What makes Halo special and unique

Really. The games is EIGHT. YEARS. OLD. and there are PLENTY of FPS that are a bit more current to discuss.

Can we P-L-E-A-S-E give it a rest already?!

What does make it unique anyways? I've only ever seen the most mainstream and unoriginal shooter ever made when I play it. Not saying its bad... but it isn't the best thing since sliced bread like all its rabid fans make it out to be.

This could be interesting, but you are just going to attract the haters. Really, what do you expect here? You mention Halo and people climb out of the woodwork trying to say how lame it is.

I don't know, seems to me that the author is talking about some mystic depth that really isn't there. But it's common that people percieve things differently. However, there's no depth (obvious or otherwise) that can cover up the fact that Halo featured copy/paste level design and insane amount of backtracking through those already copy/paste levels. In my opinion, Halo 2 was a vastly superior game because it actually offered level design and interesting setpieces instead of random maps strung together. The on-foot controls were tightened and the vehicle controls were much better. Lastly, it offered a glimpse into the Covenant's side of the story which, in my opinion, was a lot more interesting than Master Chief's. The Arbiter was a kickass character unlike...everyone else in the Halo universe.

the story is what got me into it, but aside from that the gameplay is flawed, the visuals are meh, and honestly its a mediocre game.

I don't know, seems to me that the author is talking about some mystic depth that really isn't there. But it's common that people percieve things differently. However, there's no depth (obvious or otherwise) that can cover up the fact that Halo featured copy/paste level design and insane amount of backtracking through those already copy/paste levels. In my opinion, Halo 2 was a vastly superior game because it actually offered level design and interesting setpieces instead of random maps strung together. The on-foot controls were tightened and the vehicle controls were much better. Lastly, it offered a glimpse into the Covenant's side of the story which, in my opinion, was a lot more interesting than Master Chief's. The Arbiter was a kickass character unlike...everyone else in the Halo universe.

UpInFlames

Thank you for having your hate well-thought out and relatable. Even though I disagree with some of that, I can totally see where you are coming from!

But liking the Arbiter over Master Chief? :shock:

But liking the Arbiter over Master Chief? :shock:AtomicTangerine

The Arbiter was a martyr, a sacrificial lamb for the high priests who was then brought back to do the bidding for those very same high priests. And he does it without question because that's what his faith demands and that's where his loyalty stands. Then he discovers the lies and the betrayal and leads the Elites to rise against the high priests and the brutes in order to save the universe. That's an amazing story.

Then you've got Master Chief - a guy with a manly gruff voice so doped up on steroids he can never take his helmet off. He was bred to fight therefore he has no real relatable motivation. Don't get me wrong, Master Chief is cool in his own mysterious, charismatic way, but there's no depth to him whatsoever.

That article was total crap to me. Special enemy interactions and how best to deal with them??? bahaha yeah right. You just blast crap until your ammo runs out and then you pick up the next weapon and use grenades when needed WOW how complex and revolutionary!!! lmao.

_AbBaNdOn

That is utterly false and makes me wonder if you have even played it, or if you have for how long.

As the article said, each weapon was more/less effective against a certain type of enemy than others, and combinations could be utilized to take down them faster. Examples: using the Covenant's pistol charge blast on a Elite (or a Jackal) followed up by a short burst from the Marine's assault rifle, a few pistol shots, or a melee attack were very quick and effective ways to take them down. Circle strafing around a Hunter as it charged at you and shooting it in the back with a single pistol round was all that was needed. Oh yea, try getting through the Flood with anything but the shotgun (and the assualt rifle for clean up) and you won't make it very far. Add to this the fact that only two weapons could be carried at a time which forced the player to consider which ones to gather before rushing into battle, and you find quite a bit of strategy in a genre of games that for the most part don't have. For all else Halo did average, it got this aspect of combat strategy spot on.

I agree with the TC's article, and personally found Halo to be excellent because of this. It is why it is so highly regarded. Halo is anything BUT a point and shoot FPS as so many are nowadays. Sure it had its flaws as all games do, but give credit where credit is due.

Halo is to Marathon as Bioshock is to System Shock. In short the reason it's special and unique is that it mooched off of a more special and unique title without anyone calling bs..

But liking the Arbiter over Master Chief? :shock:AtomicTangerine

it's simply magical.

I found someone write about Halo that intelligently explains why some people enjoy the gameplay of Halo and why some do not, it also explains why Halo works as a console shooter instead of a PC shooter. I did not write this and I forgot who it was but I'm going to share it with you all. "Prior to Halo on XBox, I played dozens of PC FPS, things like Kingpin, Soldier Of Fortune, Shogo, Elite Force, Blood, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Half Life, Jedi Knight and Gunman: Chronicles (A much overlooked game I must say). I'd briefly played GoldenEye on my brothers N64 but not really enough to remember it that well. I remembered Halo from when it was a third person PC title, and having just got into console gaming via Soul Calibur I picked up Halo along with an XBox a few days after it was released. Over the next few months I completed Halo no less than six times, once on Co-Op, and I barely touched multiplayer. Even though I own both sequels I've still rarely played multiplayer. It took me a while, but I've come to realise the reason why Halo was such a big deal for me, and it's precisely why it is considered dull and repetitive by a lot of people, especially predominantly PC gamers. In most FPS games you progressively get better weapons, and enemies get progressively harder, those games constantly push you to do new things and show you new sights and new challenges until the big confrontation at the end and then it's over. Halo showed you most of the weapons and enemies within the first three levels, and with three levels left you have seen everything there is. Instead of relying on a constant stream of new weapons or harder enemies Halo limits both to only those that are strongly differentitated from each other. It lets you learn the strengths and weaknesses of the weapons and enemies and then builds on that, once you start to understand how best to deal with a particular enemy it doesn't remove it and replace it with another like a lot of FPS games, but it asks you to fight that enemy you understand as well as some new ones you don't. By the end of the game you can be fighting eight different types of enemies at once (4 types of Covenant, 3 types of Flood, and Sentinals), and you have to really understand how all those elements interaction in order to get through combat effectively. Of course if you never really learn the differences between the weapons or the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies it just seems repeatitive as you're always fighting Elites and Grunts right through the game and until you get to the Flood nothing really different happens. If you do learn the deeper interactions you don't see it as fighting Elites again but as fighting Elites but this time with Jackels in support, and Hunters. Or Elites in a close environment, or Elites on vehicles. They are still Elites and everything you're learn about their behaviour and weakness still applies but the specifics have changed. Precision aiming is never the priority in Halo, understanding the interactions of weapons and enemies is, but because of that the PC translation of Halo just feels wrong as it's nowhere near as precise as a straight PC FPS, but the game was nevered design for that to be the case. Halo 2 suffered because it tried to be more like a PC FPS, it added elements like Boss Battles to make progression feel like you got something new and different. The problem was those Boss Battles never gave you a chance to learn how best to deal with them and subsequently apply that knowledge which is what Halo 1 had been all about. Fortunately Halo 3 limits those type of encounters and returns to the Halo 1 style of being all about mastery of the gameplay systems." This perfectly explains why Halo works as a console shooter instead of a PC shooter. With keyboard and mouse the gunplay and controls are about twitch skills and precision. Using analog sticks for a first-person shooter is different because its less precise and twitch but what Bungie did with Halo its more about utilizing the weapons effectively and adapting to the A.I.'s {The A.I. in the Halo franchise are some of the best in the genre by the way} fighting styles. It also helps that Halo easily has some of the best controls in console first-person shooters. Too bad it wasn't applied to Halo 2 but then Bungie brought back the formula for Halo 3.nookjoob

The writer hasn't played many games if he believes that adding in new enemies and keeping the old ones around isn't standard practice. I've played quite a few action games (including but not limited to first person shooters) and I can't think of many where that isn't the case. Also, there aren't many action games around which aren't about using weapons effectively vi a vi different enemies. Last but not least, if the writer confuses the AI with quality, he ought to play games with truly strong AI such as FEAR 1 (FEAR 2's AI was a step down) and Killzone 2.

What I most enjoyed about Halo was it was the best co-op game since Gunstar Heroes. I played through it more than ten times with various friends. The weapons were good, the enemies were well done and the encounters were for the most part well constructed (the only part I really didn't like was the library). From a game design standpointHalo 2 was a disappoint because the battlefields were so tiny and narrow. I didn't get past the third level of Halo 3 (I was playing my brother's copy whenever I visited him, he got deeper in, hit a part that really pissed him off, and traded in Halo 3) but the levels I saw were tiny and narrow. Its also worth noting that Halo 3's graphics were mediocre at best.In terms of graphics, I make allowances (I have different expectations of a $5 downloadable game than a $60 disk based game which is part of a remarkably popular franchise).

I've never messed with the multiplayer of Halo 2 or 3but have heard little that wasn't good and I know they have some really impressive feature sets, so my suspicion is that the campaigns have been reduced to the status of afterthought and that the online competitive multiplayer is the focus.