Halo: What's The Big Deal?

Mwaan - 540 days 18 hours ago

I think Halo is the best there is. The controls are smooth, the enemies are smart, and those vehicles are awfully fun to drive.

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socomnick - 540 days 18 hours ago

Yea overall balanced and it just does everything right. Especially the great multiplayer and the amazing community features.

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LastDance - 540 days 18 hours ago

do you guys really think that multiplayer is balanced? lol....

First halo was great.

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Tawnokoi - 540 days 17 hours ago

It certainly seems to be the most bashed game series, that's for sure.

Look past the hype. There's a rather good game underneath, I promise.

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jamilion - 540 days 17 hours ago

"Halo 2 solidified the Xbox's spot among the top game consoles, beating out the Playstation 2 in sales across the USA."

Is this website retarded? PS2 sales in america raped the SH1T outta xbox. Get your facts right. PS2 sold more in NA than xbox sold worldwide.

"As of January 3, 2008, Halo 3 has sold 8.1 million copies, and was the best-selling video game of 2007 in the US.”
uh... NO, COD4 was the best selling video game of 2007 in 2 less months should i add!
This article/news/whatever the hell it is = FAIL!

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Daxx - 540 days 16 hours ago

I used to love Halo but not so much anymore. What finally killed my Halo vibe was Halo 3. I found Halo 3's story to be very anti-climatic and the multiplayer to be nothing more than a virtual playground for pre-teen and teenage boys who have no sense of respect, absolutely no manners, and not a single ounce of tolerance.

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bishop-br - 540 days 16 hours ago

I would say TODAY, the only big deal is the community build around the game, which most game publishers would love to have.

Don't get me wrong, not a bad game, just don't have the wow factor anymore, in fact it's pretty much your regular shooter you get anywhere else (victim of its own fame?).

I bought Halo 1, pretty much just for thinking/hoping/praying that the game would be related to Marathon. I was following it since 1999, when i heard (read) the 'Bungie' world in Macworld Expo. It turned out to not be related (even if the armors remember too much, which also leads me to think it) but was really great game. I couldn't get the XB day and date by the time, I got one just before when Halo 2 was out, with Halo 1 as first game.

But them, like 2 months after, I got Halo 2 and I think was there that everything went wrong... I was not impressed, it was okay, but just losing something. Halo 3 come, I waited (with a sack of salt for the hype), played it on my local rental service (here in Brazil usually the rental have also console for you pay to play, since many don't have consoles) and was about to buy a 360 if it was good... Well, is enough to say I still don't have a 360.

It's definitely nothing against it, it's not calling Halo a crap game nor nothing like, but I understand when people come and ask "so what is the big deal with this game?", specially those that don't played the first one.

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NegativeCreep427 - 540 days 15 hours ago

When Halo first premiered, it was a pretty kick-a$$ game. I admit it, I enjoyed playing it with my friends and I thought it was ONE of the best FPS's on the market at the time, but compared to the innovative use of RPG elements of Deus Ex and the ground-breaking mechanics of Half-Life, it was just a FUN FPS, but far from ground-breaking.

Halo 3 was fun, but FAR from ground-breaking. I just get upset at the double standards that exist for the PS3. If Halo 3 premiered on the PS3, all the top reviewers would be complaining about all its prevalent flaws like its lack of innovation. But since it is for the xbox 360 it was nearly "the best F'n thing on earth" when it launched.

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harrisk954 - 540 days 7 hours ago

Did that article say that the Xbox beat PS2 sales b/c of Halo 2??? WTF is wrong with some of these websites... All you need to have as sensationalist title and get hits.... I guess research (or just common sense) don't matter much nowadays.

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N2NOther - 540 days 7 hours ago

"1.5 - WTF!!!!
"Halo 2 solidified the Xbox's spot among the top game consoles, beating out the Playstation 2 in sales across the USA."

Is this website retarded? PS2 sales in america raped the SH1T outta xbox. Get your facts right. PS2 sold more in NA than xbox sold worldwide."

He's talking about the week of release. Not total. There's not a single person on the planet, that thinks XBOX outsold the PS2 in total

"As of January 3, 2008, Halo 3 has sold 8.1 million copies, and was the best-selling video game of 2007 in the US.”
uh... NO, COD4 was the best selling video game of 2007 in 2 less months should i add!
This article/news/whatever the hell it is = FAIL! "

By the time 2007 ended, Halo 3 was the best selling game of 2007. Which he said quite clearly. Though it didn't sell 8.1 million copies by January 3rd. Maybe July 3rd.

And COD 4 is multiplatform, so while it has sold more, Halo 3 is exclusive and that, whether anyone likes the game or not (I fall in the "not" category) it's rather impressive.

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wallace1000 - 540 days 4 hours ago

In my opinion it wasn't overhyped, it was just well advertised. Plus Halo 3 is a sweet game, the story was interesting, the game play is fun, and the multiplier is fantastic. Halo 3 gets bashed a lot for the same reason the Wii gets bashed so much. Wii is the number 1 selling console, Halo 3 is the number 1 selling game. I can't even begin to count the number of times i have seen the Wii called a gimic. Some people have a really hard time with the fact that the console they own isn't #1 and that the #1 selling game isn't on their console. People can cry all they want, but it will never change the fact that Halo 3 and the Halo franchise as a whole are great games.

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PirateThom - 540 days 17 hours ago

I just think the problem with Halo is that it's a forced development, rather than a company making a game as a labour of love. The fact Bungie had to break away from Microsoft to make new IPs should be a little indication of that.

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thehitman - 540 days 17 hours ago

it got a 9 on ign for graphics and they gave ut3 a 9 for graphics so you can pretty much say that halo 3 success is off hype and not that the game is actually good.

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bishop-br - 540 days 16 hours ago

Bungie was great before MS and was also great with MS (for a while at least). The problem, I think, was exactly this, MS has found a proven money printer, why bother making anyother thing?

That pretty much killed Halo was for me (2 is just same as 1, so is 3, none of them wowed me like Halo 1) and almost put Bungie in the same hole. Interesting since one of the motivations for Bungie to accept MS offer by the time was that they were afraid of being developing for someone that don't know or don't care about games, just as a diversion or showcase. They shaked hands with MS as the guarantee to be funded and trated by people that actually care about the quality of the game, that would let they do their work, and not just pression for a deadline... MS just drink their life instead. LOL

I don't know if they would make PS3 games, in fact, they were more of a Mac developer before MS buyout, than they was PC and XB/X360. They don't have that much experience in consoles out of MS systems... I think they making games for PC would be good enough, even doing them for 360 is already good enough, they just need to be let alone by MS, so they can develope as they used to (slow, but with quality in mind over timing).

And just to remember, they are not under MS ownership, buy they still work with MS, actually looks like MS would publish their games.

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Xi - 540 days 14 hours ago

bungie also made oni, and they released marathon for the apple console that they released,

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GarandShooter - 540 days 4 hours ago

Halo 3's campaign in single player and co-op is fun, and online is an absolute blast, but I do understand what people are saying about some online players. I can't however, detract from the software based on how some idiots use it.

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TheZippo - 540 days 1 hour ago

I disagree, Halo 2 was horrible. The only thing that saved it was it's multi-player. Campaign was a definite step down from the first one. However I feel that everything was redeemed with a homage to the first Halo -- Halo 3.

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PirateThom - 540 days 17 hours ago

It's not exclusive to consoles, it's on PC as well.

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OOG - 540 days 15 hours ago

sorry nope but its basically exclusive to a console...waiting 2 years later to play the game doesnt really count and the fact that the same company that owns the halo name which is MS has allowed it to be on its operating system for pcs......if thats not exclusive then what is?

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Isaac - 540 days 15 hours ago

"For instance take Resistance 1, it sloppy, you run through crazy dumping round through everything without any real threats, its seem exciting but compare that to when you got 6 brutes hiding and using cover. they dont just jump out and get shot they are holding position waiting for the right opportunity. The weapon in Resistance are sweet but are far to much to be practical in something really balanced, the multiplayer felt like Turok 2. It just all about the weapons. Halo is about the skills."

Halo is not about Skill, you do not need skill to beat the game, just repetition. You do not even need any strategy. And evidently you do not even know how to make an argument. What the hell is "sloppy"? What the hell is "sweet but are far to much to be practical in something really balanced"? And again, why did "multiplayer felt like Turok 2"? Sounds like you are trying to bluff and never played Resistance.

The claim "dumping round through everything without any real threats" simply confirms it, as you are constantly being assaulted by hybrids, crawlers, rollers, steelheads, and the older chimera. Play Resistance first and then we will talk about it. Hell, something a lot of people did not like is that the boss fights did not seem very significant, but where are the boss fights in, for example, Halo 2? Do you even see anything on the whole franchise as Epic as the Leviathan on Resistance 2? No.

Halo 3 is basically a multiplayer game, and the criticism the game got basically confirms it, just read the reviews, not the scores. In fact, the scores are surprising considering, according to Wikipedia:

"Reception of the single-player aspect varied greatly. Pro-G said that while the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2 was disappointing, the campaign of Halo 3 "is anything but";[106] GameSpot and GameSpy, meanwhile, said that the campaign was too short, especially on easier difficulty levels.[20][110] IGN was highly critical of the eighth level, stating "the penultimate chapter is so bad, just thinking about it puts a rotten taste in my mouth." The New York Times said the game had a "throwaway" plot and Total Video Games judged the single-player aspect ultimately disappointing.[113][114]"

"Other complaints focused on the artificial intelligence; critics praised the enemy AI but complained that the intelligence of the player's allies was far poorer.[20][18][115][116] Bryan Vore of Game Informer said that human faces and some textures were just "embarrassing".[112] Game Informer criticized the occasional repeated environments and poor final boss battle, and both IGN and CinemaBlend.com said that they thought a part of the story was lost by not having the Arbiter featuring as prominently as the character was in Halo 2.[117][18]"

To me the only reason to own Halo 3 is forge.

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wallace1000 - 540 days 4 hours ago

That is good that you bought up MLG's endorsement, i wouldn't have thought of bringing that up until you mentioned it.

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wallace1000 - 540 days 3 hours ago

You are right dude, if you are half decent at the game then it isn't hard to get a headshot on the elite from behind. Plus the elites have the downside of having part of their head at centre of mass from the front, so with the BR you don't have the raise your aim much from centre of mass for the final headshot like you have to do with a spartan.
Plus the elites also have the advantage of running 0.001 times fast that the spartans :-P

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Xi - 540 days 14 hours ago

you obviously never read the books...

if you want a cliche story, mgs is full of nothing but. Not only that it does cliche writing to the extreme, everwhere you look is overdramatic writing, full of hot air philosophy that can be found in any tom clancy book, you get the managa rip offs and the list keeps going.

at least halo has some originality by havinf the forerunners assimilate themselves into the human race, that's something I have yet to see an alien race do in any sci-fi novel.

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beavis4play - 540 days 9 hours ago

that isn't the ultimate cliche? come on. i think story in bioshock, uncharted, ME, ratchet, resistance, MGS, KZ2 all have halo whipped. sorry, just my opinion.

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Adropacrich2 - 539 days 19 hours ago

Thank goodness for opinions then otherwise i might have to question why it is i play this overwhelmingly fun series.

Halo campaign has always been about playing over and over - i guess that's why so many people whine because they complete only the once - Halo is immensely replayable because of it's sandbox

Essays like comments are sometimes used this way to make people's opinions appear intelligent

It's fine you don't get Halo but your opinion is based on ignorance.

Halo is great viewed on it's gameplay merits even if you don't like it's universe

If lesser FPS had been similarly great then they too would be forever brought up in forums and media discussions - they are not

Couldn't give a hoot what clever response you give to this by the way

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beavis4play - 540 days 9 hours ago

if you have an opinion or question about something; that's great. even if i don't agree it's still ok. that's what makes these sites interesting. but to throw out a post as a "retaliation"? that's just childish.

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beavis4play - 540 days 9 hours ago

halo1 was ground-breaking for the reasons you mentioned. good point. i thought halo 1 was an excellent, fresh new game.

halo 2 regenerating health.....i think original KZ used this? and it launched before H2?

and H2 and H3 don't really offer anything new outside of some new multi-player features and maps. that isn't really enough. and with single-player not that great and story lacking; (after halo 1) it left H2 and 3 feeling a little flat.

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beavis4play - 540 days 8 hours ago

i see what you're saying. looking at the whole is a pretty good story(except for the cheesy ending) but i wish parts 2 and 3 could have held up better individually.
and i liked the way pt. 2 used the arbiters story a lot better than the way MGS2 shifted to raiden.(that was just disappointing)

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juuken - 540 days 18 hours ago

...Halo is the most overrated, overhyped, overstated series I have ever seen. MS hyped the hell out of this game until the other games on their system were almost non-existent.

...Do you honestly believe what you've just posted there?
Because it smells of bullshittery.

LOOOOOOOL, I'm jealous of Halo? I never liked that game from the start when it first came out. This game gets milked worse than a freakin' cow.

edit: Disagrees FTL! I never played Halo, but I just don't like it. I'm entitled to that opinion, just like you xbox fanatics hate on MGS4 for absolutely no reason at all.

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Deadman64 - 540 days 16 hours ago

You never played Halo? Your entire post = fail.

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Isaac - 540 days 15 hours ago

The other day I was discussing this with Jinxstar: Why is Halo such a big deal?

I really did not get what is the big deal with Halo. The storyline is cliched: "superhero saves future world from aliens", the art style is not realistic in that it is like a cartoon so it does not set any mood like most art mediums do, the gun design is uninspired, the fact that alien enemies behaving and talking like humans do is childish.

And who the hell says it is fast paced action? I mean seriously, that is bullsh1t, the campaign is ridiculously boring, there was no strategy needed for the game, you do not need to switch guns or choose which gun you will use according to the situation or your skills, you just have to shoot and hide to recover, shoot hide shoot hide.

Not only that, but the flood are not really scary, I never even had to fart during any Halo, unlike Doom, Quake, Resistance, Pray, Darkness, Jericho, Condemned, among others, some of which almost made me have to change my underwear (though the only games I have had to use preventive diapers were Silent Hill, Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil). I mean seriously this game miserably fails in the Intellectual Property originality department harder than a blind man at a fish depository.

The worst thing is that what Halo 1 and 2 did for the first Xbox in the graphics technology department, Halo 3 did not. I do give praise to the soundtrack, however. Not the best I have heard by a longshot, Final Fantasy is the best most of the times in that dept, but it is great nonetheless.

However, these are not important parts. A game could have sh1tty storyline, art style and graphics and still be a good game. However, a terrible game could have a fine soundtrack and excellent graphics technology but suck bad, like Lair, which did everything right except the gameplay, which is ironic since it is a game.

So moving on to Halos important part, I asked Jinxstar "WTF, I do not get why Halo is so high above the skies for the fanboys and reviewers, I have played lots of better FPS in the single player and multiplayer department". According to my friend Jinxstar, Halo 1 perfected FPS controls, and Halo 2 mastered Online FPS on consoles. So, even if it did, IMHO these are not amazing milestones.

The first achievement, perfecting FPS controls, is hardly something developers made much effort to attain. Game controllers have been evolving ever since the first NES, and Sony pretty much nailed it with the PSOne controller, considering the 360 controller has almost the same shape, give or take a few features. My point is, this achievement was attained thanks to the successive evolution of game controllers, not because any developer made a lot of effort for good game controls. Golden Eye, Doom 64, Turok, and South Park controlled very well on N64, another thumbstick simply added precision.

The second achievement is hardly something worth bragging about either, as it is also an advancement of technology. I do give credit to Microsoft (and/or Bungie) though, because on the contrary of the last one, this one would have taken some time had Microsoft not come to the console industry.

While SOCOM was great on PS2, Halo 1 was a great achievement for LAN parties and Halo 2 for finally having multiplayer with more than 4 people and not necessitating split-screen, on consoles. Perhaps not the first to do that, but definitely the most robust and visited by gamers online game back then.

Even then, I still do not honor Microsoft, I only respect them (in that aspect), as that would have happened anyway, perhaps taken longer, but would have happened. It is not like Nintendo and Miyamoto that, as much as I hate the Wii now, gaming would have never existed the way it does without them. Mario and Zelda, especially Ocarina of Time, revolutionized the meaning of production values in terms of gameplay (too bad they mostly do garbage now). Then again I might say it because I always value the single player aspect of games before the multiplayer one.

And if you think anyone that dislikes Halo is because they lack intelligence, I can say just the opposite: "Whoever likes halo is an easily satisfied idiot". However, I do not believe that, I only believe that whoever still likes Halo has missed a lot of better games, both single player campigns and multiplayer modes.

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juuken - 540 days 5 hours ago

OH FREAKIN' NOES, I FAIL BECAUSE I HAVE NEVER PLAYED HALO?!

Cry me a freakin' river.

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Kleptic - 539 days 20 hours ago

great post Isaac...I totally agree...

I'll admit that I loved Halo 1...and Halo 2...spent easily over a hundred hours between the two over the last generation of consoles...I think a lot of why I enjoyed it so much was the sheer lack of other decent shooters on consoles last generation...I never enjoyed the single player aspects of halo...

as a PC shooter fan, Halo always seemed very childish and overrated...a lot of friends in college ended up buying Xbox's though, and lan/beer parties with Halo 1 was a lot of fun...but a lot of kids act like Halo is the greatest shooter ever...far from it...its a decent shooter among an ocean of them...

and Halo 3?...I found UT3 a much more heterosexual shooter with vehicles, and UT3 actually had 'fast paced gameplay'...

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kazuma - 540 days 18 hours ago

that's so true, microsoft really is jealous of the other companies, that's why they jumped on board.

on topic: love halo <3

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socomnick - 540 days 18 hours ago

So true. Thats why I expect a bunch of sony loyalist to come in here and try to praise their amazingly generic and horrible resistance game.

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PirateThom - 540 days 18 hours ago

As if Halo isn't amazingly generic and horrible?

Frankly, Halo has only proven one thing. It doesn't matter how generic or outright bad a game is, if it's accessible to casual gamers (yes, I'm calling Halo 3 a casual game, no way those sales were all hardcore gamers, not with the way it was advertised) and hyped enough, it will sell.

Halo is Microsoft's Wii Fit.

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socomnick - 540 days 17 hours ago

Halo = the absolute meaning of hardcore games.

This franchise started the whole hardcore gaming though. 8 million copies sold and you dont call it hardcore ? your crazy.

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flambeau - 540 days 17 hours ago

How many of those "hardcore" gamers are 12 year old kids that cry when you kill them?

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PirateThom - 540 days 17 hours ago

Halo is not a hardcore game, especially when you consider the sheer number of children and casuals it attracted.

Maybe on the XBox Halo and Halo 2 were hardcore, but only because no one bought the thing bar hardcore gamers, but the 360 is another matter, it's still mostly hardcore, but there's a huge number of casuals and kids playing it and most of them made up the Halo 3 sales numbers.

So, yeah, 8 million copies sold means absolutely nothing in relation to this argument about the "fanbase" of Halo. I'm sure you're a fan, which is fine, but don't be blinded and think that those 8 million sales = 8 million hardcore gamers. If it was only hardcore gamers, they wouldn't have had such a huge advertising campaign since hardcore gamers know it's coming.

I think you're working on the basis that only Wii and games like Singstar can be casual, trust me, the definition of what makes a game casual is a lot broader than that.

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kazuma - 540 days 16 hours ago

what? hardcore? halo? now i get why ppl are so obsessed with achievements/trophies! that's because they think they're "hardcore"!

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