So I've been watching back episodes of Zero Puntuation for funsies and I recently watched the Turok episode. At the end Yahtzee uses the phrase 'let's be like Halo' as a reason for why First Person Shooters are now rubbish, and lots of people agree with him. So I watched my way through his points and made this list in response. tl;dr is at the bottom
1. Use Console Controls Responsibly:
'Console shooters will always be crippled by the lack of mouse control, but a good console FPS will compensate by having smoother aiming or auto-targeting.' Just like Halo does. It has both in fact, smooth aiming and a light auto-targeting thingy that actually makes it flow quite nicely.
2. Bring Back Health Meters:
Halo 1 has a shield meter and a health meter. It also features health packs that you walk over to trigger, just like the 'old school' FPSs everyone whines about. Halo 2 onwards also had the shield meter, which actually functions about the same as a health meter, and since you died very shortly after your shield went down it might as well have just been a health meter. Further, it had an in-story reason for the shield (your health) regenerating.
3. Give Grenades Halfway Decent Splash Damage:
Like Halo did then. All throughout the Halo series the grenades have had pretty damn decent splash damage.
4. Stop Ripping Off Aliens:
Aliens features squads of grizzled marines of various ethnicities and grizzledness, all wizecracking their way through the various scenarios they find themselves in, like a lot of mainstream first person shooters these days. However, Halo featured a lone, silent protagonist (like Gordon Freeman) with very little personality assigned to him aside from what can be gleaned by the way the enemies react to him and his squadmates treat him. The closest Halo comes to Aliens is the crypod sequence but one shout out does not a ripoff make.
5. Stop Zooming Into The Backs Of People's Heads To Show We're Taking Control Of Them
Halo has never done this. Left 4 Dead, a game by popular designers and developers Valve has done this, but never Halo.
6. Stop Blowing All Your Money On Big Name Voice Actors Who Then Totally Phone It In
This one's harder to call, because it depends entirely on what you think 'phoning it in' sounds like. The main characters of Halo have never been voiced by people particularly famous, even within the voice acting community, with the possible exception of Keith David. There have been characters played by Ron Perlman, Michelle Rodriguez (who continues her fine tradition of dying in everything she has ever appeared in) and of course half of the cast of Firefly. However I never felt that these were phoned in, and heck the Firefly crew went on to make an entire game, for which they acted about as well as any other voice actor I've seen in games. This one comes down more to personal readings of the acting but the few big names they have never seen to half arse it.
7. The final point comes in the conclusion where he offhandedly mentions having more colours than gunmetal grey and dirt brown. Yes indeed, the bright blue, red and silver elites, the orange and purple grunts, vivid green landscapes, stark white fields, the need I go on exceptions to the brown and bloomy shooters of recent years really make me think that Halo has a limited palette.
So why am I making this list now? And what's the discussion value? I guess I'm just tired of still seeing Halo held up as an example of when shooters went wrong for most of the reasons listed above. I'm not saying everyone is blindly parroting Yahtzee but what everyone seems to forget is that Halo, especially the original but the sequels to some degree never actually fell victim to the problems most people blame it for. As far as I have ever been able to see its main problem was that it got popular, and bad First Person Shooters followed in its wake. But they weren't ripping of Halo, or if they were then they weren't ripping off anything that hadn't been done before in other games.
Further discussion value and tl:dr I posit that Halo did not ruin the development of FPSs. If you want to argue against any of my above points feel free. Or suggest the games that really did start the trend for the above points. Or say why Halo did destroy the industry for different reasons than the above. Let's try and keep it civil, there's a worthwhile discussion to be had if we can remain calm.
1. Use Console Controls Responsibly:
'Console shooters will always be crippled by the lack of mouse control, but a good console FPS will compensate by having smoother aiming or auto-targeting.' Just like Halo does. It has both in fact, smooth aiming and a light auto-targeting thingy that actually makes it flow quite nicely.
2. Bring Back Health Meters:
Halo 1 has a shield meter and a health meter. It also features health packs that you walk over to trigger, just like the 'old school' FPSs everyone whines about. Halo 2 onwards also had the shield meter, which actually functions about the same as a health meter, and since you died very shortly after your shield went down it might as well have just been a health meter. Further, it had an in-story reason for the shield (your health) regenerating.
3. Give Grenades Halfway Decent Splash Damage:
Like Halo did then. All throughout the Halo series the grenades have had pretty damn decent splash damage.
4. Stop Ripping Off Aliens:
Aliens features squads of grizzled marines of various ethnicities and grizzledness, all wizecracking their way through the various scenarios they find themselves in, like a lot of mainstream first person shooters these days. However, Halo featured a lone, silent protagonist (like Gordon Freeman) with very little personality assigned to him aside from what can be gleaned by the way the enemies react to him and his squadmates treat him. The closest Halo comes to Aliens is the crypod sequence but one shout out does not a ripoff make.
5. Stop Zooming Into The Backs Of People's Heads To Show We're Taking Control Of Them
Halo has never done this. Left 4 Dead, a game by popular designers and developers Valve has done this, but never Halo.
6. Stop Blowing All Your Money On Big Name Voice Actors Who Then Totally Phone It In
This one's harder to call, because it depends entirely on what you think 'phoning it in' sounds like. The main characters of Halo have never been voiced by people particularly famous, even within the voice acting community, with the possible exception of Keith David. There have been characters played by Ron Perlman, Michelle Rodriguez (who continues her fine tradition of dying in everything she has ever appeared in) and of course half of the cast of Firefly. However I never felt that these were phoned in, and heck the Firefly crew went on to make an entire game, for which they acted about as well as any other voice actor I've seen in games. This one comes down more to personal readings of the acting but the few big names they have never seen to half arse it.
7. The final point comes in the conclusion where he offhandedly mentions having more colours than gunmetal grey and dirt brown. Yes indeed, the bright blue, red and silver elites, the orange and purple grunts, vivid green landscapes, stark white fields, the need I go on exceptions to the brown and bloomy shooters of recent years really make me think that Halo has a limited palette.
So why am I making this list now? And what's the discussion value? I guess I'm just tired of still seeing Halo held up as an example of when shooters went wrong for most of the reasons listed above. I'm not saying everyone is blindly parroting Yahtzee but what everyone seems to forget is that Halo, especially the original but the sequels to some degree never actually fell victim to the problems most people blame it for. As far as I have ever been able to see its main problem was that it got popular, and bad First Person Shooters followed in its wake. But they weren't ripping of Halo, or if they were then they weren't ripping off anything that hadn't been done before in other games.
Further discussion value and tl:dr I posit that Halo did not ruin the development of FPSs. If you want to argue against any of my above points feel free. Or suggest the games that really did start the trend for the above points. Or say why Halo did destroy the industry for different reasons than the above. Let's try and keep it civil, there's a worthwhile discussion to be had if we can remain calm.
