Halo (spoilers) for PC review

[Caydr]

To start off, I'm an FPS fan. I love HL, HL2, CSS, Descent 2, and dozens more.

Really, what's so great about this game? It seems like it got good reviews based solely on the fact that it was one of the Xbox's few "worth buying" titles at the time.

Granted, I've only played the PC version. But wouldn't that mean that, in fact, I was probably playing a version that was slightly enhanced or improved upon as well as in extreme high definition? (not even PS3 does 1600x1200, AFAIK)

My gripes with this game are as follows: First, half the game is missing. Once you unleash the flood, you spend the remainder of the game going back over territory you've already been through, albeit with new enemies. I mean, hell, you even go and "rescue" keyes again from the exact same location, through the exact same corridoors. Yes, this happens frequently in Metroid Prime as well, but it's an established trend. If they didn't have this in Prime, it wouldn't be Metroid. And in the Metroid series, it's actually a good thing you go over the same areas many times - there's SO MUCH stuff to find that at my very best, after playing for 20 hours, I only found 72% of it and scanned a little over 80%. This was on my second playthrough, so I knew where all the things were that you can only scan at one time.

Second, how am I supposed to take an enemy seriously that is two feet tall, has an ass the size of my chair, and screams (in english) "run away!!" "Bad cyborg!!" and other such things that seem ripped out of Monty Python? These little runts aren't threatening in the slightest. In fact, the fact that they're in the game at all reduces the game's merit significantly in my view.

Third, the idea of little globs that latch onto your head has been around for way too long to be creepy or even gross anymore.

Frankly, in my opinion, the only reason this game wasn't just immediately tossed away as "yet another generic mediocre FPS" was the fact that console people aren't PC people. When us PC people see this game, all we think is, "and this is 'combat evolved', how? Half-Life 1 kicks this thing's ass." A console player sees this and says "WOOOO!!! THIS IS SO TOTALLY NEW AND INCREDIBLE!!! WERE THOSE ZOMBIES??!11"

Innovations in Halo include:
Vehicular combat, which was easily the weakest part of the game (horrifyingly bad AI gunners and simple-minded controls) and was thankfully only found in areas where you needed to get from point A to point B quickly.
Weapon limiting, which I admit at least made the game borderline challenging when I played through it in 8 hours on Legendary difficulty yesterday.

These two things have been done in far better ways since Halo was released, but Halo did it first so it deserves some credit. Even if it botched the first one. (wait, did bf1942 do this first? I'm not sure)

Halo looks like it was pushed out the door too quickly. Halo 2's incredibly superior graphics attest to this. Things which had become industry-standard, like ragdoll deaths (even present in the lesser Gamecube's 'Prime' series) were thrown off in order to save Microsoft's floundering console.

The sound effects were OK, and so was the music. But just OK. They could've been far better. All the guns sound like toys, but I guess that's fitting since the look like toys too. Of all the music, there is only one memorable piece, the well known "halo 'saving the world' theme". It's a little over a minute long and you hear it perhaps 3 times through the whole game.

My final complaint? Two words: Assault Rifle. This joke of a weapon is probably the reason Earth is losing so badly versus the covenant. We can do fine in the air, but get us on the ground and we can't hit a barn door if it's any more than 5 metres in front of us. The shotgun is, in fact, far more accurate than this thing! A SHOTGUN, more accurate over distance than A RIFLE!

Would you believe I've actually been told that Metroid Prime ripped off Halo? First, Prime was in development (maybe even released?) long before Halo, and the Metroid franchise has been around since the 80s. Some people's children...

5/10 or 6/10 if you are into zombies. This game's zombies were pretty alright, actually, but they're only in the trailing 1/3 of the game.

[Guessmyname]

Not to mention the multiplayer. Any 'Blood Gulch' game on CE will be hacked up it's arse with cloaking devices and sniper rifles on the glitchy get-on-the-top-of-the-canyon bug (which also exists in another map), as well as a horde of supershields and cloakings and uber-weapons in the middle. What the hell?

[Sheekel]

Halo 2 is the shit. That game is fantasticly fun on Xbox Live. I dont care how realistic it is.

Gameplay > realism

Oh, and the 2 feet tall enemies are Grunts. They arent supposed to be threatening. They're supposed to be a blast to shoot up with a shotgun, or stick in the back. They are quite deadly in groups, especially on legendary difficulty.

I know a lot of people dont like halo because its "too poplular."

Its popular because its fun.

Also, metroid is the shit.

[Zoombie]

+1 to everything Cydar says.

[Caydr]

I emptied 2 clips of assault rifle ammo at some enemies up on a ledge. Ran out of ammo. Switched to shotgun, and no pun intended, boom headshot, boom headshot, boom headshot. Three shots, three kills. Ghey.

[Zoombie]

That assult rifle is crap. I beat the game with the following wapons: Grenade, Pistol and shotgun. Thats it.

[Muzic]

Auto rifle was also somewhat weak, took like an entire clip to kill 1 elite. Shotgun was my favourite weapon but only used it against elites, brutes and flood. Pistol in halo1 was fun <3. It had that scope you could pretty much use it as a cheap sniper, Pistol with the zoom would easily beat someone with an autorifle at a good distance.

[SwiftSpear]

Never played through halo, Halo2 however kicks ass. I've heard from several sources that the PC version of halo was not only worse then the xbox version, but also they never redesigned so the difficulty is retarded. FPS are different games on PC compared to consoles, you really can't just port back and forth, which is exactly what halo did. A console player's reaction time is about 1 third of that of a PC player, and their ability to track a target is nonexistent comparatively.

[Aun]

I suck horribly at Halo and mosr console FPS games...

I'm not too bad at PC FPS games, I just find most console controllers annoying to use after a good old mouse and keyboard.

I do remember when one of my friends first got their Xbox on their birthday with Halo. I went round in the afternoon and offered to help him in co-op mode. Turns out he'd already beaten it on legendary with his brother...

[mehere101]

Halo 2 was nice and fun on the console, but My bet is that micrsoft is doing the same sh*t job porting it they did with the first one. BTW, Grunts are comic relief. I spend hours with the RL running around smashing them.

Anyhow, Halo was unbalanced to the nth degree. Seriously, here are the steps needed to pwn everyone.
1) Get pistol (secondary start weapon under default weapons)

[Candleman]

You gotta admit, the Maw on legendary in co-op is hilarious. Especially the Warthog escape.

[Maelstrom]

Yea, Maw with the Warthogs rule. Just dont let the other player nick the car when you flip, running the coridor is not fun. Although when you repawn behind them with a rocket launcher... *BOOM*, my car!

My only complaint about H2 is that the warthogs are no longer imortal. No more warthog jumps

[Fanger]

Pistol > all

[Neddie]

The fact that you used the words "lesser Gamecube" pretty much destroyed the credibility of the whole article. No offense, but I'm tired of the constant offense against the best designed console of that Gen.

[FizWizz]

I did not play Halo much, but one thing that never failed to bug me was that the Assault Rifle was so under-powered and the Pistol was so over-powered

[Das Bruce]

They would have been better off just writing halo on a bunch of Aleph One disks. Halo level design was shameful, utterly SHAMEFUL. And the characters lacked any ability to evoke emotion in you.

[Candleman]

The Library was the worst of the bunch. It was basically a hallway with enemies in it. Only with turns.

[Maelstrom]

The Library was the worst of the bunch. It was basically a hallway with enemies in it. Only with turns.

QFT

[clericvash]

Caydr gets a cookie for this, its all so true.

[Caydr]

The fact that you used the words "lesser Gamecube" pretty much destroyed the credibility of the whole article. No offense, but I'm tired of the constant offense against the best designed console of that Gen.

Whoa, whoa, I'm a GC supporter. It's the only console I own presently, I gave the rest of them away. I still do frequent playthroughs of many of its games. My point was just that, in comparison with the Xbox, the Gamecube isn't as powerful (deny if crazy) yet managed to have some pretty damn nice graphics. Graphics don't matter very much, it's all about gameplay, and there's much better exclusives on GC than any other console IMO.

The degree to which I love my GC is this: I'm buying a Wii (sleeping outside futureshop on launch day) solely for Metroid Prime. If anything else on it is worth playing (and from what I've seen, there'll be lots), that's just gravy. I'm going to spend $300 on account of one game alone... anyone who's reading this and hasn't played Metroid Prime 1/2, take that to heart. You need to.

P.S. I'd forgotten that Halo allows for cooperative multiplayer through the campaign. Increase my rating by 1. This is a feature that's so rare, I don't care if it's a mediocre game... playing through it with a friend makes it that much better.

Hypothetical: To increase my rating by another point, remove the 2x zoom from the pistol and give it to the rifle. Then make the rifle much more accurate and about half as fast shooting when in zoomed mode. That way, the rifle is actually a rifle, and when you're not, let's say, "shooting from the hip", it's not worthless. Also, since it's still pretty low damage per shot, it leaves a nice niche for the sniper rifle.