Poll: Why do people like Halo so much?

[junkmail22]

Halo was both critically acclaimed and popular among consumers. However, I see nothing special about the series. Even Halo:Reach, which was in my eyes easily the strongest of the series, seemed a bit weak for the 10/10 reviews it was getting. I would like to hear from both people who do like Halo and those who don't in this thread.

EDIT: Wow, I did not expect this thread to explode like this. I thought I might as well take the chance to share my thoughts.

Weapons: The weapons in halo aren't that great: none of them feel very effective or interesting, and all the guns kind of feel standard. It just feels like "Here is a gun" and nothing very interesting. The exception for me was the DMR in Reach, that just felt kind of powerful and satisfying.

Enemies: Alright, enemies in halo are really kind of standard. Elites hide behind cover and shoot you. Brutes are like elites, but bigger and tankier. Grunts are your standard cannon fodder fare, and the fludd are just the headcrabs from half-life copy-pasted in. Even hunters, which everyone sings the praises of, kind of fall apart as a challenge once you get the formula down.

Vehicles: Really nothing we haven't seen before, and the lerpy ai and awkward camera don't help it. Warthogs drive and carry people. banshees fly, nothing new.

Set Pieces and Maps: Every time I played halo, I felt like it always degenerated to firing at enemies across a big area, covering to let my shields (Which kinda killed the pacing) recharge, then repeating. The multiplayer maps are more interesting, but without an objective besides "Shoot this guy" it all fell apart.

Plot: Kinda standard but still somehow impenetrable. Aliens who are religious fanatics are trying to destroy the galaxy, Master Chief (Who is the most boring character ever) must be bad enough of an ass to save humanity. Oh and there are some zombie guys and a bunch of other bad-asses died a while ago.

Multiplayer: As mentioned before, it all feels deathmatchy and unfocused, and the random spawns and weapon placement make it feel a little luck-based.

All in all, I really don't get it's staggering popularity. It's unoriginal and generic, and even as a "dumb shooter" it still kind of fails.

 

[Able Seacat]

There have been a surge of 'why do people like things' threads recently..

But anywho, I like Halo because I enjoy the story, I find both the weapons and vehicles fun to use and I like the Halo universe it takes place in.

But as always, everyone is allowed their own opinion so just because others have liked it doesn't mean you have to and vice versa.

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

There have been a surge of 'why do people like things' threads recently.

Agreed. Makes me want to slowly kill something.

OT: It's a solid first person shooter that has been polished to an insane level. The story may be a bit convoluted at times, but that's ok, because there are always more aliens to shoot. They ugly, kill they ass.

You don't have to think about "why" you are shooting aliens, and you can just have a good time.

That's all there is to it, really.

 

[Doom972]

I recently decided to play Halo 1 on the PC and see what the fuss is about. Meh.
It's definitely not the worst shooter I played, but it's very basic and has nothing to distinguish itself from others. And the Vehicle sections are awful. They made Mass Effect's Mako look much better by comparison.

I think that the people who like it are just gamers who didn't experience the PC shooters of the late 90s and early 2000s and don't know any better.

 

[Evonisia]

I like Halo for it's story, well before Halo: Reach anyway. I'm aware that the gameplay never evolves and I believe as a game Halo is completely generic and second in line only to Call of Duty as an example of the "Standard Shooter" series everything tries to emulate.

I found it all very enjoyable, even Halo 3 to an extent. Oh yes and another thing: Halo has at least goodish villains. We all know the motivations of 343 Guilty Spark in Halo 1, the High Prophets and Tartarus in Halo 2, Truth and the Gravemind in Halo 3. It also knew how to kill them or "resolve their story", each and every one of them.

Some people don't like it but I'm a fan of the schizophrenic difficulty curve because it serves the story. There's no point in the 7th mission of Halo 3 being harder than the 6th when the 7th mission of Halo 3 is half stealth focused and half large scale warfare while the 6th mission is a horror-esque segment were you are surrounded on all sides by ever growing amounts of enemies and you're forced to navigate your way through crowds of your fellow man's dead bodies.

 

[shrekfan246]

I think that the people who like it are just gamers who didn't experience the PC shooters of the late 90s and early 2000s and don't know any better.

Fun fact: I've played Half-Life, all of the Doom games, classic Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, Quake, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Halo, etc.

And out of that list, you know how many of those games I've actually completed? Halo. ... and Star Wars: Dark Forces II, but that's because you get to be a Jedi.

It's almost like there are actually people out there who *gasp, shock, horror* might not actually care about whether your character zooms around at eighty miles an hour, flipping between an entire armory strapped to the void on their back or not!

 

[Rickin10]

I liked Halo, well loved the first one actually. At the time it felt to me like it had moved the FPS onward a bit. I loved how open some of the levels were. Then came Halo 2 and..well, dual-wielding came in and it felt a bit less nuanced and yet strangely stale at the same time, and it just got tedious. Ever since then its just been more of the same.

 

[80sboy]

People like stupid things sometimes because it doesn't force them think too much.

Okay that's not the entire reason.

Truth is, Halo is just a very well presented game, and nothing more. It's greatest virtue is how well it presents itself in it's shallowness.

You want a hero? Well, a faceless, toneless, personality deficient mecha-man is what we got for you here. He has a cool sounding name "MasterChief" (which is the highest enlisted rank). He's got big pew pewing guns. And his suit visually DOES look appealing without seeming generic - pretty simplistic eye-catchy design for a space marine exo-suit.

You want a girl by your side? Well, we have a holographic cyber-babe for you, that's somehow emotionally invested with a man with more depth than a fish bowl. Only depth I felt in her character were those giant child bearing hips that I sorta found were sexy.

You want bad guys to kill? Well, we have that too...so here you go! A speices of aliens that want to exterminate us because they don't like us. And since they goofy looking and annoying, it turns out to be boat loads of fun shooting them in their face and they run around jabbering like idiots. (first rule in creating a villain: if you can't make them menacing, at least make them annoying)

And as for the world - visually - I got no sarcasm. It looks like an interesting place, even though it doesn't make a lick of sense. The halos look cool, the exo-suits look cool. And the all the characters are personality void enough where we don't feel like the game needs any much more dept to intrigue us.

Personally, I consider Halo as a poor man's Mass Effect. But since ME decided to shoot itself in the foot in the third game, when it come to over-complicating, I guess I can enjoy coming back to a game where the plot doesn't need to make sense. Because I don't care, I'm happy with how superficial it is.

 

[Church185]

I chose "meh" but I really wish there was an option for "I used to" on the poll. I was at one point a really big fan of the Halo games, even buying up the spin offs that fleshed out the universe a little (in my opinion ODST was the best Halo, just sayin). After Reach, which brought everything full circle, I was satisfied. I felt like the series had reached a peak and that I was ready to move on to something else. I ended up buying Halo 4 to see what the new story was about, but I could never bring myself to finish it because it felt like fan-fiction.

 

[Korten12]

Well I personally love it because of the spralling universe. I own all of the books (except for The Flood) and have enjoyed all of them and I really can't wait to see where the series goes.

 

[Esotera]

It's a fun game to play, has a wide appeal, and is very easy to pick up if you leave it for a couple of months at a time. It's also pretty much the only game I can think of on Xbox that will let you do local 4-player splitscreen, meaning it's cornered the market...

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I loved Halo. It's the reason I got the original Xbox over the PS3

It was a really well designed Sci-fi shooter that had really cool visuals for the armour, weapons, enemies, vehicles etc.

It brought huge innovations to the Console FPS that led the market in showing how to design FPSs specifically for console controllers, instead of mouse/keyboard (increased auto aim, 2 weapon loadout, regen. health so a little damage every engagement from slower aiming wasn't a long term issue)

The graphics were amazing at the time, the locations in the first half of the game were breathtakingly beautiful and unique, the weapons were interesting and different, and all had weight behind them.

The plot was excellently put together, easy to understand, well paced, and the pseudo-horror shift in the middle act when the Flood showed up was bedwettingly terrifying to me and every other 13 year old that played it.

Not to mention the quality of the multiplayer; well balanced maps, well balanced weapons, solid gameplay mechanics...

And most of all FUN! It was a really rewarding experience to play the campaign, and really fun to play the multiplayer with friends.

The sequels built on this with improvements in graphics to keep it up to date, expansion of the story (the Arbiter as a playable character) expansion of weapons and gameplay mechanics (duel wielding was a huge change) and for Sci-fi lovers like me the universe exploded into this incredibly deep and fleshed out storyline of the interactions of the Humans, Covenant and mysterious Forerunners for millenia, which was carefully based of and referenced by subtle points in the games (although they unfortunately moved away from this a bit after the second one, and have even openly contradicted expanded universe stuff in the games - Reach most notably.)

It's not perfect, but it's a great Sci-fi game of excellent quality and a lot of behind the scenes depth.

 

[lLucky]

1st Post!

Reach is one of the worst in the series, actually. I'm a former fanboy of the series so I know a lot about Halo. It has one of the greatest universes/story in the FPS genre, and it even has some good books based of the games which set up even more canon backstory. At first glance, the games may look like a generic sci-fi shooter but you'd be totally wrong if you actually thought so.

Other than the SP story, most of the appeal comes from it's MP. You could play really entertaining custom games which were basically funny mini-games. You could always play the actual MP and jump into BTB, TS, or FFA also. If you were like me, you could also play Halo competitively since the games were sort of balanced back in the day. There aren't many FPS out there with this much to do.

 

[AITH]

There's a large portion of the Halo fanbase that enjoys the Halo story & universe. I don't really care about all that as much. I was a fan of the very first game, because of the age I was when it was introduced and the way it made me feel like a badass. Although I'm sure there are those that would disagree with me, it also seemed novel. I also really enjoyed the second one. The way everyone was looking forward to it, the complete graphics overhaul, the dual stories from the Covenant perspective, the dual wielding and online multiplayer were just awesome.

After that I sort of lost interest. 3 was inevitable to complete the series but didn't offer many new things. And I hated the plots of ODST and Reach. 4 just looks like more of the same to me.

 

[Doom972]

I think that the people who like it are just gamers who didn't experience the PC shooters of the late 90s and early 2000s and don't know any better.

Fun fact: I've played Half-Life, all of the Doom games, classic Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, Quake, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Halo, etc.

And out of that list, you know how many of those games I've actually completed? Halo. ... and Star Wars: Dark Forces II, but that's because you get to be a Jedi.

It's almost like there are actually people out there who *gasp, shock, horror* might not actually care about whether your character zooms around at eighty miles an hour, flipping between an entire armory strapped to the void on their back or not!

So you're the an exception to the rule. Feeling special? Most people who played classic shooters like Half-Life expect more from their shooters, I guess you're not.

 

[Zhukov]

I had a ton of fun with multiplayer in the original Halo:CE.

The campaign was okay too. I even enjoyed that library level.

Lost interest after that though. Played the other games, but they never quite clawed their way into 'good game' territory.

Halo 4 was just a mess. A mess with some nice moments, but a mess nonetheless.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

The multiplayer is really fun.

Not necessarily good, but fun. That's all people want, to be frank.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I think that the people who like it are just gamers who didn't experience the PC shooters of the late 90s and early 2000s and don't know any better.

Fun fact: I've played Half-Life, all of the Doom games, classic Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, Quake, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Halo, etc.

And out of that list, you know how many of those games I've actually completed? Halo. ... and Star Wars: Dark Forces II, but that's because you get to be a Jedi.

It's almost like there are actually people out there who *gasp, shock, horror* might not actually care about whether your character zooms around at eighty miles an hour, flipping between an entire armory strapped to the void on their back or not!

So you're the an exception to the rule. Feeling special? Most people who played classic shooters like Half-Life expect more from their shooters, I guess you're not.

mm i'm gonna have to throw my rag in with shrek, i fall asleep to the likes of half life, but i've beaten each halo campaign multiple times and played all the multiplayers a shit ton. if you like those shooters, then great, but as my body has proven, i'd rather fall asleep than continue to play those games, yet i've enjoyed halo quite a bit.

(not saying it's worth a 10/10, not at all, probably a 7 or 8ish depending on subjectiveness)

 

[Zhukov]

I think that the people who like it are just gamers who didn't experience the PC shooters of the late 90s and early 2000s and don't know any better.

Fun fact: I've played Half-Life, all of the Doom games, classic Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, Quake, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Halo, etc.

And out of that list, you know how many of those games I've actually completed? Halo. ... and Star Wars: Dark Forces II, but that's because you get to be a Jedi.

It's almost like there are actually people out there who *gasp, shock, horror* might not actually care about whether your character zooms around at eighty miles an hour, flipping between an entire armory strapped to the void on their back or not!

So you're the an exception to the rule. Feeling special? Most people who played classic shooters like Half-Life expect more from their shooters, I guess you're not.

Exception #3 reporting for duty.

I've played the old school shooters. I think they were mostly shit. (Okay, fine, System Shock 2 had some cool narrative stuff and Deus Ex had good level design.)

I enjoyed the gameplay of the original Halo significantly more.

It's almost as if different people like different things. It's almost as if your "didn't know any better" angle makes you come off as obnoxious and snobbish.

Crazy world, eh?

 

[Hades]

I won't pretend the main appeal of Halo doesn't lie in its multiplayer but the reason I like Halo so much is because at least it cares about its single player. Halo tries to have a decent story, they try to have a variety of interesting enemies, they try to have fun campaign maps and it paid off. I barely played the multiplayer and still felt content by the campaigns alone and that's rare in shooters these days.

Also, no iron sight, cover based shooting and crappy vehicle sections.