but bloody hell I literally fall asleep playing half life 1 or 2...but then I'll go and play the halo games and beat them 5 times over again and again. The 2 weapon mechanic has never really bugged me, and in Halo I never felt like it really took away from anything.

 

[Vigormortis]

I'm not saying Half-Life is devoid of lore, clearly I missed things which means I'll have to replay it again, just don't feel it's as expansive as Halo's.

I suppose that depends on one's definition of "expansive".

Though, come to think of it, both story-verses span vast stretches of their respective settings. Halo's events are spread across it's respective galaxy, with most player-involved events occurring either on a Halo, on Reach, or on Earth. Half-Life's events are spread across several universes, with most player-involved events occurring either on Earth or in Xen.

I do recommend you revisit the Half-Life series, though. Especially if you missed much of the "less-than-obvious" narrative and lore strewn throughout. And, if I may, I suggest playing through them on easy so you can take your time and explore, taking in the clues.

I'd also like to suggest starting with the first game and playing through to Episode 2. Much of the lore is pieced together from clues spread out across the entire series.[footnote]And if you have any questions about it at some point, feel free to ask. I'm always willing to answer.[/footnote]

It's all opinion though, although I found out where I heard about the depletion of the oceans? it's one of the game descriptions on the older boxes, score one for marketing.

Really? I've never seen that. I have the original "special edition" box from when Half-Life 2 first released and there's almost nothing on the back about the storry.

Not saying I don't believe you, I've just never seen it. Do you know which box it was? I'd actually like to see it.[footnote]Or, I suppose I could try not being lazy and hop over to Google to find it myself. [/footnote]

And there's nothing crazy about liking ODST, I liked the direction it was taking with the series. Wars wasn't to bad either, it was an RTS that worked on consoles? kinda.

Egh, I don't know. I've been told by many self-proclaimed die-hard Halo fans, time and again, that I'm crazy for preferring the gameplay and story of CE, Wars, and ODST to any of the others. So I tend to just assume most Halo fans will tell me the same.

That said, I particularly enjoyed ODST. I liked seeing a more fully realized vision of Bungie's idea of a future Earth, as well as finally getting to experience the "threat" of the Covenant from normal, human eyes. (Was one of the first times the Covenant felt truly menacing in a Halo game. To me, anyway.)

 

[Jusey1]

Well I imagine older FPS gamers will go with HL and the younger audience with Halo, you kids and your hip new things and all that...

Halo maybe newer but it broke a lot of records and pretty much made the Xbox famous. (We probably would never had Xbox 360s and Xbox Ones right now if it wasn't cause of Halo)... So the game itself is an EXTREME big deal and honestly, I love the series... Well, until 343 took control with Halo 4 then went "Meh"... XD.



Anyways. I'm not into Half-Life at all. Don't have it, don't care for it, etc. Halo though... I've play the crap out of Halo CE on the PC all the time online! So I'm definably gonna go with Halo on this one.

 

[Sarge034]

I voted both, but if I had to choose I would go with Halo. At least they still make Halo games...

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Well Half-Life 2 was a fun game but I only played through it once. Meanwhile I played Halo 3 multiplayer for about 3 years so I'm going with halo

 

[Ticklefist]

I didn't explore the thought too much but I recently found myself wondering if Halo marked the point where "core" gaming started being the casual affair it is today.

Anyways, Half-Life. I don't even remember the story from Halo.

 

[Teoes]

Argh I mis-voted for Halo because I'm an idiot! Half-Life all the way for, for the wonderful way it put its story across. Wonderful level design and world construction too.

 

[Alarien]

I have to say neither. They are both, despite being seminal in their own right, the absolute epitome of generic.

That's not to say that I actually hate either of them, specifically, it's just that there is nothing about any world that is specifically intriguing or compelling to me. For Halo, I find Cortana to be amusing, but the rest of the story to be pretty mind numbing and under developed. For Half-Life, well, I can't really get into playing a crowbar swinging mute who just goes around doing whatever he's expected to do to save the world from a pretty faceless and not particularly interesting enemy.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Half-Life! Love the pacing and the dark, wry humor, as well as how they went about with the storytelling, seamlessly blending in the narrative into gameplay. Level design is also very good: the survival horror, the more action-paced parts, the platforming... my only gripe will always be the alien planet in the end.

 

[mrdude2010]

I have to say it depends on what I want to do. I absolutely adored the early Halos' multiplayer, but it's almost impossible to find a better single player experience than half life 2.

 

[Blade1130]

Not sure why "Both" and "Other" are answers in this question, but whatever.

I gotta go Half-Life, mainly because every Halo has let me down since Halo 1 (with the possible exception of Halo 4 which is awesome if you do it on Heroic with a bunch of difficulty skulls on. Much harder and way more interesting than Legendary.) Half-Life has simply been more consistently awesome. And when I think of Halo 1 side-by-side with Half-Life 2, I just have to go with Half-Life 2. Dog, Alex, the Gravity Gun... That game is just too damn good.

God damn you, now I have to go replay both of these.

 

[smithy_2045]

I've tried on numerous occasions to play through Half Life 1 and 2, and every time I just get bored with the game. So by virtue of the fact that I was engaged enough in Halo Reach to finish the game, I have to go with Halo.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Half Life hands down.

I was really amazed when Halo managed to gather such a fanbase back when it released. By growing up with PC and the NES/SNES only as a addendum to my hobby i didn't see anything special in Halo - it was just another shooter.

The multiplayer was really funny though, we often made special Halo LAN-Parties with 3-4 consoles and a dozen players over a weekend - that was a blast.
But the singleplayer was sooooooooooo boring. It was similar in expirience to GTA IV. I really tried to like it, because i knew the game is really trying to pull something epic here - but it just didn't work. It was dull, repetetive and just bland.

I just had totally diffrent expiriences with both HL's. They both had me in awe when i first played them, specially HL2. The SourceEngine back then was just : "Woah". There aren't many games which delievered an equal inspiring expirience as the Halflife series and all these games i consider are/were defining/capturing my passion for this hobby.

Half-Life 1+2, Portal, Mass Effect 1, Gothic 1+2 and Freelancer are THE most important games for me.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

It's got to be Halo for me. While I like Half Life and appreciate its use of level design and small details to tell the story as opposed to loads of exposition, I just wasn't all that engaged by it since the gunplay doesn't really have any weight to it and the movement feels kinda being on rocket skates. Halo (at least CE through to Reach) on the other hand feels much better to play since you aren't just a floating gun and the guns are a little more varied and fun to shoot, although the Gravity Gun makes up for that in Half Life. I also prefer the universe and lore surrounding the Halo series for scale and surprising depth.

 

[gorfias]

Well I imagine older FPS gamers will go with HL and the younger audience with Halo, you kids and your hip new things and all that...

Yes I also fall under the older audience so Halo to me is just an overarching question of "Why are there only a handful of mechanics present?"

Heh, I'm old and I need easy games (or better yet, CHEATS!) I can tell that Half Life is the better game. I also had a much stronger emotional response to it. The barnacles still absolutely freak me out. But there was also something harder about it (and 2) that caused me to never finish it. I blame myself and will likely one day give it another try, but so much else has come out since then.

On the other hand, Halo was immensely playable for me. Without cheats, I beat Halo 1, 2 and 3. (360 died before I could play 4. Damn it.)

My favorite scene was a full blown armored battle in part 1. It felt like I was very relevant in a huge, game changing battle (towards the end, in an iced over area).

No matter how good it is, if you can't really play it, it fails in comparison to one that you can play and enjoy. If you're whipping your controller across a room in rage and frustration, you aren't having fun.

 

[blackrave]

Half-life for sure
Tried Halo:CE for a while (got to the encounter with flood)
And it was one big MEH
Maybe later games became better, but I don't really care

 

[Jacob.pederson]

Before I begin I just want to start off by saying I adore both of these games!

Yea, I adore both as well. Both have their strong points. Half Life wins in terms of pacing, story, and world-building; however, Halo wins in terms of AI, persistence, and game-loop.

What do I mean by persistence? Through clever use of the always present hard drive, every item drop, vehicle, and corpse in Halo CE stayed there until level change. This was Huge for immersion. Combine this with the two-item limit and non-rechargable weapons, and strategy (on Heroic and above) often required backtracking to get more weapons. This put stress on the player to remember each encounter (in order to remember where item dropped for future reference) which consequently made each encounter more memorable! Genius!

 

[Wilco86]

It's funny I thought the exact same thing when I was playing Half-Life. "Why do I have to switch weapons for melee and grenade instead of just pressing a button allocated to each?

Well, Gordon ain't an übersoldier like Spartan so he might need a couple of seconds to ready himself to toss the grenade (after all, his speciality is to plug things like we saw in HL2). Heck, I've tossed a live one, and even with training it's not as quick as "push the button and soon explosion happens". =)

Edit: Also, most people need two hands to carry and fire an assault rifle etc., so a swing with a crowbar in a fraction of a second when needed in a hurry can be a bit difficult.

 

[an annoyed writer]

I'm the kind of girl that loves both so much that she has a figure of Gordon Freeman displayed to be sharing drinks at a miniature bar with the Chief, Chell, and Grayson Hunt on her shelf. So yeah, both.

 

[MHR]

Im going with Half-Life

I consider Halo to be "very good" and Half-life to be "great" so there.