Halo and CoD are fun

[bushwhacker2k]

Wow, Escapist-lag. Double-post >: /

 

[LarenzoAOG]

I'm sick of it. I just read a thread about overrated games that you haven't played and probably hate, and within 4 posts CoD and Halo were up. I'd say a majority of the posts afterward were "Halo/CoD because it had boring environments/characters/bad plot/generic gameplay...but I never played it but it sucks ass."

People, Halo 2 was the first FPS I ever got into. It's how I spent my weekends and summers with my friends: playing a game that we thought was fun. I know I've had many fun moments with the Halo games, and I doubt I'm the only one. I don't really care for CoD all that much, but I have played it several times (and had fun) and I think the hate on it is as unfair as the hate on Halo. That's why I'm lumping the two together.

Here's what I want you to do: I want you to tell me things about CoD and Halo that you liked. I want to read them all. Characters, events in the story, fun moments you had playing it with your friends, the design of the vehicles or structures, anything that you liked from either series! Tell me!

And if someone talks about something that you didn't like, I'm sure that someone just made a CoD or Halo hate thread that you can post it on if you really need to get it off your chest. I know this is an easy target for fights or assholes to break out on, but I want to keep this thread happy.

If you really like something then it shouldn't bother you if other people don't (not that I have ever really believed that, but thats what they say). And the games are fun, shooting aliens and terrorists and Russians in the face will be fun in a hundred years time, that doesn't make the game any good though. "Boring environments/characters/bad plot/generic gameplay" about sums up the games, that doesn't mean you can't have fun playing them.

 

[Woodsey]

I like how this subjective experience: "People, Halo 2 was the first FPS I ever got into. It's how I spent my weekends and summers with my friends: playing a game that we thought was fun. I know I've had many fun moments with the Halo games" is used to qualify this opinion as a statement of fact: "Halo and CoD are fun".

Anyway, I think people who don't like them just find them decidedly average (I know I do), and are frustrated when other developers look and see them as some sort of king that must be toppled (especially CoD), when really they'd be better off applying themselves to something more interesting.

As for my nice things: the first two CoD games did have some semblance of heart, and Halo isn't the worst thing I've ever played by quite a long shot. Having said that, I have played Two Worlds, so that's possibly even more of a backhanded compliment then I intended it to be.

 

[Spartan448]

The word think by itself implies that, but this statement as a whole, very much implies a belief that thinking otherwise shows a lack of experience with the franchise and as such implies you consider it to be factual.

Just want to let you know, if you aren't going to actually respond to what I say and yet continue to quote my posts, I'm just going to ignore you.

That's fine. I still think that Halo 2 stinks though.

 

[MorteSphere]

Good for you, but I still hate the fuck out of the obsession with realism they inspire.

Your're kiding me right? Halo has players jumping meters into the air, it takes a ton of bullets to bring down another player, and just about everything about it revolves around non realism. To be specific: look at the human guns, they don't look like any gun that exists today and they are varied to serve a simple purpose: this gun is automatic, this gun is semi automatic, this gun is a rocket luancher. See what I'm getting at? Super powerful space marine? Those don't exist in real life, neither do aliens, or spaceships, or plasma weapons, or basically everything else in the game.

However if your talking about CoD then I'm with you on that 100% (although it's just supposed to be fun)

EDIT: I forgot to mention that you are entitled to your own opinion and I'm not trying to get you to admit Halo is good becuase everyone has different likes and dislikes. Agree to disagree right?

I hate Halo for its incredibly fucking boring gameplay, plot, and characters.

Regarding the latter two, I'm bothered that they don't exist. In Just Cause 2 it's perfectly alright because the game is fucking crazy and awesome and not a macho quasifascist shitpile with pretensions to complexity. Halo wastes shitloads of time on cutscenes which could easily be filled with repetitive gameplay.

Yeah but like Just Cause 2, Halo has a story that isn't shown completely through gameplay, it's mostly showed through the cutscenes. Not, every game can be like Half Life 2 and thus the next best thing is cutscenes (which I remind you are good considering that it breaks up the gameplay at the right moments i.e. when all enemies are dead and you move to a specific spot on the map). Sure cutscenes are almost never good but Halo makes them decent by actually having the characters talk in when written sentences when most of the game they are silent.

Also, I'm getting the message that somehow you think cetain games that can have a story and don't emphasise on it *cough* Just Cause 2 *cough* but for others *cough* Halo *cough* the moment they make a original story as an important part of the game it's automatically bad. Square Enix is perfectly capable of coming up with a story and some insanely well detailed cutscenes (although they probably shouldn't because then it would end up like FFXIII and ruin Just Cause for what it stands for).

The difference between Just Cause and Halo is that Halo (Halo Reach is particularly guilty of this) thinks it has a plot. In Reach they tried to characterise their faceless space marines with typical archetypes. If the game isn't about the story, why do that? Just Cause doesn't waste time on that shit. It doesn't waste 5 minutes to a cutscene devoted to a generic, meaningless plot.

It's okay for a game to be brainless. But your gameplay has to at least be fun and you can't pretend you have a brain.

 

[Coldster]

They characterise their "space marines" because they want you to give a shit about them when they make their semi-tragic death (and they do have faces). Reach does do a less than satisfactory job in the attempt to tell a story about Reach but they at least try. Having a story in almost any game DOES NOT make it worse espiecially when the cutscenes only happen to show you what the spartans lives were about. They were hand selected by the UNSC for genetic perfection and trained from the age of six in a military outpost to fight againest the covanent. Of course they're going to have the emotions of a rock (although Bungie does a fair job of giving them decent attitudes and diolouge) and the generic personalities. It's because thats what they want them to be! Even if people like you call them stupid and pointless character archetypes. Halo Reach has a heavily story based campaign mode because that's what the single-player mode is for, the multiplayer and other game modes are for fun.

EDIT: this was supossed to be a response to the comment above mine but it must not have registered when I clicked "quote".

 

[baddude1337]

Their fun, I just don't like the fact that neither series seems to want to take any risky steps and change. COD 4 plays identical to Black Ops.

 

[Probablynot.]

Most of the hate for FPS is because People who are in to games get annoyed when people can have a little fun with the medium without aknowledging the other great things about gaming.


It's for the same reason that "real" musicians hate pop music. They can't see the wood through the trees.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

The word think by itself implies that, but this statement as a whole, very much implies a belief that thinking otherwise shows a lack of experience with the franchise and as such implies you consider it to be factual.

Just want to let you know, if you aren't going to actually respond to what I say and yet continue to quote my posts, I'm just going to ignore you.

That's fine. I still think that Halo 2 stinks though.

Glad we talked

I found Halo Wars to be boring overall, I'm convinced that RTSs aren't made for consoles.

 

[Spartan448]

As Ensemble's last game, it will always have a special place in my heart. The game WOULD've been better designed for PC like the Age of Empires games (and let's face it, Halo Wars was just a Halo version of AoE), and I think that Ensemble closed mostly because the PC fanbase felt alienated by a company that had always made PC games, but who made what would've probably been their best-selling game if it was released for PC a console game instead. Anyway, it's also always fun just massing up troops and going overkill on the other guy at the end of a round.

 

[MaxwellEdison]

Seriously, every time I see some self-assured forum user pull up the generic 'bland and boring FPS shooter' line, I die a little inside. Have you seen how colourful and vibrant the Halo games are?

Though I don't hold that opinion of Halo, you do realize that they're not talking about the graphics, right?

Sorry, I typically see people treating Halo as of the same irk as the 'brown and gritty realistic' shooters. Looking back I see I didn't mention this in my initial post though. I still think that a lot of the bile thrown at Halo is a reflection on its popularity rather than the actual game itself.

Something can irk you as much as a brown shooter w/o being one. Did you mean to type ilk?
And I have to say, I've never heard that opinion, since it is demonstrably bright. Why do you think that Halo is hated due to its popularity? Every criticism I've heard of it has given pretty solid reasoning.

 

[Grabbin Keelz]

Yea, I've seen way too much hate on Black ops. It makes me wonder if half of them have even played it. I have a strict rule that I CANT say for sure a game is bad unless I've played it for myself.

 

[Wayneguard]

I hated halo reach. I loved halo 1, 2 and 3 (even single player) but there was just something wrong about reach's weapon balance. Also, the plot utterly failed to draw me in; I though i could handle a halo game w/o master chief but I was wrong. About CoD, i've never been a fan. Even in the heydey of CoD4, I was the lone voice that said 'guys, i'm gonna go play some brood war and morrowind, u go ahead n play ur cod'. the point being, it's not all mindless bandwagon flaming.