Halo series

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While we're at it, here's a refresher on how I rank the Halo campaign modes:

1. Halo: Combat Evolved
2. Halo: Reach (arguably as good as the first game, though)
3. Halo 3: ODST
4. Halo 3
5. Halo 2
6. Halo 4

On a side note, I would've totally gotten the Master Chief Collection if Microsoft decided to release it for the XBOX360, since despite my issues with it, I still love Halo 2's multiplayer (it deserves its popularity), and I'd love the opportunity to experience it again. I was so pissed that Anniversary for the first game used Reach's multiplayer instead, which I hated. That said, they made it an XBOX ONE exclusive, which I find to be incredibly stupid. They should have at least released Halo 2 Anniversary as its own thing for the XBOX360, but I guess this was just a marketing move, and one that naturally makes no sense, at that.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I have zero interest in a Halo 2 anniversary game anyway. I don't play multiplayer much outside of co-op anymore and the campaign is not worth the effort.

Halo 4's campaign is worse than 2's? Ouch.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

As the only multiplayer shooter that I ever really enjoyed (for the most part) I'd personally love to re-experience it, myself. As for the campaign, since this is the only one that I never solo'd on Legendary (well, OK, I didn't play Halo 4 on Legendary, either, but fuck that game), I'd be tempted to replay it just for that, but that'd be way more frustrating than fun since the game is borderline cheap compared to the others in the series.

Also, playing it on co-op is arguably even harder than single player, since that's the only game in the entire series where both you and your teammate get sent back to the last checkpoint if just one of you dies.

[Foggle]

I watched some footage of Halo 4's campaign and it didn't look that bad to me. In fact, it looked like they kind of improved upon some of the things I disliked about Halo 2 and 3. However, if some of the enemies are bullshit, and the game only ever really opens up in one level, then I easily can see why you'd say it's the worst. And yeah, I heard they completely CoD-ified the MP. Gross.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Looking at someone else play the game is one thing. Playing it for yourself is a different experience entirely. It's probably not as bad as I'm making it out to be, and I'm not even saying that it's a bad game. I just consider it to be pretty poorly designed and not that fun by Halo standards. With Halo 2, even, the game was actually really good until The Flood showed up (minus the Jackal snipers on Legendary). Then the game went completely downhill from there. As for Halo 4, it never sunk to levels as bad as Halo 2 did, but it also rarely ever got to really exciting and stand out parts of the game, either. No levels in the game, even the best ones, felt as interesting as Assault on the Control Room from first game, Metropolis from the second game, The Ark from the third game, or Exodus from Reach. It either felt average, slightly above average, or bad, with a majority of the game just feeling average, IMO.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Here is a really good example of how good Halo: Reach's level design is.

Playing this level normally, it'd take you about an hour to complete on Legendary, never mind LASO difficulty (which is what he's playing on). Yet he takes advantage of the level's layout and takes really high risk but high reward alternate routes to skip certain fights and get to the end of the level faster. And mind you, this is all in one take, which is all the more impressive.

That's what any good Halo level consists of, really, and what differentiates it from most FPS games these days. I guarantee that you could never have the option to play like this in any COD game or any of its clones. Those games are more concerned about trying to make you feel like you're in a movie, so they go out of their way to make sure you can't fuck around and take things into your own hands. They want to set you on a clear track from start to finish. That's fine, really, but I've always preferred the type of level design that rewards skill and memorizing the layout of the level, and I love how Halo actually incorporates skillful platforming into this, which has been a staple of the series ever since the original.

[gunswordfist]

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.

Ah, bots. This makes me want to say that I like Perfect Dark's multiplayer much more than its single player.

Anyway, I have no problem with people liking multiplayer more than campaigns. When developers make a shooter's story mode nothing more than a glorified training mode is what gets me upset.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Halo - Top 5 Most Difficult Missions on Legendary: http://youtu.be/axWveqJs6nw

Out of everything on this list, the only one that I haven't played on Legendary is the Halo 4 mission, but that was easily the toughest mission of that game, even on Normal. The only one that I don't agree was that hard relative to everything else is Cairo Station, which is probably the easiest Halo 2 level.

Here is my own list:

5. Exodus (Reach)
4. Tsavo Highway (3)
3. The Library (CE)
2. Two Betrayals (CE)
1. EVERY SINGLE LEVEL WITH JACKAL SNIPERS (2)

[Spark Of Spirit]

Glad I never tried Halo 2 on Legendary.

But yes, those other missions were deadly hard on Legendary. I remember playing the Highway online and taking so long to get through it with my co-op partner.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Doing it solo on Legendary was a bitch. There's one section that you can't skip where you have to fight wave after wave of Brutes dropped off by Covenant drop ships. How did I get past it by myself with a relative lack of skill at the time? I had to get ultra creative and actually found a way to get a Brute Chopper up to a high area on a building that they couldn't reach. I then proceeded to snipe them with the highly inaccurate vehicle gun when they were just specs from my point of view. It was super tedious to do, but it worked. That said, I could probably fight them the legit way if I played the game now.

[Spark Of Spirit]

The fact that you could do it the other way is called good shooter level design.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That's what I love about Halo when it gets it right. No other FPS that I've ever played is so versatile that I could pull off a strategy even close to that insane. That's how I was able to solo these games on Legendary before I got better at them, though. By being creative.

And it's intentional design on Bungie's part. You know those sections that present obstacles that don't allow vehicles to pass through? Well, Bungie purposely designs those in ways that, if you're clever, you can find a way to bypass it and take your vehicle into a new area that it wasn't meant to be in, and thus completely change the dynamic of that section. In Halo 2, you could do that with a Banshee and fly to the top of a building that could not be reached by foot to get the Scarab gun. In Halo: Reach, you could steal a Banshee in that level where you have to invade and escalate up a Covenant tower to destroy a force field, and if you did so, you could literally skip every enemy and fly all the way to the top to complete the level. In that last tower defense style segment from The Package, you could either have a tough time fighting on foot, or steel a Banshee or Wraith to make mince meat out of the Covenant. in Halo CE, if you understood the right place to land from a jump and not take damage in the level Assault on the Control Room, you could literally skip the entire second half of that level, which makes for insanely quick speed runs. On the previous level, The Silent Cartographer, you could skip an entire sub-mission and make it through the security door before it closes through pinpoint timing and a bit of luck.

The best Halo levels are full of opportunities to play the way that you want to, rather than just going by the base options that the game presents to you. Bungie designs it so that the more clever players will be rewarded for thinking outside of the box.

While I don't have anything against CoD or other movie shooters anymore (they are good games, just not up my alley), you can see why I much prefer Halo's style to a game that would punish me and say that I failed a mission for getting more than ten feet away from the path that I was supposed to be following.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My discussion with Desensitized about how classic DOOM design compares to modern FPS design got me thinking about how Bungie's Halo design fell hard after 343 took over. People have also asked me before why I strongly dislike Halo 4, and to answer that I found a video which perfectly sums up why its campaign mode is so lackluster: https://youtu.be/oBv8UVOSG8U

The bottom line from his video: Less options for being able to play the way that you like = less fun/interesting gameplay

There's more than just that, but that's the ultimate deal breaker.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Holy Shit! This looks awesome!

I totally have to play this. I'll need to hunt down a copy of HCE for the PC somehow, but this looks like the best Halo related thing to be coming out in a long time. All they have to do is merely just ignore The Library and exclude it from the game, and it could be the best Halo campaign ever.

It figures that a fan mod is somehow way more interesting than anything that Microsoft or 343i is doing with the franchise these days.

And reading all of those comments about how a remixed version of a 15-year-old game is better than Halo 5 is utterly hilarious in how it's probably dead true.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Another video with more detail on it: http://youtu.be/EWJSUtL0a-g

This REALLY looks up my alley.