Microsoft Halo really holds up

[ShreddieMercury]

Halo was a seminal series for me growing up.  The first game is probably among my all-time favorites, and it's hard to overstate what a huge impact it had on games at the time.  Halo 2 was probably my most anticipated video game release ever, and I still fondly remember getting it at midnight and playing a good portion of the campaign through the night.  However, it seemed to lack some of the magic that the first game had.  I felt the same about 3 when it came out in 2007 - as much as I anticipated the end of the trilogy, it failed to capture the elusive magic of the original.  I finally bowed out when I played 4 and found it completely lacking.

 

I recently got an Xbox One to take advantage of Game Pass, and the first thing that I downloaded is the Master Chief collection.  I know that this package has had it's fair share of issues, but I've been utterly entranced by Halo again for the first time in over ten years.  I am blown away by how well the gameplay has aged, and I can't think of a single FPS from this era that would still feel as immediate and engrossing as this does.  Fast forward to a few weeks later, and I've completed the campaigns of CE, 2, 3, and ODST.  I also picked up a second hand copy of Reach, and plan on getting to 4 and 5 after.

 

I know that Halo has been eclipsed and left in the dust by bigger and more popular shooters, but there is something that is still very resonant about Bungie's vision.  All of these years later, I'm having just as much fun in these emergent combat sandboxes as I did when I first played them.  If anything, my opinion about 2 and 3 have improved greatly, and I found ODST to be a bold change of pace atmospherically and thematically.  While it may be lacking in relevancy these days, Halo still represents one hell of a collection of video games.

[Nokt]

4 is included in MCC. Reach should be coming fairly soon to MCC and it looks to get of the horrible motion blur and film grain while adding 1080p/60fps.

I wouldn't look forward to replaying 4 or 5 if you didn't like them all that much. 5 is the low point of the series imo. 

 

EDIT:

This post kicked up some old memories. Especially your hype for Halo 2. My best friend's older brother was friends with a popular "Pro" player. He ended up getting a french copy of Halo 2 a couple months before release and let us borrow it after he beat the campaign and messed around in MP. We had our fill of the campaign thinking that it was pretty fun, couldn't wait for everyone to get it. Little did we know that the online portion of the game would change our lives

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Halo 5 is an incredibly great cure for insomnia.

[HGLatinBoy]

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

Halo 5 is an incredibly great cure for insomnia.

Agreed, way fucking boring

[Paperclyp]

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

Halo 5 is an incredibly great cure for insomnia.

That's kinda what I thought about 4, and I never got to 5. 

 

Halo 3 and Reach are some of my favorite games of that era. Crazy how Halo went from "not sure there's a bigger release possible" to..."huh, another Halo?"

[Mercury33]

Halo CE’s MP is arguably my favorite MP of all time(Goldeneye/MK64 are up there) but I found everyone single Halo’s SP to be an absolute chore to get through. Except maybe ODST. Especially the first game. I would literally fall asleep trying to get through that game. Then each subsequent sequel ruined more and more of what I loved about CE’s MP 😔

[Spork3245]

3 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

Halo 5 is an incredibly great cure for insomnia.

 

5 is a jolt of caffeine compared to 4  

[Nokt]

50 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

5 is a jolt of caffeine compared to 4  

But 4 has the best star fox level made in the past 2 decades.
4 really does make a lot more sense when you actually understand what happening in the story rather than what you get told. Its a shame they put so much of it in external sources from the game. 5's story is just.... ugh.

[gamer.tv]

I started the series with 3 as I never had an OG Xbox.  I have however played through about 3/4 of Halo: CE Anniversary and bar some lengthy wandering sessions, it does hold it very well. Reach will always be my favourite as it was the first one that I pre-ordered and ended up getting very into the online, but a good series all the same. 

[TomCat]

7 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

Halo CE’s MP is arguably my favorite MP of all time(Goldeneye/MK64 are up there) but I found everyone single Halo’s SP to be an absolute chore to get through. Except maybe ODST. Especially the first game. I would literally fall asleep trying to get through that game. Then each subsequent sequel ruined more and more of what I loved about CE’s MP 😔

love Halo's  but ODST was a chore for me only Halo game I havent finished

[Spork3245]

6 hours ago, Nokt said:

But 4 has the best star fox level made in the past 2 decades.
4 really does make a lot more sense when you actually understand what happening in the story rather than what you get told. Its a shame they put so much of it in external sources from the game. 5's story is just.... ugh.

 

The enemies in 4 are all bullet sponges and easily the worst in the series, not to mention their god awful weapons.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The "character" of Locke in Halo 5 somehow manages to have far less of a personality than the Master Chief who is barely in the game.

[atom631]

7 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

 

5 is a jolt of caffeine compared to 4  

I liked 4. I havent played 5 bc of all negative reviews about it being boring. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

11 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The "character" of Locke in Halo 5 somehow manages to have far less of a personality than the Master Chief who is barely in the game.

Lock has less personality than MC in Halo one who was a blank slate for the player to project themself into the game. Locke is just horrible. 

 

343 has bungled the franchise since they took over for Bungie. As intrigued as I am in Halo Infinite or whatever, I’m still being very reserved, since not only has 343 made the worst entries in the series, they managed to screw up a collection of games and introduce issues they originals never had, leaving them unplayable for years. 

 

343 is like a kid who was gifted his father’s prized classic muscle car, only to roll it, and crash into a tree the very first time they took it out on the road. 

[Spork3245]

34 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The "character" of Locke in Halo 5 somehow manages to have far less of a personality than the Master Chief who is barely in the game.

 

25 minutes ago, atom631 said:

I liked 4. I havent played 5 bc of all negative reviews about it being boring. 

 

The new characters and overall plot in 5 is god awful, but I’m referencing solely the gameplay.

[Nokt]

4 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

 

The enemies in 4 are all bullet sponges and easily the worst in the series, not to mention their god awful weapons.

Yeah. I guess it does have the worst Legendary difficulty in the series. 

[Chickenstrip you so crazy]

It is incredible how well CE still holds up. With MCC I played CE through in a couple of days but the rest of the games haven't seen much love. They lack the magic of the original. Regardless of the campaigns, I still hop into MCC multiplayer about once a week - no matter what version game gets selected in matchmaking, Halo still has some of the best multiplayer to date. Really excited for the collection to hit PC.

[legend]

Agreed. All of Bungie's Halos still hold up, and I still prefer its MP to any shooter's MP that has released since then.

[GeneticBlueprint]

I was initially bored by Halo 2's campaign when it released. But playing it again on the MCC I think it's actually the best campaign in the whole series.

[AbsolutSurgen]

After playing a ton of Quake and Unreal Tournament, I never really understood the hype around Halo. At the time it came out I was playing a lot of online Quake 3. 

 

To me it felt like a slow FPS, but certainly a very good game.  I’ve played through a number of the Halo games with my kids recently. And they really enjoy them, but I would rather play something like Doom (for the much faster gameplay), or Wolfenstein (for the crazy story) or Far Cry (for the open world). To be honest, I think Destiny is, by far, Bungie’s best work.

[Nokt]

22 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

After playing a ton of Quake and Unreal Tournament, I never really understood the hype around Halo. At the time it came out I was playing a lot of online Quake 3. 

 

To me it felt like a slow FPS, but certainly a very good game.  I’ve played through a number of the Halo games with my kids recently. And they really enjoy them, but I would rather play something like Doom (for the much faster gameplay), or Wolfenstein (for the crazy story) or Far Cry (for the open world). To be honest, I think Destiny is, by far, Bungie’s best work.

I think a lot of it boils down to timing and its offerings. Halo really took the bar of console shooters and put it on an entirely different pedestal. 

Halo was pretty open for its time while looking at things like Perfect Dark/Goldeneye were really tight corridors.  Couch co-op/multiplayer and LAN parties became really easy too. Xbox's were really easy to lug around and most people had at least a couple TV's hanging around in their house. 

Halo 2 launched with Xbox Live and really started making a case for online gaming with consoles. Halo 3 was just took everything in Halo 2, expanded upon it and included a really robust level editor. 

[Dexterryu]

It's also still one of the (if not THE) originators of the modern FPS with regenerating health model. Not that health regenerated but the shield did. Prior to that, it was all a % of health and the only way to get back up was to get a health pack. The model allowed for both the player and the enemies(elites) to be spungy when necessary while also very weak without the shield. It was  one of the first person shooters to adopt a checkpoint system vs save anywhere(which has damn near disappeared). It also has solid enemy AI even by todays standards.

 

So one of the reasons Halo:CE stands up so well is that pioneered many of the mechanics that modern shooters still employ.

[legend]

19 hours ago, Dexterryu said:

It's also still one of the (if not THE) originators of the modern FPS with regenerating health model. Not that health regenerated but the shield did. Prior to that, it was all a % of health and the only way to get back up was to get a health pack. The model allowed for both the player and the enemies(elites) to be spungy when necessary while also very weak without the shield. It was  one of the first person shooters to adopt a checkpoint system vs save anywhere(which has damn near disappeared). It also has solid enemy AI even by todays standards.

 

So one of the reasons Halo:CE stands up so well is that pioneered many of the mechanics that modern shooters still employ.

 

Yep. There are always earlier games that kinda sorta had one of these features, but games are not just a list of features but how they are implemented and interact with each other, which is why Halo should rightfully get acknowledged for pioneering this style of modern shooter.

 

I'll add that I think another important property was that different enemies required different ways to fight them, and then you get interesting strategies that form organically with the mob make up.

 

Grunts were easy to kill if you headshot them, but otherwise were pretty spongy anywhere else. Jackles had the personal shield that meant you couldn't easily unload into them unless you angled it right, naded them from behind, or broke their shield with a PP. Elites, well, elites are obvious in that they posed an extreme threat on their own, unless you broke their shield and then immediately charged them. (And then you had elite variants like ones with the shield or not.) And it goes on like this.

 

So many other shooters have a cast of enemies that all require the same strategy: fill them with bullets.

[AbsolutSurgen]

On 7/29/2019 at 1:46 PM, Dexterryu said:

It's also still one of the (if not THE) originators of the modern FPS with regenerating health model. Not that health regenerated but the shield did. Prior to that, it was all a % of health and the only way to get back up was to get a health pack. The model allowed for both the player and the enemies(elites) to be spungy when necessary while also very weak without the shield. It was  one of the first person shooters to adopt a checkpoint system vs save anywhere(which has damn near disappeared). It also has solid enemy AI even by todays standards.

 

So one of the reasons Halo:CE stands up so well is that pioneered many of the mechanics that modern shooters still employ.

 

4 hours ago, legend said:

 

Yep. There are always earlier games that kinda sorta had one of these features, but games are not just a list of features but how they are implemented and interact with each other, which is why Halo should rightfully get acknowledged for pioneering this style of modern shooter.

 

I'll add that I think another important property was that different enemies required different ways to fight them, and then you get interesting strategies that form organically with the mob make up.

 

Grunts were easy to kill if you headshot them, but otherwise were pretty spongy anywhere else. Jackles had the personal shield that meant you couldn't easily unload into them unless you angled it right, naded them from behind, or broke their shield with a PP. Elites, well, elites are obvious in that they posed an extreme threat on their own, unless you broke their shield and then immediately charged them. (And then you had elite variants like ones with the shield or not.) And it goes on like this.

 

So many other shooters have a cast of enemies that all require the same strategy: fill them with bullets.

There were a tremendous amount of variety of FPS games out before HALO that had a variety of the game mechanics you are talking about....  Hexen, Deus Ex, Thief, Half-Life, Tribes, etc.  Clearly none of them were identical to Halo.

 

Regenerating health wasn't part of most FPS until HALO, but HALO wasn't the first FPS to use it.  (And regenerating health was a feature that was present in other action games for years.)

 

What Halo did improve on, was creating a viable (Yet still vastly inferior) control alternative to KB/M by slowing the action down, using non-linear dual analog inputs and adding a liberal amount of auto-aim.  To gamers that weren't playing all of the great FPS games on PC, it may have seemed revolutionary.  Most of my gaming peer group viewed it as a "very good" but not revolutionary game.

 

One of the things that I really liked about Doom was the return to health/shields that don't recover on your own.  I really do prefer not having the "hide behind a cover for 30 seconds to wait for your health to recover" moments, instead having the battles be constant action.

[Bloodporne]

I managed to never play Halo beyond like the first two levels of the original Xbox one. I thought it was really boring when it came out and I played it at my friends house honestly. I was really into Doom, Duke 3d, Blood, Hexen etc. and this game seemed really tame and slow in comparison. 

 

Wondering if I should break out the dusty 360 and give the series a real go.

[Nokt]

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

There were a tremendous amount of variety of FPS games out before HALO that had a variety of the game mechanics you are talking about....  Hexen, Deus Ex, Thief, Half-Life, Tribes, etc.  Clearly none of them were identical to Halo.

 

Regenerating health wasn't part of most FPS until HALO, but HALO wasn't the first FPS to use it.  (And regenerating health was a feature that was present in other action games for years.)

 

What Halo did improve on, was creating a viable (Yet still vastly inferior) control alternative to KB/M by slowing the action down, using non-linear dual analog inputs and adding a liberal amount of auto-aim.  To gamers that weren't playing all of the great FPS games on PC, it may have seemed revolutionary.  Most of my gaming peer group viewed it as a "very good" but not revolutionary game.

 

One of the things that I really liked about Doom was the return to health/shields that don't recover on your own.  I really do prefer not having the "hide behind a cover for 30 seconds to wait for your health to recover" moments, instead having the battles be constant action.

Nothing Halo brought to the table was originated by them, but they did popularize them. 

They standardized a control scheme, regenerating health, 2 gun system, dedicated grenade/melee button. 

 

This was a revolutionary game to consoles and FPS titles on console. I'm not going to say that comparing Halo to PC titles is "unfair", but I feel like you're missing the point by comparing it to those. I think everyone (or really anyone that takes a second to think about it) recognizes that if Halo had released as a PC game it wouldn't be the "revolutionary" game it is. 

1 hour ago, Bloodporne said:

I managed to never play Halo beyond like the first two levels of the original Xbox one. I thought it was really boring when it came out and I played it at my friends house honestly. I was really into Doom, Duke 3d, Blood, Hexen etc. and this game seemed really tame and slow in comparison. 

 

Wondering if I should break out the dusty 360 and give the series a real go.

I don't think you will feel any differently about it now. Its still pretty mild compared to those old games and even newer games like Doom 2016. 

[legend]

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

 

There were a tremendous amount of variety of FPS games out before HALO that had a variety of the game mechanics you are talking about....  Hexen, Deus Ex, Thief, Half-Life, Tribes, etc.  Clearly none of them were identical to Halo.

 

I played those games and played them before I played Halo. I primarily gamed on PC before Halo (incidentally, I'm primarily back to PC again!) and that included a lot of shooters. Deus Ex is one of my favorite games of all time even--but for reasons that are completely orthogonal to everything Halo did well. That is, the combat wasn't the draw of Deus Ex. I stand by my comments.

 

Quote

Regenerating health wasn't part of most FPS until HALO, but HALO wasn't the first FPS to use it.  (And regenerating health was a feature that was present in other action games for years.)

I feel like I preemptively addressed this response: "There are always earlier games that kinda sorta had one of these features, but games are not just a list of features but how they are implemented and interact with each other, which is why Halo should rightfully get acknowledged for pioneering this style of modern shooter."

 

 

 

Quote

 

What Halo did improve on, was creating a viable (Yet still vastly inferior) control alternative to KB/M by slowing the action down, using non-linear dual analog inputs and adding a liberal amount of auto-aim.  To gamers that weren't playing all of the great FPS games on PC, it may have seemed revolutionary.  Most of my gaming peer group viewed it as a "very good" but not revolutionary game.

 

Please don't use the argument that console gamers were just naive. While Halo did improve controls enormously for console shooters, that is not the only reason it's hailed. As I said above, I played a ton of PC shooters before Halo. So did a lot of my friends who loved (and still love) Halo.

 

Quote

One of the things that I really liked about Doom was the return to health/shields that don't recover on your own.  I really do prefer not having the "hide behind a cover for 30 seconds to wait for your health to recover" moments, instead having the battles be constant action.

 

You don't have to hide for 30 seconds. That said, it's perfectly fine if you don't like the style of Halo. That doesn't change the quality and importance of what it did.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The Unusual Excellence of Halo's Most Iconic Level

Quote

Of all the levels in the game, The Silent Cartographer feels like a vertical slice of every element that makes Halo, well, Halo. How do all these elements work together to make a good shooter? After all, we live in a post-Halo world. Surely in the 13 years since its release, shooters have evolved and we've got better shooters to choose from, right?

 

[GeneticBlueprint]

13 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The Unusual Excellence of Halo's Most Iconic Level

 

 

I always loved that level, but the one right after it is better IMO. I think that's the true vertical slice of the game because you can get aerial as well.

 

While game mechanics are rightfully being discussed in this thread let's not overlook the lore or the story. That is one aspect of Halo that keeps pulling me back despite the measurable dip in quality since ODST. It is one of if not the most fleshed out game universes ever created. It's fascinating, creative, and beautiful space opera and science fiction that gives you a view of everything from the individual soldier on the ground up to the large scale orbital naval battles. That's something that drew in people like my younger brother who wasn't really old enough for PC gaming and thus had nothing to compare the mechanics too. Yet he still goes back to Halo despite every game copying the Halo (or whatever came before it) formula. Combine that all with the iconic musical score and you've got an iconic and classic game series.

 

Also the ship names are metal AF: Shadow of Intent, In Amber Clad, Bloodied Spirit, Twilight Compunction off the top of my head.

[ShreddieMercury]

I've completed the campaigns of CE, 2, 3, ODST, and Reach.  Nothing will likely every top the first game's campaign for me due to my personal nostalgia and its monumental impact to console gaming, but I actually think upon replay that I would rank the campaigns like this: 3 > Reach > CE > 2 > ODST.  I enjoyed all of them, and ODST has incredible atmosphere, but in 3 and Reach, Bungie really perfected the level designs and the moment-to-moment gameplay.  Those games really move, and the gameplay varies multiple times per level.

 

I'm not sure if I'll revisit 4, since I really disliked it upon release, and I've never played 5.  Maybe Halo Infinite will bring back some of the early magic of the series, but I'm doubtful.  My reverence for the series is as much about a time and place in the industry and in my life as much as it is about Halo being a phenomenal video game.

[GeneticBlueprint]

29 minutes ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

My reverence for the series is as much about a time and place in the industry and in my life as much as it is about Halo being a phenomenal video game.

 

Yes yes yes. Definitely this. So many high school memories of hooking up 4 consoles in my friend's basement and playing 2-hour CTF rounds. Then the gang of us walking to the 24 hour grocery store and buying junk and watching movies and then going back to Halo until the afternoon the next day. No sleep. My brother and I doing split screen and trying to figure out shortcuts and cheats and find secrets in the levels. The anticipation of Halo 2.

[legend]

1 hour ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

I've completed the campaigns of CE, 2, 3, ODST, and Reach.  Nothing will likely every top the first game's campaign for me due to my personal nostalgia and its monumental impact to console gaming, but I actually think upon replay that I would rank the campaigns like this: 3 > Reach > CE > 2 > ODST.  I enjoyed all of them, and ODST has incredible atmosphere, but in 3 and Reach, Bungie really perfected the level designs and the moment-to-moment gameplay.  Those games really move, and the gameplay varies multiple times per level.

 

I'm not sure if I'll revisit 4, since I really disliked it upon release, and I've never played 5.  Maybe Halo Infinite will bring back some of the early magic of the series, but I'm doubtful.  My reverence for the series is as much about a time and place in the industry and in my life as much as it is about Halo being a phenomenal video game.

 

I might flip Reach and CE, but otherwise that is my ordering. Halo 3's campaign has so many amazing levels and they only get more amazing with 4 player coop.

[Rodimus]

I enjoyed playing slpitscreen with a friend of mine through the whole game in a weekend. Then when Halo 2 came out I got it at midnight launch took it to a friends house and played co-op the whole way through. then Halo 3 I convinved Circut City to sell me a cat helmet version early. Then played co-op online the whole way. then never played a Halo game since.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[legend]

35 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

 

 

I think this guy gets it.