Games Beaten 2014

[emwearz]

The flood are utterly horrible, boring and lazy design choice. The later Halo games play much better because they are not in it.

The second half of the first Halo has lots of backtracking but this time fighting and annoying enemy in the flood, everything about them just feels lazy.

[dsheinem]

Halo talk

I don't know, guys - I did and do play a lot of FPS games and I think the original Halo is rightly deserving of its esteemed place as one of the best in the history of the genre (single player or multiplayer). There is a lot I like better about Halo 2, but there wasn't really anything like Halo on consoles at the time it was released, and it bested most of the PC competition as well (as a PC and PS2 gamer I was jealous of its timed exclusivity).

I actually think it's level design holds up quite well today - it is generally less linear/corridor-based than most campaigns in the genre from the last decade, and I think it does the "wave-based" combat pretty well for 2001. I thought the Anniversary edition was handled masterfully and hope that Halo 2 sees the same treatment (as it is rumored to be getting for this holiday season).

[dsheinem]

The flood are utterly horrible, boring and lazy design choice. The later Halo games play much better because they are not in it.

The second half of the first Halo has lots of backtracking but this time fighting and annoying enemy in the flood, everything about them just feels lazy.

You and I disagree on this, but I've always thought that the flood were fine. Do you find them hard to target or something? Too many of them? I think the Library level pushes you to call on all the combat skills you've learned (or evolved) to use over the course of the game. The challenge they offer also emphasizes the threat they pose in the narrative.

[Violent By Design]

Halo talk

I don't know, guys - I did and do play a lot of FPS games and I think the original Halo is rightly deserving of its esteemed place as one of the best in the history of the genre (single player or multiplayer). There is a lot I like better about Halo 2, but there wasn't really anything like Halo on consoles at the time it was released, and it bested most of the PC competition as well (as a PC and PS2 gamer I was jealous of its timed exclusivity).

I actually think it's level design holds up quite well today - it is generally less linear/corridor-based than most campaigns in the genre from the last decade, and I think it does the "wave-based" combat pretty well for 2001. I thought the Anniversary edition was handled masterfully and hope that Halo 2 sees the same treatment (as it is rumored to be getting for this holiday season).

It was the best FPS on console at the time, but that was hardly saying much. It was hard for me to be amazed by Halo, when I was playing games like Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike at the time, which by then were slightly older games.

[dsheinem]

Halo talk

I don't know, guys - I did and do play a lot of FPS games and I think the original Halo is rightly deserving of its esteemed place as one of the best in the history of the genre (single player or multiplayer). There is a lot I like better about Halo 2, but there wasn't really anything like Halo on consoles at the time it was released, and it bested most of the PC competition as well (as a PC and PS2 gamer I was jealous of its timed exclusivity).

I actually think it's level design holds up quite well today - it is generally less linear/corridor-based than most campaigns in the genre from the last decade, and I think it does the "wave-based" combat pretty well for 2001. I thought the Anniversary edition was handled masterfully and hope that Halo 2 sees the same treatment (as it is rumored to be getting for this holiday season).

It was the best FPS on console at the time, but that was hardly saying much.

I think it is saying quite a bit. No single game did more to launch the FPS craze of the past decade+, ushered in an age of online multiplayer on consoles, or did more to define much of Western game development in its wake. Sure, there are plenty of PC games that did the things Halo did beforehand and plenty of PC FPSs years prior that were/are better than Halo, but Halo made the genre take hold on consoles. That's nothing to scoff at.

Regardless of whether you think the changes it instituted in the industry have been positive or negative, it is hard to deny that its success has been a major catalyst for where mainstream gaming has gone since. I'd argue that it is just as important to the FPS genre as Super Mario 64 was to platformers or Madden was to sports games.

[emwearz]

The flood are utterly horrible, boring and lazy design choice. The later Halo games play much better because they are not in it.

The second half of the first Halo has lots of backtracking but this time fighting and annoying enemy in the flood, everything about them just feels lazy.

You and I disagree on this, but I've always thought that the flood were fine. Do you find them hard to target or something? Too many of them? I think the Library level pushes you to call on all the combat skills you've learned (or evolved) to use over the course of the game. The challenge they offer also emphasizes the threat they pose in the narrative.

- I dislike how they reuse parts of level (the Library springs to mind) and just say' redo it with the flood now'.

- They are boring to fight, the literally just 'flood' the screen with repetition.

- The fact they exist makes no sense either. The forerunners built the Halo rings to destroy all life to starve out the flood. Yet kept samples of the flood. Also how the fuck did the flood survive for so long with nothing to eat?

- So repetitive, they got better about this as the original trilogy went on, but I think the later games in the series are far better off for not having the flood in it.

I just found levels centered around them really boring and repetitive, even more so when you play the same level again, but with them in it. My opinion anyhow.

I still enjoy the Halo games and have finished all of them, but I find they got much stronger and more enjoyable and less repetative when they designed the flood out of the games.

[dsheinem]

The flood are utterly horrible, boring and lazy design choice. The later Halo games play much better because they are not in it.

The second half of the first Halo has lots of backtracking but this time fighting and annoying enemy in the flood, everything about them just feels lazy.

You and I disagree on this, but I've always thought that the flood were fine. Do you find them hard to target or something? Too many of them? I think the Library level pushes you to call on all the combat skills you've learned (or evolved) to use over the course of the game. The challenge they offer also emphasizes the threat they pose in the narrative.

- I dislike how they reuse parts of level (the Library springs to mind) and just say' redo it with the flood now'.

- They are boring to fight, the literally just 'flood' the screen with repetition.

- The fact they exist makes no sense either. The forerunners built the Halo rings to destroy all life to starve out the flood. Yet kept samples of the flood. Also how the fuck did the flood survive for so long with nothing to eat?

- So repetitive, they got better about this as the original trilogy went on, but I think the later games in the series are far better off for not having the flood in it.

I just found levels centered around them really boring and repetitive, even more so when you play the same level again, but with them in it. My opinion anyhow.

I still enjoy the Halo games and have finished all of them, but I find they got much stronger and more enjoyable and less repetative when they designed the flood out of the games.

So you don't think the Flood are sort of like a combo/evolution of the Pinkys in Doom, the Kamikazes in Serious Sam, Vortiguants in Half-Life, etc.? There's plenty of enemies that "flood" the screen by rushing it, spawning all over it, etc. I thought the Flood was a good take on this kind of enemy...

[Violent By Design]

I think it is saying quite a bit

Considering its competition, not really. If Halo had been a PC exclusive no one would talk about it. PC and Console gaming wasn't as intertwined then as it is now. Being the best FPS in 2000 was being a big fish in a small pond. Heck wasn't that the sell of the Xbox? For Microsoft to enlighten the console barbarians about PC-esque gaming?

No single game did more to launch the FPS craze of the past decade+,

I'm not sure how you could measure that, but Call of Duty is bigger than Halo, and it was bigger than Halo 7 years ago. Halo is an impactful game, but FPS were going to be the big thing in gaming one way or another.

ushered in an age of online multiplayer on consoles,

That is true.

or did more to define much of Western game development in its wake.

Not sure what this means.

Sure, there are plenty of PC games that did the things Halo did beforehand and plenty of PC FPSs years prior that were/are better than Halo, but Halo made the genre take hold on consoles. That's nothing to scoff at.

Why is this relevant though?

Regardless of whether you think the changes it instituted in the industry have been positive or negative, it is hard to deny that its success has been a major catalyst for where mainstream gaming has gone since. I'd argue that it is just as important to the FPS genre as Super Mario 64 was to platformers or Madden was to sports games.

It'd be a poor argument, because it's not nearly as impactful as those games are to their genres, or impactful for the same reasons either. Super Mario 64 is important to its genre for more reasons than just it selling a lot of copies. Other than that, FPS was hardly a niche or unestablished genre, it was already a huge genre by the time Halo came out, and it was only going to get bigger and bigger, as it had been growing steadily in size for years up to that point (and still continued to grow bigger after Halo).

You must be a big Halo fan, we're kinda talking about how the game is as a whole, and you're going on this history lesson about how Halo is the Citizen Kane of video games. Not that I don't enjoy the debate, but it seems...irrelevant to the discussion.


Halo is impactful for what it did with console multiplayer and for what it did for the Xbox series, and it did influence a lot of games with the health regen thing, but hardly created an enlightenment for the FPS genre.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Halo is impactful for what it did with console multiplayer and for what it did for the Xbox series, and it did influence a lot of games with the health regen thing, but hardly created an enlightenment for the FPS genre.

I think that is the big defining argument here. I do think that Halo had as strong an impact as Mario 64 did for their respective genres and you can make those comparisons. Playing Mario 64, you can see the flaws in camera, controls and graphics, as well as level design for certain worlds, much like you can talk of the flaws in Halo.

I find that the original Halo does not stand the test of time. I agree with the flood seeming generic as even if they serve different roles and there are different types of Flood, they all seem to look the same. With other games, there may be kamikaze enemies, but they stand out and you can easily discern them from different enemies.

It has made an indelible mark on the genre for the consoles, but I don't enjoy it now.

[dsheinem]

I wouldn't consider myself a big Halo fan - I enjoy the series but it isn't amongst my favorite in the genre nor do I think it is among the best. Halo is certainly no "Citizen Kane of gaming" so you can cut the hyperbole.

But I do think that Halo has been as impactful on the industry as Mario 64 and Madden, even if it was less groundbreaking from a pure design perspective. My use of "impactful" here has more to do with the game's role in providing a blueprint for how to find sales success with the genre on consoles - everything from its marketing campaign, to elements of exclusivity, map packs, robust network infrastructure, and yes - design elements like health regen and various multiplayer modes - these became basically requisite components to finding success on a console in the years after.

In that sense, it ended up being a lot more important for the health of consoles than Mario 64 was. If anything, Mario 64 doomed many subsequent platformers to mediocrity and no one outside of Nintendo has found much success in the genre (in terms of sales). Halo was the right game at the right time...