What do you see in halo?

[MrSnugglesworth]

Xbox Live is the only reason I bought it. Mostly because Bungie is the BEST at making user friendly Xbox Live gameplay.

 

[GuerrillaClock]

The great thing about Halo is that it has a search button that you can use to check for identical threads, of which there have been about 100 in the last few months. Oh, no wait, I've gone and got it confused with this forum.

Hooray, my first Search Nazi post!

Anyway,

they're good, controls are nice, the game smooth and polished, and I had fun playing it.

this pretty much answers your question. It's a good game, better designed than most. If you ask a Halo basher what the game actually does wrong, very rarely will you get a clear answer. No one actually claimed Halo is the best game ever, but it is very, very good at what it does, and the multiplayer is excellent.

And if you had fun with it, what is there to ***** about? Isn't that what games are for?

 

[irishdelinquent]

My point was to prove that although there are many different means to achieve a single end, this is not a ground-breaking feature of Halo.

To take your point to its obvious conclusion, chess is always the same because you can only win by checkmating the king. There may be many different ways to achieve that single end, but in the end it comes down to pinning down one piece of your opponent's.

Chess has been entertaining people for well over a thousand years. It may or may not be your thing, but it has endured and prospered. I fail to see this as a strike against Halo's gameplay.

-- Steve

A very valid point. However, while it is not a strike against Halo's gameplay, it is also nothing special. That was the point I was trying to get across; this so-called innovation is nothing worth bragging about. I was trying to debate that just because you can take down an enemy in different ways, it is not innovative. Fun? Yes. Hillarious? Yes, especially when you play co-op and you fly away in the Hornet right as your teammate is about to get on to avoid dying in a Scarab explosion (I'm a bastard when I play). Innovative? No.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

My point was to prove that although there are many different means to achieve a single end, this is not a ground-breaking feature of Halo.

Chess has been entertaining people for well over a thousand years. It may or may not be your thing, but it has endured and prospered. I fail to see this as a strike against Halo's gameplay.

A very valid point. However, while it is not a strike against Halo's gameplay, it is also nothing special. That was the point I was trying to get across; this so-called innovation is nothing worth bragging about.

Did anybody claim this was an innovation? If so I didn't see it, and they'd be wrong.

However, innovation isn't the sole or even best criteria to measure a work... as many a person can attest who has sat through an innovative piece of atonal eardrum-piercing instrumental "music" or endured an innovative abstract painting that for all intents and purposes is indistinguishable from the stains on the painter's smock. An obsession with innovation is the mark of the jaded observer, in my opinion, and not the mark of the astute observer; something innovative can be just as shite as something staid, and yet all too often is praised as avant-garde by bored critics looking for anything, even shite, that's different.

Halo may not have innovated in its "boss fights", but in the main it has presented them well, balanced them carefully and given players considerable lattitude to solve the fight however they prefer... if the players are good enough at their preferred styles. The fights have enough variety that each challenge can be met with a fresh approach, if desired, but enough continuity that players can fall back on their tried-and-true tactics... if they're good enough at them.

Halo's draw, again in my opinion, is that it does so much right that a broad audience can find at least one aspect of the games to be appealing.

-- Steve

PS: There actually is a lot of innovation in the Halo games, but it's largely in the "under the hood" stuff. The mechanics for in-game host switching, the AI structure, the UI elements, the test regimen, the implentation of the "saved films" feature... all of these either have crept or will creep into other studios' works. That it's invisible to the casual player is both unfortunate, since it denies Bungie recognition, and by design, as the games were first and foremost designed to be played by people and not critiqued by critics.

 

[Yooz]

I see a Spartans crotch coming towards me then retreating...then coming towards me..then retreating. Et cetera.

 

[tk1989]

No one actually claimed Halo is the best game ever?

What about the thousands of halo fans who lay such claim?
I am sorry, but many many xbox fans see Halo as the epitome of gaming, which it clearly isn't; its good, but not that good. Also, the number of journalists that ended up giving it perfect scores was incredible.. and quite pathetic. If Halo is the perfect game then perfection is incredibly flawed.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I am sorry, but many many xbox fans see Halo as the epitome of gaming, which it clearly isn't; its good, but not that good. Also, the number of journalists that ended up giving it perfect scores was incredible.. and quite pathetic. If Halo is the perfect game then perfection is incredibly flawed.

In your opinion. In my opinion WoW is an oversophisticated chat client... that doesn't mean that WoW is incredibly flawed, just that it's not what I'm looking for in a game.

Lern 2 empathy, d00d.

-- Steve

 

[Cymbal Monkey]

The great thing about Halo is that it has a search button that you can use to check for identical threads, of which there have been about 100 in the last few months. Oh, no wait, I've gone and got it confused with this forum.

Hooray, my first Search Nazi post!

Anyway,

they're good, controls are nice, the game smooth and polished, and I had fun playing it.

this pretty much answers your question. It's a good game, better designed than most. If you ask a Halo basher what the game actually does wrong, very rarely will you get a clear answer. No one actually claimed Halo is the best game ever, but it is very, very good at what it does, and the multiplayer is excellent.

And if you had fun with it, what is there to ***** about? Isn't that what games are for?

Yes BUT there are games I had more fun playing, I'm not bitching, I just wanted to know what I wasn't seeing.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

What I love about Halo is the amount of freedom you're given in choosing how to tackle a battle, take for example the battles with the scarab tanks in Halo 3, there are so many ways to take them down you can just have fun experimenting, unlike other more linear games where there is only ever one way to defeat an enemy. Also the way vehicles are implemented in the games is unlike any other I've played.
I love Halo's story and how effortlessly epic it all feels, the multiplayer is also great although I'm not a big fan of any multiplayer games.

I remember the battles against the Scarabs from Halo 3, and I remember you take all of them down the same bloody way; shoot out the legs, climb onboard, blow up the power generator, retreat and watch "epic explosion", repeat as necessary. While the game may allow you to take down the Scarab without using a specific gun, that's pretty much it as far as choosing how to take down an enemy.

I've:
-ridden on an NPC-controlled Hornet as it touched down on a Scarab. I got out, hit the generator, it went critical, and when I got to the top of the Scarab, the Marine flew the Hornet back to me and landed on the Scarab to pick me up. I swear, the Marine driving AI is crap, but this seriously impressed me.

-flown a Hornet around and took out the Scarab generator without chopping down the legs. Just a few accurate missile launches.

-taken it out with the Scorpion's cannon acting as a giant sniper rifle.

-jumped onto it from the crane in "The Storm", taken it out from the inside.

-jumped onto it with the Gauss 'hog, then taken it out from inside.

So really, they'll always end with taking out the generator, but there are a ton of ways to do it besides simply crippling it and getting inside.

I never understood why the scarab didn't just step on you...

What I see in Halo is a good solid shooter with nice, colourful graphics and some better than average vehicle sections.

And girly pink guns...

 

[SithLibrarian]

I only started playing Halo 3 last year. Until then, I never saw the appeal to the game and thought there were better FPS titles on the market. But after playing multiplayer with my friend one afternoon, we've since made it a weekly activity over Live. Multiplayer is Halo's biggest draw, since the single campaign is kind of boring - unless you're playing co-op, that is (which is the only way I'll play it).

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I never understood why the scarab didn't just step on you...

Oh, it'll try; it's just a bit slow, so if you're paying attention it's fairly easy to avoid. Not that I haven't had my ATV (and passenger, and cranium) crushed under its metal heel once or twice after getting cocky...

-- Steve

 

[Warbasse]

Mediocrity. Plain and simple.

 

[NeutralDrow]

I see myself wielding dual needlers, proclaiming myself the Lord of the Geode Harvest, and raining death from above while giving off a bone-chilling war yodel.

...at least, that's what I did when I played last. I've only done multiplayer.

 

[AT God]

It is a very simple game, simple to the point where it bores me. But some people enjoy something simple.

The game is just point and shoot, you can run into the enemy base and maybe survive. Teamwork increases your success but isn't required if you get good at shooting things.

I think its fun, but I don't think I could have it replace games like Team Fortress 2 where teamwork is necessary and you get a larger variety of things to do. Even COD has more choices in strategies then Halo, and I don't love COD, especially 1,3, or Waw.

I don't know, I have friends who spend their lives on halo and just enjoy it, but the lack of weapons, the fact that many weapons are piss useless, and the vehicle whoring makes it lame for me. I just play campaign and after a while you get bored shooting the same wise-cracking things or rip off headcrab hordes. I get more enjoyment from a UT than a Halo, but I can't say its a bad game, just too simple for me.

 

[Arcade_Fire]

It's not bad... it just pales is comparison to several of the exponentially better first person shooters out there (Bioshock/CoD 4 & 5/Bad Company)

 

[Worr Monger]

Somehow Halo is the crown jewel of Xbox multiplayer. I wouldn't know because I don't play it

I've only played the first one... I'll play the other 2 when #3 is released on PC.. if ever.

I personally don't understand the hype.. sure it was a very decent game for the early life of the Xbox, but it was in no way revolutionary IMO. I thought the single player game had some fun features but was very repetitive.

I don't get how the story is so extravagant either.... I won't say it's bad.. just average.

I also find it hard to take the game seriously when I see goofy little aliens making wacky noises as I pump a hundred rounds into them.

I don't hate Halo but..

To me.... if Disney were to make a FPS game... it would be Halo.

 

[irishdelinquent]

Halo's draw, again in my opinion, is that it does so much right that a broad audience can find at least one aspect of the games to be appealing.

-- Steve

I can definately agree with you on this part. I have heard many a reason from different people on why they like the Halo series. Some enjoy the online multiplayer, while others have never touched it. I myself just love playing local co-op.

PS: There actually is a lot of innovation in the Halo games, but it's largely in the "under the hood" stuff. The mechanics for in-game host switching, the AI structure, the UI elements, the test regimen, the implentation of the "saved films" feature... all of these either have crept or will creep into other studios' works. That it's invisible to the casual player is both unfortunate, since it denies Bungie recognition, and by design, as the games were first and foremost designed to be played by people and not critiqued by critics.

I agree 150% with you here. As a studio, Bungie has put a lot more effort into developing their games than most.