Games Beaten 2014

[Stark]

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.

There's a lot to respond to in your post, but this is easy, low-hanging fruit. CoD is now bigger than Halo on consoles, but when Halo came out CoD wasn't even on consoles and wouldn't be until later in the oXbox's life. The FPS craze of this past decade is because of consoles and not PC, which as was pointed out started with Halo. Halo was the first FPS I remember that was palatable on a console, the controls just felt right and I was staunchly FPS on PC only, with M&K prior to Halo.

[isiolia]

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).

Ehhh, there are parts that are - the big outdoor areas for example, and those tend to shine (outside of horrible vehicle control). There's a lot more that consists of linear corridors or rooms that are very repetitive.

Wave-based stuff, I dunno, I tend to dislike the model in general. Creating logic to it, like the dropships, is nice versus just spawning stuff in - but it does the latter too. Doubly so towards the end where if you hang back and kill stuff as it tries to come through a door, it just keeps appearing. If you rush forward, it stops spawning, until the next time you have to go through there.

There are occasional moments in the game that are good. There's just a lot of filler too.

I do think the Anniversary edition was handled very well, if you like the core game. I'd also agree that the game in general is very significant. It did a -ton- for the genre on consoles, particularly with multiplayer. My suspicion though is that the focus was on that aspect of the game, with the campaign being secondary, because Rare (at least) had already shown there was market for local multiplayer.

The Flood is the kind of shift that tons of games do. Set a rhythm for combat with "smart" enemies that keep distance, go for cover, and so on. Get the player used to it. Then throw them off with enemies that rush their position instead. It's almost expected at this point. I still don't like it

Similarly, I don't like the "keeps spawning until you rush the point" stuff CoD does, even if the rest CoD4 had a great feel to it. I hate the mechanic, so I don't bother with CoD games after beating Modern Warfare.

Mostly to say, it's my opinion. The first one just happened to hit a lot of personal dislikes. The second far fewer, and 3, so far, has been great.

[Violent By Design]

There's a lot to respond to in your post, but this is easy, low-hanging fruit. CoD is now bigger than Halo on consoles, but when Halo came out CoD wasn't even on consoles and wouldn't be until later in the oXbox's life.

Ah, but you activated my trap card.

For one, he mentioned the past decade. COD has been more popular than Halo for the past decade. Not only that, COD genuinely expanded the market as a whole and made gaming bigger (and more mainstream). Halo at its best you can say exposed people to the FPS genre, COD exposed people to video games.


But for the bigger point of my post, and why I laid out the COD > Halo statement, because I knew someone would bring up that COD wasn't always bigger than COD.

So where do we draw the line in when FPS got bigger? You say that COD wasn't big when Halo came out, very true. But was Halo the biggest FPS when it came out? Nope. Counter-Strike was. Counter-Strike was bigger than the second, third, fourth, and fifth FPS combine when it came out. So how can someone say Halo influenced the genre more than anyone else? How do you measure that?

The scale is different the further back in the past you go, because naturally the market is smaller. Is Halo a bigger deal than Doom relative to how small the market was during Doom's time? Was it a bigger deal than Goldeneye when it came out? Was it a bigger deal than Half-Life? If the answer is yes, Halo was a bigger deal, couldn't we fall back on what you said in regards to Halo vs COD - in that it only has that advantage because it benefited from coming later?

How can you measure influence when every game that has come out has had the benefit of riding the momentum of an older game?

The FPS craze of this past decade is because of consoles and not PC, which as was pointed out started with Halo. Halo was the first FPS I remember that was palatable on a console, the controls just felt right and I was staunchly FPS on PC only, with M&K prior to Halo.

The reasons why FPS are more popular now has to do with the internet. That's really it. FPS was going to become bigger as online multiplayer became bigger. Xbox Live is why games are popular on consoles, not Halo. The two are intertwined, but Xbox Live is the more important ip.

If we lived in an alternative universe where that Blinky game took off instead of Halo for the Xbox, FPS would still be a killer ip genre. The masses wouldn't be playing shoot em ups and 3D platformers or anything of the like.


FPS and online gaming is bigger than Halo. Way bigger.

[Violent By Design]

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 haven't played Halo 1, but I am almost positive that Mario 64 has aged better than Halo, despite it being a full generation older. Every old game has flaws in its camera, controls and graphics - games that are 3 years old have the same problems.

Calling Halo the Mario 64 of FPS, doesn't take into consideration how big Mario 64 is for 3D platformers.

What was the biggest 3D platformer before Mario 64 came out? I don't remember either. Bug Too or some crap? Prior to Halo, you had Wolfenstein, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Quake, Doom and Tribes. All of those games were very popular as well as added their own innovations/flavor. Even if you made the argument that Halo is more important/innovative/influential than any of them - how can you say the gap between Halo and those games are anything like the gap between Mario 64 and Bug? It is unintentionally insulting to how big FPS' are.

Post Mario 64, there have been some moderately big games like Crash, but again that blatantly came after, and it never got as big as Mario 64 was.

After Halo, you had Call of Duty, Battlefield (which would have been big by its own, and if anything it was influenced more by COD in its later entries), Team Fortress 2 - all of those games you could say expanded the market. So again, is the difference between Halo and COD bigger than the difference between Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot? Is it even close?


Halo is a big deal in a genre, that has had many big deals. It's a genre was growing along with the size of the internet.

You can't compare that to Mario 64. Mario 64 was the biggest console game of its time, not just 3D platformer. To put things in perspective, the same year Halo came out, Grand Theft Auto 3 came out which was more important and turned more heads than Halo did. You can't compare their dominance, innovation or influence at all. Master Chief is no Mario.

[Stark]

@Violent you're arguing which FPS is bigger, when Dave is arguing that Halo was more influential in console FPS gaming. CoD was bigger on PCs than Halo, yes, but this doesn't invalidate his assertion.

[dsheinem]

@Violent you're arguing which FPS is bigger, when Dave is arguing that Halo was more influential in console FPS gaming. CoD was bigger on PCs than Halo, yes, but this doesn't invalidate his assertion.

specifically:

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.

Halo was more important to the health of its genre on consoles, and arguably the for health of consoles as a whole, than Mario 64 was.

Using the same criteria, though, Halo is no Super Mario Bros.

[Violent By Design]

@Violent you're arguing which FPS is bigger, when Dave is arguing that Halo was more influential in console FPS gaming. CoD was bigger on PCs than Halo, yes, but this doesn't invalidate his assertion.

I'm assuming Dave is dsheinem


If we were talking strictly console FPS gaming, then there wouldn't be a problem. He has mentioned a lot more than that.


COD was bigger than Halo was on consoles, not just on PC (where Halo absolutely bombed, going back to my big fish in a small pond analogy). COD being bigger than Halo is not a recent thing, I am well aware that COD 1-3 is smaller than Halo but they were also significantly different from COD 4 and up, but COD 4 came out a long ass time ago already. COD didn't just build off the back of Halo. COD struck gold because they found a formula that no one else had. If you're dismissing that Modern Warfare cant' be considered more influential than Halo because it came out later, then why couldn't you say Halo isn't more influential than Goldeneye? Modern Warfare could have took the Call of Duty brand off and become an original ip, and it still would have been as big.


I feel like Dave is implying that because if Halo wasn't around, FPS wouldn't be the big killer ip genre, or people wouldn't be playing FPS on consoles - which I hugely disagree with. Online multipalyer was going to become the next big thing, and it is still growing bigger as the world becomes more connected. Halo came along for the ride, but it wasn't the truck.


I also get the implication he is saying more than Halo is the biggest console fps, I feel like he is saying it is the biggest FPS period; otherwise why would he compare it to Mario 64?

[dsheinem]

Please address my actual arguments rather than the ones you feel I'm making.

[Violent By Design]

@Violent you're arguing which FPS is bigger, when Dave is arguing that Halo was more influential in console FPS gaming. CoD was bigger on PCs than Halo, yes, but this doesn't invalidate his assertion.

specifically:

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.

Halo was more important to the health of its genre on consoles, and arguably the for health of consoles as a whole, than Mario 64 was.

Using the same criteria, though, Halo is no Super Mario Bros.

Using your criteria for "impact", I agree that Halo was impactful.

But I'm still sure how that makes it the Super Mario 64 of its genre. There was still Goldeneye prior to Halo, which had mainstream success, and as I've said before, COD came after Halo and had a ton of mainstream success.

Mario 64 is still the king of the mountain. You could say that no other developers could just make a game as good as 3D Marios, but that still doesn't defeat that Mario 64 set a gold standard and a blue print on how to make 3D platformers.

The difference between Mario 64 and Super Mario Bros is closer than the difference between Mario 64 and Halo imo.

[Violent By Design]

Please address my actual arguments rather than the ones you feel I'm making.

I did, and I hadn't read your last post at the time I replied to Stark (your one about what you think Impact is). In your older post, you went out of your way to talk about the FPS Craze, which would imply you're talking about PC gaming as well.

With that being said, going based on what you think impact is, I still don't see the connection between Halo and Mario 64.

Perhaps to make it more clear, less talk on Halo, more on Mario 64. What do you think Mario 64 did for its genre?