can you please name some halo innovations which are not really innovations, perhaps in bullet point formNetrigan said:
Poll: Is Halo a generic shooter?
- Thread starter tlozoot
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Generic shooter? ************ the REASON its generic is because it made so much money and so the, to paraphrase Yahtzee 'soulless men in suits who have coin operated thought machines instead of emotions' ordered all of their haggered devs t instantly copy it as quickly as possible.
Thus the majority of games became about space marines in power armour and halo was forced into the generic corner.
Thus the majority of games became about space marines in power armour and halo was forced into the generic corner.
Recharging health... easy difficulty of Serious Sam.team star pug said:
Grenade button... Team Fortress
3rd Person Vehicle mode seamlessly mixed with foot action... Tribes 2.
Melee button... Duke Nukem 3D
Those are the major ones. But every thread I've seen where someone has listed Halo's innovations, someone eventually finds a game that did it before Halo. Although often the innovation becomes "they did it on a console first", which I find hard to accept as "innovation", such as the frequent claim that they innovated internet multi-play, despite this being mandatory on PC games long before Halo.
But they pulled together a lot of these infrequently used elements into a package unlike other games of its time... which I think is about the best a shooter can hope to achieve.
Halo is certainly the most influential shooter of recent memory, because so many have adopted these elements, but said elements were already around. They just found a really good recipe.
It was less generic when it was made. Lots of various bits become popular after it and things started looking more like Halo and thus made it look more generic, or so I've been told.
As long as we totally ignore GTA III released the year before, because it's a third person shooterEldritch Warlord said:
Again, ignoring GTA III, look no further than the huge level design of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, Unreal, and Serious Sam. Croteam used to brag about the number of square miles in their game levels. All of them used to love having some speck on the horizon being your ultimate destination and getting there without a game loading screen.
Mostly this was a limitation of game engines. id's game engines tended to only be able to handle small areas and they were the most frequently licensed game engine. A limitation not shared by the Unreal engines, which led to some rather epic levels in games like Deus Ex.
Pretty much this. The Halo formula defined the console shooter. That they've stuck to their basic formula is in my opinion nothing to fault them for.katsumoto03 said:
Its like complaining that nutella has tasted like nutella for too long, and its time for a change.
One could say that Halo was original when it came out, and has been mimicked again and again to the point where it became the very template for a shooter, through no fault of it's own, and thus appears to be generic... But one could also say that after nigh on a decade, they haven't exactly changed much. They've taken one or two steps backwards, actually, albeit for the better. It's not bad, it's not great, but it's certainly not innovative any more.
It's become generic in feel, but when you grandfather in so many changes to a genre of games, how can you call the innovator generic? Halo brought limited weapons (realism!), regenerating health (annoying to no end, but it makes sense in Halo), and obligatory vehicle sections (other games had these, but I can't remember them ever being so prominent). It also had ridiculously smart AI that I'm pretty sure hasn't even been matched by its sequels. It's a good game.
The series is kind of generic though, because while the first game ran on innovation, the others are almost higher-res clones of the same game.
The series is kind of generic though, because while the first game ran on innovation, the others are almost higher-res clones of the same game.
Forgot about limited weapons. Well, there's obviously games like Rainbow Six, which helped usher in the whole realistic shooter genre.
But first time I ever encountered having more weapons than you had slots was Blood 2, which had the usual number of weapons slots for a PC game, but had more weapons than slots, so you had to drop one to pick up a new weapon.
But I think Halo was one of the first (if not the first) to create a really easy game mechanic for doing so. Blood 2 required you to physically drop it before picking up the new weapon, instead of hitting a button to swap weapons.
Halo didn't do much (if any) of this first, but they often came up with a much better way of doing it. And there's absolutely no shame in that... no matter how much I enjoy playing "The Simpsons Already Did It" game.
But first time I ever encountered having more weapons than you had slots was Blood 2, which had the usual number of weapons slots for a PC game, but had more weapons than slots, so you had to drop one to pick up a new weapon.
But I think Halo was one of the first (if not the first) to create a really easy game mechanic for doing so. Blood 2 required you to physically drop it before picking up the new weapon, instead of hitting a button to swap weapons.
Halo didn't do much (if any) of this first, but they often came up with a much better way of doing it. And there's absolutely no shame in that... no matter how much I enjoy playing "The Simpsons Already Did It" game.
Well, because of the fact that there are so many first-person shooters out in the market today, by today's standards, Halo would probably be considered generic.
Motion detecting radar... look no further than 1999's Aliens Vs. Predator which ported the idea over from ALIENS.
And I'm sure they weren't first.
And is that a screenshot from Rise Of The Triad... I only ever played the shareware of that one, but it looks like that OTT classic.
And I'm sure they weren't first.
And is that a screenshot from Rise Of The Triad... I only ever played the shareware of that one, but it looks like that OTT classic.
That has nothing to do with anything. You had said that Timesplitters was released more than a decade before Halo 1. Did you think I just picked 2001 at random?Hardcore_gamer said:
Even if you meant Halo: Reach Timesplitters was still released a month and a half less than a decade earlier.
EDIT: This really isn't a response to you Hardcore_Gamer, but I really hate when people discuss this topic. It's nothing but ignorance and semantics.
Im not saying there is anything wrong with Halo CE. i was only pointing to the fact that dispite what most younger people, or people who only play on consoles think, Halo CE was not a huge revolution, but more a contiuation of a long tradition of PC based FPS games, its most remarkable feature beeing the platform it was released on.Arkley said:
Also, the outside maps in Tribes / Tribes 2 where every bit as expansive as those in Halo CE, large enough enfact for aircraft to have a sigificant travel time from one side to the other.
I think you need to change the last option to "WAS an innovative series." I don't really think you can call Halo generic, at least when it first came out, it revolutionized FPSs. But it has since BECOME generic, so I guess my answer is, sort of.
I voted for the somewhat option because I have played only the first one and it was somewhat innovative, gameplay wise that is, but story and the setting were as generic as they come. And mind that it was somewhat innovative for it's time, starting some great trends in the FPS genre as well as some not so great ones.
Halo Combat Evolved added regenerating health and limited weapons. That's all. I always ask people why they like Halo and they always have these lame excuses like "you just can't beat it on legendary". Halo had bad level design, cliched storylines, cliched characters and plotholes like the fact that the humans never took the time to study covenet weapons, produce and improve them, and give the best weapons for missions in case of emergency rather then give you weak guns. Bungie always focuses on multiplayer design then campain , hence Halo Reach. This franchise is the reason that there are so many generic shooters all over the place. So yeah, GENERIC.
IMO halo is not generic CoD is but just because something is not generic doesn't mean it is innovative.
Yeah this. In one of the ZP episodes Yahtzee says that Halo: CE is to shooters this century as Doom is to shooters of the mid/late 1900s. Halo essentialy set the bar for "Generic" and no generisism isn't nessisarily bad. I mean everything is generic in one way or another. You can be generic and still be great. (Personal Opinion) Dragonage Origins was the most generic WRPG to come out in a while. And I loved it. So no its not bad to be generickatsumoto03 said: