The haters of Halo
- Thread starter Kaminobob
- Start date
Since someone already mentioned Goldeneye I won't repeat what he said save to say that the removal of health packs was and is a good thing in the long run because they don't really make sense. I hope that Far Cry 2 manages to strike a nice balance though with their bullet removal system, now on to Halo. Other than what others have mentioned with respect to Goldeneye and how Halo does not do anything that Goldeneye has not done, or at least what it has done for console shooters and surpassed it, my main problems are:
[ul][li]The fact that some of the enemies are cute like bunnies.... Seriously I can't fathom why there are cute enemies in Halo games. Imagine a Doom game where you had to kill cuddly woodland creatures with guns that actually ran away from you on sight! It wouldn't make sense in the context of the game and it does not make sense for those short covenant to behave in this manner. [/li] [li]Why are players punched in the face if they happen to play the console versions of these games when it comes time to adjust the controls? (Not a problem unique to Halo but if people want to claim that this or any other game is a great game it better allow the user to create his or her own layout of buttons if the game bothers to let you change sticks in the first place, rather than insult player intelligence by not doing so but allowing other options that beg for this kind of thing.) I don't understand how the PC port of Halo 1 (and presumeably Halo 2 which I have not played.) has what seemingly all pc games have, full keyboard customization yet Halo 3 does not respect the player enough to let them decide for themselves where the buttons are mapped to. Yet I can name games that came out after Goldeneye and around the time of Halo 1 that did allow for this sort of thing.[/li] [li]How is Halo supposed to be so great if the online ui is so goddamn retarded in comparison to the PC version of Halo 1 by Halo 2 and 3? Once again Bungie decided to insult the intelligence of console players by sticking them with a retarded match selection system that people only think is good because they don't know better. I literally stopped playing Halo 3 when I saw how the match selection system worked coming from the PC version of Halo 1 (Not to mention games like Resistance, GRAW, and Socom.) that abomination was simply unacceptable.[/li][li]I would also love to understand what the point of the headcra- errrr Flood was? Bungie failed to make the Covenant truly menacing, and failed miserably to touch on the religious aspect of things other than to make the Covenant leader an insane high priest, so they decided to throw in the Gravemind and Flood to make up for this, which is just plain sad in the grand scheme of things since all of these things could have worked if they had actually put forward some effort.[/li][/ul]
[ul][li]The fact that some of the enemies are cute like bunnies.... Seriously I can't fathom why there are cute enemies in Halo games. Imagine a Doom game where you had to kill cuddly woodland creatures with guns that actually ran away from you on sight! It wouldn't make sense in the context of the game and it does not make sense for those short covenant to behave in this manner. [/li] [li]Why are players punched in the face if they happen to play the console versions of these games when it comes time to adjust the controls? (Not a problem unique to Halo but if people want to claim that this or any other game is a great game it better allow the user to create his or her own layout of buttons if the game bothers to let you change sticks in the first place, rather than insult player intelligence by not doing so but allowing other options that beg for this kind of thing.) I don't understand how the PC port of Halo 1 (and presumeably Halo 2 which I have not played.) has what seemingly all pc games have, full keyboard customization yet Halo 3 does not respect the player enough to let them decide for themselves where the buttons are mapped to. Yet I can name games that came out after Goldeneye and around the time of Halo 1 that did allow for this sort of thing.[/li] [li]How is Halo supposed to be so great if the online ui is so goddamn retarded in comparison to the PC version of Halo 1 by Halo 2 and 3? Once again Bungie decided to insult the intelligence of console players by sticking them with a retarded match selection system that people only think is good because they don't know better. I literally stopped playing Halo 3 when I saw how the match selection system worked coming from the PC version of Halo 1 (Not to mention games like Resistance, GRAW, and Socom.) that abomination was simply unacceptable.[/li][li]I would also love to understand what the point of the headcra- errrr Flood was? Bungie failed to make the Covenant truly menacing, and failed miserably to touch on the religious aspect of things other than to make the Covenant leader an insane high priest, so they decided to throw in the Gravemind and Flood to make up for this, which is just plain sad in the grand scheme of things since all of these things could have worked if they had actually put forward some effort.[/li][/ul]
I agree with this. The covenant were underdone and the flood were just a distraction from the covenant who, even in their medium-rare form, were much more interesting. I wanted religious fanatics who scared and awed me at their power. Like, you know, they're supposed to be.shadow skill said:
This is probably going to sound like a lot of the post already, but bare with me on this one.
Halo 1 was fun and I did enjoy it a lot. One of the main reason is because it brought new concepts together in an FPS game and it preformed it pretty good. Driving veichles in a FPS-game and cooperating with others by sharing mounted gunturrents/driving/passneger seat in the veichle was nothing new of that time, but Halo 1 took the concept one step further and made it all fun by executing the idea near flawlessly.
I like Halo 1, I'd even concider it to be the best Xbox FPS-game that has ever been released. (if that is telling much) The problem becomes to Halo 2 and Halo 3 which I liked less and less. The problem is if you've played any FPS-shooter on a PC the 2nd and 3rd incarnation of Halo is just dull, boring and and really nothing special.
What was a real dissapointment to me about Halo 3 is how avast majority of the game was about running around in corridoors shooting aliens, which has been done so many times before - and it's been done way better by other games. The hype didn't help the game either (neither the short campaign) - it just hurted it. For any teenager that has barely understood what kind of FPS games that have been out there since Wolf3D on the PC it would be hard to understand that the concepts that are used in Halo 2 and Halo 3 have been done before and so much better.
I don't like to compare games to each other, but hyping a game to higher than the next coming of Jesus and game reviwers (you know who you are) tossing away 10/10 at the game - when in reality the game has not much new to offer just makes me want to dislike the game even more.
Halo 1 was fun and I did enjoy it a lot. One of the main reason is because it brought new concepts together in an FPS game and it preformed it pretty good. Driving veichles in a FPS-game and cooperating with others by sharing mounted gunturrents/driving/passneger seat in the veichle was nothing new of that time, but Halo 1 took the concept one step further and made it all fun by executing the idea near flawlessly.
I like Halo 1, I'd even concider it to be the best Xbox FPS-game that has ever been released. (if that is telling much) The problem becomes to Halo 2 and Halo 3 which I liked less and less. The problem is if you've played any FPS-shooter on a PC the 2nd and 3rd incarnation of Halo is just dull, boring and and really nothing special.
What was a real dissapointment to me about Halo 3 is how avast majority of the game was about running around in corridoors shooting aliens, which has been done so many times before - and it's been done way better by other games. The hype didn't help the game either (neither the short campaign) - it just hurted it. For any teenager that has barely understood what kind of FPS games that have been out there since Wolf3D on the PC it would be hard to understand that the concepts that are used in Halo 2 and Halo 3 have been done before and so much better.
I don't like to compare games to each other, but hyping a game to higher than the next coming of Jesus and game reviwers (you know who you are) tossing away 10/10 at the game - when in reality the game has not much new to offer just makes me want to dislike the game even more.
Your position in the gaming industry does not make your opinion any more or less valid.HeadExplodie said:
Please read my post, I want names. If Halo really is so mediocre, it shouldn't be difficult. I like Halo, but I am willing to accept that it borrowed many elements from other games and may in fact be somewhat mediocre. However, I have yet to see any proof beyond people simply stating that it is.
I have to agree with you there. I used the plasma rifle exclusively in Halo 1 and now I don't touch it at all.The Rogue Wolf said:
Call Of Duty 4. The controls are far better. The story better. The online better. Level design is far superior.Ghandi 2 said:
Half Life 2. Once again, everything is better.
Hell! I like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. more! Better story and more fun to play.
System Shock.
Unreal.
Quake.
I could go on and on. There are far better games out there. Where Halo exceeds is in it's ability to make everything middle ground. It's the American way!
Look, I don't knock people for digging Halo. I think it's going to be the natural reaction. I love some pretty lame games too. I just think touting Halo as the end-all-be-all of FPS gaming is rather short sighted and completely ignores so many fantastic games that Halo got it's inspiration from. It's funny to see publications give it a 10.
Besides that I said games that were released before Halo, I want ones that prove that everything in Halo has already been done quite a bit, not your subjective opinion of better.
System Shock: other than vaguely shared story elements, I don't see any similarities.
Unreal: It has dual weilding, but so did Marathon. I don't see similarities past that, the gameplay is completely different.
Quake: Ditto.
System Shock: other than vaguely shared story elements, I don't see any similarities.
Unreal: It has dual weilding, but so did Marathon. I don't see similarities past that, the gameplay is completely different.
Quake: Ditto.
I liked 1 & 2. They were good. Not epic, or amazing, or great. Good. Decent. Competant enough but lacking the flair of genius I was led to believe they had.
Halo 3, however, is absolutely fantastic. I finally "got it". It clicked. I love it. Halo 3 is a marvellous game.
Halo 3, however, is absolutely fantastic. I finally "got it". It clicked. I love it. Halo 3 is a marvellous game.
FPS's with good corridor shooting: Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake (practically defined that style), Goldeneye, Half-Life, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear (I think Ravenshield came out after Halo)
FPS's with good open level design: Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942/Expansions.
FPS's with vehicles: Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942.
Aliens: Half-Life, Far Cry.
Fate of the Universe rests on your shoulders: Every game in existence.
Jumping: Pretty much all games
Grenades: Once again, pretty much all games
Halo even had your standard weapon styles: Sidearm, Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher then they just mirrored it for the bad guys, re-skinned them and made them laser weapons.
Playing the campaign feels like a cross between the spit and polish of Counter-Strike or Rainbow Six and the destructive mayhem of Quake or Unreal Tournament. You sort of have to pay attention to your surroundings but most of the time you can just run in at top speed and blast everything to death.
Halo was unimaginative in how it applied the "difficulty" settings basically making it so you die after taking fewer shots but your character can still pick up piles of ammo and grenades in every corner of the game.
In my opinion Halo ruined a perfectly nice quick-draw grenade feature by making it so you pick them up every five feet, I've even wondered if it would be possible for someone to beat the entire game just using grenades...
FPS's with good open level design: Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942/Expansions.
FPS's with vehicles: Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942.
Aliens: Half-Life, Far Cry.
Fate of the Universe rests on your shoulders: Every game in existence.
Jumping: Pretty much all games
Grenades: Once again, pretty much all games
Halo even had your standard weapon styles: Sidearm, Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher then they just mirrored it for the bad guys, re-skinned them and made them laser weapons.
Playing the campaign feels like a cross between the spit and polish of Counter-Strike or Rainbow Six and the destructive mayhem of Quake or Unreal Tournament. You sort of have to pay attention to your surroundings but most of the time you can just run in at top speed and blast everything to death.
Halo was unimaginative in how it applied the "difficulty" settings basically making it so you die after taking fewer shots but your character can still pick up piles of ammo and grenades in every corner of the game.
In my opinion Halo ruined a perfectly nice quick-draw grenade feature by making it so you pick them up every five feet, I've even wondered if it would be possible for someone to beat the entire game just using grenades...
In sequential order:
I wasn't claiming open levels were a first to Halo.
Call of Duty and BF1942 were after Halo.
I wasn't claiming aliens, superheroism, jumping, or grenades were a first either. But what about quick-draw grenades? Useful quick-draw melee?
Needler is not, and what do you expect? Are there any games that don't include those weapons? And Halo 1 at least had very big differences between human and alien equivalents (and nobody has the needler). PP was completely different, PR stunned, there was no alien shotgun or sniper, and the pistol was the best weapon in the game.
That's a fair enough subjective impression.
I thought that was how the difficulty system for most games was: make it much easier for you to die.
Isn't the point of making grenades easy to use to use them?
And you completely neglected the shield, which is an integral aspect of Halo's gameplay.
I wasn't claiming open levels were a first to Halo.
Call of Duty and BF1942 were after Halo.
I wasn't claiming aliens, superheroism, jumping, or grenades were a first either. But what about quick-draw grenades? Useful quick-draw melee?
Needler is not, and what do you expect? Are there any games that don't include those weapons? And Halo 1 at least had very big differences between human and alien equivalents (and nobody has the needler). PP was completely different, PR stunned, there was no alien shotgun or sniper, and the pistol was the best weapon in the game.
That's a fair enough subjective impression.
I thought that was how the difficulty system for most games was: make it much easier for you to die.
Isn't the point of making grenades easy to use to use them?
And you completely neglected the shield, which is an integral aspect of Halo's gameplay.
gonna say something a bit controversial as my first post on the website since its predominately pc and xbox gamers here
but, halo is nothing compared to metroid prime
halo is a bland, unsatisfying and repetitive game and i found no enjoyment from shooting the toy guns at the at the highly unsatisfying enemies, little critters running around, no dissing to pokemon, but it just makes me think i'm killing pokemon
metroid however is incredibly huge, the graphics are beautiful even for now, a truly immersive experience which i haven't seen matched since. The gameplay is spot on, truly engaging whereas halo; i mean when i fire a gun it makes no real bang, no real camera shudder to immerse you
its incredibly simple though, which perhaps lies at it's core of it's popularity, and there are many other things which are appealing, i must admit i did enjoy looking up and seeing the halo in all it's splendour in the first game... actually that's it
there are things that could be enhanced, a stronger story, where there could be texts around a better and huge freeform world where the gamer could listen, watch or even read (leave the last one out in the console version), just to give greater depth to the overall story and establish sub stories perhaps, also slightly different landscapes would have been better, in a certain world all the locations would seem the same, there wouldn't be a subtle difference to give a sense of progression, just is a bit repetitive
well thats my view on halo, i probably will buy the pc versions in a box set for 15 pounds maybe next summer as a past time, i'll keep to half life 2 till then, and after then
but, halo is nothing compared to metroid prime
halo is a bland, unsatisfying and repetitive game and i found no enjoyment from shooting the toy guns at the at the highly unsatisfying enemies, little critters running around, no dissing to pokemon, but it just makes me think i'm killing pokemon
metroid however is incredibly huge, the graphics are beautiful even for now, a truly immersive experience which i haven't seen matched since. The gameplay is spot on, truly engaging whereas halo; i mean when i fire a gun it makes no real bang, no real camera shudder to immerse you
its incredibly simple though, which perhaps lies at it's core of it's popularity, and there are many other things which are appealing, i must admit i did enjoy looking up and seeing the halo in all it's splendour in the first game... actually that's it
there are things that could be enhanced, a stronger story, where there could be texts around a better and huge freeform world where the gamer could listen, watch or even read (leave the last one out in the console version), just to give greater depth to the overall story and establish sub stories perhaps, also slightly different landscapes would have been better, in a certain world all the locations would seem the same, there wouldn't be a subtle difference to give a sense of progression, just is a bit repetitive
well thats my view on halo, i probably will buy the pc versions in a box set for 15 pounds maybe next summer as a past time, i'll keep to half life 2 till then, and after then
Two words: Half motherfucking Life. Half Life is hands-down better in every respect than Halo. And when you add in HL's ridiculously huge and talented mod-making community, there simply is no competition. The fact that Halo pretty much co-opted the zombie head-crab thing should be a good indicator of the latter's inferiority. What bothers me is that Halo is a completely average FPS that was elevated to godlike status simply because there was nothing else to compare it to. Just like GoldenEye. My PC user friends and I all scratched our collective heads at how much noise people made in regards to both these games, considering vastly superior alternatives could be had on the PC - the system that practically gave birth to the entire genre.
Actually... now that I think of it, just about everything in Halo was co-opted from another major IP...
Space marines: Alien(s)
Covenant: An equal mix of Alien(s), Predator, and Star Wars (Grunts = Jawas with bad posture)
The Halo: Ringworld
Cortana: If HAL9000 and Idoru had a baby
The story: Equal parts Super Mario Bros. and Yojimbo
Oh, and the reason Halo 2's campaign was teh suck is because of Microsoft basically. Bungie had much less time to craft the second game than the first, due to pressure put upon them by Microsoft to release on time. They've gone on record saying that they wish they had more time to work on the SP campaign. Here's a long quote I found from Chris Butcher, lovingly ganked from Edge Online:
?We had about four to five weeks to polish Halo at the end. No more than that. And that last five per cent is responsible for 30 per cent of the success of the game, or more. That?s the period in which we really had a perfect storm. The team was all there, everything was working great, the Xbox hardware was finally there and good, and we just were able to relentlessly execute on that. The entire game came together within that four- to six-week period.
?One of the things that stuns me when I think about it, and I can?t believe this is true ? we had none of that for Halo 2. Take that polish period and completely get rid of it. We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it. Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right. It?s astounding to me. I fucking cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it."
Actually... now that I think of it, just about everything in Halo was co-opted from another major IP...
Space marines: Alien(s)
Covenant: An equal mix of Alien(s), Predator, and Star Wars (Grunts = Jawas with bad posture)
The Halo: Ringworld
Cortana: If HAL9000 and Idoru had a baby
The story: Equal parts Super Mario Bros. and Yojimbo
Oh, and the reason Halo 2's campaign was teh suck is because of Microsoft basically. Bungie had much less time to craft the second game than the first, due to pressure put upon them by Microsoft to release on time. They've gone on record saying that they wish they had more time to work on the SP campaign. Here's a long quote I found from Chris Butcher, lovingly ganked from Edge Online:
?We had about four to five weeks to polish Halo at the end. No more than that. And that last five per cent is responsible for 30 per cent of the success of the game, or more. That?s the period in which we really had a perfect storm. The team was all there, everything was working great, the Xbox hardware was finally there and good, and we just were able to relentlessly execute on that. The entire game came together within that four- to six-week period.
?One of the things that stuns me when I think about it, and I can?t believe this is true ? we had none of that for Halo 2. Take that polish period and completely get rid of it. We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it. Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right. It?s astounding to me. I fucking cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it."
Headcrabs aren't original to Half-Life or Halo; they're original to Heinlein's 1951 novel The Puppet Masters as far as I can tell, though I'm fully prepared for someone finding an earlier precedent for a macroscopic parasite attaching itself to a host and controlling its actions in fiction.
Hell, if you want to be all reductionist about it, Half-Live is just a rip-off of Castle Wolfenstein that can never touch its pristine majesty. Mein leben...
-- Steve
Hell, if you want to be all reductionist about it, Half-Live is just a rip-off of Castle Wolfenstein that can never touch its pristine majesty. Mein leben...
-- Steve
I wasn't claiming that you were claiming that...whatever. I was just bringing up a point that has been made before namely that it wasn't strictly a corridor shooter as if that was an innovation.Ghandi 2 said:
I was sure that they were but I just checked and you're right. I could have sword BF1942 was pre-Halo but my timeline is all screwed up.
I've given my opinion on the quick draw grenade and it's more of a characteristic of the console than an innovation. It simply makes sense to give you a grenade button when you don't have number keys for cycling like a PC does. Also, even though it was helpful I liked having more range control instead of having to bounce grenades off things for them to fall short or jump for them to go far.
I'll give you the melee, that was great and has been used before. I can't think of another game before it which used a quick melee.
The Needler is the alien equivalent of the SMG with the only thing setting it apart being homing ammo just like the alien sidearm is still a sidearm except you charge it up and it sort of homes in on the enemy... Glowing laser weapons and homing ammunition aren't new.
The difficulty system is there to make the game more difficult not make it easier for you to die. Making enemies stronger and you weaker is the most basic level. I much prefer removing health restoratives, making someone take more realistic damage, making the AI act more intelligently, giving the player less ammo to work with, etc.
To the point where you can toss a never ending stream of destruction at whatever enemy you like? I much prefer the more classic ?use grenades in a pinch? setup instead of the ?OMG, I'm a souped up human and I like to throw explosives!? setup.
The regenerating shield just made the game easy. I rarely felt any immersion in Halo because of that very aspect of the game. You just never felt like you were going to die throughout the game because if things got tough you could just hide behind a corner and wait. Sure it's innovative (I think) but I don't think it added anything to the game.
Duke Nukem 3D had quick-draw Melee. It wasn't more powerful than a shotgun to the head of the monsters, no. But somehow in Halo, everybody has the most ridiculously powerful upper arms in the history of mankind. The Doom Space Marine and his Berserk pack look like a joke next to the insta-kill pistol whipping in Halo.
Not to defend it but it can be said for call of duty aswel. Honestly In my option if you can get close enough to the other player to hit them (or if you sneak up on them) from a purely game play mechanics stand-point it should be a 1 hit kill.propertyofcobra said:
When i was first introduced to the halo series, i had unquestionable high standards for the games, having heard so much about them from friends, etc. Upon completing the first game, i promptly filed suit against Microsoft for wasting several hours of my life that could have been spent doing more entertaining things, like watching grass grow for instance. the game just did not live up the hype surrounding it, and definately not to what i percieve a quality FPS to be. but perhaps its me. i'm not going to pretend like im an expert on FPS games, having only been gaming for a few years, but i'd like to think i know decent FPS games from mediocre ones, since FPS are the only games i regularly play. the problems with gameplay have all been previously stated: bland, repetative levels, mindless AI, blah blah blah. nothing new here. what i was so struck by was how boring the game was to play. i waited and waited for the game to get interesting, but it never happened. it was like doing a very boring chore for a very long time. again, maybe its me. perhaps i am biased in that i have only played what are considered to be good to exceptional FPS games, such as Goldeneye, Half Life, and CoD2 and 4. perhaps i like games with a bigger objective than "get from point A to pint B while killing as much shit as possible." perhaps i like games where, when i unload a friggin clip into a guys friggin head, he has the friggin common courtesy to friggin die instead of continuing to friggin hop over to me like nothing friggin happened and proceeding to friggin beat me like a red-headed stepchild (im looking at you, Halo multiplayer)! after my less-than-steller experience with the first game, my roommate somehow convinced me to play the second one with him (an official investigation is, in fact, under way). more of the same monotony. it got to a point where i just put the controller down, calmly walked into the bathroom, and slit my wrists. at least i was having fun then. i cant think of a better way to describe Halo than boring. it loses its fun and originality(?) very quickly and is...well...boring. maybe mutiplayer redeems it. i wouldnt know, i got too frusrated playing it seeing as im used to shooting chumps in the head and having them die. its a learning curve that im not going to attempt to make however, seeing as the games i already play are better...not just better, but more fun as well. it seems to me like the bobbleheaded fanboys of the halo series only like the games cuz they are told that they will like them
I think a lot of fanboys and the like are guilty of the logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy. They have trouble comprehending the idea that a game can be something other than good or bad, and this is the problem with Halo... it's neither. It's quite average, all around, and that doesn't fit inside a false dichotomy like that. As a result, many people say it's awful, many people say it's great, and not enough people say that it's average.
Personally, I felt, in the context of the time, that Halo was quite good, because my expectations for a console shooter were quite low. It was 2001, too, how many memorable FPS games came out that year? The first sequel was a bit of an improvement, but still quite underwhelming. Halo 3? Again, average... far better than the first two, but struggling to stand out compared to its contemporaries. Still, this doesn't really warrant people actually HATING them. Hate is a strong word.
Personally, I felt, in the context of the time, that Halo was quite good, because my expectations for a console shooter were quite low. It was 2001, too, how many memorable FPS games came out that year? The first sequel was a bit of an improvement, but still quite underwhelming. Halo 3? Again, average... far better than the first two, but struggling to stand out compared to its contemporaries. Still, this doesn't really warrant people actually HATING them. Hate is a strong word.
Oh yeah. I forgot all about the sheild. I would so buy the game just for that. (That was sarcasim for the people who didn't realise)Ghandi 2 said: