Halo series

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

And there goes the only thing left about Bungie that I cared about (I'd be more interested in playing Destiny if it wasn't an online only game). I would suspect that they must have a pretty good reason to fire Martin Fucking O'Donnel, who (IMO) is by far the best composer of "modern" video game music. In a way, though, this may be a good thing. This can lead to other developers enlisting his talents in games that I would possibly find more interesting to play. That said, the likelihood of that happening is unlikely, because as time goes on, the state of AAA gaming is just moving further and further away from anything resembling actual fun, to me.

Anyways, hopefully O'Donnel finds some new work, soon, but I doubt that'll really be a problem for him given his amazing track record. His work on the Halo series is one of the few consistently great things about the series as a whole, and IMO his finest work is displayed in Reach, which quite frankly has a breathtaking soundtrack.

[gunswordfist]

so he didn't do Halo 4's soundtrack, right?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

so he didn't do Halo 4's soundtrack, right?

Nope. Halo 4 wasn't even made by Bungie. It was made by 343i, with a brand new composer and all. Needless to say, it has the weakest soundtrack of any Halo game to date.

[gunswordfist]

I was hoping they fired that guy and not him. I thought O'Donnel had already moved on. It's shocking that he was tossed aside like that.

[Daikun]

Composer fired from Bungie. No reason given.

Now he's fighting back. With a lawsuit.

[gunswordfist]

So sad.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I only just realized that Halo 2 Anniversary is NOT coming to the XBOX360, but instead is exclusive to the XBOXONE, and at that it's only part of the Master Chief collection. That's kind of dumb on Microsoft's part since a lot of people still don't own an XONE. Despite being my least favorite Halo game, I would have actually picked up this game if it were available to me since I lost my old copy ages ago, but as it stands that's not possible, so whatever.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, just out of boredom and some time to kill, here are my top 10 favorite Halo levels, followed by my 5 least favorite:

Best:
10. Reclaimer (4)
9. The Package (Reach)
8. Metropolis (2)
7. The Covenant (3)
6. Tip of the Spear (Reach)
5. Two Betrayals (CE)
4. The Ark (3)
3. The Silent Cartographer (CE)
2. Exodus (Reach)
1. Assault on the Control Room (CE)

Worst:
5. Shutdown (4)
4. The Oracle (2)
3. Sacred Icon (2)
2. Cortana (3)
1. The Library (CE)

The fact that Halo 2 has not one, but two of my least favorite levels is a pretty good indicator for why it's my least favorite Halo game. That said, even that has good levels. Halo 4 has just one admittedly excellent level, then one terrible one, and the rest are so damn mundane and forgettable, IMO. Upon reassessing it, Halo 3 has some really great levels, but of course Cortana is one of the worst. The only game not featured on this list is ODST. Quite frankly, while I like the game, I came to realize that none of its levels were noticeably stand-out or terrible. They were all good levels, but nothing too memorable. And, of course, the original and Reach were by far the best, with each having 3 representatives on my list. Exodus is such a fun level because it's challenging and so big and open that you have near limitless options to tackle each encounter in many way that you want. Meanwhile, I firmly consider Assault on the Control Room to be the most iconic Halo level, with all of the elements that make the series great rolled up into one awesome package.

[gunswordfist]

Thanks to Games With Gold, I'll be able to play Halo Reach on my 360 this month.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It's the second best Halo game, IMO.

[Foggle]

Posted without comment.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I bet you'd find the same things for the COD games, too. People rank online multiplayer over single player a lot on the internet.

Doesn't change the fact that Modern Warfare 1 has the best single player campaign of the series by far. Same with Halo 1.

[Foggle]

Call of Duty 2 and especially 1/UO are much better than 4 IMO. Unless you're talking about the Modern Warfare sub-series, in which case I'd agree.

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. In fact, I'd say the MP maps were generally better in Halo 1 & 2 than the later ones. Though I never played Halo 4's competitive MP at all.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Halo 1 multiplayer was great, but people constantly talk down on it these days because it wasn't online. It's sort of funny, though, because when Halo was huge, it was the combination of strong single player and multiplayer modes that hooked people in. It was the GoldenEye / Perfect Dark / Timesplitters of the system.

I didn't really enjoy much of Halo 3's multiplayer at all.

[Foggle]

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.