In terms of game development, was the Xbox ahead of its time?

[themistermanguy]

It might be easy to forget now, but the Xbox One is only Microsoft's THIRD home gaming console. The PC giant known for Windows first entered the console space in 2001, with the system that started it all, the Original Xbox. While it had many skeptics at first, the Xbox eventually won people over with a secret weapon, Halo: Combat Evolved. The First Person Shooter phenomenon demonstrated exactly what the Xbox was about. PC quality gampeplay and graphics in a user-friendly living room console setting. The Xbox used an x86 CPU and a GPU based on Microsoft's Direct-X technology. This not only allowed the Xbox to be the most powerful console of the 6th generation, but it also allowed it to be the easiest console that generation to develop for. Because it was essentially a PC in console form, developers who programmed on PC could port titles over and develop new titles for it, with incredible ease. Most programmers know how to make games for PC, so a console that's like a PC allowed for as smooth a development process as possible.

For some reason though, Microsoft abandoned the x86-architecture that gave the Xbox its identity, and instead opted for a custom PowerPC chip for their next system, the Xbox 360. While the 360 is Microsoft's most successful console to date, the decision to ax the x86 format is a decision that still baffles me to this day. Fast-forward to the present day. With increasing development costs and scales for big titles, consoles needed to be easier to develop for to accommodate for these problems, and the rise of the indie developer community. Microsoft, went back to square one and returned to x86 for the Xbox One. Sony opted for the same cheap, PC tech as well with the PS4. Even Nintendo's Switch is running a Tablet SoC based on Nvidia's PC hardware. With PC development being more ubiquitous among developers now than its ever been, having hardware that developers can easily transition to and from is more important. PC hardware dominates the current consoles today, but it's easy to forget that it all started with Microsoft's Original Black and Green, Mountain Dew Machine.

 

[Squilookle]

No, it wasn't. It was exactly of its time. Also it didn't win me over with Halo. For every innovation Halo did, it regressed in some other area that console FPSes before it had championed. These days I only keep it around for Mercenaries and the GTA trilogy.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

No... x86 was what Microsoft knew at the time and why the Xbox was like the size of a PC and the PS2 and Gamecube weren't.

Excerpt from my post in your Wii game development thread:

The reason x86 processors weren't used for console gaming was that they were very power hungry until just recently. The PowerPC CPUs made more sense for consoles for several reasons and that's why they were used. This generation marked the first time that x86 processors were better in pretty much all regards for a console.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Halo popularized FPS to Dudebros muscleheads.

As far as console FPS goes, Perfect Dark was miles ahead. Now Perfect dark, owe all of it's success on Goldeneye 007.

Basically Goldeneye paved the path, and Perfect dark ... Perfected it. Unfortunately that was before Gaming was socially acceptable. Halo came when Gaming started to be more mainstream. Which mean that most people ( dudebros) never played the older, superior games, and regarded Halo as the holy grail.

To give credit where credit was due. Halo did do wonders for console multiplayer shooters. But a lot of that is thanks to the internet.

 

[Worgen]

No, it wasn't. It was exactly of its time. Also it didn't win me over with Halo. For every innovation Halo did, it regressed in some other area that console FPSes before it had championed. These days I only keep it around for Mercenaries and the GTA trilogy.

How so? Halo was really innovative for a console fps game and it really made the fps gameplay work on console. What are some ways it regressed?

 

[Satinavian]

No, it wasn't ahead of its time.

It was cheap PC technology remarketed as a console by doing some standardisation and putting some simplyfied OS on it. And then running basically PC games.

 

[Squilookle]

No, it wasn't. It was exactly of its time. Also it didn't win me over with Halo. For every innovation Halo did, it regressed in some other area that console FPSes before it had championed. These days I only keep it around for Mercenaries and the GTA trilogy.

How so? Halo was really innovative for a console fps game and it really made the fps gameplay work on console. What are some ways it regressed?

I'm glad you asked. First, this:

Halo popularized FPS to Dudebros muscleheads.

As far as console FPS goes, Perfect Dark was miles ahead. Now Perfect dark, owe all of it's success on Goldeneye 007.

Basically Goldeneye paved the path, and Perfect dark ... Perfected it. Unfortunately that was before Gaming was socially acceptable. Halo came when Gaming started to be more mainstream. Which mean that most people ( dudebros) never played the older, superior games, and regarded Halo as the holy grail.

To give credit where credit was due. Halo did do wonders for console multiplayer shooters. But a lot of that is thanks to the internet.

...basically sums it up, but if you want to get more specific:

Everything except for people bouncing in vehicles had been done two years before in Perfect Dark. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and the Timesplitters games that followed were the ones that defined how a FPS could control perfectly on a console. Halo just threw it out and emulated the PC tactic of rooting the crosshair to the centre, which is far better suited to a mouse than a gamepad. Let's look at it this way:

Goldeneye brought us:

*Fluid, console tailored controls
*Variable zoom aiming for different guns
*non-linear and highly varied level design
*Huge arsenal of weapons, all of which could be held at once
*Location specific damage on enemies, who react accordingly
*Different objectives for each difficulty setting, with unlockable levels for higher difficulties
*Cheats, unlockable by completing difficult specific speed runs, and would not let players advance through the story when activated
*Split screen multiplayer for four people, including five modes
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Dual wielding weapons
*Persistent bulletholes
*Emphasis on stealth and objectives over brute strength (though it was still possible)

Perfect Dark added:

*secondary functions for all weapons
*Dual Wielding in multiplayer, four years before Halo 2
*Six modes in multiplayer
*up to 8 computer controlled bots in multiplayer, with everything customisable from skill level to tactics and preferred weapons. Friendly bots could even be ordered around during a match.
*Larger interior and exterior locations
*level starting spots and other factors dependent on actions performed in previous levels
*Co-operative mode
*Counter-operative mode
*Various single and multiplayer challenges

Halo introduced:

*Better graphics and levels being larger still
*Enhanced flanking enemy AI
*Better vehicle physics
*Regenerating health
*ported PC/Mac controls
*LAN support with up to 16 players

and so Halo removed:

*Console tailored controls
*non-linear level design
*All weapons being held at once
*Dual wielding
*Different objectives for each difficulty
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part)
*Location specific damage on enemies, who react accordingly
*Secondary functions
*Down to 5 multiplayer modes again
*Multiplayer bots of any kind
*A lot of the multiplayer customisation as seen in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, and The World Is Not Enough
*Counter operative mode
*Singleplayer and multiplayer challenges

If anything, Halo pioneered a few forward steps in the console FPS market (side-steps, in the case of regen health), and the rest were big steps back in the development of the genre. Due to its popularity, however, rivals sought to copy the bare minimum approach Halo adopted, and as a result, console FPSes have been lacking the earlier pioneering features ever since.

Hell even The World is Not Enough and Timesplitters 2 are in some ways better made games than Halo, and they both came out beforehand.

 

[BrawlMan]

No, it wasn't. It was exactly of its time. Also it didn't win me over with Halo. For every innovation Halo did, it regressed in some other area that console FPSes before it had championed. These days I only keep it around for Mercenaries and the GTA trilogy.

How so? Halo was really innovative for a console fps game and it really made the fps gameplay work on console. What are some ways it regressed?

I'm glad you asked. First, this:

Halo popularized FPS to Dudebros muscleheads.

As far as console FPS goes, Perfect Dark was miles ahead. Now Perfect dark, owe all of it's success on Goldeneye 007.

Basically Goldeneye paved the path, and Perfect dark ... Perfected it. Unfortunately that was before Gaming was socially acceptable. Halo came when Gaming started to be more mainstream. Which mean that most people ( dudebros) never played the older, superior games, and regarded Halo as the holy grail.

To give credit where credit was due. Halo did do wonders for console multiplayer shooters. But a lot of that is thanks to the internet.

...basically sums it up, but if you want to get more specific:

Everything except for people bouncing in vehicles had been done two years before in Perfect Dark. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and the Timesplitters games that followed were the ones that defined how a FPS could control perfectly on a console. Halo just threw it out and emulated the PC tactic of rooting the crosshair to the centre, which is far better suited to a mouse than a gamepad. Let's look at it this way:

Goldeneye brought us:

*Fluid, console tailored controls
*Variable zoom aiming for different guns
*non-linear and highly varied level design
*Huge arsenal of weapons, all of which could be held at once
*Location specific damage on enemies, who react accordingly
*Different objectives for each difficulty setting, with unlockable levels for higher difficulties
*Cheats, unlockable by completing difficult specific speed runs, and would not let players advance through the story when activated
*Split screen multiplayer for four people, including five modes
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Dual wielding weapons
*Persistent bulletholes
*Emphasis on stealth and objectives over brute strength (though it was still possible)

Perfect Dark added:

*secondary functions for all weapons
*Dual Wielding in multiplayer, four years before Halo 2
*Six modes in multiplayer
*up to 8 computer controlled bots in multiplayer, with everything customisable from skill level to tactics and preferred weapons. Friendly bots could even be ordered around during a match.
*Larger interior and exterior locations
*level starting spots and other factors dependent on actions performed in previous levels
*Co-operative mode
*Counter-operative mode
*Various single and multiplayer challenges

Halo introduced:

*Better graphics and levels being larger still
*Enhanced flanking enemy AI
*Better vehicle physics
*Regenerating health
*ported PC/Mac controls
*LAN support with up to 16 players

and so Halo removed:

*Console tailored controls
*non-linear level design
*All weapons being held at once
*Dual wielding
*Different objectives for each difficulty
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part)
*Location specific damage on enemies, who react accordingly
*Secondary functions
*Down to 5 multiplayer modes again
*Multiplayer bots of any kind
*A lot of the multiplayer customisation as seen in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, and The World Is Not Enough
*Counter operative mode
*Singleplayer and multiplayer challenges

If anything, Halo pioneered a few forward steps in the console FPS market (side-steps, in the case of regen health), and the rest were big steps back in the development of the genre. Due to its popularity, however, rivals sought to copy the bare minimum approach Halo adopted, and as a result, console FPSes have been lacking the earlier pioneering features ever since.

Hell even The World is Not Enough and Timesplitters 2 are in some ways better made games than Halo, and they both came out beforehand.

Everything said you said is true. I was one of those guys that said Halo was overrated (though I appreciate the things it did). Also, I'll give the XBOX credit for having some niche Japanese games, even though most of them failed horribly on the console and would have been better suited on a PS2 or Gamecube. The only ones to find successs on the system were Dead or Alive (its previous games were on different consoles) and the Ninja Gaiden reboot.

 

[Worgen]

No, it wasn't. It was exactly of its time. Also it didn't win me over with Halo. For every innovation Halo did, it regressed in some other area that console FPSes before it had championed. These days I only keep it around for Mercenaries and the GTA trilogy.

How so? Halo was really innovative for a console fps game and it really made the fps gameplay work on console. What are some ways it regressed?

I'm glad you asked. First, this:

Halo popularized FPS to Dudebros muscleheads.

As far as console FPS goes, Perfect Dark was miles ahead. Now Perfect dark, owe all of it's success on Goldeneye 007.

Basically Goldeneye paved the path, and Perfect dark ... Perfected it. Unfortunately that was before Gaming was socially acceptable. Halo came when Gaming started to be more mainstream. Which mean that most people ( dudebros) never played the older, superior games, and regarded Halo as the holy grail.

To give credit where credit was due. Halo did do wonders for console multiplayer shooters. But a lot of that is thanks to the internet.

...basically sums it up, but if you want to get more specific:

Everything except for people bouncing in vehicles had been done two years before in Perfect Dark. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and the Timesplitters games that followed were the ones that defined how a FPS could control perfectly on a console. Halo just threw it out and emulated the PC tactic of rooting the crosshair to the centre, which is far better suited to a mouse than a gamepad. Let's look at it this way:

Goldeneye brought us:

*Fluid, console tailored controls
*Variable zoom aiming for different guns
*non-linear and highly varied level design
*Huge arsenal of weapons, all of which could be held at once
*Location specific damage on enemies, who react accordingly
*Different objectives for each difficulty setting, with unlockable levels for higher difficulties
*Cheats, unlockable by completing difficult specific speed runs, and would not let players advance through the story when activated
*Split screen multiplayer for four people, including five modes
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Dual wielding weapons
*Persistent bulletholes
*Emphasis on stealth and objectives over brute strength (though it was still possible)

Perfect Dark added:

*secondary functions for all weapons
*Dual Wielding in multiplayer, four years before Halo 2
*Six modes in multiplayer
*up to 8 computer controlled bots in multiplayer, with everything customisable from skill level to tactics and preferred weapons. Friendly bots could even be ordered around during a match.
*Larger interior and exterior locations
*level starting spots and other factors dependent on actions performed in previous levels
*Co-operative mode
*Counter-operative mode
*Various single and multiplayer challenges

Halo introduced:

*Better graphics and levels being larger still
*Enhanced flanking enemy AI
*Better vehicle physics
*Regenerating health
*ported PC/Mac controls
*LAN support with up to 16 players

and so Halo removed:

*Console tailored controls
*non-linear level design
*All weapons being held at once
*Dual wielding
*Different objectives for each difficulty
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part)
*Location specific damage on enemies, who react accordingly
*Secondary functions
*Down to 5 multiplayer modes again
*Multiplayer bots of any kind
*A lot of the multiplayer customisation as seen in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, and The World Is Not Enough
*Counter operative mode
*Singleplayer and multiplayer challenges

If anything, Halo pioneered a few forward steps in the console FPS market (side-steps, in the case of regen health), and the rest were big steps back in the development of the genre. Due to its popularity, however, rivals sought to copy the bare minimum approach Halo adopted, and as a result, console FPSes have been lacking the earlier pioneering features ever since.

Hell even The World is Not Enough and Timesplitters 2 are in some ways better made games than Halo, and they both came out beforehand.

I disagree. While Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were great. They were also clunky as hell. One of the biggest things that Halo added was auto aim and target centering that actually made it feel good to use a controller. Sure, I miss the old aim a weapon by itself system but it was rather clunky.

Most of the things you have there that Goldeneye added were just things that fps games had around that time. The standard was to have a huge weapon arsenal you carried at all times, but that was also because the weapons had power curve and there was no reason to use earlier weapons. While Halo only let you have two at once all of them were balanced, there wasn't a throw away weapon in the bunch. I think your wrong about location specific damage not being in Halo, there were headshots and I think enemies reacted to being shot in different places, although sure, you couldn't shoot their guns out of their hands. Halo didn't have cheats but it did have modifiers unlock-able by finding skulls. I didn't do much of the Halo multi so I'm not going to speak on it. Dual wielding weapons isn't really a bonus and was added in Halo 2 anyway. Persistent bullet holes? now your just reaching, that was a feature in Rise of the Triad first, I remember because I remember being blown away by it. Sure Perfect Dark had good bots, but unreal had better ones. You also mention the shield but you seem to really not understand how elegant of a solution it was for keeping the action up in a game and balancing the amount of healing items you needed, you have to add that to the positive, at least for the first Halo, Halo 2's shield system kinda sucked.

You have a very biased list here that gets really nit picky just to give Golden Eye all these points and take away all these points from Halo. I get that your a fanboy but damn man, calm down. A lot of your list is like complaining that Final Fantasy isn't Super Metroid.

 

[Rangaman]

Err...no. Having an inbuilt HDD and PC architecture was great in theory and on paper. But as anyone who owned an Xbox can attest, it was an impossibly huge behemoth with an awful controller.

The trade-off for that was some games looked better than their PS2 counterparts (GTA: Vice City, for example), the privilege of paying $60 per year to do what PC gamers did for free, splitscreen Halo (which was actually pretty fun), some niche games almost no-one remembers and PC ports that ranged from "slightly worse" to a port of Morrowind where you couldn't see more than a few meters in front of you due to hardware limits.

Saying the Xbox was "ahead of its time" because PC architecture is standard now is largely ignorant of the fact that the Xbox really didn't do anything impressive with its "advanced" technology besides slightly better looking games. If it had support for independent development and modding; a digital distribution service; and cross-platform play, it would be "ahead of its time". As is it's merely an interesting experiment, and one that Microsoft lost quite a bit of money on.

 

[themistermanguy]

No, it wasn't. It was exactly of its time. Also it didn't win me over with Halo. For every innovation Halo did, it regressed in some other area that console FPSes before it had championed. These days I only keep it around for Mercenaries and the GTA trilogy.

How so? Halo was really innovative for a console fps game and it really made the fps gameplay work on console. What are some ways it regressed?

Basically all Halo did was popularize console multiplayer and begin the trend of plaguing console shooters with aim assist.

I second the praise of Goldeneye and PD which made the most vital strides in terms of game design, but as far as console FPS launch titles go I thought Resistance: Fall of Man was better than Halo: CE in almost every regard. More interesting weapons (Insomniac?s forte really), more varied environments including a large map for vehicle use, greater enemy variety, and a lengthy campaign that was varied enough to keep things interesting. Also 40 player MP was nuts, and I?m not big on MP. I think it also had 4 player offline but I never did that.

AI was probably the biggest variable. Although you were dealing with more enemies on screen that still knew how to take cover and flank you. The sequels were also good in their own rights but I think overall the first game was the best. It would be a must buy for me if Insomniac ever rebooted the franchise for current gen or next.

 

[Worgen]

No, it wasn't. It was exactly of its time. Also it didn't win me over with Halo. For every innovation Halo did, it regressed in some other area that console FPSes before it had championed. These days I only keep it around for Mercenaries and the GTA trilogy.

How so? Halo was really innovative for a console fps game and it really made the fps gameplay work on console. What are some ways it regressed?

Basically all Halo did was popularize console multiplayer and begin the trend of plaguing console shooters with aim assist.

I second the praise of Goldeneye and PD which made the most vital strides in terms of game design, but as far as console FPS launch titles go I thought Resistance: Fall of Man was better than Halo: CE in almost every regard. More interesting weapons (Insomniac?s forte really), more varied environments including a large map for vehicle use, greater enemy variety, and a lengthy campaign that was varied enough to keep things interesting. Also 40 player MP was nuts, and I?m not big on MP. I think it also had 4 player offline but I never did that.

AI was probably the biggest variable. Although you were dealing with more enemies on screen that still knew how to take cover and flank you. The sequels were also good in their own rights but I think overall the first game was the best. It would be a must buy for me if Insomniac ever rebooted the franchise for current gen or next.

Except you don't seem to realize how big that aim assist was. It was the most important thing that allowed fps games to work on console. I guess you don't remember having to fight with the controls in older fps games with a controller, but it made playing them pretty annoying. Systems like the aim system in Golden Eye and Perfect Dark worked but it was a bandaid over the bigger issue.

If you want a better fps game then any listed here just go play Serious Sam the Second Encounter. Massive environments, both competitive and coop multiplayer, a large number of inventive and fun weapons and a large variety of enemies to use them on.

 

[Squilookle]

I disagree. While Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were great. They were also clunky as hell. One of the biggest things that Halo added was auto aim and target centering that actually made it feel good to use a controller. Sure, I miss the old aim a weapon by itself system but it was rather clunky.

Most of the things you have there that Goldeneye added were just things that fps games had around that time. The standard was to have a huge weapon arsenal you carried at all times, but that was also because the weapons had power curve and there was no reason to use earlier weapons. While Halo only let you have two at once all of them were balanced, there wasn't a throw away weapon in the bunch. I think your wrong about location specific damage not being in Halo, there were headshots and I think enemies reacted to being shot in different places, although sure, you couldn't shoot their guns out of their hands. Halo didn't have cheats but it did have modifiers unlock-able by finding skulls. I didn't do much of the Halo multi so I'm not going to speak on it. Dual wielding weapons isn't really a bonus and was added in Halo 2 anyway. Persistent bullet holes? now your just reaching, that was a feature in Rise of the Triad first, I remember because I remember being blown away by it. Sure Perfect Dark had good bots, but unreal had better ones. You also mention the shield but you seem to really not understand how elegant of a solution it was for keeping the action up in a game and balancing the amount of healing items you needed, you have to add that to the positive, at least for the first Halo, Halo 2's shield system kinda sucked.

You have a very biased list here that gets really nit picky just to give Golden Eye all these points and take away all these points from Halo. I get that your a fanboy but damn man, calm down. A lot of your list is like complaining that Final Fantasy isn't Super Metroid.

I'll give you Rise of the Triad- I only added that because I've never heard anyone defininively name a shooter that had bulletholes before GE until now, so thankyou for widening my knowledge.

I stand by everything else I said though. Everything else listed was introduced by Goldeneye (save for huge arsenals and level sizes, Turok being a contemporary champion of that), but GE and PD had auto-aim as well, which varied based on difficulty level.

Please don't wheel out the pathetic 'sure it had something great but it was better somewhere else' argument. Everyone knows Unreal has the best bots in the business but that's irrelevant. Perfect Dark's were the best console bots of the 5th and 6th generation, and bottom line is having any multiplayer bots is better than Halo having none at all. Saying a huge aresnal is negated by ranked weapons is pretty daft as well. Multiple guns facilitates player choice- with All Guns on you can complete any level with any gun you wish, both powerful AND nightmare hard. Just like dual wielding, it's a feature, like so many others, that was absent from Halo. And don't pretend Halo guns like the Needler weren't complete pieces of crap either. Halo's guns were no better balanced than any other shooter, only this time you're forced to throw away half your entire arsenal when you switch a single weapon, only finding out down the road if you made the right choice or not.

Also -thanks for the reminder- no cheats in Halo. Super boring. It had modifiers, sure, but so did GE and PD, where you could adjust enemy health, damage output, even reaction times. Chuck in cheats for things like fast and slow animation, invisibility, turbo mode etc and it becomes a whole different experience. So Halo doesn't stand out in that area either. Also if Halo had location damage beyond just headshots, I never once noticed it. And if it's unnoticeable it may as well not even be there.

Finally, the regen-shield. Yes I understand how it worked. The only thing it innovated was introducing to the gaming world the trend that is endlessly copied to this day (admittedly not as well as the way Halo did it originally) of hiding behind cover and waiting for your wounds to heal. That did anything but keep the action up. And look, I get where they were coming from with it- it was the first real practical solution to making multiplayer duels a level playing field once one player had died (the previous status quo was whoever survived the last fight would be low on health for the next one) but in singleplayer it would grind the action to a complete halt again, and again, and again. We have Halo to thank for the legions of shooters that do the exact same thing, compared to the older system where you had an amount of health (plus body armour if you found it) and that was it. Stuck in a bind? Well too bad buddy, you have to fight your way through to the end and nobody's going to hold your hand to do it either. The sense of achievement from just barely scraping through a level with the tiniest sliver of health is a joy nobody ever experienced while playing a Halo game.


TLR Console shooters were doing just fine before Halo appeared, and its quality impact on the landscape of console shooters was a mixed-bag at best, and at worst a regression from which console FPSes are still held back by 18 years later.

 

[Worgen]

I disagree. While Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were great. They were also clunky as hell. One of the biggest things that Halo added was auto aim and target centering that actually made it feel good to use a controller. Sure, I miss the old aim a weapon by itself system but it was rather clunky.

Most of the things you have there that Goldeneye added were just things that fps games had around that time. The standard was to have a huge weapon arsenal you carried at all times, but that was also because the weapons had power curve and there was no reason to use earlier weapons. While Halo only let you have two at once all of them were balanced, there wasn't a throw away weapon in the bunch. I think your wrong about location specific damage not being in Halo, there were headshots and I think enemies reacted to being shot in different places, although sure, you couldn't shoot their guns out of their hands. Halo didn't have cheats but it did have modifiers unlock-able by finding skulls. I didn't do much of the Halo multi so I'm not going to speak on it. Dual wielding weapons isn't really a bonus and was added in Halo 2 anyway. Persistent bullet holes? now your just reaching, that was a feature in Rise of the Triad first, I remember because I remember being blown away by it. Sure Perfect Dark had good bots, but unreal had better ones. You also mention the shield but you seem to really not understand how elegant of a solution it was for keeping the action up in a game and balancing the amount of healing items you needed, you have to add that to the positive, at least for the first Halo, Halo 2's shield system kinda sucked.

You have a very biased list here that gets really nit picky just to give Golden Eye all these points and take away all these points from Halo. I get that your a fanboy but damn man, calm down. A lot of your list is like complaining that Final Fantasy isn't Super Metroid.

I'll give you Rise of the Triad- I only added that because I've never heard anyone defininively name a shooter that had bulletholes before GE until now, so thankyou for widening my knowledge.

I stand by everything else I said though. Everything else listed was introduced by Goldeneye (save for huge arsenals and level sizes, Turok being a contemporary champion of that), but GE and PD had auto-aim as well, which varied based on difficulty level.

Please don't wheel out the pathetic 'sure it had something but it was better somewhere else' argument. Everyone knows Unreal has the best bots in the business but that's irrelevant. Perfect Dark's were the best console bots of the 5th and 6th generation, and bottom line is having any multiplayer bots is better than Halo having none at all. Saying a huge aresnal is negated by ranked weapons is pretty daft as well. Multiple guns facilitates player choice- with All Guns on you can complete any level with any gun you wish, both powerful AND nightmare hard. Just like dual wielding, it's a feature, like so many others, that was absent from Halo. And don't pretend Halo guns like the Needler weren't complete pieces of crap either. Halo's guns were no better balanced than any other shooter, only this time you're forced to throw away half your entire arsenal when you switch a single weapon, only finding out down the road if you made the right choice or not.

Also -thanks for the reminder- no cheats in Halo. Super boring. It had modifiers, sure, but so did GE and PD, where you could adjust enemy health, damage output, even reaction times. Chuck in cheats for things like fast and slow animation, invisibility, turbo mode etc and it becomes a whole different experience. So Halo doesn't stand out in that area either. Also if Halo had location damage beyond just headshots, I never once noticed it. And if it's unnoticeable it may as well not even be there.

Finally, the regen-shield. Yes I understand how it worked. The only thing it innovated was introducing to the gaming world the trend that is endlessly copied to this day (admittedly not as well as the way Halo did it originally) of hiding behind cover and waiting for your wounds to heal. That did anything but keep the action up. And look, I get where they were coming from with it- it was the first real practical solution to making multiplayer duels a level playing field once one player had died (the previous status quo was whoever survived the last fight would be low on health for the next one) but in singleplayer it would grind the action to a complete halt again, and again, and again. We have Halo to thank for the legions of shooters that do the exact same thing, compared to the older system where you had an amount of health (plus body armour if you found it) and that was it. Stuck in a bind? Well too bad buddy, you have to fight your way through to the end and nobody's going to hold your hand to do it either. The sense of achievement from just barely scraping through a level with the tiniest sliver of health is a joy nobody ever experienced while playing a Halo game.


TLR Console shooters were doing just fine before Halo appeared, and its quality impact on the landscape of console shooters was a mixed-bag at best, and at worst a regression from which console FPSes are still held back by 18 years later.

Actually, none of your list were introduced by Golden Eye. They were in other games before, Golden Eye was just the first fps game to have some of them, to my knowledge. There were a ton of smaller fps games out there that I don't remember well enough to cite. Although fps dual wielding was first done by Bungie actually, in Marathon. Although Rise of the Triad came out about the same time and it also had dual pistols.

I'm not saying a huge arsenal is negated by by ranked weapons, I'm not sure what you even mean by that. What I said was that having all your weapons be viable was one of the things that Halo did that was a good thing that not many games had done, instead of having 'ranked' guns where the later guns were just better. The needler is great at taking down elites on the highest difficulty otherwise you really want a plasma pistol with you. Even the basic pistol in halo had a place, I don't get where your coming from about there being useless weapons in it. Again, talking about Halo not having dual wielding is like bitching at final fantasy for not being super metroid, its a really dumb argument.

If you want to get that nit picky then Halo had realistic body positions on the ground and Golden Eye just had them fall flat.

The regen shield was a good thing to introduce. Back in my day I had to lean fps games by just using cheats, then again, I learned fps games with just a keyboard and didn't know enough to bind strafe keys. How is waiting for a shield to regen worse then having to backtrack for a health kit that you might have missed, or accidently picking up the only large health kit in the area accidentally? Before hp regen it was really easy to fuck up the design of a level and just not put enough health in, I played a good number of old fps games that did that. You can't blame the success of a game for everyone that tries to copy it. Actually, I would argue that no one really tried very hard to copy Halo, there weren't many scifi fps games that came out after Halo, there were some like Mace: bounty hunter but really everyone copied cod.

 

[Squilookle]

Actually, none of your list were introduced by Golden Eye. They were in other games before, Golden Eye was just the first fps game to have some of them, to my knowledge. There were a ton of smaller fps games out there that I don't remember well enough to cite. Although fps dual wielding was first done by Bungie actually, in Marathon. Although Rise of the Triad came out about the same time and it also had dual pistols.

I'm not saying a huge arsenal is negated by by ranked weapons, I'm not sure what you even mean by that. What I said was that having all your weapons be viable was one of the things that Halo did that was a good thing that not many games had done, instead of having 'ranked' guns where the later guns were just better. The needler is great at taking down elites on the highest difficulty otherwise you really want a plasma pistol with you. Even the basic pistol in halo had a place, I don't get where your coming from about there being useless weapons in it. Again, talking about Halo not having dual wielding is like bitching at final fantasy for not being super metroid, its a really dumb argument.

If you want to get that nit picky then Halo had realistic body positions on the ground and Golden Eye just had them fall flat.

The regen shield was a good thing to introduce. Back in my day I had to lean fps games by just using cheats, then again, I learned fps games with just a keyboard and didn't know enough to bind strafe keys. How is waiting for a shield to regen worse then having to backtrack for a health kit that you might have missed, or accidently picking up the only large health kit in the area accidentally? Before hp regen it was really easy to fuck up the design of a level and just not put enough health in, I played a good number of old fps games that did that. You can't blame the success of a game for everyone that tries to copy it. Actually, I would argue that no one really tried very hard to copy Halo, there weren't many scifi fps games that came out after Halo, there were some like Mace: bounty hunter but really everyone copied cod.

I did actually intend to mention dual wielding existing before GE- the point being that it existed in shooters before Halo, and Halo didn't have it. This is a regression, regardless of how important or not you think it is. Same for holding all weapons, multiplayer bots, unlockable cheats, difficulty-specific objectives, mission endings changing the start point of the next level, counter-operative multiplayer, etc etc etc... That's why dual wielding is worth pointing out.

I don't remember ever seeing a Halo enemy not fall flat on the ground either. I'm not saying they never did anything else in Halo, but GE sure had enemies slumping down dead against walls if you killed them up against them. And hell, even if Goldeneye didn't have something Halo did, that's the whole point- Halo was a later game. It's supposed to add to the genre (like Marathon did) or at least maintain parity. Not take the genre backwards.

By ranked weapons I'm referring to what you called 'power curve'- I'm assuming you meant some guns were lower powered and others packed more punch. Having 'viable weapons' as you call it isn't that much of a boast. That's a bare-minimum requirement of a shooter, GE/PD had that as well, and in far greater numbers than Halo. The fact other games stumbled with it doesn't really matter when comparing two games that didn't. And I really wouldn't bring up the basic Halo pistol if I were you- a gun so broken it was most player's sniper rifle of choice. Even Bungie itself soon realised how ridiculous that was and balanced it out in later Halos.

The point of health kits is so that it specifically wouldn't be accidental. You learn your environment. You use what tools you have to get the job done. Regen health is like an overprotective mother mollycoddling you through every level. It works great in, say, a sandbox where health kit locations are more difficult to have placed with the right amount of consistency, but in straight up shooters they're just a bullshit 'hide behind box to win' mechanic. Maybe you're not seeing the appeal of surviving a hard slog through a level that's meant to be challenging if you learned FPSes by using cheats, but trust me, it's there. And having played shooters on both sides of the shift, I'm pretty sure regen is hopeless for anything other than the most casual playing experience possible.

I wholeheartedly agree that it was easy to fuck up level design and health levels in a shooter, but neither GE, PD, TWINE or many, many other great shooters that came before Halo suffered from it. So again, irrelevant. As for copying Halo- I meant game mechanics, not setting, though there were definitely a decent amount of sci-fi shooters in Halo's wake.

 

[Worgen]

Actually, none of your list were introduced by Golden Eye. They were in other games before, Golden Eye was just the first fps game to have some of them, to my knowledge. There were a ton of smaller fps games out there that I don't remember well enough to cite. Although fps dual wielding was first done by Bungie actually, in Marathon. Although Rise of the Triad came out about the same time and it also had dual pistols.

I'm not saying a huge arsenal is negated by by ranked weapons, I'm not sure what you even mean by that. What I said was that having all your weapons be viable was one of the things that Halo did that was a good thing that not many games had done, instead of having 'ranked' guns where the later guns were just better. The needler is great at taking down elites on the highest difficulty otherwise you really want a plasma pistol with you. Even the basic pistol in halo had a place, I don't get where your coming from about there being useless weapons in it. Again, talking about Halo not having dual wielding is like bitching at final fantasy for not being super metroid, its a really dumb argument.

If you want to get that nit picky then Halo had realistic body positions on the ground and Golden Eye just had them fall flat.

The regen shield was a good thing to introduce. Back in my day I had to lean fps games by just using cheats, then again, I learned fps games with just a keyboard and didn't know enough to bind strafe keys. How is waiting for a shield to regen worse then having to backtrack for a health kit that you might have missed, or accidently picking up the only large health kit in the area accidentally? Before hp regen it was really easy to fuck up the design of a level and just not put enough health in, I played a good number of old fps games that did that. You can't blame the success of a game for everyone that tries to copy it. Actually, I would argue that no one really tried very hard to copy Halo, there weren't many scifi fps games that came out after Halo, there were some like Mace: bounty hunter but really everyone copied cod.

I did actually intend to mention dual wielding existing before GE- the point being that it existed in shooters before Halo, and Halo didn't have it. This is a regression, regardless of how important or not you think it is. Same for holding all weapons, multiplayer bots, unlockable cheats, difficulty-specific objectives, mission endings changing the start point of the next level, counter-operative multiplayer, etc etc etc... That's why dual wielding is worth pointing out.

I don't remember ever seeing a Halo enemy not fall flat on the ground either. I'm not saying they never did anything else in Halo, but GE sure had enemies slumping down dead against walls if you killed them up against them. And hell, even if Goldeneye didn't have something Halo did, that's the whole point- Halo was a later game. It's supposed to add to the genre (like Marathon did) or at least maintain parity. Not take the genre backwards.

By ranked weapons I'm referring to what you called 'power curve'- I'm assuming you meant some guns were lower powered and others packed more punch. Having 'viable weapons' as you call it isn't that much of a boast. That's a bare-minimum requirement of a shooter, GE/PD had that as well, and in far greater numbers than Halo. The fact other games stumbled with it doesn't really matter when comparing two games that didn't. And I really wouldn't bring up the basic Halo pistol if I were you- a gun so broken it was most player's sniper rifle of choice. Even Bungie itself soon realised how ridiculous that was and balanced it out in later Halos.

The point of health kits is so that it specifically wouldn't be accidental. You learn your environment. You use what tools you have to get the job done. Regen health is like an overprotective mother mollycoddling you through every level. It works great in, say, a sandbox where health kit locations are more difficult to have placed with the right amount of consistency, but in straight up shooters they're just a bullshit 'hide behind box to win' mechanic. Maybe you're not seeing the appeal of surviving a hard slog through a level that's meant to be challenging if you learned FPSes by using cheats, but trust me, it's there. And having played shooters on both sides of the shift, I'm pretty sure regen is hopeless for anything other than the most casual playing experience possible.

I wholeheartedly agree that it was easy to fuck up level design and health levels in a shooter, but neither GE, PD, TWINE or many, many other great shooters that came before Halo suffered from it. So again, irrelevant. As for copying Halo- I meant game mechanics, not setting, though there were definitely a decent amount of sci-fi shooters in Halo's wake.

Except its a really pointless point. Its literally saying I don't like this game for not being that game. You complained about me talking about the unreal bots but keep bringing up this.

Then you didn't pay attention, the enemies would conform to the floors they fell on. If an arm or leg was hanging over an edge it would literally hang down in a way that actually looked better then the physics engine the later games would use. Oh holy crap, stop with your this game isn't that game bullshit. Its a really dumb point. Golden Eye didn't have the cool enemies of Doom, it didn't have the inventive enemies of Quake, it didn't have the story of Strafe, it didn't have the cool weapons of Blood, it didn't have the giant robots of Earth Siege, it didn't even have the William Shatner of Tekwars.

Every gun in Halo had a place, most other fps games have one or two throw away backup weapons. Such as the pistol in most fps games or the dinky melee attack you have. In the later halo games they made it suck like a normal pistol in other games. Essentially making it pointless.

Then you must not have ever really played an old school fps game. Its really easy to stumble over a health kit when your just missing a few points and not have it for later. It can be really annoying to finish a firefight with very little health left and have to back track through the whole level to scrounge as much as you can back. Hell, you still had to do that in HALO. Because it still had HEALTH PACKS! The shield was just for a slight added layer of protection. Plus, you are full of it, I already told you the best fps game is Serious Sam the Second Encounter. But if you don't know how that one plays then I don't know why we are even talking.

Name some of them then, besides Mace, Killzone and Haze, also it doesn't count if its Doom 3 based or part of a series.

 

[Lufia Erim]

You have a very biased list here that gets really nit picky just to give Golden Eye all these points and take away all these points from Halo. I get that your a fanboy but damn man, calm down. A lot of your list is like complaining that Final Fantasy isn't Super Metroid.

And in one paragraph, the last one at that, you just completely invalidate your entire post. You apparently just have a bone to pick to be edgy. Too bad too because it could have been an interesting discussion. Literally disregarding everything you said.

 

[Squilookle]

Except its a really pointless point. Its literally saying I don't like this game for not being that game. You complained about me talking about the unreal bots but keep bringing up this.

Then you still aren't getting it. If Unreal Tournament came out before Goldeneye, and on consoles, and then GE came out without bots, then yeah, Goldeneye would be regressing the genre. You can't blame a game for not having things that didn't appear in gaming until later. But it doesn't work the other way around, and with Marathon, Rise of the Triad, Marathon 2, Blood, Tomb Raider (if that counts), Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and numerous others before Halo having dual wielding- Halo's complete absence of it (until remedied by Halo 2) was a glaring regression. Do you see the difference now?

[Halo's] enemies would conform to the floors they fell on. If an arm or leg was hanging over an edge it would literally hang down in a way that actually looked better then the physics engine the later games would use.

Well why didn't you say that to begin with? Now it actually makes sense! You're right, GE's bodies always assumed a flat surface to fall on. But as pointed out before, it came out before Halo (and in 1997 was also the genre leader in enemy reaction behaviour for console -and- for PC anyway), so therefore irrelevant.

Every gun in Halo had a place, most other fps games have one or two throw away backup weapons. Such as the pistol in most fps games or the dinky melee attack you have. In the later halo games they made it suck like a normal pistol in other games. Essentially making it pointless.

Yeah, but as has already been pointed out, all the games under discussion handled their gun selection better than most
[sub](even if GE had more than twice the guns of Halo, and Perfect Dark three times as many)[/sub] and as a result bringing that up is like comparing Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing and complaining that there are car games out there that don't have weapons at all.

Then you must not have ever really played an old school fps game. Its really easy to stumble over a health kit when your just missing a few points and not have it for later. It can be really annoying to finish a firefight with very little health left and have to back track through the whole level to scrounge as much as you can back. Hell, you still had to do that in HALO.

Yeah, that's pretty annoying, if the health packs only feed your main health and can't be stored. Good thing GE and Perfect Dark made the armour and shield separate from the main health, and therefore a health item you would always pick up on sight, and therefore never have to backtrack for. But yes, thanks for pointing out that additional way in which Halo was a step backwards.

you are full of it, I already told you the best fps game is Serious Sam the Second Encounter. But if you don't know how that one plays then I don't know why we are even talking.

Don't get upset just for forgetting who you're replying to. That was hanselthecaretaker you mentioned Serious Sam to. And considering that game has 3/10ths of fuck-all to do with our comparison, I didn't mention it, not least because you were talking about it it to someone else.

We done here?​

 

[Kyrian007]

I can think of one way it was ahead of its time. My roommate bought one nearly straight away after their release. After enjoying it for a little over a month it bricked for no reason. Well not no reason, we were trying to use it to play video games. I guess that partially makes it our fault. Anyway the Xbox was the Xbox 360 years before the Xbox 360 would make shoddy hardware synonymous with the Xbox brand. Although that one month was enough for us to get through Halo. Neither of us preferred it to Perfect Dark on my positively ancient N64.

 

[Worgen]

You have a very biased list here that gets really nit picky just to give Golden Eye all these points and take away all these points from Halo. I get that your a fanboy but damn man, calm down. A lot of your list is like complaining that Final Fantasy isn't Super Metroid.

And in one paragraph, the last one at that, you just completely invalidate your entire post. You apparently just have a bone to pick to be edgy. Too bad too because it could have been an interesting discussion. Literally disregarding everything you said.

You're wrong, this could never have been an interesting conversation. Its probably the stupidest debate I've been involved with online. This is literally a nothing debate over the stupidest shit.

Except its a really pointless point. Its literally saying I don't like this game for not being that game. You complained about me talking about the unreal bots but keep bringing up this.

Then you still aren't getting it. If Unreal Tournament came out before Goldeneye, and on consoles, and then GE came out without bots, then yeah, Goldeneye would be regressing the genre. You can't blame a game for not having things that didn't appear in gaming until later. But it doesn't work the other way around, and with Marathon, Rise of the Triad, Marathon 2, Blood, Tomb Raider (if that counts), Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and numerous others before Halo having dual wielding- Halo's complete absence of it (until remedied by Halo 2) was a glaring regression. Do you see the difference now?

And neither had the super weapon type weapon as showed up in doom which had a port on console before hand. There fore both are now regressive bad games. You still have no point here and its a really dumb argument.

[Halo's] enemies would conform to the floors they fell on. If an arm or leg was hanging over an edge it would literally hang down in a way that actually looked better then the physics engine the later games would use.

Well why didn't you say that to begin with? Now it actually makes sense! You're right, GE's bodies always assumed a flat surface to fall on. But as pointed out before, it came out before Halo (and in 1997 was also the genre leader in enemy reaction behaviour for console -and- for PC anyway), so therefore irrelevant.

You don't get to use that as an argument since you're already bringing up stuff that literally doesn't matter.

Every gun in Halo had a place, most other fps games have one or two throw away backup weapons. Such as the pistol in most fps games or the dinky melee attack you have. In the later halo games they made it suck like a normal pistol in other games. Essentially making it pointless.

Yeah, but as has already been pointed out, all the games under discussion handled their gun selection better than most
[sub](even if GE had more than twice the guns of Halo, and Perfect Dark three times as many)[/sub] and as a result bringing that up is like comparing Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing and complaining that there are car games out there that don't have weapons at all.

And call of duty has more guns then all of them, having more guns means nothing. What is your point?

Then you must not have ever really played an old school fps game. Its really easy to stumble over a health kit when your just missing a few points and not have it for later. It can be really annoying to finish a firefight with very little health left and have to back track through the whole level to scrounge as much as you can back. Hell, you still had to do that in HALO.

Yeah, that's pretty annoying, if the health packs only feed your main health and can't be stored. Good thing GE and Perfect Dark made the armour and shield separate from the main health, and therefore a health item you would always pick up on sight, and therefore never have to backtrack for. But yes, thanks for pointing out that additional way in which Halo was a step backwards.

Almost every fps game has separate health and armor since Doom. In fact, you could carry a health kit in Heretic and Duke, which means that GE regressed from those 2 games, in fact, it also regressed since it didn't have the level of interactivity of Duke, or the amount of level destruction Duke had.

you are full of it, I already told you the best fps game is Serious Sam the Second Encounter. But if you don't know how that one plays then I don't know why we are even talking.

Don't get upset just for forgetting who you're replying to. That was hanselthecaretaker you mentioned Serious Sam to. And considering that game has 3/10ths of fuck-all to do with our comparison, I didn't mention it, not least because you were talking about it it to someone else.

We done here?​

You are forgetting rule four of stupid as shit internet arguments. Just cause a post wasn't directed at you doesn't mean it won't be brought up. We both know this stupid shit doesn't end till one of us gets suspended.