Why I Hate Halo (And Other Stories)

[ThePerfectionist]

Despite what I chose to title this thread (hey it got you to read it, didn't it?), this post isn't really going to be about the many things I find wrong with Halo and all its bastard children. No, I have a larger problem I want to talk about, it's just Halo's fault that that's what made me notice exactly how big a problem it was in the first place.

For those of you who don't want to read through what I anticipate will be a lengthy post, let me just put the main point here:

Why are developers sacrificing single player for multiplayer?

Having said that, let's elaborate. I want you to consider something. When a person buys a game at a store (or online, or whatever), what does that tell you about the person? (Also, for sake of example, let's assume that the game is not given as a gift)

Does it tell you that person is social? No, and in fact if they play video games they probably lean at least a little on the anti-social side.
Does it tell you the person has any friends? No.
Does it tell you that the person has a gold Xbox Live membership? Probably not.

There is only ONE thing that you can pretty much guarantee when someone buys a game for themselves. They own the console that it's for, and they WANT TO PLAY IT. Each copy of a game sold equals ONE more person playing. Maybe they want to play online, maybe they don't. Maybe they want to play co-op, maybe they don't. But they are PLAYING THIS GAME. The only thing you know as a game developer is that people will buy it to play it. So why are so many games coming out that operate under the assumption that people have friends to play games with, or worse yet, that they want to play online with some 12-year-old douchebag?

I'm not against the concept of multiplayer - I certainly play Demon's Souls online and have my Soul Sign down whenever I have the chance - but I don't like what the future looks like when games like Halo and Call of Duty, which have the shittiest of shit single player, are selling like mad because people are clocking upwards of 300 hours playing online. Multiplayer is a FEATURE for fuck's sake, not a premise. It goes on the box next to 'cinematic gameplay' and 'all-new combat system' (though admittedly, you wouldn't see the second one next to any shooter in the last five years).

As you may have gathered by now, I'm a little bit biased in this area because I love single player. I love playing through an epic campaign, spending hours and hours doing whatever it is the developer has set out for me to do. Multiplayer to me is ultimately pointless; sure it's fun to skirmish every now and again (I have spent more time with Perfect Dark's multiplayer than I'd like to admit), but the core of any game should always be the part made for the person who bought the fucking game.

Some games are exceptions to this rule. Party games like Rock Band (or something like Mario Party) don't require a strong campaign mode to succeed, though it always helps. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock still managed to be boring as fuck despite having the most innovative single player of any music game to date. Though I haven't finished Rock Band 3's yet, so that may change. Those games, I don't go into expecting to play with a set goal, besides maybe 'unlock all the songs' and even that is only so I have more material.

These games, however, are few and far between. Shooters, RPGs, RTSs, and all the other genres that make up the majority of gaming are supposed to provide me a distraction for 10 or 15 hours (or in the case of Tales of Symphonia, 60 hours). I haven't played MW2 myself, but from what everyone that HAS played it tells me, you can practically get through the story mode in a lunch hour. I don't understand why people are willing to pay full price to run around in the same dozen environments shooting the same six guns at the endless horde of online opponents.

Games started as single player experiences. As technology improved, we developed co-op and mulitplayer, and eventually online interactions. All of those are good things, but it's important to remember where we started, and where the core must remain.

Oh, one more thing.

It may be hard to tell from that rant, but my problem is not directly with games that focus on multiplayer. That MAG thing game out a while back and I didn't have a problem with it. I didn't buy it, but it was fine by me. Why, you ask? Because it SOLD itself as a pure multiplayer experience. My problem, for those of you that are wondering and didn't catch on from the one-line-explanation at the top, is when developers make the single player suck because they are paying more attention to multiplayer. Single player should NEVER take a back seat. Either make it the priority or don't put it in at all.

 

[Thyunda]

Now you're talking rubbish. The whole point of playing games is the fact you're PLAYING A GAME. PLAYING. Key word. I'm not saying Multiplayer should be valued over singleplayer, I'm saying a good story is all well and good, but it'll only last you the once. To me, multiplayer is far more important than singleplayer in a game. Bioshock 2, for example, has a damn good singleplayer, and multiplayer is only a feature.
The multiplayer is dead and game retailers in England are trying everything they can just to sell a few copies.

I would definitely prefer multiplayer playability to single player replayability.

 

[repeating integers]

I agree with your point - it's annoying when games sacrifice single-player for multiplayer. But I strongly disagree with you on Halo, which I play for the excellent campaigns. That's right - I bought Halo 3 for the campaign (and played through it 5 times), I bought ODST for the actual ODST disc rather than the multiplayer disk and loved every minute of it, I then got Halo 2 for nothing but the campaign and thought it was awesome, and despite playing the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta, I bought the full game with the campaign at the forefront of my mind. I love Halo's singleplayer, it doesn't feel half-assed at all - to me at least, it feels like they devoted equal effort to all sections of the game. And here's the clincher: I played Half-Life 2's singleplayer campaign up to the conclusion of Ravenholm before having to stop, and while it wasn't bad, I preferred the campaigns of all the Halo games I've played (which is all of them but CE).

As for Call of Duty, I haven't got it or played it much, so I can't comment. Doesn't sound like my kind of game, I don't like dying so easily.

 

[Robyrt]

Q. Why do developers spend so much time on multiplayer?

Answer #1. Multiplayer is more profitable than single-player. Since existing players keep their games longer, and early adopters feel pressure to get in on the ground floor with everyone else, full-price sales are higher and used sales are lower. Peer pressure helps drive sales of map packs compared to single player DLC, and multiplayer lobbies are a great place to serve ads for your DLC that the campaign can't match. (When they tried it with Dragon Age, everyone hated it.)

Answer #2. It's more efficient to make a single-player and multiplayer game at the same time than it is to make 2 separate games. You can reuse art assets, level design, and even some testing resources.

Answer #3. Long story-driven games are increasingly difficult to make. They're super expensive, they hit all the toughest competition (Blizzard, Bioware, Valve, Rockstar, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Sony), and as gamers grow older, they have less time to spend in an enormous complex narrative before they want some payoff. Few people care that Halo's missions are disjointed and the storyline an afterthought, because they only have time to play 1 or 2 missions between putting the kids to bed and the end of the night.

Answer #4. The industry's most dedicated customers - males 18-25 - are heavily into multiplayer. It's a lot easier to convince them to buy the Next Hot Shooter than it is to convince John and Jane Smith to buy another RPG.

 

[twistedheat15]

TLR!! From what I did get, you're basically bitching because you think special work goes into multiplayer over single which it doesn't but even if it did so what? For a long single play to work in a game like CoD or Halo you need extensive levels, Big in depth story lines, a slew of other crap. To make the multiplayer work you just need a map, guns, and people, everything already taken from the single play, but adding people gives it replay value.

Even if the companies did cater to multiplay more so then single, it's because they know the multiplay is what's gonna bring longevity to the game itself. You're basically bitching "I don't wanna play with ppl, these games should be longer" When their focus was more so on multiplay to begin with. Telling them to go big or take it out in general is just stupid.

 

[Baby Tea]

Multiplayer is a FEATURE for fuck's sake, not a premise.

Totally wrong.
Look at MMOs! Multiplayer is the whole focus of the experience!
Games like Halo and Call of Duty are like a halfway point between the MMO and the singleplayer experience.

Now, don't get me wrong: I love singleplayer in games. My favourite games are all singleplayer-focused games (Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, Homeworld, and so on). But multiplayer is huge and it's here to stay. Like it or not. Some games do put single player in second place, like MW2, but that's why you research the game you're playing.
There are still plenty of great singleplayer games out there, and more being made!
It's not like there are zero games out with great singleplayer!

This whole rant seems to way-overblow multiplayer shooters in a very sensationalist way.

 

[The Long Road]

This point was brought up earlier, but I'll expand on it. Multiplayer is an easy way to get a LOT of replayability out of your game. Yes, you have to devote a lot of resources to networking, but then you don't have to create wastefully massive game worlds and sophisticated enemy AI. The developer can just say "We'll let the players fight each other, because they're smarter than any AI we can make." Combine that with an easier map design challenge than for a single-player mode, and people will play your game damn near non-stop if it's any good.

Single player, however, requires so much more. Massive levels, lots of audio recording, friendly and enemy AI, a plot (debatable nowadays), encounter scripting, cinematics, and if you want to include boss fights, a lot of time and energy goes into a single enemy that never shows up again. It's difficult, it's expensive, it's time-consuming, and there is a good percentage of people who own CoD4, CoD:MW2, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo: Reach, GoW, and GoW2 who have never played the campaign mode of even one. Contemporary gamers, especially the tweens and young teens, seem to prefer to shoot their mouths off over teh interwebz rather than sit down to a finely-crafted campaign.

One other thing that might be related: I've noticed that people have stopped using the term "Halo-killer" for any potentially good FPS coming out in the near future. Now that there are games that truly rival Halo's multiplayer, it's easier to get your foot in the door. GoW is a perfect example, CoD4 to a lesser extent. However, every single campaign-oriented FPS is compared to Half-Life as inevitably as the sunrise. If the game falls short, and it always does, it's given a single overwhelming response: meh. Maybe nothing, but I think there's a correlation.

 

[Matt_LRR]

...

Really?

The Halo games (1, ODST, and Reach, especially) all had excellent single-player campigns. Excellent far beyond what I would reasonably expect from the developer of a game that people buy almost exclusively for the multiplayer.

Bungie has continually impressed me with their comittement to creating a compelling singleplayer game to pair with their multiplayer, because those guys have got to know that maybe a third of their audience is ever going to do anything but play online deathmatch until the next one came out.

In fact ODST goes even further to prove this point, considering the entire game was based around characters seperate from the master chief, who had only been introduced in the campaign of Halo 2 - and the frequency with which I as a gamestop clerk was asked "WTF is an ODST" by frat boys had me wondering if I was the only person who'd ever played the game for the story.


the Modern warfare games are another great example of the above. Both games had excellent, well produced, action-movie like campaign modes, that were difficult, fun, varied and inventive. Admittedly, MW2 cut the length down, but they seriously upped the intensity and the action-movie feel.

These are not games that exemplify half-assed singleplayer tacked on to a fully-realized multiplayer game.

You're using full-package-deal games to illustrate your point, and I think the examples you've chosen are really weak.

-m

 

[ThePerfectionist]

...

Really?

The Halo games (1, ODST, and Reach, especially) all had excellent single-player campigns. Excellent far beyond what I would reasonably expect from the developer of a game that people buy almost exclusively for the multiplayer.

Bungie has continually impressed me with their comittement to creating a compelling singleplayer game to pair with their multiplayer, because those guys have got to know that maybe a third of their audience is ever going to do anything but play online deathmatch until the next one came out.

In fact ODST goes even further to prove this point, considering the entire game was based around characters seperate from the master chief, who had only been introduced in the campaign of Halo 2 - and the frequency with which I as a gamestop clerk was asked "WTF is an ODST" by frat boys had me wondering if I was the only person who'd ever played the game for the story.


the Modern warfare games are another great example of the above. Both games had excellent, well produced, action-movie like campaign modes, that were difficult, fun, varied and inventive. Admittedly, MW2 cut the length down, but they seriously upped the intensity and the action-movie feel.

These are not games that exemplify half-assed singleplayer tacked on to a fully-realized multiplayer game.

You're using full-package-deal games to illustrate your point, and I think the examples you've chosen are really weak.

-m

Wow, a post from a member of LRR *flattered* (that's not even sarcasm either)

I bought Halo 3 when I got my Xbox (mostly because there was very little else out at the time) and I got so very very bored with the campaign mode. I've never played more than a couple hours of the previous games, but the whole story concept of the first three just didn't draw me in at all.

That said, I have heard good things about Reach from people who hated Halo 3, so maybe I should give that one a chance.

I admit with MW2 I was just feeding off what seems to be the popular consensus, as I've not played it myself. I didn't hate the original MW campaign, but once again it just felt like they weren't putting any effort into the emotional side of it (granted, I stopped before that radiation scene that everyone loves, so maybe it needed more time).

Then again, this may just be me. I have a long list of games that I've tried on recommendation and hated.

 

[repeating integers]

One other thing that might be related: I've noticed that people have stopped using the term "Halo-killer" for any potentially good FPS coming out in the near future. Now that there are games that truly rival Halo's multiplayer, it's easier to get your foot in the door. GoW is a perfect example, CoD4 to a lesser extent. However, every single campaign-oriented FPS is compared to Half-Life as inevitably as the sunrise. If the game falls short, and it always does, it's given a single overwhelming response: meh. Maybe nothing, but I think there's a correlation.

Having now played Half-Life 2, I feel an almost religious need to respond to every person who says stuff like this.

I've played Half-Life 2 up to the conclusion of Ravenholm. Beyond the terror induced by that level, what, precisely, was so special? The campaign was average. It had its good moments. The physics puzzles weren't as annoying as what I'd been led to believe. But I think Halo 2 - the direct competitor to Half-Life 2 as it was released in the same year IIRC - had a better campaign.

So, what is it in Half-Life's story you love so much? Maybe I just need to play the original, but I really can't imagine that's aged well. It's older than Homeworld, and the only reason that hasn't really aged at all is because it lacks any form of competition other than its own sequels.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Now you're talking rubbish. The whole point of playing games is the fact you're PLAYING A GAME. PLAYING. Key word. I'm not saying Multiplayer should be valued over singleplayer, I'm saying a good story is all well and good, but it'll only last you the once. To me, multiplayer is far more important than singleplayer in a game. Bioshock 2, for example, has a damn good singleplayer, and multiplayer is only a feature.
The multiplayer is dead and game retailers in England are trying everything they can just to sell a few copies.

I would definitely prefer multiplayer playability to single player replayability.

allow me to provide a counter example to your point
you are saying that a good single player story only lasts you as long as it takes to finish it
so for sake of E.G. Modern Warfare lasts 5 hours, Enslaved lasts about 12 hours, and Tales of Vesperia lasts about 60 hours. (and then there are Bioware games that encourage multiple play-throughs)
so that's fine.

but how long does an online multyplayer match last?
5 minutes? 15 minutes if your playing a big team battle? 2 minutes 30 seconds if some douche gets a nuke?
and then what you're done?
then what? you play one of every type of game on every multyplayer map available? that's about 3 or 4 hours?

even if you love multyplayer how many times do you have to play Infection at Sword Base before it starts to get boring?
wouldn't you rather play a well constructed campaign than shoot the same 13 year old douche bags half a million times?

 

[tlozoot]

In the past we had RPG games, adventure games, puzzle games and all sorts. We had games that concentrated on story, or gameplay. Now we have multiplayer games as well. Honestly, with the availabilility of fast internet for most people now-a-days some games can pull off being multiplayer-centric. Dismiss it as a mere feature if you will, but that doesn't make it true.

I enjoy excellent single player games as much as the next guy, but I also bought games like MW2 and Halo Reach just for the multipalyer. Sure I had a great time with their single player portions, but I would not have dropped the money on them if I hadn't of known that I'd spend much more time with the multiplayer than I would with the single player. What's wrong with that? If the majority of people enjoy the multiplayer portion over the single player, then it's simply stupid not to cater to this crowd through subsequent sequels.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

OP:I can agree to a point.


ALso anyone saying games are games they are just that dose not understand what game play narrative is, if a game has crappy game play or limited designs then its fundamentally a bad game then again like flim if the story sucks why are you watching it so damn much?

Subjectivity aside humans are sheep who like zoimbies for brains go after media of the lowest common denominator and the studios are just fedding the ned for crap.

 

[thebighead01]

I am in total agreement with you ThePerfectionist. Single player campaigns for me, are why I buy a game in the first place. It's what I look back on whenever I think about my time playing games (e.g. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 when a certain someone dies at the end, or pulling out the Master Sword for the first time when playing Ocarina of Time). It's these moments that make my gaming experience so good and why I buy more games, to get more moments like that.

Multiplayer games are good fun, a way to kill a few hours, but when it created to the detriment of the single player it's not worth it. Worst still I have come off multiplayer in recent years simply because going online to play against people can be a chore. You have to deal with idiot, impatient people looking for their next headshot. I really don't want to have to deal with losers like that. I get that in real life, and games to me, are about getting away from that shit.

But I think developers and publishers in particular look to mulitplayer as the best way to increase their games longevity. The look at games like WOW and think that they should incorporate a similar model in their game. And it works. Look at MW2. People are playing the multiplayer, still playing it, and because of that pay for new maps and weapons etc and charge more for single player dlc all to keep playing.

Worst still you have developers who try to squeeze in multiplayer just for the hell of it, even if their game was originally and always should have exclusively remained single player. Dead Space 2 for example should have remained this way but instead resources are being diverted to create their new multiplayer; this in itself makes no sense because it takes away the no1 thing that makes a horror game horrific; the feeling of isolation.

And as has been pointed out games like MW2 suffer because of the diversion of resources to the multiplayer experience which leaves a short and rushed single player campaign (which was not worth the full price). Personally I'd like to see games being sold exclusively as single player games with the option to buy the multiplayer portion if you choose if developers and publishers insist on taking this course with games

 

[Blights]

So, you just started this thread to ***** about a game? You gave no discussion value, you're basically asking people just to argue back.

Halo: Reach was DESIGNED for multiplayer, it's like buying WoW then bitching because you don't want to play online. And as much as I hate MW2, it's on the same boat. Alot of games use Multiplayer for another fun aspect of the game, I have fun playing with friends, whether it be Campaign, Forge or Multiplayer.

 

[Haakmed]

As I have been playing games now I feel that most of the new games coming out are not focusing mostly on multiplayer over singleplayer. I have been noticing that a lot of games are trying to be like the big smash hit games like call of duty or halo because they know those games worked. Call of duty 2 was my last call of duty game I really loved to play both single and multiplayer because after that everything felt the same to me just in a different setting. The same I feel can be said of halo, while I like the halo story the gameplay is the same stale thing with no real improvements on the game other than the introduction of better graphics engine and new weapons which make things a bit more interesting. (aside from how a coworker and I feel about Reach's singleplayer story I still played every halo game for it's story and the multiplayer was kinda a fun bonus I played shortly.)

To me I have mostly been looking for games to buy that are new and something that is something I have not played before. Dead space changed how damage was inflicted to the enemies by making it so you had to cut parts off in order to do significant damage and that was something I really enjoyed. Sure the game was single player but I believe dead space 2's multiplayer will be enjoyable when released.

 

[The Long Road]

One other thing that might be related: I've noticed that people have stopped using the term "Halo-killer" for any potentially good FPS coming out in the near future. Now that there are games that truly rival Halo's multiplayer, it's easier to get your foot in the door. GoW is a perfect example, CoD4 to a lesser extent. However, every single campaign-oriented FPS is compared to Half-Life as inevitably as the sunrise. If the game falls short, and it always does, it's given a single overwhelming response: meh. Maybe nothing, but I think there's a correlation.

Having now played Half-Life 2, I feel an almost religious need to respond to every person who says stuff like this.

I've played Half-Life 2 up to the conclusion of Ravenholm. Beyond the terror induced by that level, what, precisely, was so special? The campaign was average. It had its good moments. The physics puzzles weren't as annoying as what I'd been led to believe. But I think Halo 2 - the direct competitor to Half-Life 2 as it was released in the same year IIRC - had a better campaign.

So, what is it in Half-Life's story you love so much? Maybe I just need to play the original, but I really can't imagine that's aged well. It's older than Homeworld, and the only reason that hasn't really aged at all is because it lacks any form of competition other than its own sequels.

Maybe you just need to, I dunno, finish the game? You're missing out on some of the best narrative-gameplay combos of modern gaming. Seriously, when I read "I've played up through the conclusion of Ravenholm", all I heard was "I'm 12 and what is this?". You're judging the game based on... half the game. And that's not including Episodes 1 and 2.

Based on your dismissal of Half-Life in general, especially after only playing HALF of it, I'd say you aren't qualified to make any kind of statement about what is and isn't a good campaign. You obviously like FPSs, but you couldn't recognize good writing if it smacked you in the face. The characters feel human, putting it head and shoulders above most FPSs right there. The setting is unique and fresh, and it has the right mixture of feeling bogged down in cannon fodder and fighting a few elite enemies. Halo 2 had a decent campaign at best. It doesn't stand up at all to HL2, though.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

I hate to interrupt the contradicting going on, but telling the OP that he should appreciate certain games' narrative and depth is like telling a kid who hates vegetables that he should really be enjoying his broccoli because it's the Best Food Ever. Some people just don't like certain games, or don't think they're of much value. I would sooner read space opera than Shakespeare. He may be literarily important, but it doesn't mean I like his work, or this it's The Shiznit. You can't tell someone what their opinion should be.

That aside, I believe he does and doesn't have a point. If a game is released and was created specifically for multiplayer, bitching about multiplayer is silly. It's like taking Metal Gear and bitching about the crazy anti-war plot, or taking Homeworld and bitching about the 3d-RTS theme. It's the premise of the game. Take Team Fortress 2, which is a wonderful game that is entirely about multiplayer. Take out multiplayer, and nothing is there. But it's still a stellar game, and much distinguishing should be made between "I wish this had single-player" (totally out of line with what the devs wanted) and "I don't like this game" (your opinion, which is valid). Don't spend your time wishing a multiplayer game would lean single-player.

On the other hand, games that promise a single-player plot and then just tease with a tiny little wimpy campaign are annoying. If a game in a plot-heavy series somehow decides to punt single-player for multiplayer, I'm going to feel cheated, because it's not what I was led to believe would be my experience, and I bought the game for single-player.

tl;dr -- ask yourself, before you complain about a game, what did the devs really want to do here? Was their objective a multiplayer experience or single-player? Did they want to have an epic campaign, or lead you to believe they would, and then fail? Or not? Buy multiplayer games if you want to play multiplayer, and single-player if you want to play single-player.

 

[archvile93]

The reason multiplayer tends to get the focus (and I'm not saying this is a good thing) is because it has more replayabilty. A campaign is good, but don't you enventually get tired of going through the exact same levels clearing out the exact same houses, with the exact same number of baddies in them, using the exact same weapons and equipment, who run to the exact some cover when you walk over the invisible tripwire, to complete the exact same objective? Replayability is important in most game, and the fact is the computer's predictable, other humans aren't

 

[LarenzoAOG]

OT: Sorry OP but I gotta rant about Halo.

I hate Halo, there are 5 Halo FPS's and almost nothing has changed from CE to Reach, the series main charecter is a non-entity, no personality, no backstory, brick. ODST introduced a brick that wore different armor and never spoke, Reach let you decide what color your brick was and if you wanted a boy brick or a girl brick. The best Halo game was Halo 2, and only because you got to play as the Arbiter, the only charecter who seemed to care about what was going on and was even remotely interesting.

The worst part of Halo is the fanbase, when I told a friend my favorite part of Halo was playing the Arbiter he said, verbatim "Why would you want to play an alien when you are supposed to fight them?", I was unaware someone could be so short sighted. Unlike most people who play Halo I actual paid attention to the story, and there is actually an intelligent message to it, the Covenant represents an extermist religous autocricy, zealously persuing what they are told to do by the tenants of their religion, unwilling to try to understand or learn about the "heretic" humans, there's a strong message about the danger of religous extremism and apathy towards mutual understanding, and they did it on purpose! I'm not reading to much into this, I'm simply reading the writing on the wall. But how many Halo fans got that part of the game? In fact, how many people are still reading this? If you actually read this entire off topic rant I want you qoute me.

/rant