The real reason Halo was/is so popular

[Simriel]

Lets face it. Halo and all its sequels are fun and engaging games. The reason they get so much hate is because they are popular and therefor over hyped. Personally i would rather have HL2 Episode 3 this year than Halo 3: ODST but i will enjoy ODST none the less. Oh and Freeman would win. He has a choice of like 10 weapons, whereas Master Chief has only 2. And he would win even FASTER if he had the super powered grav gun, because Master Chief would be powerless against it.

 

[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 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.

It was a launch title! Of course there weren't many other FPS games to compare it to, what a preposterous statement.

 

[KeithA45]

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).

Would you believe it was originally made on a mac?

...and I just started another fan-boy war, didn't I?

 

[Sion_Barzahd]

I found it was just, well easy really. The thing that attracted me to halo was i wasn't any good at FPS games before it. I tried it at a friends place before buying it myself and i found it so easy to just pick up and play.
Unlike things such as COD which often prove really challenging.

Halo was comforting and has brought me into an entire genre of gaming i used to deny due to my lack of skill for them.
Thats why i think its good.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Because it's a High Concept Space Opera mixed with Military Sci-Fi game with fun gameplay and through the roof production values. It's not hard to understand why it's popular and successful.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Would you believe it was originally made on a mac?

Yeah. Wasn't really the same game though. It started as an RTS, then moved into more kind of TPS/battlefield territory, and then finally moved to first person.

About the only thing that stayed static throughout the process was the setting on a mini-O.

 

[Gormers1]

Its a solid game, well put together and quite fun to play though. That, coupled with the old hype machine, are why its popular. It is in no way a bad game, its actually very good. I wouldn't rate it in the greatest games ever list buts its borderline. I enjoyed a number of the set pieces in the third one.

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.

Pretty much that. Though the first one is one of my favorite games ever.

I dont thing "being a spartan" is the main thing that made it so appealing.

 

[the_tramp]

I'm confused, I'm sure game were always about being THE man as opposed to being A man?

DooM anyone?
Duke Nukem?
Gordon Freeman?
Pac-man?
Jumpman/Mario?
Simon the Sorcerer?
Captain Keen?

 

[cuddly_tomato]

1. Name three things [even one thing] that Halo gave to FPS'es that wasnt there before.

2. If "Lots" of people tell you "dont eat at restaurant X" because they put dog in thier food, does that mean that they are wrong?

3. the topic is about Halo in general, HALO 1, 2, and 3. We can judge it because we are judging Halo by itself, not by standards that constantly change, if thats the case ,then 007: goldeneye for the N64 was the best game ever and all games made after that is nothing but crap.

4. it received critical acclaim? by who? all of the top game magazines? by x-play? do you just listen to whoever tells you "its good" without listening to objective reviews?..... you sheep.

1. Vehicles? Regenerating health? Needlers? Cooperative play on an FPS?

2. Yeah, if they are all doing it merely because everyone is eating at that restaurant and they can't bear things being popular. That's what the Halo hate is really about.

3. You have to judge things by their contemporaries. Seriously, any suggestion to the contrary is as ridiculous as saying Ghengis Khan wasn't a good military leader because he didn't use his airforce enough.

4. No such thing as an "objective review".

It was a fun, solid, enjoyable game for far more people than your average FPS, so it must have done something right.

and who causes hype? fanboys without fanboys there wouldnt have been a hype

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[GloatingSwine]

I'm confused, I'm sure game were always about being THE man as opposed to being A man?

DooM anyone?
Duke Nukem?
Gordon Freeman?
Pac-man?
Jumpman/Mario?
Simon the Sorcerer?
Captain Keen?

In pretty much all of those you weren't The Man though, in the way that there wouldn't be NPCs whose principal reaction to you is "You, my man, are The Man."

Frequently because there weren't any NPCs, of course, but even when there were you were just this schmuck who'd showed up to save the princess/kill the demons/eat the dots.

 

[the captain]

I'm gonna guess, because it's good. It's not the best FPS ever but it still did enough things right that people loved it.

 

[Fronken]

That made somewhat sense, though you cant really say that halo is bad because it didnt do anything new, there's no such thing as innovation these days, just about everything has been done before, all modern games have things taken from older games, its just how it works.

Regenerating health has been around for ages in RTS games for certain hero/leader characters, so thats nothing new.

Energy swords, Lightsaber much?

And the list goes on and on...

So saying that a game is bad because its not innovative isnt a valid argument in modern gaming.

 

[Iampringles]

Because it is good.

 

[P1p3s]

its cool to see such differing opionions on this but i have to say i agree with the OP.

All of that being said tho, i much preferred playing as the Arbiter in Halo 3

 

[KeithA45]

its cool to see such differing opionions on this but i have to say i agree with the OP.

All of that being said tho, i much preferred playing as the Arbiter in Halo 3

What does "OP" stand for anyway?

And as much as I didn't enjoy being the Arbiter, I think it was necessary so the player didn't get sick of the Master Chief.

 

[RavingLibDem]

peeeps, its a good game, halo 3 did the usual thing that happens when games become a series, and got a lot worse, however halo 1 had an awesome campaign, was fun, challenging, and i dont care what you say legendary is a challenge, and when me and my friend did beat it we were ecstatic. Frankly, people who beat on it, are beating on the fact that its succesful, and in many cases simply dislike anything that is considered succesful, i know its not the best fps ever or anything like that, but its good, its fun, and people should probably learn to deal with that, because its not going away any time soon!

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I think the keys to Halo 1's success were these:

- high production values throughout the game, including visuals, audio, and UI elements
- art design that uses a full colour pallate to reflect mood and atmosphere throughout
- remarkable level of polish for a launch title
- a solid, responsive, reliable control scheme designed directly for the controller
- combat mechanics that reward multiple styles of play; you can snipe if you want to, or rush in guns blazing, or sneak in close-quarters and backstab... there's no one "right" way to play for much of the game.
- in a related point, a weapon "sandbox" that gives useful roles to all items and does away with the "worst-to-first" scale often found in FPSes.
- a solid AI system, enhanced by the "combat dialog" system to give the impression that characters were thinking and communicating with each other.
- vehicles incorporated directly into the game, instead of being forced segments or "rail shooter" sections. (And the vehicle controls that meshed well with the rest of the game.)
- a story that's superficially easy to understand but with many deep-background elements deliberately left mysterious... and those mysteries let players dream of what dragons may lie off the mapped areas, getting the story-hounds even more absorbed into the game.
- a well-balanced co-operative play mode in the campaign
- easily-accessable multiplayer out of the box, supporting split-screen and LAN play

And, ultimately;
- Microsoft recognised it had a winner on its hands and promoted the heck out of it so that it would become a "system seller" title.

That's what I've got, anyway.

-- Steve

 

[Alex_P]

Halo 1 didn't just do regenerating health, it did it right. It kept some of the death-by-attrition feel of older medikit-based games but no longer penalized you just for getting into a real fight. You could trade potshots with some goons without feeling like you were making a mistake just by doing that, but you could still leave a big fight feeling weakened and vulnerable.

In single player, this allowed the level designers to stop putting those goddamn medikits every five feet (although on some levels they definitely still did that).

In multiplayer, it got rid of that annoying "running around with only 10 hp left" phenomenon while (again) still leaving you more vulnerable after a close call.

-- Alex