a honest question about the halo serie

Newbie's Journey

Newbie's Journey

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I own a copy of halo 1 pc version and i have finished the game, i have tried the multiplay. But for one thing, i still dont get it. What is so special in halo ? What makes it so popular ? personnally, it doesn't suck, but it's definitly not a master piece. I heard u can play coop in the xbox version, maybe that's what brings the popularity to the game, i guess. The pc version doesn't have coop and it sucks without it. On e3 2004, they have shown off a map for capture the flag of halo 2 and something u can do in the game, like hold 2 different weapons with both hands...but still, that's nothing special. Also the engine is old, not much physics, old graphics, no dynamic lighting and shadowing. I think the halo serie is getting overhyped. so tell me what u think about this.
 
Yes. Very overhyped.
Co-op on Xbox was really fun, but I have no clue why people like Halo 2 so much either.
 
yeah, i saw every trailer, every movie of halo2, well it's full of actions, but NOTHING SPECIAL...the theme of halo is kinda "run(drive) around and shoot them up". We have been playing this theme for so many years now since the first fps game was created. See, u need some complementary themes for today's fps games, like horror, suspense, world wars, etc. Just action is not enough.
 
I agree. Its nothing special. It was three years ago on the xbox, but not now and def not on pc.
 
the thing about halo is that it has a gripping story and thrilling last levels... couldnt you feel the rush of adrenaline and self-enthusiasm about saving the world on the last few levels? didnt you fear for your life when fleeing from the planet? didnt you feel nervous when you thought you were going to make it, this is it- your going to ESCAPE... and then...

well ,youve completed the game so you know what happens. for me, the great thing about halo was its story. i loved it. 10X better than HL in my opinion... plus the multiplayer was damn fun untill UT2004 came out.
 
Its because console are not meant for first person shooters. A half-way decent one ( like Halo) comes a long and they celebrate it like Half-Life.

Try playing capture the flag with the map "Blood Gulch." Instant fun.
 
Halo evoked a far deeper emotional response in me than HL did, at least in my case.
 
I like the story, I like the characters, I like the gameplay, I liked the way all stuff remained so you could see how a battle has been progressing just by looking at bulletholes and blood and bodies.. oh and the co op was awesome, caused many hours of fun.. Graphics were great back then aswell, with all the shaders and stuff.

Well, people have different tastes, simple as that. You don't have to mock someone for liking a game you don't like.
 
:| It's an OKAY game. One thing I really hate about the game is the damned enemies, TOO MANY! Example: you're running around in a narrow ass corridor and BAM there's like 40 Flood monsters at your disposal, they just keep comin and comin.
 
Suicide42 said:
the thing about halo is that it has a gripping story and thrilling last levels... couldnt you feel the rush of adrenaline and self-enthusiasm about saving the world on the last few levels? didnt you fear for your life when fleeing from the planet? didnt you feel nervous when you thought you were going to make it, this is it- your going to ESCAPE... and then...

well ,youve completed the game so you know what happens. for me, the great thing about halo was its story. i loved it. 10X better than HL in my opinion... plus the multiplayer was damn fun untill UT2004 came out.
Click to expand...

u're right, ut2004 has better multiplayer.

u can find the same type of gameplay of last few levels in many other fps games. It's always the same thing, maybe with a little variation: fighting against bunch of strongest ennemies, fighting the boss, the place is going to blow and u must run away in limited amount of time...these things happen in almost every other fps games, like shogo, red faction serie, unreal serie, metal of honor, etc etc. that's why i'm not getting too excited by the halo serie.

With the technologies of the next generation of engines, it can generate many new and different gameplays. Like the interaction with objects, shadow and darkness creating horror, etc, therefore increasing story telling ability captivates the players more into the stories and into the world that the authors of the game want to express.
 
"And the horse you rode in on..."

Then comes the choir and the flyby.

I actually shivered. But I don't want another Halo vs. HL thread and I'm just repeating what I said earlier so let's leave it at that.
 
FictiousWill said:
"And the horse you rode in on..."

Then comes the choir and the flyby.

I actually shivered. But I don't want another Halo vs. HL thread and I'm just repeating what I said earlier so let's leave it at that.
Click to expand...

it's not a halo vs hl thread. i just think the halo serie is getting overhyped, i just want to talk about that
 
Yeah, it's very overhyped.. But I wasn't really into Halo back when it was hyped and such , I just tried the game out on Xbox in some store and bought it later on since it had Co Op..
 
Halo is far more suited to the Xbox, and one of my fave games. I got it for the pc too and found the experience very average (and can totally understand your point of view)

Without a big screen, analogue control, rumble and trigger buttons, much of the experience is lost. A mouse makes aiming far easier, and as a result the balance which made Halo such a great experience on the Xbox is borked (without wanting to start a mouse vs joypad debate: easier doesn't always equal better. Sometimes a game can benefit from making shooting the bad guys tricky ........ imagine playing Golden Eye with a mouse. It would be complete shit)

imo Halo is the first, and only game (I don't like UT2004 :) ), to combine good hand to hand fighting with decent vehicles (BF1942/Flashpoint only having the latter)

To finish it on Legendary (on the Xbox) requires some skill. Unlike most pc shooters (FarCry/COD/MoH/NOLF etc) which, while good fun, usually offer little challenge. It's not hard in a cheap way either, when you die it's because you weren't good enough ....... not due to poor level design or unfair AI. As this is what i'm really into (fps in clans being my fave gaming) I think it's the challenge Halo offers that really makes the game stand out.

Sure, it's not perfect. Some areas are repeated and the Library level sucks :/ But i've had more fun playing Halo than any other single player shooter (other than Golden Eye) Some levels are fantastic - vehicles, aliens and humans everywhere. The air filled with lasers flying about \o/

The way the shield works is great. As is the two weapon system (which sounds terribly simple and crap lol, but in practise is excellent). On easy settings you can easily finish the game with just a smg and pistol. Play on Legendary and you'll learn to value each weapon - each combination offering a very different experience and adding to the replay value enormously.

(and co-op is great :) )
 
Warbie i might add that i found Far Cry about twice as hard as Halo. Albeit Halo is still hard on Legendary. Anyway i do agree that Halo is a bit overhyped, but thats only by the Xbox players. Its the best game they have, and its a damn good one, but if you compare it to other first person shooters on the PC it doesn't stand a chance against NOLF or Deus Ex.

When people say its the greatest FPS ever they really haven't played great first person shooters before.
 
I dunno m8 - this is all subjective at the end of the day.

Personally, NOLF didn't do anything for me. I got bored 3/4 of the way through and never went back (it felt like a poor Golden Eye :/) I certainly prefer Halo on the Xbox too.

I wasn't a massive fan of Deus Ex either (loved System Shock 2 tho :))

Horses for courses and all that :)
 
The combat in Halo is HIGHLY tuned. 2 weapons at a time, grenades keyed to a different button, rechargeable shields. It introduced a whole slew of innovative ideas into FPS combat. Large fan of Halo here if you couldn't tell.
 
There's a few things I liked about Halo, but the story wasn't one of them :) Just me i guess.
 
The game wasn't horrible. But it was way overhyped. All I heard was amazing things from X-Box gamers. Then I finally got to try it on PC. I played it right after Jedi Academy and I had a lot more fun playing the SP of Academy than Halo. I never got to try the multi because I didn't exactly buy the game.

The story was perhaps a little better than HL. But story isn't that important to me in FPS games. If Bungie hadn't repeated a few of the SP levels over again with Flood instead of Combine it would have been short but a lot more fun IMO. Oh and the Library was the best level of the game. It was actually a challenge on the PC.

I gotta say though, I'm still disappointed that it didn't turn out like it was going to before it went to X-Box. I was just as hyped about Halo as I am about HL2 when I first saw that 10 minute E3 video.
 
The Halo story is shoved down your throat, that's all. Listen to what npc's say and take a close look at your surroundings and things start to fit together.
 
I got in on the Halo thing late, but I still think its a damn good game.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say most of the things that make Halo great are what made HL great. The story is intriguing, the characters and NPCs actually have character, and the entire thing is so polished its ridiculous. The music, graphics (for their time), and sound effects are all exceptional. It conveys an enormous sense of atmosphere along with a good amount of humor too.
Its not revolutionary (although grenades seem to have become much more important these days), but its just done damn well. Its a total experience that is usually fun to play and can give you that tingly feeling when doing so. Something to note is that judging it against more recent games is moronic. It's like comparing HL to FarCry.
And for anyone who didn't think those first Halo 2 trailers were impressive I have to wonder why you picked up a controller in the first place.
 
There's a reason why there's so much hype about Halo (crap games just are not this popular)

It may not be to everyones taste, but it is a good game.

imo it's not possible to fully appreciate Halo by playing it on the pc alone. It's like playing a port of Mario 64 or Golden Eye on the pc (I deserve to be arrested for thought crime for even thinking that :/). Halo is a console game through and through.

//edit - and that could be why some of you guys don't like it.

What do you think of Metroid Prime? (infact all the best single player first person shooters seem to be on consoles *puts on flame suit*)
 
to the the guy that said that consoles are no good for fps,go play goldeneye and metroid prime and tell me what you think:)
 
Warbie said:
There's a reason why there's so much hype about Halo (crap games just are not this popular)

It may not be to everyones taste, but it is a good game.

imo it's not possible to fully appreciate Halo by playing it on the pc alone. It's like playing a port of Mario 64 or Golden Eye on the pc (I deserve to be arrested for thought crime for even thinking that :/). Halo is a console game through and through.

//edit - and that could be why some of you guys don't like it.

What do you think of Metroid Prime? (infact all the best single player first person shooters seem to be on consoles *puts on flame suit*)
Click to expand...

I've heard really good things about Metroid Prime, i wouldn't mind playing it.

Also i thought the SP Halo 2 trailer was just more of the same gameplay from the last one. Everyone hyped it up saying its awesome and all this but it doesn't seem like that. Multiplayer looks pretty good though, but i don't wanna pay 100 bucks (Aussie) for the game and another 50(or maybe even another 100) for Xbox Live so i can play against people. I'd much prefer playing it on the pc

But really it doesnt have anything to do with the consoles. Maybe its too do with the developers and how well they impliment the controls into the game. If the control's suck on a console that can bring the whole game down, but if the controls rock like in Halo then it doesn't matter about it. But there are still better FPS games for the PC then on a console. For example, lets do the obvious and compare Halo. On Xbox with co-op its awesome. On PC it sucks. Why? Well one reason was because it was a bad port (By Gearbox, who made the awesome Opposing Force add-on :O) and the other reason was because it just doesnt stand up to the other PC shooters.
 
I like Halo. It has a great plot with interesting characters (I like the way the Covenant see us as 'against their religion'). The pacing, something that many games get wrong, is spot-on, making every mission interesting, The enemies are intelligent (to some extent) and are a blast to fight against. Both vehicular and on-foot action is smooth, polished and perfectly intuitive. What's not to like?
 
Sulkdodds said:
I like Halo. It has a great plot with interesting characters (I like the way the Covenant see us as 'against their religion'). The pacing, something that many games get wrong, is spot-on, making every mission interesting, The enemies are intelligent (to some extent) and are a blast to fight against. Both vehicular and on-foot action is smooth, polished and perfectly intuitive. What's not to like?
Click to expand...

Well i never said i didn't like it. I just said it doesnt stand up to the PC shooters. But since you asked, the level design sucks, the story had alot of potential but lost it after the flood came along, also the flood reminds me SO MUCH of Half-Life, there were only 10 levels making the game short, and you have to pay 50 bucks to play multiplayer online. The pacing did seem to serve its purpose well though.Co-op is awesome though, and multi-player is still fun even on 4 players. But there are alot of PC games that do a better job of everything that Halo does well.
 
Since a lot of people mentioned it, why is everyone's favorite game Goldeneye when Perfect Dark was a far better version of the same thing?
 
Halo was basically the poster child of the X-box back then (2 years ago) and received the burden of attention whenever the console was mentioned. It was alot better than as opposed to now on the PC.
 
METROID PRIME OWNS COMPLETELY...

good, now weve got that out the way, i would also like to say that Holo also owns, and GEORGE BUSH SMELLS

/me runs off giggling
 
Well, I consider Halo the absolute most overrated game of all time. I bought it when it came out for PC about a year ago, and to this day it is the only single player game I own that is too astoundingly boring and repetitive for me to stick through and finish. The gameplay consists of nothing but your basic run and shoot. Every once in a while you got a little cutscene with some story in it, but it didn't matter because reagardless of what happened in the story you would still run and shoot, run and shoot, through carbon copy levels. It wasn't like HL or many other FPS game where you would have some sort of tasks to complete that involve even the simplest form of world interaction, oh no, most of Halo's environments are the dullest imaginable with nothing to do other than kill the bad guys. The whole story was so detatched from the actual gameplay that you might as well read a novel and play Quake 3 SP.
 
What, why does everybody think halo is crap?

Now let's assume I have no halo bias, ignore my avatar.

In 2001, there was no good FPS. Literally, there was a rehash of quake (serious sam) and quake 3 itself.Soldier of fortune and the rainbow sheilds were a moderate affair there. For 3 years now, ever since 1998 when half-life revolutionized pc gaming - no FPS was of quality. People were dying, it was getting boring to play Counter-strike for some, and it was still very popular at that time...we needed a new FPS...

and then, Halo

Not only was it innovative with it's two weapon strategy and shield system, but it was the most fun game I had played in years. Fluid animations, good SP and MP and excellent storyline made halo what it is. No it doesn't have all that fancy dynamic lighting or shadow shit - neither it had awesome graphics (mind - in 2001 those graphics were pretty good none the less) it was a game purely dependent on gameplay and that's why it succeded. The warthog alone owned. Period.

Hopefully the same history would repeat itself in half-life 2's case as many people believe it's an underdog in the graphics department (many but not me, I think it's awesome).
 
I still can't forgive the terrible level design on the indoor levels. There were points when I turned the corner to see the same damn section of rooms starting all over again for like the 5th time and almost gave up. Otherwise, it was a pretty decent game, really well done.
 
Apos said:
I still can't forgive the terrible level design on the indoor levels. There were points when I turned the corner to see the same damn section of rooms starting all over again for like the 5th time and almost gave up. Otherwise, it was a pretty decent game, really well done.
Click to expand...

Microsoft is to blame for that, they forced a deadline on bungie to complete the game on time with the xbox release. Bungie had BIG ideas for the game, but had to finish the game fast so they couldn't work on the level designs much.

Some of them were at their very intial stage, here see this video of halo evolution:

http://www.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_halo_evolution.html
 
Halo in my opinion was medicore. As I started getting into the game it was getting tedious and the levels virtually repeated, at least 3 ****ing times; I mean by same design. Halo 2 doesn't personally interest me, I guess it appeals to some gamers.
 
Sparta said:
But there are alot of PC games that do a better job of everything that Halo does well.
Click to expand...

Like what?

I honestly feel there are more great single player first person shooters on consoles than on the pc.

Namely - Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, Metroid Prime and Halo. Aside from Half and Sysyem Shock 2 (possibly Deus Ex ...... although we're venturing into rpg territory), the pc really has nothing that can even begin to compete with those games (titles like Soldier of Fortune, Jedi Knight and Far Cry seeming extremely average in comparison)

(multiplayer is different tho - and is the pcs saving grace :) )

Most people who dislike Halo played it on the pc, which isn't suprising. I thought it was a bit crappy on the pc, but it's one of my fave games ever on the Xbox. The difference is that much.
 
Warbie said:
Like what?

I honestly feel there are more great single player first person shooters on consoles than on the pc.

Namely - Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, Metroid Prime and Halo. Aside from Half and Sysyem Shock 2 (possibly Deus Ex ...... although we're venturing into rpg territory), the pc really has nothing that can even begin to compete with those games (titles like Soldier of Fortune, Jedi Knight and Far Cry seeming extremely average in comparison)

(multiplayer is different tho - and is the pcs saving grace :) )

Most people who dislike Halo played it on the pc, which isn't suprising. I thought it was a bit crappy on the pc, but it's one of my fave games ever on the Xbox. The difference is that much.
Click to expand...

The last statement is very true Warbie, the xbox version is class. Those of you who have played it on pc have definately no idea how good this game is on the xbox. True, the level design isn't much different - but even now the graphics and overall gameplay experience on the xbox version...what you say...PWNs the pc version, and the fact that it came 3 years before it.
 
My sole gripe with Halo PC is they didn't bring over the cloaking shader from the X-box version. The cloaked enemies were just very transparent, but in the x-box version they distort the scenery behind them, which is far cooler.
 
I guess the hardest thing they had to do with the port was rewriting all the shaders so they'd work on normal hardware. I guess a few things got dropped.
In its time Halo was a landmark, and will remain so. At the time it showed a real step forward for the genre with its general polish and combinations of good ideas.
 
I think your asking the wrong forum. Of course everyone here doesn't like Halo, because everyone here is apeshit over HL2. Go to a Halo forum and ask the same question, and you'll see why people love it.

I personally think it's a great game on the XBox, but it sucks on the PC. Don't ask me how that works out.
 
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