Why I Hate Halo (And Other Stories)

[IBlackKiteI]

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

I think you are sort of asssuming that Halo goes on about religious extremism stuff too much.
One can pretty it up any way they like but theres no dening that Halo, story wise, is just a halfassed load of bullcrap that only serves to get the 'brick' from point A to point B killing as many aliens and crap along the way for no damn reason.

It has as much of an intricate backstory and meaning as much as Modern Warfare 2 has a decent plot line.

 

[GLo Jones]

It would suit me just fine if Call of Duty would take the Team Fortress 2 approach and just ditch the single-player entirely. I'm sure there's some people who only bought CoD for the campaign, but I'd wager they're in the VAST minority.

Shooters and Fighting games are better as multiplayer experiences, plain and simple. The Halo series has managed to have some above-average single-players throughout the series, but it still plays second fiddle to the awesome multiplayer.

I expect I probably won't pay any attention to the Black Ops singleplayer until at least 6 months into having the game.

 

[Mikeyfell]

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.

I just got a great idea for a game
It'll have extensive levels, a big in depth story line and a slew of other crap.
doesn't that sound better than six hours of staring at the back of a chest high wall waiting for the bullet noises to stop long enough to poke your head out form behind cover and try to head shot one of the billion identical terrorists or aliens that clog up FPS's like the toilets at an Indian restaurant?

doesn't that sound more fun than Call of Halo Reach of Honor of War 2 Theft Auto?

or is an original thought to much for you to handle?

Nope it isn't an original thought because there are hundreds of games with the same premise. Picking the one with chest high walls, flying bullets and identical terrorist and then bitching because it doesn't have what you want outta it, instead of playing something else is stupid.

Nope?...
that's a bit of a flippant dismissal isn't it?

just because there are hundreds of games with ...you know, a story line and expansive levels and other crap doesn't make them unoriginal.


this is what I said if you strip away the assholeism

games with original stories are better than the shrift we get from main stream games

this is you

having a story is not an original idea

my complaint is that chest high walls, identical terrorists and flying bullets are the only elements in mainstream games. whether they be in Gears of War, Halo, Modern Warfare or Metal of Honor...or any thing else.

including those 3 elements is like the magic trinity that will ensure a game millions in profit from the crowd that can't realize that they already own at least 4 identical games

and I suppose I feel the need to ***** about it for the same reason you would intervene if you saw someone pouring sugar into the gas tank of your car

only in this case the gas tank of my car is the game industry
and the sugar is bad copy pasted FPS games that make so much money that no one has any interest in trying to make good games anymore.

 

[ICanBreakTheseCuffs]

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.

When I see someone talking like this I think FANBOY ALERT! I mean c'mon.You're basically using the term "It gets better.....later." because your complaining that he didn't play the entire game so he's a heretic.HE DIDN"T PLAY THE REST OF THE GAME BECAUSE IT DIDN"T APPEAL TO HIM!gosh.Good Writing doesn't make a game the best singleplayer experience in the world.The thing I don't like about singleplayer is that it FORCES you to do this.Especially HL2 because several times Alyx asks if your up for something and immediately she assumes yes.Maybe I don't want to sneak around and get inside the the nexus because maybe I want to be in the front lines where I can drastically improve morale and blow up striders and hunter-choppers and shit TO FEEL LIKE A BADASS!the only reason you play games is to have fun.NOT to experience the kind of story that the developers made up that I don't strictly care about.NO game to date has struck my fancy in terms of singleplayer because most stories I don't give a shit about or atleast in the way they tell it.But I'm getting off topic so I should probably get back on.In summary,Saying someone has no right to say his opinion about a game because he didn't find it appealing enough to go on is complete bullshit!But your probably going to find another way to make HL2 seem like the seemingly "perfect" singleplayer experience and anything else put up to it is poop because your another inhabitant in the city of ENDLESS HL2 fanboys.

 

[Blank Kold]

You can't argue your point based on your preferences. Sure, you may like single player games, doesn't mean someone else will. And you may not like multiplayer games, doesn't mean that everyone else also dislikes them.

If you're aiming for cost efficiency, you'll probably end up playing an online fps since, as you said, people can chalk monstrously large amounts of play time. If you're playing for an immersive experience, you'll probably go with an rpg or some sort of genre game.

Regardless, saying that something should be disregarded because you, a singular person person among a multi-million consumer base, dislikes it is borderline ignorant. No one is forcing you to play anything.

 

[repeating integers]

When I see someone talking like this I think FANBOY ALERT! I mean c'mon.You're basically using the term "It gets better.....later." because your complaining that he didn't play the entire game so he's a heretic.HE DIDN"T PLAY THE REST OF THE GAME BECAUSE IT DIDN"T APPEAL TO HIM!gosh.Good Writing doesn't make a game the best singleplayer experience in the world.The thing I don't like about singleplayer is that it FORCES you to do this.Especially HL2 because several times Alyx asks if your up for something and immediately she assumes yes.Maybe I don't want to sneak around and get inside the the nexus because maybe I want to be in the front lines where I can drastically improve morale and blow up striders and hunter-choppers and shit TO FEEL LIKE A BADASS!the only reason you play games is to have fun.NOT to experience the kind of story that the developers made up that I don't strictly care about.NO game to date has struck my fancy in terms of singleplayer because most stories I don't give a shit about or atleast in the way they tell it.But I'm getting off topic so I should probably get back on.In summary,Saying someone has no right to say his opinion about a game because he didn't find it appealing enough to go on is complete bullshit!But your probably going to find another way to make HL2 seem like the seemingly "perfect" singleplayer experience and anything else put up to it is poop because your another inhabitant in the city of ENDLESS HL2 fanboys.

Thanks for your support lol... but I think the guy ragequit the thread after I responded to him with a wall of text.

I don't hate the Half-Life franchise (anymore), but good lord some of its fans... If the Halo series' minority of screaming 12 year olds are "meta-cunts", then I hate to think what the Half-Life series' minority of elitist and superior pricks are. Uber-cunts?

 

[Thyunda]

Or they could make a more multiplayer game and then BAM! They hit the big money. Single player, once again, has pretty much hit its limit. What else you can do with another form of telling a story? Make it more interactive? Well, wouldn't it be fantastic if you could interact with REAL PEOPLE?!

wow...what brought this on

and secondly what's so great about real people
real people are all shallow one dimensional characters who I find boring and predictable.
It's grating just to know they exist

am I some how less of a person because I get more emotionally invested in fictional well written characters that don't exist and never will.....

okay don't answer that please........
I'm begging you
answer this instead

no other form of media could get away with this zero content zero evolution approach to making profit.

okay except movies and television...... and books [sub]damn you Twilight[/sub]

alright fine so I'm talking out my ass

but all those shows and games and books and movies are just shooting for the lowest common denominator
and I put generic multyplayer driven games like Call of Duty at the nadir of media along with movies like Jack Ass and TV shows like American Idol and books like Twilight

there does that make me less of a person

Crikey. Who lit the fuse on your tampon?
But seriously, you called me one-dimensional? That's a pretty dickish thing to say, man. The reason no other medium can get away with it is because a game is what you make it. You can't rewrite a film while you watch it.
As for Zero Content/Zero Evolution, why is MW2 so popular? I hate the game, but I won't deny it's good. I could play it, but I'm not very good at it and I get stressed too easily by it.
And I actually like Jack Ass. It's random and good for a few giggles. It's called entertainment. It's hardly Shakespeare, but I can enjoy that too. For example, right now I'm listening to Phantom of the Opera. Afterwards, I'll probably put a Pitbull album on. Classical opera straight to mainstream R'n'B? It's called varied taste.

 

[Ampersand]

Never really got into mass effect, I started playing but then i just rewatched babyon 5.

Oh snap.
oh no you didin't

Bioware is the only company that can keep me coming back to a game

Yeh I get you ^_^
They don't really appeal to me but i get why their so popular.
To tell you the truth a game i'd really like to play is one with a story as great as mass effect or dragon age but with gameplay like prototype (I heart prototype, but you could substitue any game that you thought had epic gameplay in there)

that's why I miss games like Ratchet and Clank
or Jak and Daxter

Jak and Daxter was epic =D

yup...and now Naughty Dog is making Indiana Jones meets Tomb Raider
oh dear what is the world coming to

The reason i'm studying video game design, is that i respect designers freedom to make what ever games they want. So if I want really want a game made i'll make it my F-ing self.

 

[Frotality]

well from all the responses its quite obvious the game industry is going nowhere i want to be.

games are supposed to be games, not first-person facebook. a game that relies on a such a simple aspect of human nature like socializing to make it fun is exploiting that to make up for, as the OP said, shitty singleplayer. case in point; single player takes work and effort to make, multiplayer is cheap and easy; and you people are also making it more profitable. why do you all hate quality so much? if you dont give the game industry any indication that you desire more than move-aim-shoot, then there will never be anything else. if a well-marketed pile of dung outsells actual food because the dung is eaten in big, glorious, dung feasts with all sorts of other people, why would anyone keep making actual food? does anyone see my point? if you actually bought mostly food and just forked over for a dung party every so often, dung salesmen would be forced to have quality dung to stay in business; and more importantly, the thriving food industry would be able to provide you with....food. to eat. and live. and not fester inside you, killing all that made you unique and interesting, replacing everything with dung. sure, at a point they might drop in quality as demand exeeds supply (as if that will ever happen), but however processed and mediocre the food gets...its not dung. the food industry would call the shots; they could make what food they want, instead of trying to make it all as dung-like as possible just so it will sell.

i for one, find that dung doesnt really have lasting appeal; its good for a snack, but i need some actual nutrition most of the time. but apparently im in the minority; apparently you all are satisfied eating at dung parties for the rest of your lives. guess ill just have to start fishing and hunting (indie games!) if i want real food from now on.

 

[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

I think you are sort of asssuming that Halo goes on about religious extremism stuff too much.
One can pretty it up any way they like but theres no dening that Halo, story wise, is just a halfassed load of bullcrap that only serves to get the 'brick' from point A to point B killing as many aliens and crap along the way for no damn reason.

It has as much of an intricate backstory and meaning as much as Modern Warfare 2 has a decent plot line.

Ah, sir I believe we've met, this time however I'm inclined to disagree with you, I'm refering to the first 2 Halo games where Bungie seemed to focus on making games that didn't suck. After playing Halo 3, the last Halo game I actually paid money for, I do agree the focus shifted to shooting things for no better reason than they're bad. And remember, Cod 4 actually had a pretty good story for a shooter game, then the guilty cop out that was Cod: MW2 kind of shat on that aspect of game design to wring as many pennies out of their explosion montage as they could, the same thing happened to the Halo series, after Halo 2 they just wanted our money and they thought it could best be acheived by introducing less likable charecters and less interesting plots.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

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

I think you are sort of asssuming that Halo goes on about religious extremism stuff too much.
One can pretty it up any way they like but theres no dening that Halo, story wise, is just a halfassed load of bullcrap that only serves to get the 'brick' from point A to point B killing as many aliens and crap along the way for no damn reason.

It has as much of an intricate backstory and meaning as much as Modern Warfare 2 has a decent plot line.

Ah, sir I believe we've met, this time however I'm inclined to disagree with you, I'm refering to the first 2 Halo games where Bungie seemed to focus on making games that didn't suck. After playing Halo 3, the last Halo game I actually paid money for, I do agree the focus shifted to shooting things for no better reason than they're bad. And remember, Cod 4 actually had a pretty good story for a shooter game, then the guilty cop out that was Cod: MW2 kind of shat on that aspect of game design to wring as many pennies out of their explosion montage as they could, the same thing happened to the Halo series, after Halo 2 they just wanted our money and they thought it could best be acheived by introducing less likable charecters and less interesting plots.

I moreso meant just Halo 3.
Halo 1 was brilliant, Halo 2 was quite interesting but felt very, very disjointed, as if everyone designing the game was trying to make their own seperate thing and cram it full of as much stuff as possible within a short space of time.

And Halo 3 was...bad, very bad.
Infact its single player isnt even worthy of mention, (especially alongside the likes of Metro 2033 : )! ) at least Bungie can make a multiplayer that is kickass to many people though, but I personally tend to prefer other stuff.

 

[Bat Vader]

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.

I just got a great idea for a game
It'll have extensive levels, a big in depth story line and a slew of other crap.
doesn't that sound better than six hours of staring at the back of a chest high wall waiting for the bullet noises to stop long enough to poke your head out form behind cover and try to head shot one of the billion identical terrorists or aliens that clog up FPS's like the toilets at an Indian restaurant?

doesn't that sound more fun than Call of Halo Reach of Honor of War 2 Theft Auto?

or is an original thought to much for you to handle?

Nope it isn't an original thought because there are hundreds of games with the same premise. Picking the one with chest high walls, flying bullets and identical terrorist and then bitching because it doesn't have what you want outta it, instead of playing something else is stupid.

Nope?...
that's a bit of a flippant dismissal isn't it?

just because there are hundreds of games with ...you know, a story line and expansive levels and other crap doesn't make them unoriginal.


this is what I said if you strip away the assholeism

games with original stories are better than the shrift we get from main stream games

this is you

having a story is not an original idea

my complaint is that chest high walls, identical terrorists and flying bullets are the only elements in mainstream games. whether they be in Gears of War, Halo, Modern Warfare or Metal of Honor...or any thing else.

including those 3 elements is like the magic trinity that will ensure a game millions in profit from the crowd that can't realize that they already own at least 4 identical games

and I suppose I feel the need to ***** about it for the same reason you would intervene if you saw someone pouring sugar into the gas tank of your car

only in this case the gas tank of my car is the game industry
and the sugar is bad copy pasted FPS games that make so much money that no one has any interest in trying to make good games anymore.

There are developers out there that still want to make good games. Bioware, Rockstar, Valve, Ubisoft, and 2K still make excellent games. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins are two excellent games. Bioshock is an excellent game. Assassins Creed II is a pretty darn good game. Portal is an excellent game.

 

[repeating integers]

Seems a bit like necromancy, the above, but eh. It's only a few days dead.

Ah, sir I believe we've met, this time however I'm inclined to disagree with you, I'm refering to the first 2 Halo games where Bungie seemed to focus on making games that didn't suck. After playing Halo 3, the last Halo game I actually paid money for, I do agree the focus shifted to shooting things for no better reason than they're bad. And remember, Cod 4 actually had a pretty good story for a shooter game, then the guilty cop out that was Cod: MW2 kind of shat on that aspect of game design to wring as many pennies out of their explosion montage as they could, the same thing happened to the Halo series, after Halo 2 they just wanted our money and they thought it could best be acheived by introducing less likable charecters and less interesting plots.

I disagree, personally. I loved Halo 3's campaign as much as the other Halo games I've played. It was a nice end to the main story arc, a conclusion to the story of the Human-Covenant war and the Flood that felt very final. The combat was just as good, the music was just as good, and I found the story to be just as compelling. Of course, it wasn't perfect, but nothing is. Plus, the Ark was an awesome level.

Maybe it's just because of the odd order I played the games in...

 

[hyperhammy]

Okay, so are you saying you are going to pay 60 bucks for Enslaved, because it has a good story and great singleplayer, but no multiplayer? Or are you going to shell out 60 bucks for an average single player and an amazing Multiplayer game with tons of replay value? (For example black ops)

 

[raunchious]

The halo series has always been ruthlessly rushed by Microsoft and has suffered because of it. In Halo 1, the second half of the game consists of revamps of previous levels, albeit with the flood thrown into the mix. I'm sure that bungie would have rather made new levels, but the xbrick was coming out and it needed its killer app. The library level...I dunno if that was because of rushing or a brainfart on bungie's part.

Anyway, Halo2 was rushed even more. The story was intriguing but discumbobulated and given an extra year or so of development Bungie would have had the chance to iron it out better. The cliffhanger ending, I suspect, was not meant as a teaser for halo 3 but was necessitated because bungie didn't get to finish the last level.

Halo 3 was also rushed but bungie is just as much to blame for its inscrutable storyline as Microsoft. When they made Halo3 bungie gave up trying to do their own thing due to the lukewarm reception of Halo2, and instead just tried to please everyone as much as possible. They brought back the assault rifle, stuck the arbiter in the backseat and invented an excuse for the covenant to invade earth again (which I think is the one thing in Halo2 that everyone liked). It was like the game was directed by a focus group or something. What's funny is that the boldly unique ODST came out right afterwards.

The single player gameplay of both Call of Duty and Halo are great...I don't think that the developers have been neglecting those areas at all. BUT I would say it wouldn't kill them to change up the gameplay more between iterations. Call of Duty Black Ops still plays a lot like the original call of duty, and Halo Reach likewise. As for games lasting only 6 hours, I don't see this as a big deal. If those 6 hours are awesome I will play through the game 2 or 3 times, making it more like a 20 hour game. If a 40 hour game sucks I will play it for 2 hours and throw it in the trash afterwards.

 

[Necromancer1991]

*Looks at Halo reach's single player campaign* Now I know your trolling so I won't fall for it...

Now that I think about it, I have yet to run into a game with a bad (IMO anyway) single-player campaign, except the CoD and the Kane and Lynch series, CoD's is just bland, all flash and no substance, K&L's is just boring I mean it' terrible, but guess what people STILL gave Activision $60 to play a buggy mess that was CoD2 multiplayer, reviewers still gave K&L2 great scores, which amazes me. Really I never play games JUST for the multiplayer (TF2 being the exception XD).

 

[Palademon]

I especially like the part where you say developers shouldn't assume gamers have friends.