The real reason Halo was/is so popular

[KeithA45]

Also it may not be the first game to do the things you mentioned, but it certainly popularised a number of things, like regenerative health and the Space Marine Sci-Fi dealie. The positives and negatives of this could likely be argued forever though.

Agreed, it certainly influenced future games

I never wanted to be important. Explains why I hate Halo so much

Lol of course no part of my argument applies to everyone, I mean just most people. There are always exceptions

What's stupid is hating a game because of its popularity, just because lots of people like something doesn't mean it's bad, in fact, it's generally the opposite.

Agreed, but I think it's 1 part what other people mentioned above, that fan-boys drive some people away, and 1 part that some people just like to be different from the masses. "Everyone likes Halo? I bet it's stupid"

EDIT:

...that was the selling point of it, a single spark of hope in a struggle for survival... ...you were a super soldier who was the only one bad ass enough to win the fight...

That's EXACTLY what I mean =)

 

[beddo]

Also, all of the game elements in halo may have existed before it in various games, but it was the first one to bring it all together and polish it up.

They didn't all exist before.

 

[edinflames]

Gordon Freeman would kick his ass.

Why? Because he's in a better game?

Yes.

Halo was popular because it did for the Xbox what Goldeneye did for the N64: it provided a fun FPS shooter with great split-screen multiplayer.

As people have discussed here often enough there is nothing particularly special about the plot/characters/setting/etc but the content was delivered in a well presented way that was (and here's the key) fun to play. Halo was, in terms of gameplay, a limited but well produced console FPS. There is nothing wrong with limited content (just ask Valve) if that content is fun. Halo2 ruined the MP for me (and had a pathetically short and easy SP), Halo 3 recovered the balanced MP quality and made good use of Xbox360's Live system.

Simple as that.

 

[Baonec]

Gordon Freeman would kick his ass.

Why? Because he's in a better game?

Cause he has a gun that can pick Master Chief up, then drop him in volcano....

If you're goingto give Freeman a weapon then the Chief get's either a BR or sniper either way gordon would be dead within seconds.

 

[Ancientgamer]

Gordon Freeman would kick his ass.

Why? Because he's in a better game?

Cause he has a gun that can pick Master Chief up, then drop him in volcano....

Funny, I could never pick up anything other than boxes and pipes laying around. It would have been awesome if I'd know you could pick up the combine soldiers.

 

[beddo]

I don't know if I liked HALO or not it just didn't leave an impression on me.
The only reason it was so popular was because it was the only decent FPS on the XBOX. It didn't do anything new or innovating it was just colorful which was enough to keep the XBOX crowd entertained.
When I first heard that you could mount a vehicle as gunner, driver or whatever I thought; wait Operation Flashpoint has that.

It did have innovative features for the FPS genre. If you played it at launch it was definitely new and innovative. If you played it a few years after of course it wouldn't seems special because it influenced so many shooters including, I would argue, the Half Life series.


It wasn't the only decent FPS on the Xbox by any means, there was also:

Riddick EFBB, XIII, Timesplitters 2, Halo 2, Half Life 2, Republic Commando, Oddworld Stranger.

 

[edinflames]

the reasons why halo is hated isnt due to the game as much as its due to the fanboys who think its the best in the world and will scream with their collective 13 year old voices to prove you wrong.

So damn true. I like Halo, but I hate the chumps who I meet on every XBL server. They collectively made me go back to PC gaming. Which I suppose I can thank them for since games are a lot cheaper to buy.

granted, Halo can be a fun game, but theres a time when a game just needs to go ahead and die out.

Spot on. But remember, this is a Microsoft franchise and you know what they are like when it comes to hanging on to old ideas.

It did have innovative features for the FPS genre. If you played it at launch it was definitely new and innovative. If you played it a few years after of course it wouldn't seems special because it influenced so many shooters including, I would argue, the Half Life series.

Erm...how did it influence Half Life?

 

[Sennz0r]

no the real reason is a big base full of very convincing fanboy's seeing as most halo fans tend to draw as many other people as possible into their gaming zone


ow ok... maybe forge worked a lot too(ok let's be hones loads of people including me just bought it for that)

The fanboys tend to push people away because of their enthusiasm for what many people see as just another game. This does not make people think it's a great game. This makes people think Halo players are annoying, pushy fanboys (not saying all of them are, don't want to contribute to any flame war that is bound to happen).

Your 'play Halo for Forge'-argument only works for Halo 3. It does not explain how the franchise got so big from the start.

i mean with the fanboys argument that i have seen it happen all around me that like 3 dudes had the game started playing just that then 2 more bought the game then 3 more blabla bla till i was the only one left who didnt buy it
im sorry i cant really explain it but it's a chain of reactions ok?

That's got nothing to do with fanboys per se, that's just hype spreading. I'm guessing you're talking about Halo 3 in this respect? They probably bought it because it was advertised all over, the game was known all around, everyone said they had to have a copy... All of that isn't caused by the fanboys. It's the whole Halo-hype. Halo is one of those franchises that's cool and popular. Playing Halo and saying it's awesome doesn't mean you're a fanboy.

I do understand the chain reaction thing, though. Seen it happen a lot myself as well.

 

[beddo]

Gordon Freeman would kick his ass.

Why? Because he's in a better game?

Cause he has a gun that can pick Master Chief up, then drop him in volcano....

Funny, I could never pick up anything other than boxes and pipes laying around. It would have been awesome if I'd know you could pick up the combine soldiers.

You clearly didn't complete Half Life 2 then.

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

Ask yourself: "if Halo didn't have multiplayer mode would it be able to hold its own with its single player mode and would it still be as popular?"

 

[Ancientgamer]

I don't know if I liked HALO or not it just didn't leave an impression on me.
The only reason it was so popular was because it was the only decent FPS on the XBOX. It didn't do anything new or innovating it was just colorful which was enough to keep the XBOX crowd entertained.
When I first heard that you could mount a vehicle as gunner, driver or whatever I thought; wait Operation Flashpoint has that.

It wasn't the only decent FPS on the Xbox by any means, there was also:

Riddick EFBB, XIII, Timesplitters 2, Halo 2, Half Life 2, Republic Commando, Oddworld Stranger.

I believe he ment at the time.

 

[GloatingSwine]

It was popular for a number of reasons.

The first and most important is that it was the first FPS game on a console to get controls really right.

There were a few before it, but they weren't as natural as Halo, because they were largely adapted from the PC mentality of having eight million different guns and having to cycle laboriously through them all to get to the one you actually wanted, having at least two of the weapons being all but worthless (and a pointless melee attack that you'd never use and just increased cycle time).

Bungie introduced something they called the "golden tripod" in Halo. Guns, Melee, Grenades. All three are a worthwhile tactical decision, and all of them are accessable with a single button press, and no function of the character is more than two button presses away. (the only ones that require more than a single press are alt-grenade and alt-weapon).

Additionally, all of the weapons are balanced such that you are never left with a completely useless weapon. Even the starting pistol is powerful and accurate, whereas in many shooters preceding it you started with a worthless pea shooter.

Add to that in the campaign mode you had the first hints at an enemy driven by AI other than "run at player shooting", and the enemy mobs had a lot of personality and character (up there with the technicolour demons in DooM).

Master Chief is just another cookie-cutter space marine. He is not special.

Except he's the original mold.

Apart from, y'know, the Marines in Aliens, and the Space Marines of WH40k. Most other Space Marine type characters exist on a sliding scale between the two. (Though it's really Aliens that were the "original mold".)

 

[todd10k]

Gordon Freeman would kick his ass.

Why? Because he's in a better game?

Cause he has a gun that can pick Master Chief up, then drop him in volcano....

Funny, I could never pick up anything other than boxes and pipes laying around. It would have been awesome if I'd know you could pick up the combine soldiers.

Yeah, on the final missions of half life 2, when the grav gun get's it's super juice you can pick up the soldiers themselves and fling them across the map. great fun.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

It's a great multiplayer game. 2 years after it came out and I still go back to it. It's easy to play, you can usually get in a few kills, and there are couple of insta-win situations that are good for a laugh.

Defending the plot of any game turns into a nightmare after a while, it's just a subjective opinion. Multiplayer numbers don't lie.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

I personally think that Halo 1 was superb. It was the first Xbox game and second console FPS to really shine (Red Faction came before it). Way back when it was released (2001-2002) it had virtually no opposition in FPS terms. It was the best.

Halo 2 and 3 were solid games. But after you played Halo 1 you really kept playing to see how the story progressed and how things would turn out. It had a good and robust single player as well as a solid and fun multiplayer. How many other FPS games have that? That is the secret of Halos success. Having really good ground to build on with Halo 1, and not messing with a formula that worked for its sequels.

 

[51gunner]

I figure it earned its popularity by being
A) an actually decent launch title that came with most of the Xbox consoles sold
B) a fun multiplayer game that suddenly everybody owned
C) a pretty cool world for single-player.

Halo 2 then improved the series record by being the sequel to the game that everybody owned, and providing a pretty solid online multiplayer. Halo 1 built up a large userbase, Halo 2 brought them online.