My opinion of Halo is that it was a well made product, an even better
marketed product, and that it threw away much of the innovation that had gone into console shooters up to that time and marked the start of the decline of console shooters.
Rant Incoming:
Everything except for regen health and people bouncing in vehicles had been done two years before in Perfect Dark. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and the Timesplitters games that followed were the ones that defined how a FPS could control perfectly on a console. Halo just threw it all out and emulated the PC tactic of rooting the crosshair to the centre, which is far better suited to a mouse than a gamepad. Let's look at it this way:
Goldeneye brought us:
*Fluid, console tailored controls
*Variable zoom aiming for different guns
*non-linear and highly varied level design
*Huge arsenal of weapons, all of which could be held at once
*Different objectives for each difficulty setting, with unlockable levels for higher difficulties
*Cheats, unlockable by completing difficult specific speed runs, and would not let players advance through the story when activated
*Split screen multiplayer for four people, including five modes
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Dual wielding weapons
*Emphasis on stealth and objectives over brute strength (though it was still possible)
Perfect Dark added:
*secondary functions for all weapons
*Dual Wielding in multiplayer, four years before Halo 2
*Six modes in multiplayer
*up to 8 computer controlled bots in multiplayer, with everything customisable from skill level to tactics and preferred weapons. Friendly bots could even be ordered around during a match.
*Larger interior and exterior locations
*level starting spots and other factors dependent on actions performed in previous levels
*Co-operative mode
*
Counter-operative mode
*Various single and multiplayer challenges
Halo introduced:
*Better graphics and levels being larger still
*Enhanced flanking enemy AI
*Better vehicle physics
*Regenerating health
*ported PC/Mac controls
*LAN support with up to 16 players
and so Halo removed:
*Console tailored controls
*non-linear level design
*All weapons being held at once
*Dual wielding
*Different objectives for each difficulty
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part)
*Secondary functions
*Down to 5 multiplayer modes again
*Multiplayer bots of any kind
*A lot of the multiplayer customisation as seen in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, and The World Is Not Enough
*Counter operative mode
*Singleplayer and multiplayer challenges
TL
R:
If anything, Halo pioneered a few forward steps in the console FPS market (side-steps, in the case of regen health), and the rest were big steps back in the development of the genre. Due to it's popularity, however, rivals sought to copy the bare minimum approach Halo adopted, and as a result, console FPSes have been lacking the earlier pioneering features ever since.
Hell even The World is Not Enough and Timesplitters 2 are in some ways better made games than Halo.
I was actually shocked to discover lately that for all the mass marketing and media coverage the series saturated everyone with, it was not until Halo 3 came out that a Halo game outsold Goldeneye. All the more surprising considering how massive the console shooter playerbase had become following Halo's release.
