Call me biased, but as an average PC gamer my glimpses of Halo on the Xbox (and playings of it) have made me feel unsettled by its slow turn-speed and gameplay.

In retrospect: at the time of playing Halo I was a UT2004 muli-player junkie, thus even the limited weapon pickups, lack of jumping capabilities and fast-paced-map crossing buggered up my sense of decent gameplay.

I personally think a game should only be graded on how much fun it is.

Do you have fun while playing halo?
I do, I like Halo CE, I thought it was fun.
I thought the story was interesting. the enemys fun to shoot.
not the best game ever. not by a long shot. but for a shooter it does a good job.

Halo 1 was an impressive game. Not being a PC gamer, Halo exposed me to a less claustrophobic style of shooter. The story was basically an afterthought for me, it was really the environments that drove the epic feel of the game. I remember seing the opposite side of the halo in the sky and feeling really drawn in by that image.

As a franchise though, I think its pretty overrated, for too many reasons to go into on a post.

I'm kind of tired of arguing the point, but honestly, Halo isn't actually average. Well, Halo 1 isn't.

Bungie did a lot of great things with Halo 1, made a lot of great game design choices, and in the end made a really fun combat game that has an atmosphere that cannot be captured.

What went wrong with Halo 2 and 3 was all the people that complained about the first Halo for stupid reasons, and then Bungie got caught up in "Hmmm, how can we make a better video game?". That's why Halo 2 was a lot of corridor combat with little open spaces, and why Halo 3 feels as if there's too much emphasis on objectives that it takes away from the story (so many moments where a sudden big story point occurs and I never realized I was heading to one), as well as trying to shorten cut scenes and throw some dialogue into gameplay to keep players from having to "leave the game". In the end, that was horrible.

It's technically a classic tale. The first Halo is great because they made what they wanted to. The other games are flawed out the ass because they tried to make what everyone told them, and unfortunately the people that DO love it are the people that can't appreciate the good atmosphere and design decisions of the first game or the story direction of the second (no, Halo doesn't have the most amazing story, but God dammit I like it).

Even so, they are good games. Plus, they're also like Contra. Play them alone, and they're fun. Play them on co-op, and it's like "HOLY SHIT BEST THING EVAR!"

I like halo but at best its mediocre, it never developed anything ground breaking in really any way. Halo 2 did a good multilayer but again its nothing you can't/haven't been getting on the pc. As far as other fps I rather play I'd rather play any of the call of duty games, quake 3, unreal tournament. When a game sells a system (as halo was doing for the original xbox) the game should be fantastic, and in all honesty it isn't. I could now go on about the story but their really seems to be a lack their of... or at least lack of one I care about.... unreal tournament doesn't have a story either but they also don't have a in depth single player campaign, so I honestly don't think it can fail at something its not trying to succeed at. I was heard someone refer to halo's single player as bubble gum game play, it has a cretin sensation and feels good at first but as the game wears on you find yourself bored quickly (much like gum taste good at first but after awhile it loses it's taste).

All in all I don't find halo a really bad game but I don't think it should stand out above the games it does. I can't understand why some people defend halo as if it is the "Beez-Neez" but on the flip I can't understand why some people attack it as if it was a horrible title that should end up in the bargain bin. It never did anything exceptionally well but did everything ok.

If it where not for two things, the Halo series would have been a series that I would find difficult to remember or care about.
1, One-Touch-Grenades: Halo CE was the first game I played where grenades actually became useful. To misquote our favorite reviewer, now I could finally master the fiddly little b*stards and still have sex with girls. After that any FPS that didn't have the throw-a-grenade-without-messing-around-button was almost an automatic failure.
2, That little audiobook the marketing department put out to hype Halo 2. I found that to be a very enjoyable piece of science fiction writing. Since I read large amounts of sci-fi normaly this little book really made the world come to life for me. I still listen to it from time to time.

I think Yahtzee summed up, word for word, my feelings on Halo: "Halo 3 is by no means bad. What it is is average. Boilerplate. Run-of-the-mill. A competent shooter, its only remarkable feature being the degree to which it's stuck up its own ass. Everything it does has been done before and better."

Yes, it's not a bad game, but it is not worthy of the 10/10 scores that mainstream reviewers have been bestowing upon it (perhaps because they were afraid of the fate that befell Gerstmann).

If you asked me to summarize why I dislike the Halo series, I think I can sum it up perfectly well with a little challenge for the fans: Name anything that Halo has or does and I guarantee I can name 3 earlier games that did the same thing. And probably did it better. There is simply nothing unique about Halo.

That said, it's not entirely unpleasant on its own merits, and I would definitely like it better if it weren't so lionized, but as is, I get an awful taste in my mouth whenever I read a paid review, and that feeling stays with me when I get roped by a friend into playing the game. Hype is a game's worst enemy, and when the media starts giving 10/10 scores to games that basically take a couple other games and add slightly better graphics, I just can't look at it with an unbiased eye.

I played Metriod Prime before Halo, and frankly, Metriod Prime is so much better in every respect that it's embaressing, even if it came out at least a year later.

I was able to try Halo 3 recently, and I got bored of it soon after and decided to pop in Guitar Hero II instead, which kinda surprised me, since I have Guitar Hero III.

The game, to me, is akward and slow, the aiming is screwy, though that has more to do with me being so much more used to using a mouse for aiming than anything the game does wrong, and the only reason I could see myself playing it again is for the story, which is what I don't play FPS's for.

Give me Team Fortress 2 over Halo any day.

EDIT: Oh, right, I don't dislike the game, and I recently entered a Halo 3 tournament to try to win a free 360, though rubbing shoulders with the people who play this game is a revealing experience.

I remember this one guy who, every time somebody would die, even when he wasn't playing, he'd scream "teabag, teabag!" at the top of his voice.

He was an idiotic high schooler who lost in the first round, along with most of his friends, who were all loud and obnoxious and all left after being soundly defeated.

soladrin:

For anyone who says the story is mediocre/sucks, go read the books and get back to me after that, the halo books are in my top 10 favorite books (with things like Dante's Divine comedy, Ovidius Metamorphoses and other brain bashing litirature(spelling?) so thats saying a lot)

I shouldn't need to go out and buy something beyond just the game in order to determine whether the storyline in the game is good or not. Whether or not the books are amongst the greatest literary pieces of our time or not is totally besides the point. What matters is the game itself, and can it be judged on its own merits.

Myself, I am not a fan of FPS games in general, and Halo would definately be amongst the bottom of the bunch for me, especially after becoming used to keyboard/mouse layout rather than a substandard joystick version (that is to say that nearly every FPS on the computer is better than any FPS on a console, to me just due to the control scheme, storyline or not). Playability is of utmost importance when playing a game such as this, and the Halo series does not cut it in that respect.

Lord_Jaroh:

soladrin:

For anyone who says the story is mediocre/sucks, go read the books and get back to me after that, the halo books are in my top 10 favorite books (with things like Dante's Divine comedy, Ovidius Metamorphoses and other brain bashing litirature(spelling?) so thats saying a lot)

I shouldn't need to go out and buy something beyond just the game in order to determine whether the storyline in the game is good or not. Whether or not the books are amongst the greatest literary pieces of our time or not is totally besides the point. What matters is the game itself, and can it be judged on its own merits.

Myself, I am not a fan of FPS games in general, and Halo would definately be amongst the bottom of the bunch for me, especially after becoming used to keyboard/mouse layout rather than a substandard joystick version (that is to say that nearly every FPS on the computer is better than any FPS on a console, to me just due to the control scheme, storyline or not). Playability is of utmost importance when playing a game such as this, and the Halo series does not cut it in that respect.

well that might be a goodpoint, but i liked it enough to go deeper into it :) personal preference is a bitch huh?

anyhow, saying the playability isnt really an argument, the playability is great, your just not used to/dont like console shooters, those 2 things are quite some miles apart.

shamefully i do indeed like halo, i had an xbox once. as far as FPS's go, its probably the best without delving to far into cross-genre games. a lot of people dont like FPS's, and use halo as their best example of an FPS to demonstrate how much they dislike FPS's, i like everything, when its done well.

I played Halo CE when it came out on the PC. I definatly enjoyed it, it was a fairly fun. I certainly didn't enjoy it as much as Half-life. Or even Unreal 2, which perversely I enjoyed quite a bit. It was a fairly well made and fun shooter with reasonably fun mulitplayer which wasn't really anything to write home about but was fun enough to have a good time for an hour or so.

I didn't play Halo 2 because it wasn't released on PC or PS2 untill after Half-life 2 came out which does everything Halo does and better (it was never realeased on a non XBox/PC platform).

I will probably play Halo 3 because a friend of mine has it on XBox and theres precious little else to do at 2 in the afternoon when all the work is finished for Uni. That said, I seriously doubt its going to change my opinion on it.

The Halo Series is fun, its not the most fun you can have with a shooter, its not got the best suspense, the best atmosphere, the best adrenaline rushes or even the best plot, the major flaws come with the teddy-bear like creatures you fight which aren't funny, the cliched plot which while fairly fun in a generic Sci-fi way is again, nothing to write home about.

Someone said they enjoy the Plot of Halo along with various "High literature titles". Fair enough. Bear in mind I enjoy the plot of brainless action films along with bworks like Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and the works of William Blake. Doesn't make the plot of the brainless action films any better, just means I am able to enjoy pap-plots for what they are, a lazy way of keeping yourself occupied without engaging ones brain.

I can't believe anyone thinks that Halo comes close to being the Golden Eye of it's time. Golden Eye was something new when it came out a decade ago. Halo brought nothing new to the table.

Golden Eye brought stealth gameplay elements to the FPS genre. Suppressors on guns and avoiding being seen by enemies and security cameras were in Golden Eye first. Golden Eye also brought varying mission objectives to the FPS. Specific criteria had to be met to pass a level. It wasn't enough just to make it to the exit of a level, you actually had to follow objectives. Meet with an NPC, Destroy a computer, use a radio, guard Natalia while she hacks a computer, and so on. Golden Eye was the first FPS to have multiple, varying objectives that you had to complete, before you could pass a mission. And the game didn't hold your hand and guide you around either. Some objectives were location based while others could be completed out of order.

Even with some big flaws like enemies not being able to shoot you if you were behind a railing or if you were too close to them, there were some really nice touches to the game: guards that wouldn't shoot you on sight but would run to an alarm to call for reinforcements, head shots, objectives that weren't in the same location every time you played the level, vehicle segments, non-refilling health, dual-wielding, variable zoom weapons, adjustable sniper scope, inherently inaccurate weapons, partially destructible environments, different faces on enemies, bullets that could penetrate parts of the environment and so on and so on. Taking the shot on the train and then escaping? The face off against Trevelyan? Fighting through the silo before it explodes? There was nothing like this on consoles or PC in 1997.

Halo doesn't do anything wrong other than it doesn't do much of anything particularly well. It's a pretty boring game after a while. There's no penalty for being shot because you'll be back to perfect condition in 10 seconds. Even if you do end up dead you don't lose much progress. There's just nothing interesting about the game if you've been playing FPS in the 90's.

Wolfenstien3d, Blake Stone, Doom, Doom 2, Marathon, Rise of the Triad, Heretic, Quake, Shadow Warrior, Blood, Duke Nukem3D, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, Future Shock, and SkyNET-- Maybe if you'd grown up playing those games, you'd realize what a change GoldenEye was. Ad to that list Half-life, TFC, Perfect Dark, Deus Ex, A few Medal of Honor games, Quake 2, Turok, Rainbow 6 (and a few expansions), Soldier of Fortune, (an I'm sure I missed a few here and there) before Halo came out and there's no way to be impressed with the game.

Halo just isn't memorable if you've been following the genre from the start. GoldenEye was and still is.

I personally can't stand multi-player games: as soon as you open the door, some little shit is going to find some way to cheat. Then the cheating will spread and ruin the game for everyone.

The thing that ticks me off about Halo in general is that everybody seems to be obsessed with this game series. I do believe that "fan boys" are the ones driving the market for Halo even though it's a good game. Far from being great.

There's nothing worse than spending several hours playing a game and getting an ending that basically says "That's it, or is it" kind of crap. You basically go though hell and back in H1 and H2 just to get an open ending that doesn't tie up anything.

Zero Punctuation sums up what I feel, anyways.

COD4 is the perfect example of the pinnacle of the FPS genre.

The Halo series is by no means horrible, but like others have said is not as innovative as some have hyped it to be.
I hate the hype this game has received. To much hype just turns me off.
The game isn't bad, and is enjoyable in its own right. But, is does not deserve the hype. The fanboys/girls that will buy anything just because it has something to do with the franchise, they weird me out.

I honestly don't see what is so great about the game. The multiplayer, to me, is the only thing pushing the game. Of the hundreds of FPS I've played, Halo just doesn't stand out as being an astounding single-player game. It feels like any other FPS, maybe not as far as the controls are concerned, but the actual gameplay doesn't feel much different. The graphics were eye catching, but that was pretty much it for me.

I had much more fun playing Hitman than Halo.

Primeginia: He can say that because he is talking about his personal opinion of a subjective experience.

CS, DoD, or Unreal Tournament are going for a completely different experience and should not be compared to Halo, just like it would be wrong for me to compare it to Deus Ex (as much as I love it). Slow turning speed can be adjusted, it's just a sensitivity setting.

Khaos, I got bored and didn't finish the first level of either Hitman (in fairness, the tutorial for Hitman 1 was bugged and I didn't feel like doing it again). Who is right?

I would like to know about other games before Halo 1 that had a quickly recharging shield (it doesn't matter if you think that's fun or not), melee and grenades on the fly (that were useful), useful vehicles, and a gun like the needler? Really, I want to know. I hear people constantly talk about how mediocre it is, but I never get examples (other than saying Half-Life etc. are better games).

Halo 1 was a good game because it gave you the sense that you are an elite mofo with a gun and an agenda which often barely survived by the skin of your kevlar plated butt in most of the situations you ran into. the aliens where alien and unique in that, although comprehendable, it isn't blatent that they are speaking english. even the little blue ewoks are belivable

it is Halo 2 and 3 which killed the game for me, where they took about 50 steps back from 'quazi realistic sci-fi' and proceeded to shoot large caliber guns at the thought of it. instead slapping in more and more insanely stupid story, stupid humor, overpowered weapons, and making Master Cheif an end all be all god of the cosmos.

the aliens go from barely comprehensable to Harvard educated.
Master Cheif goes from barely surviving and an elite trooper that 'makes it happen' to some sort of golden god destroying Covent capital ships single handedly.
and the hive minded Flood go from a collective hole working in unison to an army lead by a massive 'little shop of Horror' reject kept in the basement of a Halo ring...

it is why i dislike the halo series. they take a good thing and muck it up.

Good, good is like Half Life and the orginal half life mods. it mixes puzzles, combat, and story in such a belivable and good way that it will always be a good game. instant classic.

Halo is the Linkin Park of video games. They took good parts from other games, watered them down to make them palpable to more people, then fed them to the public. I've worked in the gaming industry for quite a while. Halo is nothing compared to it's hype.

Ghandi 2:

Khaos, I got bored and didn't finish the first level of either Hitman (in fairness, the tutorial for Hitman 1 was bugged and I didn't feel like doing it again). Who is right?

Neither.
Never said Hitman was a great game, but it held my attention more so than Halo ever did.
I didn't finish the first level of any Halo game, as I myself also got bored.

Some of the hatred Halo gets is because of the hype. Some of it is PC gamers' elitism towards console gamers. Some of it is disdain for the fill-in-the-blanks story that you have to read the books, play the alternate-reality game, use the secret decoder ring, etc. to understand to any real degree. Most of it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to the fanboys' insistence that the Halo series is the be-all and end-all of FPS gaming, and every other company should just hang it up and go home.

I've played the first two Halo games (being a PC gamer) and, like others, I have to say that it wasn't terrible nor was it exceptional. For every excellent thing the game threw at me (some sweet vehicular combat), it seemed to counter with an irritation (waves of Flood in Generic Mucus-Dripping Metallic Corridor #42 in the Library). Sure, I loved having grenades available at the touch of a button (made for some interesting run-and-gun combat), but that was offset by some ridiculous weapons balancing (a popgun for an assault rifle, a battle rifle that only fired bursts, etc.). A major problem fixed from Halo 1 (couldn't take the gun and have a Marine drive) just brought in another problem in Halo 2 (the Marines doing the driving were- how did Yahtzee put it? Oh yes- pants-on-head retarded). I still load the games up on occasion when the mood strikes me; oddly enough, I enjoy fighting the Flood the most, if only because the visceral satisfaction of watching a shambling horror get chewed to bits by my rapid-fire weapon makes me happy in my happy parts. ;) However, now that I've gotten myself a brand new video card (8800GT, thanks for asking), I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to turn all those digital horses loose on running a couple of poorly-ported XBox games.

And, oh yeah... what the HECK did they do to the Covenant weapon sounds in Halo 2? I mean, jeez. The plasma rifle went from sounding like a heat-spewing tool of death to sounding like one of those 1980's plastic toy kids' guns that had the light-up barrel.

Kaminobob:
if you say that halo is NOT a good FPS, what on earth DO you consider good? (and i mean pure FPS here. no FPSRPGs like system shock)

What is good. That's too easy; HL1 2 and all the episodes. CoD4 is a great game. Probably trhe best war game at the moment until BiA: HH comes out. Bioshock (I have no idea why it's also an RPG) is so much better. I found FEAR funner to play then Halo. I found a good many games funner, then Halo, which always had me wondering... why does this game have such a huge fan base??!

Halo 1 was great but then it started going downhill imo

Since someone already mentioned Goldeneye I won't repeat what he said save to say that the removal of health packs was and is a good thing in the long run because they don't really make sense. I hope that Far Cry 2 manages to strike a nice balance though with their bullet removal system, now on to Halo. Other than what others have mentioned with respect to Goldeneye and how Halo does not do anything that Goldeneye has not done, or at least what it has done for console shooters and surpassed it, my main problems are:

• The fact that some of the enemies are cute like bunnies.... Seriously I can't fathom why there are cute enemies in Halo games. Imagine a Doom game where you had to kill cuddly woodland creatures with guns that actually ran away from you on sight! It wouldn't make sense in the context of the game and it does not make sense for those short covenant to behave in this manner.
• Why are players punched in the face if they happen to play the console versions of these games when it comes time to adjust the controls? (Not a problem unique to Halo but if people want to claim that this or any other game is a great game it better allow the user to create his or her own layout of buttons if the game bothers to let you change sticks in the first place, rather than insult player intelligence by not doing so but allowing other options that beg for this kind of thing.) I don't understand how the PC port of Halo 1 (and presumeably Halo 2 which I have not played.) has what seemingly all pc games have, full keyboard customization yet Halo 3 does not respect the player enough to let them decide for themselves where the buttons are mapped to. Yet I can name games that came out after Goldeneye and around the time of Halo 1 that did allow for this sort of thing.
• How is Halo supposed to be so great if the online ui is so goddamn retarded in comparison to the PC version of Halo 1 by Halo 2 and 3? Once again Bungie decided to insult the intelligence of console players by sticking them with a retarded match selection system that people only think is good because they don't know better. I literally stopped playing Halo 3 when I saw how the match selection system worked coming from the PC version of Halo 1 (Not to mention games like Resistance, GRAW, and Socom.) that abomination was simply unacceptable.
• I would also love to understand what the point of the headcra- errrr Flood was? Bungie failed to make the Covenant truly menacing, and failed miserably to touch on the religious aspect of things other than to make the Covenant leader an insane high priest, so they decided to throw in the Gravemind and Flood to make up for this, which is just plain sad in the grand scheme of things since all of these things could have worked if they had actually put forward some effort.

shadow skill:
[/li]

I would also love to understand what the point of the headcra- errrr Flood was. Bungie failed to make the Covenant truly menacing, and failed miserably to touch on the religious aspect of things other than to make the Covenant leader an insane high priest, so they decided to throw in the Gravemind and Flood to make up for this, which is just plain sad in the grand scheme of things since all of these things could have worked if they had actually put forward some effort.

[/ul]

I agree with this. The covenant were underdone and the flood were just a distraction from the covenant who, even in their medium-rare form, were much more interesting. I wanted religious fanatics who scared and awed me at their power. Like, you know, they're supposed to be.

This is probably going to sound like a lot of the post already, but bare with me on this one.

Halo 1 was fun and I did enjoy it a lot. One of the main reason is because it brought new concepts together in an FPS game and it preformed it pretty good. Driving veichles in a FPS-game and cooperating with others by sharing mounted gunturrents/driving/passneger seat in the veichle was nothing new of that time, but Halo 1 took the concept one step further and made it all fun by executing the idea near flawlessly.

I like Halo 1, I'd even concider it to be the best Xbox FPS-game that has ever been released. (if that is telling much) The problem becomes to Halo 2 and Halo 3 which I liked less and less. The problem is if you've played any FPS-shooter on a PC the 2nd and 3rd incarnation of Halo is just dull, boring and and really nothing special.

What was a real dissapointment to me about Halo 3 is how avast majority of the game was about running around in corridoors shooting aliens, which has been done so many times before - and it's been done way better by other games. The hype didn't help the game either (neither the short campaign) - it just hurted it. For any teenager that has barely understood what kind of FPS games that have been out there since Wolf3D on the PC it would be hard to understand that the concepts that are used in Halo 2 and Halo 3 have been done before and so much better.

I don't like to compare games to each other, but hyping a game to higher than the next coming of Jesus and game reviwers (you know who you are) tossing away 10/10 at the game - when in reality the game has not much new to offer just makes me want to dislike the game even more.

HeadExplodie:
Halo is the Linkin Park of video games. They took good parts from other games, watered them down to make them palpable to more people, then fed them to the public. I've worked in the gaming industry for quite a while. Halo is nothing compared to it's hype.

Your position in the gaming industry does not make your opinion any more or less valid.
Please read my post, I want names. If Halo really is so mediocre, it shouldn't be difficult. I like Halo, but I am willing to accept that it borrowed many elements from other games and may in fact be somewhat mediocre. However, I have yet to see any proof beyond people simply stating that it is.

The Rogue Wolf:
And, oh yeah... what the HECK did they do to the Covenant weapon sounds in Halo 2? I mean, jeez. The plasma rifle went from sounding like a heat-spewing tool of death to sounding like one of those 1980's plastic toy kids' guns that had the light-up barrel.

I have to agree with you there. I used the plasma rifle exclusively in Halo 1 and now I don't touch it at all.