Why Halo 5 Is the Best and Worst Halo Yet

Binkan

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I have only watched let's play on Halo 5, and I do like that every weapon has a zoom now but aside from that the campaign didn't really interest me on the same lvl as Halo 1-3, ODST, Reach and 4 had, ODST because you got to play as ODST, Reach because the planet was an icon in the Halo universe, Halo 4 because that was the game that would start the abomination that is going on right now.
 

MeisterKleister

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Mar 9, 2012
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Ever since the very first Halo game it's been a fond tradition of me and my best friend to play through each Halo game splitscreen together, so the removal of it comes as a deep disappointment to me. I am certainly not going to buy an Xbox One and the game just so we can play together, which I suspect is what they want people to do.
 

flying_whimsy

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I generally don't play halo except a once-through for story in each one (finally just played reach), and I haven't bothered with 4 because I looked up some of the story and 343 is nothing but complete hacks when it comes to writing (also I thought the armor design got really ugly). Mainly, I just like it because of Red vs Blue and the mega bloks stuff.

Still, no split-screen? So much for having a bunch of people over to play: it's like they totally missed what made the games fun in the first place. That'd be like making a goldeneye remake with online-only multiplayer.
 

Jerast

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Joccaren said:
I'm not seeing what the fuss is...
Your massive post indicating all of peoples concerns begs to differ. It seems you see what the fuss is perfectly, just don't agree with it. If you truly are blind to it, then here, let me help.

Joccaren said:
No splitscreen... Ok, it sucks, welcome to the world of publishers needing to pump up graphics or else it 'looks like arse', needing to pump up to 60 FPS or else they're 'breaking promises of 60FPS 1080p gaming', and consoles not upgrading their hardware very often because 'It'd be too complicated'. Split screen was always a temporary thing in the AAA space. Too many conflicting demands for it to be able to exist permanently.
This one is easy to tell you why people are "fussing" over it. I've played halo with mates since CE. Online with Xboxconnect and xboxlive since it first came out. Splitscreen drunken lanparties, smashing the campaign on a couch with a mate. Great fun without needing two-four tv's and consoles set up for a couple of games. No splitscreen makes it harder to find a reason to do it. Lots of my friends don't have time to play online at the same times due to work, commitments, lovelives and such, so we just get together every so often to play games. Now Halo, one of our most treasured additions, is no longer welcome because of the amount of fuckery required to get that many xbox's and tv's in a room that's already filled with laptops, beerpong eskies and drinks everywhere.

Joccaren said:
No Forge. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that not just basically the modding/map making engine? And its being released in a month so that its fully ready, free of charge?
What the fuck is the problem here? Lots of games release their full modding capabilities post launch. Some release them at launch, and many release them partially at launch, but really what would you have them do here? Release the entire game a month later because Forge wasn't ready? Can you think of the shit they'd get for that? So, they release the core game early... And get slammed for it. Its a lose-lose situation.
This one I actually agree with you on. Seems like something that would actually need time to be allowed to grow. The game is like, just out, let's not flood the servers with shitty lockout remakes just yet. I question who would buy a halo game based on the modding mode.

Joccaren said:
More game modes coming in future. Ok... Again, the same sort of deal as above. Would you rather play something now, and get more later, or would you rather play nothing now so you can get everything later? Witcher 3 releases DLC for free, its Heroic. Halo does it and it should have been in at launch. Sure, if you'll end up having to pay for them, that sucks. If its free... Why the complaint?
Completely disagree. This is not like forge which is a fun addon. This is a match mode. The core of halo has honestly always been multiplayer, online multiplayer and competitive gameplay, except arguably the first (yes, you could take CE online with XBC). If you release fuck all game modes at the start, the casual core will get bored and just stop playing and the game servers will die a tragic death other than mlgnoscopepros before any of the fun and casual modes come out. Nobody wants to play MLG 4v4 Slayer with randoms, they play that with their friends that they can communicate it with. When their friends aren't online they play Social Oddball and BTB to shit on casuals, but if the casuals have already moved on because of fuck all fun gametypes when it comes out, you have butchered that large part of the scene. It should not have cut playable gametypes down to the frankly disgusting codtier level. Most of the good, fun, casual AND competitive gametypes are objective gametypes anyway, and a huge chunk of those are missing. To answer your question, I would much rather it not come out until there were enough game modes in it to be interesting. Comparing having fuck all game modes (what should be the core of it) it to the Witcher 3 massive DLC expansion packs is pretty fucking absurd for a comparison by the way.

Joccaren said:
Shitty single player? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Halo has never had a single player outside the campaign to start with. I can boot up combat evolved right now, and Single Player won't be anything but the campaign. I'll agree the trend sucks, but its been one that's established for over half a decade at this point. Seems less like something to mark a game down for now, more something to mark it up for when it actually does it - though that is kind of pathetic in its own right.
They are talking about the campaign. I'm not sure why we are still pretending that Halo's story has ever been good. I'm sure people who have read the books have a whole new level of understanding of it, but frankly the games have had the most rubbish stories imaginable. Regardless, it has always had a campaign and some were more fun than others, I haven't played the new one yet but apparently it is not fun. I'll have to wait till I can play it online with a friend in co-op.

Joccaren said:
I mean, yeah, a lot of this is disappointing to some small level, but its all pretty standard these days. I don't see what the total outrage is when half the complaints are that they're fixing some of the complaints and it'll take time, and the other half are features that to my knowledge the games have never had in the first place. It'd be like me complaining the Call of Duty doesn't have a tactical 'conquer the world' game mode like Star Wars Battlefront 2 did. Its never been a part of the series, I don't see why it would be now.
So again, yeah, disappointing... But where is the big surprise in all this?
The surprise is that time and time again games cut the fuck out of all the features loved from previous games, and carve it up and lose features, then release it, and people still defend it with a "lel wut u xpeckt :DDDDDDDDDD.... muh tripl A's". I expect sequels to have more not less, and time and time again they have had less recently. Look at NBA2K16. 2K Gaming have to be the most nickle and diming microtransaction bastards in the industry, but they add more every year. They try new things to see what people like, they add more modes, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't so they refine it every year. Not many people complaining about halos lack of modes are expecting gametypes that have never been in the series mate, nobody is chasing a FIFA grandtour MYCAREER mode in Halo (as great as that would be). People want the stuff that was in the last games, not a hacked up carcass filled with stuffing, with promises of maybe breastmeat but probably more stuffing later.


I've transitioned from someone who played CE for fun, Halo2 in the highly competitive scene, fading out of competitive in 3, becoming a pubstomper in reach and 4, ignoring the collection and probably returning 5 to the story. Halo has been the series I grew up with, and yeah things change, but I'm not worried about my favorite franchises changing, that's fine. If we're all going with "Less is More" which is a great quote for pizza toppings, but not so much for an fps that has made its bread and butter with diverse multiplayer settings in the past, then the series has lost its way.

I literally understand all the butthurt over the sims4 now. I understood it then, but now I truly understand it.
 

fix-the-spade

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erttheking said:
Ugh. Well tell me this. I'm a fan that thought Halo 4 diddled all over the series' story, did Halo 5 unfuck that at the very least?
You wish, Halo 5 spins off in a completely different direction from 4/Spartan Ops and while the premise is great (Cortana is the villain) the execution is very Halo 2, which is to say you'll finish the game annoyed. Spartan Ops put Halo 4's plot into an interesting place by the end, 5 ignores it and it's implications pretty much entirely.

As for the rest, sparse features and like Halo 4 commits the unforgivable sin of not having Grifball. I still play Reach because Reach has Grifball, there are literally no other modes in Halo history that I enjoy more than that.

It continues the tradition of Halo games being ok. Combat Evolved and Reach are still the best ones in the series.
 

Erttheking

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fix-the-spade said:
erttheking said:
Ugh. Well tell me this. I'm a fan that thought Halo 4 diddled all over the series' story, did Halo 5 unfuck that at the very least?
You wish, Halo 5 spins off in a completely different direction from 4/Spartan Ops and while the premise is great (Cortana is the villain) the execution is very Halo 2, which is to say you'll finish the game annoyed. Spartan Ops put Halo 4's plot into an interesting place by the end, 5 ignores it and it's implications pretty much entirely.

As for the rest, sparse features and like Halo 4 commits the unforgivable sin of not having Grifball. I still play Reach because Reach has Grifball, there are literally no other modes in Halo history that I enjoy more than that.

It continues the tradition of Halo games being ok. Combat Evolved and Reach are still the best ones in the series.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you, as I think the idea of making Cortana the bad guy is a TERRIBLE idea. We had something in like that in Halo 3 where she was sorta kinda the thrall of the Gravemind, and that was annoying as all hell. Really, we haven't seen Cortana at her base state since Halo 2. In Halo 3 she was in distress for 75% of the game, in Halo 4 she was descending into rampancy, and now she's evil. Cortana's base character of a playful snarky hacker feels like it's taken a backseat for a long time. Also I question Halo's need to keep pulling new villains out of nowhere, when at the same time they reverted Elites to bad guys again in Halo 4 (Not all of them but you would've had to read EU books to know that) and last time I checked the Brutes were still kicking around and I doubt the Flood is gone for good.

Though I have heard how painfully bare bones Halo 5's features are (No Firefight, no forge, no split screen, only 4 playlists...Christ. Remember when new Halo games had MORE stuff? Remember when even fucking ODST introduced a new game mode? Remember when one of Halo Reach's main selling points was a new and improved Forge mode?) and even if I thought Cortana being evil was a good idea I'd probably avoid the game purely because of that.
 

Joccaren

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Mar 29, 2011
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Jerast said:
Joccaren said:
No splitscreen... Ok, it sucks, welcome to the world of publishers needing to pump up graphics or else it 'looks like arse', needing to pump up to 60 FPS or else they're 'breaking promises of 60FPS 1080p gaming', and consoles not upgrading their hardware very often because 'It'd be too complicated'. Split screen was always a temporary thing in the AAA space. Too many conflicting demands for it to be able to exist permanently.
This one is easy to tell you why people are "fussing" over it. I've played halo with mates since CE. Online with Xboxconnect and xboxlive since it first came out. Splitscreen drunken lanparties, smashing the campaign on a couch with a mate. Great fun without needing two-four tv's and consoles set up for a couple of games. No splitscreen makes it harder to find a reason to do it. Lots of my friends don't have time to play online at the same times due to work, commitments, lovelives and such, so we just get together every so often to play games. Now Halo, one of our most treasured additions, is no longer welcome because of the amount of fuckery required to get that many xbox's and tv's in a room that's already filled with laptops, beerpong eskies and drinks everywhere.
As I said, yeah, it sucks. It was also inevitable, Mr Anderson. Consoles are simply incapable of doing what people expect them to. Something has to be sacrificed. Sacrifice the 60FPS? Microsoft hates you because they want to advertise their premium games console as running 60FPS 1080p to make it sound like its actually an improvement over the last one.
Don't up the graphics? Publisher hates you because they've got nothing to easily sell it on, and your customers hate you because other games have come out with better graphics and yours 'looks like arse'.
Take out splitscreen, and people hate you because they need to own more than one console to play with friends.
Thing is, you can't have all of them. Games have been dropping split screen for years, because it can't be sustained alongside everything else. I mean it could, if consoles went for good hardware, but the 'new' ones were 3 years out of date to begin with, let alone now, and choosing to go with actually good hardware instead of the mid-range 3 year old hardware they did would have forced prices up to where everyone would complain consoles are too expensive. This isn't a PC v Consoles dig here. It is a limitation of the platform, and people are fine to enjoy the platform's benefits - but it can't have it all. Thanks to the poor power of consoles, you've got to sacrifice something. For Halo, it was finally split screen, following in the footsteps of many other games.
Sure, it sucks, but when your options are that, or trying to convince console manufacturers to market their machines as sub-HD 30FPS platforms... You can see where the cut is going to be made.


Jerast said:
Joccaren said:
More game modes coming in future. Ok... Again, the same sort of deal as above. Would you rather play something now, and get more later, or would you rather play nothing now so you can get everything later? Witcher 3 releases DLC for free, its Heroic. Halo does it and it should have been in at launch. Sure, if you'll end up having to pay for them, that sucks. If its free... Why the complaint?
Completely disagree. This is not like forge which is a fun addon. This is a match mode. The core of halo has honestly always been multiplayer, online multiplayer and competitive gameplay, except arguably the first (yes, you could take CE online with XBC). If you release fuck all game modes at the start, the casual core will get bored and just stop playing and the game servers will die a tragic death other than mlgnoscopepros before any of the fun and casual modes come out. Nobody wants to play MLG 4v4 Slayer with randoms, they play that with their friends that they can communicate it with. When their friends aren't online they play Social Oddball and BTB to shit on casuals, but if the casuals have already moved on because of fuck all fun gametypes when it comes out, you have butchered that large part of the scene. It should not have cut playable gametypes down to the frankly disgusting codtier level. Most of the good, fun, casual AND competitive gametypes are objective gametypes anyway, and a huge chunk of those are missing. To answer your question, I would much rather it not come out until there were enough game modes in it to be interesting. Comparing having fuck all game modes (what should be the core of it) it to the Witcher 3 massive DLC expansion packs is pretty fucking absurd for a comparison by the way.
It still stands, that the game modes are free. Another example? Splatoon does it and is praised. May end up being a race against the clock, but there is still a game to be played, and one that is probably quite enjoyable and will be for a while. I don't doubt some people will take a break until the other game modes are released. Some might not come back after that break. That said, it'd be pretty similar if the game itself released mid summer instead of just after exams. Everyone would have bought other games, and be playing them, because they released on time. Halo would be on people's 'to play' list, and would gain traction slowly. Maybe a better move, maybe not. I'd still personally rather have a game to play once the hard work of exam time is over, than have to sit around and wait a few months because a couple of non-essential game modes weren't ready. But then, maybe I've been spoiled by early access, and being able to play games even before their picture perfect actually appeals to me.

Jerast said:
Joccaren said:
Shitty single player? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Halo has never had a single player outside the campaign to start with. I can boot up combat evolved right now, and Single Player won't be anything but the campaign. I'll agree the trend sucks, but its been one that's established for over half a decade at this point. Seems less like something to mark a game down for now, more something to mark it up for when it actually does it - though that is kind of pathetic in its own right.
They are talking about the campaign. I'm not sure why we are still pretending that Halo's story has ever been good. I'm sure people who have read the books have a whole new level of understanding of it, but frankly the games have had the most rubbish stories imaginable. Regardless, it has always had a campaign and some were more fun than others, I haven't played the new one yet but apparently it is not fun. I'll have to wait till I can play it online with a friend in co-op.
Re-read the OP.
Had they included a decent offline mode besides Campaign. Or how about some offline multiplayer bots? I've been asking for that since Halo 3. But they have not even done that. So, needless to say, this hamstrings Halo 5 right out of the gate.
They are specifically talking about offline things [Probs shouldn't have said single player, though with the loss of split screen it is pretty close enough], outside of the campaign. Offline bots being an example given. Halo has never had offline bots. So, we're complaining about something the series has never had, because we'd like it. Coming from someone who cites being able to always pick up a Halo game and know you'd have splitscreen, you'd also always know it had no offline bots.
And this is half a complaint essay away from the game modes and custom game options complaint, so I'm not really seeing much else to this complaint from the flow of discussion. So basically half this is a repeat of split screen, or a repeat of future game modes, but wants bots too. I think its kind of a bit... out there to claim a game is awful for not putting something that's never been in the series in.

Jerast said:
Joccaren said:
I mean, yeah, a lot of this is disappointing to some small level, but its all pretty standard these days. I don't see what the total outrage is when half the complaints are that they're fixing some of the complaints and it'll take time, and the other half are features that to my knowledge the games have never had in the first place. It'd be like me complaining the Call of Duty doesn't have a tactical 'conquer the world' game mode like Star Wars Battlefront 2 did. Its never been a part of the series, I don't see why it would be now.
So again, yeah, disappointing... But where is the big surprise in all this?
The surprise is that time and time again games cut the fuck out of all the features loved from previous games, and carve it up and lose features, then release it, and people still defend it with a "lel wut u xpeckt :DDDDDDDDDD.... muh tripl A's". I expect sequels to have more not less, and time and time again they have had less recently. Look at NBA2K16. 2K Gaming have to be the most nickle and diming microtransaction bastards in the industry, but they add more every year. They try new things to see what people like, they add more modes, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't so they refine it every year. Not many people complaining about halos lack of modes are expecting gametypes that have never been in the series mate, nobody is chasing a FIFA grandtour MYCAREER mode in Halo (as great as that would be). People want the stuff that was in the last games, not a hacked up carcass filled with stuffing, with promises of maybe breastmeat but probably more stuffing later.


I've transitioned from someone who played CE for fun, Halo2 in the highly competitive scene, fading out of competitive in 3, becoming a pubstomper in reach and 4, ignoring the collection and probably returning 5 to the story. Halo has been the series I grew up with, and yeah things change, but I'm not worried about my favorite franchises changing, that's fine. If we're all going with "Less is More" which is a great quote for pizza toppings, but not so much for an fps that has made its bread and butter with diverse multiplayer settings in the past, then the series has lost its way.

I literally understand all the butthurt over the sims4 now. I understood it then, but now I truly understand it.
And again, these game modes apparently they have said they're adding in. AFAIK, for free. Sure, complain that they released it early, but let that be the complaint. As is, its complaining about a list of "We're fixing" features, like if I was in the middle of replacing your tires on your car and you complained that your car had no tires. It doesn't really help or accomplish much, as its already being worked on.

Sure, if the game modes were never coming, I could understand.
But that's not what's been said. Its been said that they're coming. Maybe it released prematurely for some people, but that's about it [Outside of splitscreen which, as said, was inevitable]. I can understand why some people are a bit disappointed, I'm not understanding what the major fuss is. When these game modes don't arrive, or arrive a year later rather than a few months, or are paid DLC... Yeah, I'd understand the fuss. When they're coming, but aren't here just yet... Disappointing, but not a huge fuss.

But again, maybe I've just been spoiled by good early access games, where I can play the game, and extra 'core' features are added over time, so I'm not just staring at a screenshot for 3 years waiting for the game.
 

StatusNil

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Joccaren said:
Shitty single player? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Halo has never had a single player outside the campaign to start with. I can boot up combat evolved right now, and Single Player won't be anything but the campaign.
Um, I'm not an expert on Halo, but I'm pretty sure even I have played single player modes like SP Firefight in ODST and Spartan Ops in Halo 4. Sure, SO is kind of like a second campaign, but it has respawning instead of checkpoints, so it's mechanically different.
 

BaronVH

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To chime in on the story aspects of the single player campaigns I would say the only one with any story at all is the first game. Halo 2 was the worst. Silly aliens with a story that just stops. Halo 3's story is no better. Halo 4 has this silly didact thing. I do think the story in Halo 5 is the second best story, but that is not a compliment at all. I cannot say Bungie would have done any better than 343, since the single worst story in any game that attempted a story was Destiny. A globe shows up and you shoot aliens and accomplish nothing. The first Halo had great gameplay with a sense of discovery that was never matched by any of the campaigns since. I stand by my initial assessment that I do enjoy Halo 5, and it is a good game. Not anything to buy a new system for, but I am not sure that there is a single game that would warrant that. It does appear that the new consoles are coming out of the dark with some excellent games, and it is the first time in this generation that I am in a quandary about what games to buy.