The haters of Halo

[Kaminobob]

one of the things that i very commonly hear is that halos 1, 2, 3, or some combination thereof sucked/sucked HARD/are only played by mentally incompetent fanboys.
i like halo. i liked 1, 2, and 3. the online community is retarded, drunk, and 6 years old but that's why god invented the mute button (and why bungie made it easier to get at in halo3.) and they are basically my only complaint. now, before i start wondering if i should ask Microsoft to pay me for this, let me get to my point:
people who dislike halo: stand up. wave. okay, then... if you say that halo is NOT a good FPS, what on earth DO you consider good? (and i mean pure FPS here. no FPSRPGs like system shock)

 

[Copter400]

I like Halo, too. A shining monument to FPS's, and this is NOT something you can argue with.

Well, maybe you can. I dunno. My point is that Halo has its faults, but I'm a competent gamer, which means my opinion counts, and I've played the bloody thing and enjoyed it. ENJOYED!

 

[Malidictuim]

I have Halo 1 and 2 and I like the games. They are challenging, well-made and well-thought-out.
I never played on Xbox Live but what I've heard is that Xbox Live tears the brain out of your skull and replaces it with half-dead rabid ferret with down syndrome. They are a few flaws but they are good games when you have 12 hours to kill and an Xbox handy (I'm an insomniac with an Xbox in my room. I named my controller Steve. =D)

Halo 1 was the shit (Excuse my french) and Halo 2 wasn't as good but still was a great game.
I've never played Halo 3 and frankly by looking at the quality scale from Halo 1 to Halo 2, I don't think I want to. But Halo is a great franchise and will be remembered as the game that made the Xbox what it is.

 

[Chris Evans]

I found Halo 1 a bit of a bore really at times. Sure there were some fun moments like the opening levels, but it quickly descended into a game full of the same areas...over...and over again. Something which frankly bored me.

Also The Flood....really hated them. Why were they in the game? They just made it really quite poor in my opinion.

I preferred Unreal 2 to Halo 1 which I think is saying something.

 

[Gir]

i can't stand halo... but thats just my personal opinions.. a good FPS? i would say something more like rainbow six vegas... THAT was fun.. evan if the terrorist's are pants on head stupid. or have the greatest fasination with running up to you and bumm-violating you with a shotgun.. but other then that, i love the cover system. and the game as a whole. i dont like halo. then again i dont like X-box. so *shrug*

-Gir

 

[Rowan_of_Rin]

I loved Halo 1, and I really can't tell you why, just good times. Halo 2 sucked and was a massive letdown, but I must say Halo 3 redeemed that in the best possible way. The campaign was fun, however, I am starting to realise where it really shines is in it's multiplayer, which I have been playing almost non-stop since it's release. OH and somehow..THEY MADE FLOOD FUN TO FIGHT. I repeat: FUN!!! I think it was the instant kill factor if you hit them in the right spot..now I look forward to our encounters!

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

I don't hate the series, but also don't think it lives up to the hype that surrounds it. The first Halo did the most I thought for the series, while the sequels mostly seemed to repeat the formula and tweak some gameplay mechanics for than anything else.

The first one, gameplay wise, did a lot of things right. The integration of melee attacks and grenades with single button pushes made them work, and made them not just back up weapons you had to switch to, but an integral part of combat. Vehicles were also very well done, they didn't feel tacked on or overpowered. Enemy AI could be a bit slow at times, but was also fairly good.

The biggest fault I saw was with level design. Up until the seventh level, all of the levels are fairly unique, and only really the third level seemed monotonous (trudging through the covenant ship). After that though the game just spiraled down. The Library is just an awful level, boring level design that is stacked on top of itself to make it much longer than it had to be. The eighth level (Two Betrayals) is just backtracking through the fifth level, but with added vehicles. The ninth level mimics the third with lots and lots more purple hallways in an alien ship. And the Maw is a lot of the first level but beat up and in an odd angle. It feels like they just ran out of time and had to force some backtracking to make the game last longer.

This was compounded by the fact that the game went from fighting fairly clever aliens that you needed some variety of weapon to dispatch with most efficiently (Covenant weapons for shields, human for unshielded) to killing zombies with a shotgun. The shotgun was extremely efficient at the job, and the Flood had boring suicidal AI.

AI and level design are two very important aspects of FPS games, and the latter half of the game seems to abandon what they did have in the former half. It could have been much better, but it did do a lot of things right, so I think the first one was overall a good game.

The second one basically repeated the formula. The level design in the latter half was somewhat better (if not original), but it degenerated into more zombie bashing. The lack of innovation though in Halo 2 really struck me, there was none of the innovation of the first one, the only thing that was even very new to the series was dual-wielding weapons. The game wasn't bad either, but without anything really new with a lot of mirrors of the previous game, I couldn't consider it very good, either. Above average for it's polish I would say, but not a stunning achievement in gaming.

I've only played a bit of the 3rd, but it seems to me to be a lot like the second one. Not a lot of innovation and sticking to the same principals of the first two.

The games clearly take a 'if it isn't broke, don't fix it' attitude towards themselves, and overall this can work I think. It makes for respectable games as a whole, but I also don't think it warrants nearly the hype they get either. The first one was good and fairly unique. The sequels more or less copy it and tweak some aspects. But it's been seven years since the release of the original, I think gamers should be expecting more.

What are some good, pure FPS? I would be careful looking for "pure" FPS, because that very well could knock out good games that dare to be innovative (innovation in the FPS genre isn't very common). The Call of Duty series is overall high quality, this year's Call of Duty 4 is a marvelous game in almost all respects. The Half-Life series has been quite an achievement. Bioshock released this year is also quite good, it's "RPG elements" as they're described aren't as deep as System Shock and it is much closer to a traditional FPS. The original FEAR game has some of the greatest pure combat sequences in an FPS game, and it can occasionally be creepy or give some good "Boo!" scares.

The Halo series isn't an awful FPS, but I think there are significantly better ones out there too. That's how I feel about it.

 

[Hellfire72]

i agree to some extent with GrowlersAtSea that gamers should be expecting more from the single player..... but. i would just like to point out that the memory capabilities of a console system are not too flasho. so some levels are forced to be repeated to reduce this. personally i also hated the "library" level from halo 1. it was way too monotonous.

but halo 1 was all about the single player. silly bungie. they got it right the second time around in halo 2. the lack of innovation in the single player is the point. they realised that the multiplayer outclassed it by a billion to one so they started working on that. obviously not enough tho, with not many changes, and one map being just copy pasted and then renames. BUT.....

Halo 3 went one step further in vamping up the multiplayer, combining armour modification, many more vehicles, and way better maps, with completely different single player levels to Halo's 1 and 2. This makes halo 3 the best of the lot. it has a lot better multiplayer, and a lot better singleplayer. but while halo was originally about the single player. noone cares anymore. it doesnt take long to finish on legendary if you have any sense at all so then it is purely the online and system link multiplayers which keep it going

overall. Halo 1: Great first try of a FPS
Halo 2: Not really any different, tried to make a better multiplayer. didnt really.
Halo 3: Single player slightly different and better. Multiplayer = THE SHIT

 

[rawlight]

Halo isn't bad per se, it's a typical FPS game. The problem that a lot of people (PC users) have is that it gets a great deal of hype because it is on the Xbox. Nowadays that doesn't really make a difference, everything is on the Xbox. But back in the day, when Halo first came out, people started to talk about it like it was the second coming. However, it was just an average game. Except for the fact that it was the only FPS game for the Xbox. It's kind of like Goldeneye for the Gamecube. For a Gamecube game, it was great, but for an FPS it was nothing special.

So at the time, Halo represented the bastardization of FPS games by the console market making enemies out of the old school PC gamers segment. Today, the bastardization is complete and the same crap comes out on every platform. The hate remains to remind of us of better times.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The biggest fault I saw was with level design. Up until the seventh level, all of the levels are fairly unique, and only really the third level seemed monotonous (trudging through the covenant ship). After that though the game just spiraled down. The Library is just an awful level, boring level design that is stacked on top of itself to make it much longer than it had to be. The eighth level (Two Betrayals) is just backtracking through the fifth level, but with added vehicles. The ninth level mimics the third with lots and lots more purple hallways in an alien ship. And the Maw is a lot of the first level but beat up and in an odd angle. It feels like they just ran out of time and had to force some backtracking to make the game last longer.

I agree with the criticism of The Library, but I think the replay of areas with variation in the last three levels was actually a good idea. It reinforces the sense of place in the game, rather than whipping you around lots of different places without really letting any of them become familiar.

I've only played a bit of the 3rd, but it seems to me to be a lot like the second one. Not a lot of innovation and sticking to the same principals of the first two.

That's rather the point of a sequel. Sequels are supposed to build on the parts of their predecessors that did work and tighten up the parts that didn't. Halo 3 does a fantastic job of that, without fixing the parts that weren't broken. Contrast that with Metroid Prime 3, which I feel does stray into fixing things that weren't broken by bolting on more cutscenes and characters, the gunship upgrades and having less sprawling connected areas. It's clearly a step down from it's predecessors, whereas Halo 3 isn't, it's at least as good as the other two, even at it's weakest.

 

[Zera]

The reason I dont like Halo is the reason I dont like FPS to begin with. They practically have no imagination any more. You either are going to be shooting the same soldier,alien, or mutant over and over again. Sure Halo has a good online mode, the game just seems generic which hardly tries to diffrenciate itself from other shooters. Im pretty sure technically its good, I am just not going to play it. Just the same old sci-fi shooter.

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

For seven years, sixty dollars more, and an entire console generation, don't gamers deserve a little more? Visuals, gameplay, storyline, from the first to the third, the changes aren't exactly breathtaking.

Maybe that's more a problem with the gaming community and not the game though, that people don't expect much in the way of innovation and change, and much like the movie industry people expect safe sequels.

 

[propertyofcobra]

Halo is not a bad game. Or a great game. It's an average, and extremely overrated, game.
Halo 2 was worse. I haven't played 3, so I can't comment, but from what I've heard it's still not that great.

Most Halo haters who actually dislike the franchise don't dislike the games. They dislike...well...the franchise. The huge media boom over it, the thousands upon thousands of slavering fanboys, all ready to grab a sniper rifle and camp in a safe spot (camping remains the absolutely most cowardly tactic in a FPS game, ever, no matter what justification you use, with the sole exception of guarding a mission objective. And no, the levels' only sniper rifle spot is not a mission objective.)

A game that gets perfect scores from absolutely everyone should be great in all areas. This means that you should be able to squeeze lots of hours of fun out of it without using the internet, unless the game exists specifically and only FOR the internet (Battlefield series, MMOs, etc.). This is not the case with Halo.

The single player campaigns of Halo and Halo 2 are short, boring, simplistic and overall pretty darn disappointing.
The multiplayer is great? Sure, whatever.


Someone else said it. Halo is to the Xbox what Goldeneye was to the nintendo 64. A rather average and boring game that, because it's pretty funny to play with friends, got the rank of supermythological god-game by fans who simply cannot even consider seeing the faults.

Only Goldeneye DID add something relatively new, hit spots on enemies, and the enemy reacting to them.


And of course, someone else explained how Bungie didn't even try with the single player in Halo 2 and 3...

So, if they deliberately don't give two flying fucks about their single player campaign, why in the name of hades is it such a great game series? Because it lets you run around and shoot people? Like every other game ever?



A lot of Halo haters hate Halo just because it's trendy to do so. A lot of them hate Halo because they don't own a 360, or so it would seem.
In reality, it's more of the opposite. Most 360 owners are also rabid Halo fanboys, giving the 360, in the eyes of anyone who doesn't care about that console, an air of "That one thing that keeps dying to piss you off that has halo".

I, personally, don't mind Halo. The first game had an okay single player. The second game had a much worse single player. The third game, from what I heard, didn't improve on single player a single, itty bit.

And as Yahtzee says, maybe the multiplayer excuses it, but it'd have to teleport whores into the room before I (and a lot of other people with me) start caring.
I don't hate the Halo franchise because it's popular. I hate it because frankly, there are much, MUCH better games out there, even in the FPS genre, that deserve infinitely more praise.
I see the Halo fanboys' reasoning though, because frankly, if your only PC is pre-pentium (and used only to yell at Halo-haters) and you have a 360, I'm sure Halo 2 and 3 seem like great, wonderful, innovative FPS games. Anyone who played videogames before the original Halo came out however knows very well (or should) that frankly, it's not as great a series as it's cracked up to be. I honestly believe that without Halo, first person shooters worldwide would be better, more innovative, and more fun to play. (I mean single player, of course. Because if a game HAS single player, that is what I will measure it by, with the multiplayer at most adding two points to an "out of ten" score.)

 

[TomBeraha]

people who dislike halo: stand up. wave. okay, then... if you say that halo is NOT a good FPS, what on earth DO you consider good? (and i mean pure FPS here. no FPSRPGs like system shock)

I don't consider Halo to be a good First Person Shooter. I played Halo on the Xbox first, hated playing a FPS with anything but a keyboard and mouse, and still do (this isn't Halo's fault) - However - I decided to give it another try when it came out for PC, I found it to be sort of interesting storyline wise, but not that good, it has it's moments though. Then I played it multi with friends over our LAN, and decided it was mediocre at best.

I'm comparing Halo to Unreal Tournament when I'm looking at multiplayer options. I'm comparing it to Deus Ex when I'm looking at single player games. And frankly - Halo doesn't stack up. The story in Deus Ex is certainly over the top but it feels like an awesome ride while it plays out, and the customization is unbeatable. I prefer Call of Duty when it comes to singleplayer pure action games, the pacing and excitement just feels stronger. Heck - I preferred Freedom Fighters in terms of squad based action and story. I don't feel like you've considered Half-Life or Half-Life 2, as both of those kick way more butt than Halo. I prefer System Shock to Halo any day.

That's quite a few games I consider good FPS games. Here's one more - though it would seem some would disagree with me - Metroid Prime 3. I've loved every minute of it.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I'm comparing Halo to Unreal Tournament when I'm looking at multiplayer options. I'm comparing it to Deus Ex when I'm looking at single player games. And frankly - Halo doesn't stack up. The story in Deus Ex is certainly over the top but it feels like an awesome ride while it plays out, and the customization is unbeatable.

Interesting, because as a shooter, Deus Ex is rather clunky. Until you've spent some serious skill points you're a laughably poor shot for a supposedly highly trained and cybernetically enhanced future special agent, the weapon balance is shot all to hell, half the weapons are useless due to their large inventory size relative to the amount of actual use they get in the game, and enemy reactions to alarms and people being shot aren't always terribly realistic.

 

[ajbell]

I have to say I don't much like Halo. (Well, I don't much like Halo 3, as that's the only one I've played for any length of time.) I don't hate it, but it's not a brilliant game.

One of my key problems with it are the enemies. I just can't take any of them seriously. The grunts? Who on earth thought they were a good idea. No one seems to like the Flood (with the honourable exception of Rowan_of_Rin). And they're all pretty monumentally stupid.

I'm also not much of a fan of the gameplay. I know it's a run-and-gun, but haven't we advanced at all since Wolfenstien 3D? Run in, lob grenade implausible distance, jump up and down whilst holding down the trigger and circle strafing. Repeat, for all possible battles.

And as for the multiplayer! It's not to my taste (at all), but I am willing to conceed that my just be me. I can't get past my dislike of it to actualy get into it. Maybe it's because I suck (which I do), but who the hell jumps during a fire-fight and then, when they're close enough, punches the enemy in the face, rather than unloading a clip full of hot lead into his brain-box? Weapon balance? When your fists do more damage than an entire assult rifle clip? Don't make me laugh.

OK, Halo 1 was important for the console market, and Halo 2 for the on-line console community, but historical importance alone does not excuse lazy, unoriginal game creation like Halo 3.

Hmm, I may ahve started off claiming not to hate Halo, but it sure sounds like I do. Oh well. I don't. Honest. I just don't think it's much good, either.

Give me Half-Life any day.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

My game can beat up your game. Neener-neener. Pthbtbtbt.

And now, back to something worthwhile.

-- Steve

edited to add: Because the phrase won't stop bothering me until I type it out, I offer two words:

Underroos braggadocio.

How it applies to the current discussion is left as an exercise for the reader.

 

[FatRabidRamboCow]

As a gamer, I can see why so much love surrounds the Halo series. In most people's eyes Master Chief is "Adorable" in a sense of the word. The Super Soldier complex character design just seems to suck people in, added the fact that he has his face hidden adding mystery to the character. And as a game, it did the job: Hero, Baddies, Guns.

But as a hardcore FPS fan, I hate it. The gameplay is poor, the enemies are boring, and the guns are unsatisfying. On top of that, Master Chief is a cliched rip-off of Flynn Taggart from Doom. What I consider to be a good FPS doesn't have these problems.

 

[LordOmnit]

I've played both Halo 1 and 2, but not three.
I tried out the single player and thought that the story wasn't particularly well presented, but maybe I didn't get far enough into it, so no flaming me for that.
The gameplay was somewhere along the lines of mediocre to poor, considering that all of the characters turned with all of the urgency of a comatose, the characters handled a little better than a sheep in a supermarket trolly, and there was basically three options when talking about the weapons: (1) pathetically piss weak (2) 1-hit kill (3) elbow/gun-butt.