Let's Be Like Halo! Wait... what?

[Mysten]

I most definitely agree.

A lot of the dislike for Halo I see on the internet comes from the new definition of FPS that has developed in the wake of the Call of Duty explosion. The term FPS has little to do with the actual first-person perspective and the gunplay (I cringe every time someone calls Gears of War a FPS), it's now just a blanket term for 'macho guys with guns do macho things with guns while everyone feels macho in a brown-grey world of chest-high walls and completely unrealistic scenarios' and all of the negativity that that brings along with it.

Halo has a much deeper story than anyone gives it credit for, especially if you pick up one of the novels and delve into the expanded universe. The fiction recently got turned on its own head with the release of Halo: Cryptum which essentially redefined everything we thought we knew about the Forerunners, Precursors, Flood and Humanity's shared past and it's all the better for it.

I love Halo. For me, that's enough. If people on the internet feel like rolling out the ol' "Halo ruined shooters, Halo sucks" argument on the forums, I'm not going to argue when I can just pick up my controller and stick grunts with plasma grenades for half an hour instead. Time better spent.

 

[KaosuHamoni]

I love when people say games copied Halo. They didn't.

They copy Call of Duty today, but I don't feel there were ever any TRUE Halo clones. Halo was Halo, you either liked it or didn't. Nothing looked like it was straight stealing from it. Developers took some ideas (just like every hack and slash action game cribs from DMC, God of War or Ninja Gaiden to some extent), and games moved on. The only "Halo" trends I see are regenerative health and the idea of holding two weapons at a time. Both of these aren't even copied wholesale in most games (Gears lets you hold four weapons)

Totally in agreement with you, Mr. Topic Creator

Fixed it for you =]

 

[AwesomeFerret]

Edit: OT: Yeah, I never got why people thought Halo started the bland shooter trend, especially in the color department. I don't see how Halo could have started the bland gray and brown shooter trend, when Halo has always been more colorful than most shooters that came after and even some before it.

I completely agree with you. Heck, all the colours and general fun over-the-top-ness is what makes me prefer Halo to Call of Duty.

Spoiler: Off-topic rant against my Google Chrome browser

Screw you Google! I don't care if you're American dictionary spells colour as "color", I'm British dammit! I like tea and cake and watching Doctor Who on a Saturday night! And I spell colour as "colour", the way it's supposed to be spelt!

 

[Irridium]

Well if that is the case of the term, then I really don't consider Halo to have any auto-aim. With the regular projectile weapons, I have never had the reticule stick to a target and follow it, I'm the one doing the moving of the reticule to stay with the target. If the target moves too fast for my thumb moving the targeting-directional-view thumb-stick, then I won't hit it because it will run out of the reticule.

I don't see how people can complain about the three I mentioned, needler, sticky launcher, and rocket launcher.

The needler has always had homing capabilities with the needles coming out, but I have never had the needler reticule stick to the person I am firing at. Yes it turns red when I am in range for homing shots, but the reticule has never followed the person I targeted.

Even with the sticky launcher, it does have a slight lock, but once players press the charge up button, they have to follow the target manually before the reticule turns red and locks(for only a brief moment), then homing after fire. But it is the only weapon in the game that purely locks to anything.

The rocket launcher is like the sticky launcher in that players have to keep aim manually while the lock on mechanism syncs up for rockets to home, but even with that, the rocket launcher only locks on and homes in on just vehicles, it won't do it with people.

So that is why I was puzzled by what the other poster said about auto-aim in "Halo 3/Reach being completely overkill", when only three weapons only show slight if any auto-aim and really it isn't auto aim, it is just homing after the fact of shooting. Besides two of them are alien weapons and I would expect something like that from race that is somewhat more advanced.

The DMR, Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Pistol, and other weapons human or alien that aren't the three I mentioned, have never had any auto-aim when I used them.

But now I read again what you say at the bottom of your response "Halo is a good console FPS, so it does contain a lot of auto-aiming...", it makes no sense to say Halo has a lot of auto-aiming when only the three weapons, the needler, sticky launcher, and rocket launcher, have barely what could be seen as auto-aim. The other weapons in the game have absolutely no auto-aim.

So, taking in how many weapons there are in the game, Halo has hardly any auto-aim. Nothing but my own fingers and some luck has helped me get a few headshots with the sniper rifle or DMR.

Halo doesn't really include auto-aim(which I believe is automatically aiming for you like the snapping-to-enemies mechanic seen in Call of Duty, Red Dead, and GTAIV). But it does have quite a bit of aim-assist. In a recent GameInformer Magazine, Bungie explained how their auto-aim system worked. It was described in their Battlefield 3 issue(March, I think it was).
Halo makes use of friction and magnetism. Friction slows your turning speed when the reticle is over an enemy. Magnetism keeps the reticle trained on the enemy when the enemy or you are moving. The only weapons in Halo that have no aim-assist are un-zoomed sniper rifles. Every other gun has its own special settings, with some heavier than others. But its there.

The difference with Halo is that Bungie did it so well, its hard to notice unless your actively paying attention to it.

 

[Hyper-space]

Saying that FPSs are rubbish now would be too ignore the litany of Doom/Quake/UT-clones that were made back in the days, copying the most famous shooter is nothing new.

 

[dosp5]

I think I speak for everyone ( on this forum at least) when I say thank you, for pointing out that the halo series isn't some bland uncreative shooter.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

gigantic snip

The reason for the 'irrelevant' topics was because I was literally copying word for word Yahtzee's points from the Turok review. He makes the seven points, then attributes all the blame to 'let's be like Halo.' My counter point was that in fact none of his points related to Halo in any way, either because they were qualitative judgements or they were just something Halo didn't do. My further point would be that most of the other things people blame Halo for don't in fact originate there, but that would have made my post about twice as long.

Fair enough. Though keep in mind that Yahtzee's 'reviews' aren't exactly reviews, and he often just says stuff like this for the hell of it. You can't entirely say that Yahtzee himself truly thinks something based on a few lines from a video which was made to be funny, but that definitely doesn't render him unable to be disputed based on what he does say though.

 

[Spud of Doom]

Halo CE was indeed a landmark game in many ways. I can still go back and thoroughly enjoy the campaign in that game.

 

[Ranorak]

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.

Very debatable.
Whether a mouse or controller is best for a shooter is pretty much up to the player, as is Halo's gunplay being smooth.
Though then again Halo was one of the first games to have any form of auto-aim, which pretty much every FPS has in some way nowadays. Though personally I think Halo 3/Reach's auto-aim is completely overkill, its way too much of an assist and just takes the fun out of the game.

Hello, my name is Goldeneye, meet my sister Perfect Dark.
We would like our 'auto-aim' reward, thank you.