Halo series

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm not surprised. On top of most gamers generally preferring multiplayer to single player, you have to keep in mind that, while it was popular, a lot of gamers didn't get into the series until the second game, which multiplied the fan base for the series. The 3rd game also came out really successful in that regard thanks to the popularity of 2, but having to compete with COD that year prevented it from overtaking the 2nd game, which had no competition for online console gaming at the time of its release. Still, as far as campaign modes go, I'd say that 1 was the best, and 2 was the worst (not counting 4, which wasn't made by Bungie).

I honestly thought Halo 3 was far inferior to the first one in terms of multiplayer. Granted, the Xbox version didn't have online play, but split-screen was a lot of fun, and taking the PC port online was incredible.

Having played and enjoyed both extensively, I'd say that I honestly found 3's multiplayer to be the best in the series, personally. The maps were mostly well balanced and most of them were a good size. I love Halo 1's split screen, but I always felt that it's maps were either too small or too big for just 4 players. Granted that, I may have felt differently if the game was online, or if I had enough friends to have LAN parties with (as it stood, I didn't even have enough friends to fill up a single TV screen ), I may have felt differently, but overall I just had more fun with 3's split-screen and online. That said, I prefer a good single player any day, and 1 trumps the sequels, in that regard.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I thought Halo 3 kind of lost the plot in general. I was huge into Halo 1 both single- and multi-player for years as a kid (I even read the books!), and I loved Halo 2 MP even more while still moderately enjoying the campaign, but literally all of my interest in the franchise died when 3 launched. I found every aspect of that game to be utterly boring, and had to force myself to play it with my friends since they were all still enamored with the series. I couldn't even finish the campaign because the Cortana level made me physically ill.

Never bought another Halo game after that. I played a fair amount of ODST and Reach MP at my friend's place, but I just haven't really had the resolve to pick up the series again. Hell, I even went through a whole phase where I pretended that I never liked the games to begin with. Ah, the stupid things we do as teenagers.

I really should pick up Reach one of these days. The novel was pretty fantastic to me as a youngster.

Eh, this will never make sense to me. Halo 3's multiplayer was excellent (and I'm not even a multiplayer type of gamer). The weapons felt WAY more balanced than in Halo 2, where stuff like dual wielding needlers and the notorious "noob" combo made an otherwise great MP with the best maps in the series into something much more derivative than it should've been. I still loved it, but it wasn't as great as everyone said it was, IMO. I thought 3 was a massive improvement. You actually had to use different weapons and vehicles, and they each had distinct advantages and disadvantages. It was certainly not boring at all. It just required more of a learning curve than Halo 2, because it wasn't as simple to exploit cheap tactics, and I'm all for that. To me, it's more fun and rewarding to perform well in Halo 3's MP because it's more skill based and less luck based. That isn't to say that 2 is broken, because it's not, but I definitely felt far more constrained in my options and strategies on the MP setting.

Also, the campaign mode in 3, while still far, far inferior to 1, was miles better than 2, and the reason is because 3 only had one terrible level in the game, that being Cortana. Halo 2 had SEVERAL horrible levels. That, and Halo 3's levels The Ark and The Covenant are 2 of the best in the series.

As for Reach, I consider it to have the most boring MP in the series, but the best single player since the first game.

[Foggle]

I was never good at any of the games, so the higher learning curve didn't really mean anything to me. I was consistently a middle of the road player across all three of them, and I clocked tons of time in each. I just didn't like most of the maps in 3 - especially that one with the river and man cannons which you ended up playing on literally 75% of the time for some reason. (While I did actually enjoy this map at first, it didn't have the longevity of levels like Blood Gulch or Zanzibar, for me.) The guns also felt a lot less satisfying to fire IMO; it seemed like there was more punch to them in the first two games, especially Halo 1.

The campaign I can't really comment on, as I literally have not touched it in six years. I just remember thinking it was one of the most uninteresting games I'd ever played at the time.

[Spark Of Spirit]

As someone who played a lot of split-screen Halo 1, it really WAS that good. About all it was missing for me was bots.

Also, Foggle you should try ODST single player and Reach someday. Their single player campaigns were more fun than Halo 2 or 3s to me (even if ODST's wasn't very long) and Reach really feels like the Halo 2 campaign I wanted back when I first played that game.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Also, the range of the shotgun in Halo 2 is ABYSMAL. I don't mean that it's too short. On the contrary, it's too long, making it way too overpowered in multiplayer (if someone comes remotely close to you with it and you don't have a one-hit-kill weapon to fight back with, you're done). Granted that, it goes both ways, so you're an overpowered motherfucker with it on MP as well, which I'm fine with, but it's on the single-player where it's a bitch. The Flood carry that weapon, and on anything above Normal (as in, the difficulties that I like to play on), it's a one-hit-kill. You could be playing perfectly, and then you're dead out of nowhere because you didn't manage to kill that thing from a considerable distance away.

That's bad enough, but it gets worse. The Flood with rocket launchers are back! Thought they were bad in Combat Evolved? At least the missiles flew in straight and predictable paths in that game. In Halo 2, they have homing, so you're fucked unless you memorized exactly where they spawn and kill them before they see you. And even when you kill Flood, the infection firms can reanimate their corpses! In halo 3 you could prevent this by destroying their corpses with a single melee attack. In Halo 2, it takes (and this is an exact number, here) "22" fucking melee attacks to do that, which of course is impractical. The only other ways to do it are either with a sword or frag grenade. Don't have either of those? Well, enjoy killing and re-killing the same damn enemies over again and drawing out each battle as much as possible. As a kid I never understood it and thought that they just infinitely respawned, but now, it's literally just their corpses getting reanimated and basically forcing me to waste all of my ammo.

Yeah, The Flood suck, but they are ESPECIALLY terrible in the 2nd game. And I haven't eleven mentioned the atrocious Jackal snipers, either. The only thing that 2's campaign mode has over 3 is Elites, which are more interesting enemies than Brutes. Too bad you only fight them for about half of the game, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I was never good at any of the games, so the higher learning curve didn't really mean anything to me. I was consistently a middle of the road player across all three of them, and I clocked tons of time in each. I just didn't like most of the maps in 3 - especially that one with the river and man cannons which you ended up playing on literally 75% of the time for some reason. (While I did actually enjoy this map at first, it didn't have the longevity of levels like Blood Gulch or Zanzibar, for me.)

If you're talking about Valhalla, that was actually a remake of a Halo 1 map, so it's kind of  no double standard, there.

Halo 3 had excellent maps. Guardian, Narrows, Epitaph, and most others. The only ones that sucked were Construct and some of the DLC maps.

And for the record, I also played hours upon hours of each, and if was never a high level player in the slightest. I simply feel that, on a level if actual fun, Halo 3 was the best when it came to multiplayer.

The guns also felt a lot less satisfying to fire IMO; it seemed like there was more punch to them in the first two games, especially Halo 1.

Eh, I guess that's just a subjective interpretation. I don't see how you could argue that they had less kick to them when they killed enemies fast if you knew how to use them (the BR was insane with consecutive headshots). Weapons were still as powerful as ever. Just not as exploitable. Personally, I felt satisfied whenever I got a kill, rather than just from firing my weapons.

The campaign I can't really comment on, as I literally have not touched it in six years. I just remember thinking it was one of the most uninteresting games I'd ever played at the time.

Honestly, the level design in the good levels from that game are still among the best in the series, IMO. The only reason that it wasn't as good as it should've been was because the Brutes were the main enemies, and you didn't fight Elites anymore, which were much more interesting.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

As someone who played a lot of split-screen Halo 1, it really WAS that good. About all it was missing for me was bots.

Yeah, playing Halo 1's split screen with my older brother, cousin, and friend were among my fondest memories. Really, I think that all 3 original Halo games had excellent MP (as much as you guys try to rag on 3, which I largely disagree with). I particularly prefer a good split-screen experience to online MP with total strangers, any day, myself. That's why, even if I got the first game for the PC and played its MP online, I doubt that it's be as much fun for me.

Also, Foggle you should try ODST single player and Reach someday. Their single player campaigns were more fun than Halo 2 or 3s to me (even if ODST's wasn't very long) and Reach really feels like the Halo 2 campaign I wanted back when I first played that game.

I really enjoyed everything about ODST except for the hub world, which was a nice idea, but ultimately really boring to navigate. Reach was magnificent, though. Great level design, excellent enemy AI, and a really good balance of weapons, vehicles, and accessories to use. It's arguably as good as the original in terms of the campaign mode. For all of their fumbles, Bungie left the series off in a high note, IMO.

[Foggle]

As someone who played a lot of split-screen Halo 1, it really WAS that good. About all it was missing for me was bots.

Split-screen on Xbox and online on PC in Halo 1 were THE thing with me and my friends back in the day. I must have clocked over 500 hours on it in total, not even counting the 10s of times I played through the campaign. I mean, with maps like Battle Creek, Blood Gulch, Gephyrophobia, Hang 'Em High, Sidewinder, and Timberland, and those vehicles, man, I never got tired of that damn game. Back then, there was nothing like riding with your friends in a warthog, or blowing someone out of a banshee with the rocket launcher (no lock-on or destructible vehicles in the first game!) and taking it for yourself. One of my favorite things was forcing everyone to play Chiron using the Rockets game type whenever I got the chance to pick a map.

No other multiplayer game to this day has replicated the pure fun I had with the original Halo. Was it perfect? No. Was it balanced? Hardly. But I've never loved competitive MP as much before or since. Halo 2's multiplayer came close, though; getting to play split-screen AND online at the same time? That blew my mind back in the day. And some of the new maps were just phenomenal.

Also, Foggle you should try ODST single player and Reach someday. Their single player campaigns were more fun than Halo 2 or 3s to me (even if ODST's wasn't very long) and Reach really feels like the Halo 2 campaign I wanted back when I first played that game.

I will, for sure.

If you're talking about Valhalla, that was actually a remake of a Halo 1 map, so it's kind of  no double standard, there.

No it wasn't. It was supposed to be the new Blood Gulch according to Bungie, but I found it a lot less enjoyable than that map and especially Coagulation.

Valhalla is a multiplayer map in Halo 3. A from-the-ground-up level, it is said to be a "spinoff of the Blood Gulch map from Halo: Combat Evolved."

Honestly, the level design in the good levels from that game are still among the best in the series, IMO. The only reason that it wasn't as good as it should've been was because the Brutes were the main enemies, and you didn't fight Elites anymore, which were much more interesting.

That might be it. I do plan on picking up another copy and trying it again one of these days, for old time's sake at the very least.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I will, for sure.

Just keep in mind, Reach is most fun as a game where you use tactics. If you go in expecting something a bit more cinematic or with an engrossing story, you'll probably be disappointed. It's fun on a gameplay level where you have so many options at your disposal to deal with each situation at hand. I also recommend playing Heroic difficulty for the best experience, but to be safe, start it out in on Normal, and if it's too easy for you, then switch to Heroic.

No it wasn't. It was supposed to be the new Blood Gulch according to Bungie, but I found it a lot less enjoyable than that map and especially Coagulation.

That's what a remake is. It's not supposed to be the same, but an updated version of an earlier map. The terrain and weapon placements have changed, but the idea of a semi-symmetrical map with two forts is still intact. And the problem is that you were playing a map designed for big team battle and/or capture the flag. Big team battle isn't as fun as regular team battle because it's too cluttered with too many players. It's an EXCELLENT map for capture the flag, but that's not a very popular game type, unfortunately. The map is also a bit too big for just 8 players in regular team slayer, so there's your problem. I honestly still enjoyed it, though. My strategy was to take residence in the canyons and either snipe or ambush players crossing between forts (which is also what I did in Blood Gulch). The idea is to take advantage of the map's layout, and there were so many pockets to hide in and take advantage of that it was still really interesting, despite being a bit too big for regular sized team matches.

That might be it. I do plan on picking up another copy and trying it again one of these days, for old time's sake at the very least.

Yeah, I need to buy a new copy, myself, since I misplaced my old one years ago, and on top of that it stopped working, anyways.

Also, I should comment on it since Foggle brought it up earlier, but the only part of Halo's story that I ever legitimately cared about was Fall of Reach, which I thought was a good novel, but ironically THAT's the part that's not canon anymore. Figures....

As for the games, though, I never actually cared about any of the characters. I did like some of the humor, though, like the banter between Cortana and Spark in the first game. I suppose that Halo 2 came the closest to being a good story as far as the games go, since the Arbiter actually had a character arc going for him (and he's voiced by Keith David, which automatically makes him awesome), but the game just abruptly ended and his story was pretty much dropped in the third game, so that potential just went straight down the drain.

At any rate, I never played Halo games for story, so it hardly matters to me.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Also, the range of the shotgun in Halo 2 is ABYSMAL. I don't mean that it's too short. On the contrary, it's too long, making it way too overpowered in multiplayer (if someone comes remotely close to you with it and you don't have a one-hit-kill weapon to fight back with, you're done). Granted that, it goes both ways, so you're an overpowered motherfucker with it on MP as well, which I'm fine with, but it's on the single-player where it's a bitch. The Flood carry that weapon, and on anything above Normal (as in, the difficulties that I like to play on), it's a one-hit-kill. You could be playing perfectly, and then you're dead out of nowhere because you didn't manage to kill that thing from a considerable distance away.

This I can confirm. I had a friend who memorized those maps only to get that shotgun and was nearly unstoppable every time he found it. Needless to say, Halo 2 didn't stay in the multiplayer roundabout for very long. Then again, I think the disappointment of the campaign soured me on enjoying the multiplayer which just wasn't as fun as 1 to me or my group. Halo 2 is the only campaign in the series I never tried to go through more than once. I really just hated everything about it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Those fucking Flood. Truth be told, they weren't that bad in Halo 1, aside from The Library. They were interesting enemies, even, when they were also fighting other enemies and not just preoccupied with you. In Halo 2, an enemy that could sometimes be a nuisance was turned into a fucking nightmare. Interestingly, for a game all about killing off the Flood for good, Halo 3 featured significantly less of them than either of the first 2 games. Just some food for thought, but maybe it's more clear why Halo 3 is way better than the 2nd game, in my eyes.

[Foggle]

I don't play games for the story unless I have reason to believe that the plot is fantastic. I know Halo is more about actual gameplay than "cinematic experiences" or whatever they're calling them now.

I dunno, I personally wouldn't call Valhalla a remake of Blood Gulch. A reimagining, sure, since they share similar design concepts, but it played a lot differently and wasn't as expansive IIRC. I think I may have been attached to the desert aesthetic and huge bases more than anything. Halo 3 definitely had some awesome maps, the problem was that it seemed like no one - online or off - ever wanted to play Guardian or Narrows... when people didn't pick Valhalla, it was always fucking Construct or The Pit. That might have been what soured me on the game.

Wait, The Fall of Reach isn't canon? Bummer! I loved that book when I read it a decade ago.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I don't play games for the story unless I have reason to believe that the plot is fantastic. I know Halo is more about actual gameplay than "cinematic experiences" or whatever they're calling them now.

Alright, just making sure that you keep your expectations in check.

Halo games have never been flashy, at that, which I've always respected about them, in a way. If you were to watch a YouTube video, it probably wouldn't look like anything special, but actually playing a game like Combat Evolved or Reach really is THAT good.

I dunno, I personally wouldn't call Valhalla a remake of Blood Gulch. A reimagining, sure, since they share similar design concepts, but it played a lot differently and wasn't as expansive IIRC.

Eh, I'm not going to bother nitpicking the usage of terms, here. Call it whatever you want. The bottom line is that it's trying to emulate a popular Halo 1 map, which was my only point.

I think I may have been attached to the desert aesthetic and huge bases more than anything. Halo 3 definitely had some awesome maps, the problem was that it seemed like no one - online or off - ever wanted to play Guardian or Narrows...

Maybe it's just a region thing, but my experience was completely different. Guardian was almost always voted in when I played online, and it was a favorite between my college friends and I on split screen. Narrows, I got in moderation. I will confirm that Valhalla was the 2nd most popular map online, though, from my play experience.

when people didn't pick Valhalla, it was always fucking Construct or The Pit. That might have been what soured me on the game.

Construct fucking sucked. I'm with you in that, but I LOVED The Pit. It had the best weapon placements by far. Rocket Launcher, Sniper Rifle, Sword, Shotgun; even to this day, several years after I last played Halo's MP, I still have their locations memorized. No vehicles, but just straight up FPS action, mostly from mid-to-close range. It was my second favorite map for just straight up team death match next to Guardian. I also found Snowbound to be a pretty underrated map.

Wait, The Fall of Reach isn't canon? Bummer! I loved that book when I read it a decade ago.

Yeah, most of the fan base does, actually. It's one of the unfortunate side effects of Halo: Reach, which contradicts the events of that book in some ways that in not sure of. That said, since I don't care that much about story, I got over it.

[Foggle]

I enjoyed The Pit for a while, like Valhalla, but I ended up playing it so much that I got tired of it. Construct was just... no. why did anyone like that map

Snowbound was great. I also liked High Ground and Ghost Town. Standoff made my eyes burn for some reason. Don't really remember any of the other maps except for the remakes.

What is bad about Halo 4, btw? I know you said it felt too much like 343 was trying to copy Bungie, but like... were the levels and AI downgraded?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To be. Clear, I harp on Halo 4 for its campaign mode. I never even touched its MP because, quite frankly, my XBOX360 refused to play it after I installed it and re-installed it multiple times. And from everything I've seen and heard, most Halo fans hate the MP in Halo 4 because they COD'ed it up the ass (the scoring works on points, now, rather than kills, for instance).

As for the single-player, the problems can be summed up in one word: Promethians. That's the new enemy type to replace The Flood, and in concept, it had a lot of potential to it, but rather than giving them smart AI to make them interesting and challenging enemies, 343 just made them a nuisance, much like the Flood, and occasionally downright cheap. The Promethian Knights in particular will literally just teleport in front of you at will from as far back as SNIPING distance and kill you with one melee attack if you're playing on Heroic or Legendary. In general, they can teleport without rhyme or reason, causing you to lose track of them and miss many kill shots that you had perfectly lined up. It's just bad design, and only challenging in an unfair way. There are also these enemies called Watchers that can revive fallen Prometheans, and can catch your grenades and throw them back at you, so your priority is to take them out first. Once again, it's an interesting concept, but the enemy AI for it just stupidly floats around in random directions, so rather than being interesting to fight, it just feels like a big time waster to have to take them out before proceeding with the main fight at hand. And of course, with Prometheans comes a new class of Promethean weapons to go along with the new enemy type. Once again, tons of potential, but it's all wasted due to a lack of any creativity on 343's part. They are all just carbon copies of both human and Covenant weaponsmthwtnalready exist (like it has it's version of the BR and Carbine, the Rocket Launcher and Fuel Rod Cannon, the Shotgun, etc.), except they are all INFERIROR versions of those weapons because they are not as powerful and run out of ammo much faster. So, you'll just find yourself wishing you could find another human or Covenant weapon lying around to replace it with, and the sad thing is that you are stuck with Promethean weapons for a majority of the game.

And that's just what 343 did different. Everything else about the game's campaign mode is designed to feel like a Bungie Halo game, but it just doesn't feel quite as well put together as in the Bungie games. Like, you don't fight in enough interesting environments, and the ones that are on the quality if Bungie games are too few and far apart. One level that was a standout for me was the 5th level, Reclaimer, which did feel really interesting in design, and almost like a Bungie-designed level. If more levels had been like that, the game would've been a lot of fun, but most end up feeling monotonous and constrained to me. Shutdown is easily the worst offender of this, and my least favorite level in the game by far (though it does have a HUGE skip that you can do that cuts out more than half of the level, which makes it far more bearable, IMO).

Overall, though, the game just didn't feel as satisfying to play as other Halo games did, to me.