Halo Series. Boring, uninspired, overrated.

[Gently Applied Heat]

I am 37 years old. Back in my high school years, Halo was considered one of the best games ever made. However, I never played it because I was one of those ♥♥♥♥♥ Gamecube owners.

Now so many years later, I picked up TMCC and have been slowly making my way through the games, in order, one at a time. I am about 75% through Halo 2 and I think i'm about done. It's like I keep playing these games hoping that eventually SOMETHING will grab my interest, but it hasn't. It just boggles my mind how many people thought this was some sort of revolution in gaming...

Environments: BORING. Every level feels like a shooting gallery in the same copy-paste hallway or outside area.

Weapons: BORING as ♥♥♥♥. Using the same guns to shoot the same enemies which simply get more bullet spongy as the game goes on makes me want to quit.

Enemies: BORING. Shooting the same purple and brown enemies every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ level. Even the actual aliens themselves look un-inspired D&D rejects. Half the time I don't even know what i'm shooting at... a robot? An Alien? I don't know. None of the enemies have any distinguishing features that make them interesting.

The Story: BORING. Every chapter seems like it was written by a fifth grader and always boils down to "Go to the place and press the button". Halo 2 seems like it is trying really hard to capture my attention but I don't care about any of the characters or their struggles. They are trying so hard to get my to care about a guy in armour whose face I have never seen and an alien who looks like every other alien I've killed hundreds of.

It's really screwed up but i'm almost ANGRY at this point. I remember living through through the Halo craze even to the point where my friends talked about it like it was some genius product.

I mean jesus, no wonder they have never made a Halo movie. What the hell would it be about?

Can someone please try to help me understand why this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game series rose to the top while other GREAT shooters shot ♥♥♥♥ on back in the day?

I remember buying Timesplitters 2 for my Gamecube and the guy who sold it to be told me that Halo was way better. At the time, I felt bad for being a "Nintendo kiddy". I look back on that and I shake my head. I was right all along.

Can someone please help me understand why people think this series is so amazing?

[Gunslinger ☢]

Publicado originalmente por Pekmez Pita:

I couldn't agree more.

I can't even bring myself to complete the first game. Too much consolitis for me.

"It's a 20 year old game!"

So what? So is Half-Life but it's vastly superior to this in every way imaginable. Still is.

The level design alone is just atrocious. Never mind the clunky gunplay and overall grueling pacing of the game.

As someone who has dumped hundreds of hours into Half life related stuff as much as Halo, i completely disagree with this take, also Half Life mostly has very scripted AI that purely depends on its encounter design in a very linear thinking fashion while Halo took a simple predictable yet hard to fight enemy design approach, and the latter is more fun in a dynamic fashion than either hitscan Hgrunts or Black ops, so no offense, thats just flat out wrong, Half Lifes combat was always lackluster but made up for it in the aforementioned encounter design, while Halos combat is indepth yet simple to pick up and play with level design that either supports you or your enemies, not that its perfect either.

Besides, comparing a game known for its inspiration to bring storytelling into video games and not for its combat to Halo which is known for being one of the most notable console FPS games to have good gameplay is like if i compared apples and oranges, although the fact that atleast in the case for CE its basically a hybrid of oldschool gameplay designs with some things that appear in more modern titles makes it a interesting experience to play much in the same vein as Half Life, and wasting time to argue one experience is better over the other is completely pointless when great games are meant to rub shoulders with one another, and not bicker over which is better than the other.

[never047]

Being the same age as the OP and also never played any of the Halo games before, I feel compelled to share my experience here

So far I've played through the first game and I've just beaten Halo 2. I can't say I loved it at first, a lot of my initial thoughts were similar to the OP. Maps and enemies felt uninspired, I didn't like the shooting mechanics or the overall feel of the game. But I guess somewhere mid-Halo:CE I warmed up to it and now I kinda like it :)

I don't think it's the best thing ever, I wouldn't rate it as highly as Quake or HL or some other PC classic from my youth, but it's good shooty fun in it's own right. It shines on higher difficulties, you really have to employ strategy in how you approach different enemy types and how you use your weapons. There's some clever game design here at play.
I can also sort of see why it was a big thing back in the day. It's doing a lot of things you really couldn't see in an FPS game back then, like big maps, vehicle combat, cinematic story line etc..

So yeah, I wouldn't say I'm a massive fan, but I'm having fun with it.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Well, I think we found another person who can't comprehend that people enjoy something that he doesn't, and he thinks that it somehow makes him edgy since he doesn't enjoy the "mainstream" thing and then he has to be very vocal about it....

Dude, fine, you don't like Halo, it doesn't mean "You were right", it just means you don't like it. No reason to try and crap on those who do and imply that you are better than them. You can't be right on a subjective thing like enjoying a game. That is only opinions.

[Halcyform]

The series is amazing because it's well executed and has an involved storyline that is well fleshed out in lore that is at least a dozen books long. Most people's familiarity with the storyline probably goes as far as a 2 to 4 minute youtube video.

I can certainly see the point of view on not being able to follow story all that well if you are playing only the games. Halo is set in a sprawling universe (past and present) and you aren't getting into the finer details of the story with just the games. Yeah, I know, it's terribly troublesome that Halo actually has an overarching storyline (/s).

The series is also as popular as it is because of the competition it had at the time it released. What kind of competition did it have? Pretty much none. Other shooters were either bad or on their nth sequel. The genre was largely stagnant - and ready - for something new.

It's multiplayer definitely catapulted its popularity as well. So popular that the memes are nigh endless.

That story about how little "sweet reveries" was devastated because some random game store employee dumped on his Timesplitters purchase because "halo is betta", was depressing. My first thought in that scenario wouldn't be about Halo vs Timesplitters, it'd be: ok, neckbeard guy, you tell me about games and I'll tell you about gainful employment.

So, you don't like Halo. That's great. I'm glad you recognize what you like and don't like. Stop torturing yourself and go play some Timesplitters. No, really, go play something else.

[Gunslinger ☢]

Publicado originalmente por Halcyform:

The series is amazing because it's well executed and has an involved storyline that is well fleshed out in lore that is at least a dozen books long. Most people's familiarity with the storyline probably goes as far as a 2 to 4 minute youtube video.

I can certainly see the point of view on not being able to follow story all that well if you are playing only the games. Halo is set in a sprawling universe (past and present) and you aren't getting into the finer details of the story with just the games. Yeah, I know, it's terribly troublesome that Halo actually has an overarching storyline

As someone who grew up with the games and has never read the books and has no interest in doing so, its not really needed to understand the overall plot of every game (besides Halo 5, but thats another can of worms, Linda from blue team was on Reach, her vitals flatlined before being frozen in Cryo, it took one month minimum to reach Installation 04 after this event, in either the timeline of the books or the game, and several days after that to actually recover her from the postmortem of 04, she has been dead for almost a month and she was *somehow* revived in-universe to see the events of Halo 5??? Thats just ONE character in the extended universe, and all that was from a basic search just to understand a single character existing.) or the universe, all the games, books, and other forms of media contradict eachother a lot anyway, including the games and media that take place in the same timeframe, such as Fireteam Raven and CE, Halo The Flood and CE, ODST and Halo 2, The fall of Reach and Reach the game, the extended universe is honestly a mess factoring all the grafted on plot stuff, and large amount of retroactive retcons, so infact im gonna say ignore the extended universe and focus on what the games explain only, and use basic deduction skills to figure out whats happening.

Halo is a series of games first and foremost, its not Warhammer 40K or Star Wars, and when the games tried to be that or depended on exterior material to understand the concurrent plot of a game release, it fell hard because the fans are just that, gamers, not lore enthusiasts.

[Waddlebeard]

Frankly, it's hard to appreciate what Halo has done for the industry from the perspective of the modern age. Prior to Halo on Xbox, there was no standard ruleset for how an FPS should play and feel on console, it's basically the Half-Life or Quake of console shooters. It showed us that a shooter's foundation is built upon it's weapons sandbox: how each weapon interacts with it's targets, the environment, each other: perfect this, and the rest of the game just falls into place.

Prior to Halo, our best example of this was Perfect Dark, maybe 007: Nightfire or Goldeneye 007. But even these games had fatal flaws due to the way players were forced to interact with these games with frankly inferior controllers (melee players need not reply, i can already smell your sweaty shine spikes) and inconsistent control schemes.

TLDR: Halo once defined a genre. That makes it special. It doesn't make it a good game by todays standards, or at all for that fact. It just makes it a better game than what came before it, and an important piece of history for developers to learn from when they set out to make their own entry to the genre.

[E3kHatena]

The two things Halo did for the industry were codify the gameplay of a console FPS and give Microsoft a mascot, an identity to point towards. XBox as a brand was effectively directionless but they were interested in the Marathon successor Bungie was developing, and paid to have the game brought to the XBox. Its control scheme, its multiplayer, and later with 2/3 its online modes were entirely new at the time and essentially set in stone how we expect FPSes to control, how their multiplayer is handled, etc.

While the changes it brought about to level design, de-emphasizing the more explorative designs of Half-Life and Quake and fully spitting in the face of the semi-nonlinear designs of older titles doubling back around on themselves as you hunt for keys and their respective doors, as well as to the combat making your melee strike by far your strongest attack and prioritizing camping and health regen were definitely contentious, the games were unlike anything else console players had access to and were approachable with an expansive galaxy to potentially explore, which is what drove people in. I will say that Halo 2 started getting good for me shortly after meeting the Gravemind, and 3 was a shorter title with more action-y setpieces. CE and the opening parts of 2 were a lot of reused environments and felt rife with padding. I also don't think both games are master-classes in design, though they stand on their own alongside the likes of Doom Eternal and Half-Life 1 as solid A-rank titles for me; not bad, though not the top of the class within the coveted S-rank.

If you do push forward, remember to use your melee strike, stay patient with the numerous deaths you'll likely face, and most of all keep in mind where *console* FPSes were at the time each respective game came out. Halo CE got to essentially make all the rules as it wasn't bound to hardware constraints as hard as the PS1 and N64 were, and Halo 2's only real console competition was Metroid Prime; even though HL2 and Doom 3 got console ports, they were designed for the PC from the ground-up and were really struggling to run on the 6th Gen hardware. It's probably for that reason that fans felt there was a slump in quality around Halo 4/5; console FPSes just caught up to PC FPSes and as a result, the series feels like old news. It's also why so much hype surrounded Halo 3; it finally had a competitor in the console FPS scene in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, both of which had extensive and genre-defining online modes alongside a truly cinematic-feeling campaign.

[HeresGwenny]

It's just not your cup of tea. No one's forcing you to play a game you don't like. I personally enjoy it because it's a lot more arcadey than other FPS games like COD or CSGO, where you die in a couple of shots. Idk how having a movie about it says it's a bad game, but there are two movies and multiple shorts.

[Deathstruck]

I like how the OP responded only to one message that was essentially just agreeing with him, but not the 50+ others which are actually trying to discuss with him or calling him out lol. No balls.

[wyte boi]

Halo is Sonic of fps games, everyone like it but in fact it was never good

[Demon of Razgriz]

Publicado originalmente por Mustard Chief:

Halo is Sonic of fps games, everyone like it but in fact it was never good:DukeSunglasses::DukeExplosion:

The fact that "everyone" likes it should tell you something....just because YOU don't like something doesn't objectively mean it wasn't good, just like everyone liking something doesn't mean that it objectively is good. You can't do something as objectively good or bad when it comes to likes and dislikes, its all subjective.

Seriously, can people just accept that people like that different things. Stop thinking you are being edgy and cool just because you don't like the mainstream thing.

[Lord Bennington]

Halo was never anything special. At most it was a kind of tech demo, and offered co-op campaigns when plenty of games didn't at the time.

[doug]

I love posts like this. Gives me real schadenfreude

You're complaining that you feel like you're wasting your time playing a video game and making it out like that's somehow somebody else's fault. Ask yourself why you're playing this game? Who forced you to buy it? Is somebody forcing you to play it? What's going on in your life that's better than playing this game? Why don't you go and do that instead?

Publicado originalmente por Sweet Reveries:

I mean jesus, no wonder they have never made a Halo movie. What the hell would it be about?

It would undoubtedly end up being some Michael Bay tier bovinefeces, I'll give you that.

[smitty78749]

it was the little things that made halo special... you don't see it then you don't see it
go back to gamecube

[El Syd]

I have similar thoughts about the series (played everything up to and including Halo Wars), from a story perspective at least. Dunno what people see in it. Around 2012, I bought the novel, 'First Strike', by Eric Nylund in the hopes of gaining a stronger appreciation of the lore, but it ended up being pretty forgettable like the stories in the games.

I remember the gameplay being alright at least, but I enjoyed other FPS from that era a lot more (Alien VS Predator 2, for example). I think it was the couch multiplayer which really caused the explosion in popularity. It seems like it was the Goldeneye of the 2000s.

I hear that playing the campaigns on the hardest difficulty is where it's at because that's where the 'genius' of the underlying systems design becomes prominent. So, I may still pick this collection up. Maybe I'll enjoy the story more this time...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Tribes 2 bring us this style of multiplayer (team deathmatch with vehicular combat) earlier than the Halo series did?

By the way, when is number 5 coming to PC? Not getting a console just for that.