The Escapist Game Circle: Halo

Zoidbergio

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Oct 4, 2007
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Woozy said:
Okay, fair enough, the contempt for Halo can get downright aristocratic at times,
That's exactly it. People like to prop themselves up by hating on popular things. Their loss, really.

Sometimes, things can achieve massive popularity and still be great. Like Halo. While millions unashamedly enjoy this awesome game, you can go back to whatever obscure title it is you think is so great and keep thinking you're smarter and better than Halo players.

Also, some of us don't have the resources to maintain a PC gaming rig and update drivers and cards and all that junk every 6 months.

Console gamers have a more fun and social experience. We sit on couches together passing controllers around, laughing and talking, sharing real human connections; meanwhile, PC gamers are sitting in a chair, all by themselves, with their faces inches from the screen wearing headsets to talk.

Goldeneye, Halo and now Halo 3 provide a much more fun and rewarding experience than any PC game is capable of.
 

Russ Pitts

The Boss of You
May 1, 2006
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What struck me about Halo when it first came out (and still does) was how replayable it was. The game was a natural for multiplayer matches because the physics, the joy of shooting the weapons, the moon gravity feel of playing the stronger than strong Master Chief, the swervy wonderfulness of driving the vehicles and the honestly impressive AI all combined to make an experience that felt just slightly different each time through. Different enough that I committed suicide more than once just to get another go at a particularly demanding section of the game.

Story-wise, it was fun SF romp with just enough "woo" to keep it interesting through the dullest parts of the game (Library), but just as you don't watch anything with 'Bruckheimer"n the credits for deep, satisfying storylines, you don't play Halo for anything but the experience and the awe-inspiring fun.

I've become less enamored of the overarching storyline in the intervening years, but before it became a media sensation, Halo was just a really fun game with a cool story and it didn't feel like any game ever made - on any console. Sorry to the "I hate console games, even halo" crowd, but this really was a step forward, not simply a watering down. I've been playing PC shooters since there were PC shooters, and Halo matched and bested even the best of them at that time, in all but depth of narrative, for which Half-Life still holds the crown.

Halo was not the one thing that convinced me to let my aging PC die of natural causes and jump ship to the couch, but knowing it was there certainly helped. It's arguable that there are still experiences one simply can't get anywhere but on a PC, and that consoles, therefore, are inferior. It's arguable, but irrelevant. The fact is, at this point in time, you can get a comparable experience playing on either platform, and barring fanaticism, there's simply no need for invective on that point.
 

Lex Darko

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Aug 13, 2006
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I don't think anyone has mentioned this so I will. The best part about Halo:CE is that last level. I've never played a more entertaining vehicle level in a FPS. The sole goal of the level is to make it off the Pillar of Autumn before it blows up no unlike the rest of the game it doesn't ask the player to fire a weapon or be the hero. It just ask the player to move their butt before it blows up.

Also Halo didn't have big boss fights and they weren't missed but for some reason they are in Halo 2 and 3 which is disappointing.

For Halo having first been released in 2001 it really wasn't a bad first person shooter.

When I think of all the FPSs I've played there's one thing that really stands out for me with Halo, not the multiplayer other games have done that better, but the vehicles. If it ends up on any "best of" list it should be marked as one of the first FPSs to do vehicle combat right and in a way that was easy to pick up and rewarding of mastery. I think that the vehicle gameplay maybe it's one really contribution to the genre as a whole.
 

Woozy

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Oct 8, 2007
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How much Halo did you play? What about it did you dislike? What do you mean by mediocre?
You can't really be a male 20-something living on a college campus without having some exposure to Halo. As of today I've completed all three Halo games on the "Heroic" difficulty (Legendary in the case of CE), and I've competed in the multiplayer mode both over LAN, and over XboxLive. My room mate is, it seems, the world's biggest Halo apologist, and routinely pesters me to play the game with him so I can "see what I'm missing".

"What I'm missing", to answer your next question, is about 30% of the FOV and movement speed I would be getting if I'd been playing Counter-Strike or, more recently, TF2 on my PC. Halo 3 is supposed the on the cutting edge of electronic gaming technology, on a console that from the beginning was designed to appropriate the experience (and, really, the culture) of PC gaming, and it plays like shit because the developers still won't bite the bullet and give me a fucking mouse to shoot with.

Edit:
Zoidbergio said:
That's exactly it. People like to prop themselves up by hating on popular things. Their loss, really.
That isn't what I meant. It's possible to think Halo is garbage without impotently railing against the mainstream. The point is that it is possible to spoil Halo for yourself by playing other games in the genre on hardware better suited to its style. Which is fucking absurd, considering how technically advanced Halo was in other areas.
 

Trillinon

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Jul 11, 2007
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So, any idea what November's Game Circle game will be? Halo, unfortunately, sparked a week of discussion, then died. Now that Orange Box has sucked up the majority of my gaming life, I'm well overdue for an old, but interesting, game to play.
 

innocent42

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Nov 3, 2007
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I liked Halo 1. It was fun on the Xbox, but since I'm not a console gamer, I picked up the PC version about a year ago. The cut-and-paste level design is a far cry from, well... Far Cry, as well as other great PC shooters like Half-Life. However, it was quite fun: there was a lot to do, usually, the weapon balance was good, and it didn't do that irritating thing where you can carry 12 guns and all their ammo in your pocket. The melee attack was a nice addition that has been copied in quite a few games since, and although some people didn't like the recharging shields, I didn't mind. I thought it fit the game well. It's an action game that does not pretend to be realistic. The story is not great, but it's passable, and at least it's there, which already puts it above many other shooters. The multiplayer was fun, and actually resulted in some fairly tactical on-on-one battles, which is a very rare feat. Unfortunately, it's really only fun when you're playing with friends, because the online community are all incredible assholes, and no matter which gametype the map is set to, all they want to do is play free-for-all Slayer. Also, half the servers were always set to "Rocket Launchers Only" which completely removed all the tactics, and therefore most of the fun, from multiplayer gaming.

Halo 2, I only played at a friend's house, so I did most of the campaign on co-op. Some of the battles were quite fun, but overall the game was not as tight. The new weapons weren't quite as balanced, and the story made little sense. Environments were pretty, and animations were improved, but I kind of liked Halo's too-fast animations. I guess what I'm saying is Halo 2 had more style, but less charm, and ultimately, less substance.

I haven't played Halo 3, but it's fun, from what I've heard, apart from being really short. I think Bungie probably corrected their mistakes from Halo 2, though I doubt they reached the same heights as Halo 1. I wonder where the Marathon designers went? I heard that a lot of them jumped ship when Bungie was bought by Microsoft...
 

Kermi

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Nov 7, 2007
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I played FPS games on my faithful old PC for years before picking up my XBox, which came with a copy of Halo as well as Dead or Alive 2. I didn't pick up my Xbox until Halo 2 was out, so I was pretty behind the times.
I don't see why hardcore PC fans cling so strongly to the believe that console FPS games can't hold a candle to console shooters. Sure, I don't see System Shock 2 coming to a console any time soon (except for, you know, the whole BioShock thing) but can you really sit there and tell me halo didn't compare to games like Quake 2/3, Unreal tournament, etc.? And I'm about as confused by half Life fans as most people are of my interest in Halo. I played through Half Life and it cemented my belief hat shooters haven't changed one damn bit since the first time I fired up Doom. You point and shoot. with the exception of more interactivity in a 3D environment and prettier visuals, not a thing has changed. This is my belief and you can't change it. The FPS genre is not, will not be, and can not be revolutionary in any way shape or form. You can just evolve it a little bit here and there, so I don't get offended or indignant when Halo-bashers looking to get a rise out of someone say there's no difference between playing Doom or Halo. They're right.
Halo had a solid multiplayer engine and while the story was basic and somewhat derivative, what wasn't by that point? Frankly, Halo was the first game that felt truly epic to me, as in massive in scope. This is one thing people always argue with me on: they feel the idea of a lone hero trekking across vast, largely featureless terrain with little or no companionship is a tired, boring schematic on which to base a franchise. These same people call Shadow of the Colossus a work of art, so fuck them. I liked the feeling the game gave me when playing through it, and when I got to the end I felt a real sense of accomplishment as the Chief sat back and tried unconvincingly to accept Cortana's encouragement. He knew there was still a bigger fight to come, that maybe disabling Halo wasn't the best thing to do. But he'd gone in and done his job and now he wanted to go home. I felt that. I believed in it.

Halo had a basic story, an enigmatic to the point of characterless hero protagonist, and yet it somehow worked. The gameplay elements were elementary at best but it still worked. It was an engaging tale despite its lack of complexity and I think the only thing wrong with Halo was Halo 2 - the poor continuation of the story, the broken yet still impossibly popular multiplayer. This killed a lot of enthusiasm for Halo 3, though the game has still done remarkably well. Did Halo deserve two sequels? No, it could have survived without one and if there WERE going to do one, it should have been a good one. Halo 2 was not the worthy successor it needed to be.
However, it brought online multiplayer on consoles into the limelight, doing all the really hard work in bringing us to where we are today. I think it's a good place, despite the "hooting dickholes" that infest Xbox Live.
 

Arbre

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Jan 13, 2007
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Has this been done on purpose to generate a 100 pages long thread, with half of them being sanctionned with some red and yellow?
Need some target practice? :D
 

J-Val

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Nov 7, 2007
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Halo and it's subsequent sucessors may have all the right things in place, but you don't really get much experience out of the game. Theres no atmosphere, no clever plot twists, no interesting quirks. It's like the game was designed to be average.

While I believe multiplayer and co-op are a must for games, singleplayer is just as, if not more, important. Besides, Halo's multiplayer isn't even that good. Lackluster matches, poorly designed maps... Even Goldeneye's multiplayer was more fun.

One thing that always confuses me is how people claim the game is epic. You play a faceless cyborg, jumping around lazily designed maps aided by your inept AI comrades. That's not epic. That's not even interesting. There are flash games with a better developed story.

As for the third installment; Team Fortress 2, Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4 are out / coming out soon. Why settle for less?

Of course, this is all my humble opinion. I'm fine with people playing Halo. What I don't like is when they start claiming it's the "game of the year" or "best game ever", because thats giving credit where credit isn't due.