Not really understanding the halo hate.

[Funkysandwich]

I think the games are fairly solid examples of shooters, and I enjoy playing them when I get the chance to (I don't have an Xbox, so I really only get to play splitscreen) but I don't get it when people say they are the best games ever. I don't hate Halo though, I just don't get the hype.

I think it's probably time to stop making Halo games now though. The Halo CE remake should be the last game in the series.

 

[Zhukov]

I thought it was alright. A polished and functional shooter that was basically fun to play. I am grateful for the fact that it introduced regenerating health and the one-button approach to grenades and melee.

Story and characters were generally dull and flavourless though. The series did occasionally manage to convey an impressive sense of scale and... urgh... "epicness", but it never did anything with it.

Also, I thought Halo 2 was significantly below the standard of the other games.

 

[zpm4737]

I think people's disdain for the series can be summed up nicely with this quote from Yahtzee: "It is by no means bad. What it is is average... Everything it does has been done before and better." People don't hate it. They just don't like that something so uninteresting and average has become so popular, while real innovation gets ignored.

In fact, just go watch Yahtzee's review of Halo 3. It applies pretty well to the whole series.

 

[kingcom]

People still hate Halo?

I thought all that moved to Call of Duty when that became popular.

It's just people hating on what's popular. Business as usual.

That said, the Halo hate on this site has died down recently - hell, I haven't even been seeing much CoD hate!

Yea I know right? Its not like people have actual concerns and complaints about a video game and provide clear conscise criticism of a game? Its CLEARLY just popularity.

Its also pretty popular to dismiss 'hate' as simply hate for popularity's sake....know what im saying?

 

[ChupathingyX]

I can't hate Halo, without it there would be no Red vs Blue.

 

[Xanadu84]

I hate Halo. It may not be repetitive brown, but it still feels repetitive, cliche, and shallow. However, I also aknowledge that the fact that it has brought joy to millions means that I have to admit that it succeeded in being a good game, because to say otherwise would be HUGELY pretentious. I suspect that Halo acted as a jumping off point for the modern shooter on a console, and my PC roots ruin that for me because I had already had a bunch of shooters that were well executed to play when Halo came along.

 

[ServebotFrank]

The thing is, the regenerating health thing in halo made sense because you had a sheild, but when things like COD copy it, it makes no sense at all. Bullet wounds aren't just going to heal in a couple seconds if you just leave them there.

I wish people would give the "it made sense in Halo because it's a shield"... follow that logic and every single shooter would have to be a science fiction because health kits and regenerating health don't make sense. Hell, health kits don't make sense in Halo. Consuming a health kit don't magically heal your wounds... so it makes no sense at all and is therefore, following your logic, it's wrong.

Doesn't matter if there's a sci-fi explanation for it or not, it comes down to "is this fun?" If it is, then it matters not one bit if the mechanic has some in-game explanation or not. Many of the greatest games of all time make absolutely no sense... see virtually every game released on a console or PC. Almost all of them take massive liberties with reality to make them fun to play.

And the shield regeneration mechanic is extremely similar to the health regeneration system. You take damage, you hide until it goes away. Any regeneration system alters the way the game is played, allowing players to play more aggressively than a system that has a finite amount of health available to the player. Whether this is a good or bad thing is down to player preference.

Technically the shield just serves as regenerating armor. You do have health and once you start taking health damage you die really fast. Granted Halo 2 and 3 took this away for some reason but Reach and ODST make brought the health bar back and required you to manage it because keeping it low just ensured your death.

 

[TitanAtlas]

I hate the Halo games because they just seem tasteless.... generic super-soldier onwards to save humanity... again.

The combat is bland and boring, the enemies are ALWAYS the same, there's no much variety, and even though the A.I. is supposed to be smart, i swear to god the most stupid things that i ever saw A.I. 's do, came from the Halo games...

At least they are all long has hell, wich for people who like them is good news... except Reach and ODST.

Hell, Reach is the only Halo game i respect. It has really good story, the sound fits perfect on the action, and it provides key events that keep people hanging to the controller.

But the rest of halo games, for me are not that great... ODST beeing in the very bottom...

 

[DarkRyter]

Halo Hate? You are obviously a time traveler from the past.

Dude, alot has happened since 2007. Like, we have a black president, now.

 

[General BrEeZy]

I will die for Halo. and i do very dearly love the color it has! plus, its a game where people get so much creative fun stuff made that keeps it from getting genuinely old. but all games can get boring, have cussing losers all over the multiplayer, etc etc etc, but Halo is Boss despite its faults.

im not a hater, i love CoD, Battlefield, and all other types of games.

 

[Deathninja19]

People still hate Halo?

I thought all that moved to Call of Duty when that became popular.

I know, right? I thought Halo 3 was the last hated game in the Halo series.

Hated by non-fans, that is... (Looks angrily at ODST and Halo:Wars)

How dare you ODST was the closest we will likely ever get to a Firefly game and to be serious I actually like Halo Wars, it somehow made a strategy game work on a console even if it was pretty easy.

 

[Bobbity]

You're right, I never actually got the hate for Halo. Halo: CE was as fun as anything, and one of the best games on the original Xbox. We still play LAN matches at school occasionally, when the teacher takes us down to the computers to do research or somesuch.

The Halo games are fun, colourful, and not at all bland. Admittedly, 3 and Reach were both a little too cover based, and I'm so sick of Microsoft milking the series that I'm not going to get the next one, but it was still fun. The multiplayer had some of the most interesting and creative modes you'll find in an FPS[footnote]Griffball and Rocket race, anyone?[/footnote], and even the single player had some pretty unique and memorable parts. Don't believe me? Ask anyone who's played the first game about the Maw, or anyone who's played the second about taking down that motherfucking Scarab. Years and years on, and I'm sure that every single one of them remembers those levels.

 

[Slayer_2]

You must have crawled out from under a rock. Halo isn't the current "cool" thing to hate, that would be Call of Duty.

 

[Netrigan]

Technically the shield just serves as regenerating armor. You do have health and once you start taking health damage you die really fast. Granted Halo 2 and 3 took this away for some reason but Reach and ODST make brought the health bar back and required you to manage it because keeping it low just ensured your death.

My point would be that it's a distinction without much of a difference.

In Halo, your shield takes damage and you have to hide to replenish it.

In Call Of Duty, your health takes damage and you have to hide to replenish it.

Other than the amount of hit-points you have, there's not a whole lot of difference between the two systems. Yes, in Halo some of those hit-points don't regenerate, but when I played Reach, I treated my health as a reserve (something not to be used unless absolutely necessary) and I treated my shields exactly the same way I treated my health in other games. Quickly figuring out about how much damage I can take before being forced to take cover. Defeating any game with a regeneration system is largely a process of figuring out this rhythm... only employing a more cautious approach in areas where death comes quickly.

And this system totally works in a lot of games, but there's I miss those random tense moments in shooters where you had to employ a cautious approach because you ran into a bit of bad luck. Part of the fun of Doom is that how you played the game could change the way you experienced a level. The game didn't reset to a default after every encounter. Every so often, a completely mundane encounter would become super-tense because you were near death. Yes, this sucked when the situation become unwinnable, but added a level of tension that is often absent from modern shooters.

 

[zpm4737]

Halo 3 sucked.

I'm not even going to try to defend that one.

WHY I OUGHTA!

Nah, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but three is second only to one in quality, at least in my opinion.

I think people's disdain for the series can be summed up nicely with this quote from Yahtzee: "It is by no means bad. What it is is average... Everything it does has been done before and better." People don't hate it. They just don't like that something so uninteresting and average has become so popular, while real innovation gets ignored.

In fact, just go watch Yahtzee's review of Halo 3. It applies pretty well to the whole series.

Eh. Not really when the first one came out. Now, I wasn't into shooters then - I was still playing Crash Bandicoot - but trying to dig up anything on shooters back then reveals nothing quite like the original Halo. Halo 3 and up have all suffered from the Seinfeld Effect [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny]., at least as far as my young eyes can tell. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it just doesn't seem so. Not that its lack of real innovation since the series proper actually ended helps.

Now, Halo, it is hated on these forums (and on the internet) often for a few different reasons, but none really having to do with the game's quality. I would wager that it's mostly because of what the series brought to shooters. The first is regenerating health. Yes, I know it did not have regenerating health, it had a shield, but the finger still gets pointed at it for starting that trend. Many people want ye olde health packs back, again failing to realize that only two Halo games of five are lacking health packs. The main complaint here is that it makes the game easy. My own opinion calls bollocks here - ever tried playing Halo 1 or 2 on Legendary? Resistance 2 on the hardest difficulty? What about Call of Duty 4? Point proven.

The second is weapon limits. I'm going to have to agree with this one - it would be so much fun to have one or two assault rifles and eight other well-made and interesting guns than just having to switch between them and pray that the developers are going to give you a rocket launcher when you need it.

Other, smaller things happened that helped stir the hate. It brought console shooters to a PC level, something previously unthought of, and many PC gamers point to it as a big reason why their precious complexity has been dumbed down to a point where us mortals can have fun with it. Though the original Halo's walking speed is fast compared to today's slowass marines, it was still slower moving than, say, Half-Life.

I'm sure there are other things that helped fuel the hate toward it, but those seem to be the major ones.

I played Halo before I played Half Life or Half Life 2, and I wasn't impressed. There's just nothing to it. It's like the Transformers of video games. Popular, and puzzlingly so. again, as Yahtzee said, "Colorful dross with the depth of a spoon." Oh, and sorry for enjoying games that aren't brainless shoot-em-up. Hey, according to you, it grants me everlasting life!

 

[StarsintheBlood]

I am in love love love with Red vs Blue.
Halo... its okay. Nothing super special, but nothing horrible. /Might/ call it generic, but it's pretty ok. Meh.

 

[Asita]

Honestly, I never really hated it, I was just puzzled by the game's overwhelming popularity. I played it, didn't see what the big deal was, but was happy enough to accept it as just a difference of opinion.