chalkitdown1
Member
So I've just played through all the Halo fps games for the first time over the course of the past 4 weeks. Never had an original Xbox and so I passed on the 360 sequels when I had that console.
Anyway, I recently got an Xbone and the Master Chief Collection was on sale for 8 or thereabouts so I thought I'd finally jump in and see what all the fuss was. When I was done with that I picked up Halo 5 and Reach for 15 total (a bargain, I think). It's been quite a trip these past few weeks with a lot of ups and downs along the way. I'm pretty much all Halo'd out at this stage having played nothing else in between, just jumping straight from Halo to Halo.
I played through them in this order btw; 1>2>3>4>ODST>5>Reach.
No real point to this thread, just needed to jot down my thoughts on the series from this unique perspective so here are my hot takes for each game as a complete noob to the series in 2017.
Halo CE: Anniversary
I was kinda mixed on this. I loved the first half of it. It had great enemy encounters and the Halo gunplay is as good as I've been led to believe. I was also blown away by the music. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, the drums especially.
However, it went downhill around episode 6 or 7. Most of the second half of the game has you repeating prior missions except this time in reverse. It reminded me of DMC4 which pulls a similar stunt. I'm not sure if they ran out of money or time or what but I didn't enjoy much of the second half of the game and I haven't even mentioned the infamous Library level yet. It was so fucking long and monotonous although I don't think it was even the worst level in the game, I enjoyed the one before it even less. There were numerous points throughout the campaign where I wasn't sure if I was in a new area or had somehow gone backwards and was in a previous room. There was so much copy and paste shit going on here. One thing I DID like about the back half of the game was the lead up to the introduction of the Flood. It was very well done. The incredible music helped of course. It might be sacrilege to say but the level design in this game is just not that good today, maybe it wasn't even that great at the time, I'm not sure.
Although SAYING THAT, there were a lot of old-skool aspects that I did really enjoy. The hand-animated cut-scene animation was goofy as fuck but I think it added to the charm. Doubly so the way Master Chief goes flying in his death animation when you get killed by an explosion. I also loved the way it didn't hold your hand. It would give you an objective and you are left to figure out where to go and how to do it. No waypoint on screen telling you where to go, no annoying Cortana screaming in your ear telling you to hurry up. You're just left to get on with it. I will admit it did sometimes take me FOREVER to find things but I prefer it this way than being led by the hand.
I have to say they did an amazing job on the remaster because holy shit the original graphics are so grey & dark & bland. It's night and day (sometimes literally) when quick-switching between them.
One other thing I wasn't expecting was the humour. There are some genuinely funny lines from the other background marines (a lot of them Aliens quotes and the Sarge is pretty much Apone, right?) and having the covenant speak English was a wonderful touch which led to some funny moments. The aforementioned goofy animations helped with this tone a lot. It kinda felt like a cartoon at times.
Fuck the final sequence, though. What better way to finish this seminal FPS than with a driving section in a terribly controlling vehicle through tiny tunnels where you're constantly getting caught on geometry at every turn and being flipped over by the slightest fucking bump on the floor. Just an awful way to end the game. Apparently people like this part! I don't get it, it was up there with the worst of the game for me.
Overally a mixed bag. The parts I loved I really loved and the parts I didn't I fucking despised.
Halo 2: Anniversary
I literally jumped straight into this after finishing Halo CE (there are no end credits for the individual games on the MCC, it's just level end, back to menu, start Halo 2). First thing I noticed upon starting the first mission of this (apart from the total nerfing of the shotgun, boo!) was that something just didn't feel right. It took me a few missions to put my finger on it but I eventually realized that it was the FOV. It's a lot narrower than Halo CE. Now, I don't know if it was like this in the original Halo 2 or something they fucked up in 2A but it was noticeable as hell here especially when jumping directly from game to game like I did. I got used to it over time, mind.
Am I right in remembering that this game got a bad rap at the time of release? Because I really liked it, even the Arbiter missions. They were a nice change up in both style and tone and I welcomed the invincibility power. And MY GOD some of the music on his missions was simply outstanding. Got some real 2001 A Space Odyssey vibes off some tracks. Martin O'Donnell can't get praised enough for his work here. Also, Michael Wincott has one of the truly great voices in cinema. I'm a big fan of his and never knew he was in this series. He has such a cool fucking voice.
The upgraded graphics here were even better than in 1. The new cut-scenes were almost life-like in how good they were (I had a weird bug where the subtitles were out of sync with the video, though) and the story eventually made sense. I say that because I was pretty baffled at the start. I felt like I had missed a whole game worth of stuff with the way it starts off with all these new characters and races. I was genuinely confused for a long time about what the hell was going on. The story in the first game was like a children's novel in comparison. Also, maybe this was just me but I felt the new graphics, as incredible as they are, were very dark in places and made it difficult to navigate certain areas.
One thing I didn't like about the game was how linear it felt compared to CE. Even though CE is pretty linear itself, it tricked you into thinking it was more open with large levels and a lot of sandbox style missions with vehicles. Everything in 2 kinda forced you down a set path with no great open areas.
Again with the shitty ending, though. I would have been pissed if I had played this at time of release with that dumb non-resolution that genuinely felt like the halfway point of the game. Thankfully I only had minutes to wait for Halo 3 and not years.
Halo 3
The downgrade in graphics after the 2 remastered games before it was the first thing that jumped out at me. Man, we're really come a long way from those early 360/PS3 days!
That aside, though, I absolutely adored this game. I can see why people praise it. It felt more like a sequel to Halo 1 than 2 thematically, with less emphasis on story & a lot fewer cut-scenes. Everything is really bright and colourful which was more how CE:A looked rather than the slightly gloomy look of 2. And the goofy cut-scenes are back! And the Aliens quotes from your fellow marines! I really can't get enough of them. I loved the overall camaraderie of the marines at your side, you're never alone in this game, it really felt like you were part of a war and not a one-man operation.
The controls of all the vehicles continues to get better, too. I like the new handbrake that the Warthog has (I had gotten used to the handling at this point) and taking down that Scarab on a Mongoose with your buddy on the back with an OP bazooka was probably the best moment of the series up until then. Then they go and top it with the dual Scarab battle later on! That part was epic. It goes without saying that the music was top-notch overall as well.
I still don't know why there isn't an option to have proper driving controls with the triggers, though. At the very least you should be able to look around without turning the vehicle at the same time, but oh well.
It was so satisfying to kill that fucking shithead 343 Guilty Spark. What a little turd it was right from the first moment you meet it in Halo 1. Can't believe it killed the Sarge!
The only real problem I had with this was that you never got to play as the Arbiter. The little bromance that he and Chief developed over the course of the game was great and it was as much his story as it was the Master Chief's in the end. Kinda felt cheated that he was relegated to a supporting role even though he accompanies you on every single mission if I recall correctly. Also, Michael Wincott's amazing vocal talent is fro some reason replaced with that of Terence Stamp :/ A great actor, don't get me wrong, but he's no Michael fucking Wincott! That kinda bummed me out.
Finally a Halo game with a really great ending! "Wake me when you need me". Beautiful. *sniff*
Halo 4
Erm, you should have stayed asleep, Chief! What a stinking pile of shit this game was. The one and only positive I can give it, and I'm gonna get it out the way early, is that the graphics are genuinely fantastic. It's hard to believe that Halo 3 & Halo 4 came out in the same system, the jump in graphical fidelity is that fucking huge.
And with that out of the way; Fuck this game! This is Call of Duty with a Halo skin on top. I think I hated every single moment of it. I was forcing myself to finish it come the end. You know you're in for a bad time when your Halo game opens with what is essentially a QTE climbing sequence ripped from Uncharted 2.. What the fuck is this shit doing in Halo? And then they decide to finish the game with an actual QTE as well. Bloody awful.
When did Cortana turn into such an annoying fuck? I had no issues with her in the previous 3 games but in this she never ever stops shouting at you. Constantly yelling orders, telling you what to do, where to go and prompting you to hurry up if you don't do it fast enough. And on top of that she yells the most banal, pointless dialogue at you. "Covenant!" Gee, thanks Cortana, I didn't see them there shooting me in the face. It's like the voice director told the actress to be as loud as possible & Never. Stop. Talking. Were you supposed to feel sad when she "died" at the end? Because I was absolutely delighted. I couldn't stand her by the end. And adding to Cortana holding my hand the entire game, there's a waypoint on screen at all times so you know where to go and what to do. God forbid I try to figure something out for myself. The level design in general was awful. So linear and restrictive.
There is zero humour or charm in the game, everything is super serious and dark & melodramatic. The OTT Chief flying death animation is gone, the covenant no longer speak English so no more funny lines of dialogue from them & your fellow marines (the few occasions when you're with them) spout generic grunt dialogue you're heard in every military shooter before. And the music, good lord. It's more background noise than music. I think there was one memorable track in the game that stood out and it was right at the end at some point in the final mission.
They reduced the ammo count on all weapons presumably to make you switch to the new weapons and not stick with the ol' favourites, but it goes way too far. It felt like I had to pick up a new gun off the floor every 30 seconds, they lasted no time at all. Didn't like the new enemies much, either. Almost all of them were bullet sponges, the knights in particular and the flying butterfly ones annoyed me to no end. They just weren't fun to fight. And is it just me or are enemies that teleport into the battlefield out of thin air just the laziest shit? The covenant at least come in on ships or have a reason to be there. Not a fan of the newly re-designed enemies, either
Even though I've finished the game I would be hard pressed to tell you what the story was actually about, it's told that badly. I know I joked earlier about feeling like I missed a game in between 1 & 2 but that eventually made sense. However, here I really do think I missed something. I think I saw the main bad guy 2 or 3 times max in the entire game and barely knew what he was about at the end. I don't even remember his name at the time of writing. Everything about the story on either side was a convoluted mess.
The one and only mission I actually enjoyed was the one were you are going through the desert valley on top of a humongous vehicle with the sniping part at the end.
What an awful game. I was so pissed off after playing this that I forego going straight into 5 (as I figured it would be more of the same) and went back to play ODST and finish the MCC instead.
Halo 3: ODST
Holy shit, it's the Firefly crew! (And Six from Battlestar Galactica). Amazing voice cast straight off the bat.
This was easily the shortest of all the games I've played so far. A lot of levels could actually be completed in mere minutes. The MCC shows the par times before a mission and some of them were 2 or 3 minutes. Some missions just required you to get from point A to B and you could run or drive there without even engaging in any combat.
I wasn't a fan of the "investigation" levels at all. So boring and sparse. Walking through the same empty streets again and again wasn't fun, especially at the movement speed this game has. The music was odd, too, there was a lot of sad jazzy piano going on in parts which I wasn't a big fan of. I realize it fit the tone of loneliness & isolation in the Rookie missions but I just didn't like it all that much.
The actual flashback missions were really good, though. After the shit that was Halo 4 it was refreshing to have old-school levels again and a lot of vehicle combat and great enemy encounters. I especially enjoyed the last 2 or 3 missions where it's Buck & Six escorting the Engineer Alien thingy and it really finished on a high with that Coastal Highway mission.
The story in this was very straightforward and simple which again was refreshing coming off the back of 4.
Halo 5: Guardians
First impressions of this weren't the best. That opening cut-scene was some ridiculous shit. Why bother with all these marines at all when Team Osiris can fuck up the entire covenant army at ease like this by themselves? It was so dumb. It brought back memories of The Twin Snakes that depicted a massively different Snake in the cut-scenes thank in-game. First thing I did upon starting the game proper was change the controls back to the Halo 4 config. Throwing grenades with the B button?! Aiming down the sights with the L trigger? ADS in MY Halo? Fuck off with that shit. Get back to the right stick click where you belong. I don't think I used the ADS for the entire game except when using sniper rifles and such, just like you do in the previous games. I'm glad they give you the option to bury the ADS at least, but it shouldn't be in there in the first place.
After that was done I could get on with hating this like I did 4. Except I kinda....really liked this. I can't quite explain it. It's something I never expected but 343 corrected a lot of the problems I had with 4. I presume they actually listened to the fans, did other people have the same complaints I did?
The covenant speak English again! This is huge for me and part of the reason why I enjoyed the series. And that also means that some of the humour is back. The enemies are also less bullet spongy. The Knights are more tolerable now and the flying cunts are put down in seconds. The combat and general enemy encounters were much improved over 4. Best of all, the waypoint is now hidden and only shows up when you hit d-pad down if you actually want it. Another case of them letting you hide something that I'd prefer wasn't there but at least it's not prominent any more.
The plot was OK. It actually made sense this time. I'm glad Cortana was absent for the majority of the game but I would have preferred if there were more Blue Team missions. Only 3 missions out of 15 as Master Chief is a bit of a joke. A half n' half mix like Halo 2 would have been better. Speaking of Halo 2, motherfucking ARBITER! I was delighted to see him back. I really enjoyed his little part of the story. Unfortunately again, you don't get to play as him which is a shame. While I enjoyed the return of Buck from ODST, the rest of Team Osiris were completely forgettable, the lead character in particular. What a boring, bland monotone-voiced lead. I don't even remember the squadmembers names except Buck. Chief's Blue Team members were even worse, though. Creating new characters is not 343's strongpoint, it seems.
As for the gameplay, well, it's not really the same Halo anymore but I did enjoy the new mobility and the speed you have. It played more like Titanfall with the way you can zip around.
The biggest problem with the game was the repeated fight with the Warden. I was so fucking sick of this cunt by the end. Were they taking the piss with this or what? I think I fought him 7 times. SEVEN! Same fucking boss every time. What the hell were thinking?
Halo Reach
This was something special. I'm glad I left it until last. The jump in graphics between Halo 3 & 4 made more sense after playing this as it sits nicely between the two from a graphical standpoint.
It took a while to get used to it at the start coming from 6 Halo's in a row that ran at 60fps to Reach's 30. The motion blur was kinda jarring. Why oh why didn't they give this a facelift while they were doing all the other games? I quickly got over it due to the game being so goddamn great, though.
It probably had the best missions in the series. These massive levels were very impressive and I loved the seamless transitions from point to point on the map in the dropship. Also loved the new space combat. That mission was epic, especially with the way it ended being thrown to safety to finish the fight. What a cool moment. There was also an open-world type mission which felt a lot like Crimson Skies on the original Xbox, one of my favourite games.
The squad members of Noble Team were all memorable and well-written. It was heartbreaking to see them get killed off one by one. That final mission (and epilogue), my god. Just stunning. What a way for Bungie to bow out of the series.
Come to think of it, a certain Star Wars movie ripped off a lot of story beats from this game, didn't it? A prequel story with a bunch of characters you've never heard of before in an established series, on a mission to deliver something that could change the war, sacrificing themselves one by one in a story that leads right up to the start of the original in the series. Hmm, that all seems mightily familiar!
To be honest, I can't find a single thing that truly bothered me. There were little things here and there that I wasn't too fond of (the covenant don't speak English etc) but overall there was nothing to truly complain about. An amazing game.
Anyway, in terms of ranking them I'd probably go:
1. Halo Reach
2. Halo 3
3. Halo 2
4. Halo 5
5. Halo CE
6. Halo 3: ODST
...
...
...
...
7. Halo 4
It was a fun month.
Anyway, I recently got an Xbone and the Master Chief Collection was on sale for 8 or thereabouts so I thought I'd finally jump in and see what all the fuss was. When I was done with that I picked up Halo 5 and Reach for 15 total (a bargain, I think). It's been quite a trip these past few weeks with a lot of ups and downs along the way. I'm pretty much all Halo'd out at this stage having played nothing else in between, just jumping straight from Halo to Halo.
I played through them in this order btw; 1>2>3>4>ODST>5>Reach.
No real point to this thread, just needed to jot down my thoughts on the series from this unique perspective so here are my hot takes for each game as a complete noob to the series in 2017.
Halo CE: Anniversary
I was kinda mixed on this. I loved the first half of it. It had great enemy encounters and the Halo gunplay is as good as I've been led to believe. I was also blown away by the music. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, the drums especially.
However, it went downhill around episode 6 or 7. Most of the second half of the game has you repeating prior missions except this time in reverse. It reminded me of DMC4 which pulls a similar stunt. I'm not sure if they ran out of money or time or what but I didn't enjoy much of the second half of the game and I haven't even mentioned the infamous Library level yet. It was so fucking long and monotonous although I don't think it was even the worst level in the game, I enjoyed the one before it even less. There were numerous points throughout the campaign where I wasn't sure if I was in a new area or had somehow gone backwards and was in a previous room. There was so much copy and paste shit going on here. One thing I DID like about the back half of the game was the lead up to the introduction of the Flood. It was very well done. The incredible music helped of course. It might be sacrilege to say but the level design in this game is just not that good today, maybe it wasn't even that great at the time, I'm not sure.
Although SAYING THAT, there were a lot of old-skool aspects that I did really enjoy. The hand-animated cut-scene animation was goofy as fuck but I think it added to the charm. Doubly so the way Master Chief goes flying in his death animation when you get killed by an explosion. I also loved the way it didn't hold your hand. It would give you an objective and you are left to figure out where to go and how to do it. No waypoint on screen telling you where to go, no annoying Cortana screaming in your ear telling you to hurry up. You're just left to get on with it. I will admit it did sometimes take me FOREVER to find things but I prefer it this way than being led by the hand.
I have to say they did an amazing job on the remaster because holy shit the original graphics are so grey & dark & bland. It's night and day (sometimes literally) when quick-switching between them.
One other thing I wasn't expecting was the humour. There are some genuinely funny lines from the other background marines (a lot of them Aliens quotes and the Sarge is pretty much Apone, right?) and having the covenant speak English was a wonderful touch which led to some funny moments. The aforementioned goofy animations helped with this tone a lot. It kinda felt like a cartoon at times.
Fuck the final sequence, though. What better way to finish this seminal FPS than with a driving section in a terribly controlling vehicle through tiny tunnels where you're constantly getting caught on geometry at every turn and being flipped over by the slightest fucking bump on the floor. Just an awful way to end the game. Apparently people like this part! I don't get it, it was up there with the worst of the game for me.
Overally a mixed bag. The parts I loved I really loved and the parts I didn't I fucking despised.
Halo 2: Anniversary
I literally jumped straight into this after finishing Halo CE (there are no end credits for the individual games on the MCC, it's just level end, back to menu, start Halo 2). First thing I noticed upon starting the first mission of this (apart from the total nerfing of the shotgun, boo!) was that something just didn't feel right. It took me a few missions to put my finger on it but I eventually realized that it was the FOV. It's a lot narrower than Halo CE. Now, I don't know if it was like this in the original Halo 2 or something they fucked up in 2A but it was noticeable as hell here especially when jumping directly from game to game like I did. I got used to it over time, mind.
Am I right in remembering that this game got a bad rap at the time of release? Because I really liked it, even the Arbiter missions. They were a nice change up in both style and tone and I welcomed the invincibility power. And MY GOD some of the music on his missions was simply outstanding. Got some real 2001 A Space Odyssey vibes off some tracks. Martin O'Donnell can't get praised enough for his work here. Also, Michael Wincott has one of the truly great voices in cinema. I'm a big fan of his and never knew he was in this series. He has such a cool fucking voice.
The upgraded graphics here were even better than in 1. The new cut-scenes were almost life-like in how good they were (I had a weird bug where the subtitles were out of sync with the video, though) and the story eventually made sense. I say that because I was pretty baffled at the start. I felt like I had missed a whole game worth of stuff with the way it starts off with all these new characters and races. I was genuinely confused for a long time about what the hell was going on. The story in the first game was like a children's novel in comparison. Also, maybe this was just me but I felt the new graphics, as incredible as they are, were very dark in places and made it difficult to navigate certain areas.
One thing I didn't like about the game was how linear it felt compared to CE. Even though CE is pretty linear itself, it tricked you into thinking it was more open with large levels and a lot of sandbox style missions with vehicles. Everything in 2 kinda forced you down a set path with no great open areas.
Again with the shitty ending, though. I would have been pissed if I had played this at time of release with that dumb non-resolution that genuinely felt like the halfway point of the game. Thankfully I only had minutes to wait for Halo 3 and not years.
Halo 3
The downgrade in graphics after the 2 remastered games before it was the first thing that jumped out at me. Man, we're really come a long way from those early 360/PS3 days!
That aside, though, I absolutely adored this game. I can see why people praise it. It felt more like a sequel to Halo 1 than 2 thematically, with less emphasis on story & a lot fewer cut-scenes. Everything is really bright and colourful which was more how CE:A looked rather than the slightly gloomy look of 2. And the goofy cut-scenes are back! And the Aliens quotes from your fellow marines! I really can't get enough of them. I loved the overall camaraderie of the marines at your side, you're never alone in this game, it really felt like you were part of a war and not a one-man operation.
The controls of all the vehicles continues to get better, too. I like the new handbrake that the Warthog has (I had gotten used to the handling at this point) and taking down that Scarab on a Mongoose with your buddy on the back with an OP bazooka was probably the best moment of the series up until then. Then they go and top it with the dual Scarab battle later on! That part was epic. It goes without saying that the music was top-notch overall as well.
I still don't know why there isn't an option to have proper driving controls with the triggers, though. At the very least you should be able to look around without turning the vehicle at the same time, but oh well.
It was so satisfying to kill that fucking shithead 343 Guilty Spark. What a little turd it was right from the first moment you meet it in Halo 1. Can't believe it killed the Sarge!
The only real problem I had with this was that you never got to play as the Arbiter. The little bromance that he and Chief developed over the course of the game was great and it was as much his story as it was the Master Chief's in the end. Kinda felt cheated that he was relegated to a supporting role even though he accompanies you on every single mission if I recall correctly. Also, Michael Wincott's amazing vocal talent is fro some reason replaced with that of Terence Stamp :/ A great actor, don't get me wrong, but he's no Michael fucking Wincott! That kinda bummed me out.
Finally a Halo game with a really great ending! "Wake me when you need me". Beautiful. *sniff*
Halo 4
Erm, you should have stayed asleep, Chief! What a stinking pile of shit this game was. The one and only positive I can give it, and I'm gonna get it out the way early, is that the graphics are genuinely fantastic. It's hard to believe that Halo 3 & Halo 4 came out in the same system, the jump in graphical fidelity is that fucking huge.
And with that out of the way; Fuck this game! This is Call of Duty with a Halo skin on top. I think I hated every single moment of it. I was forcing myself to finish it come the end. You know you're in for a bad time when your Halo game opens with what is essentially a QTE climbing sequence ripped from Uncharted 2.. What the fuck is this shit doing in Halo? And then they decide to finish the game with an actual QTE as well. Bloody awful.
When did Cortana turn into such an annoying fuck? I had no issues with her in the previous 3 games but in this she never ever stops shouting at you. Constantly yelling orders, telling you what to do, where to go and prompting you to hurry up if you don't do it fast enough. And on top of that she yells the most banal, pointless dialogue at you. "Covenant!" Gee, thanks Cortana, I didn't see them there shooting me in the face. It's like the voice director told the actress to be as loud as possible & Never. Stop. Talking. Were you supposed to feel sad when she "died" at the end? Because I was absolutely delighted. I couldn't stand her by the end. And adding to Cortana holding my hand the entire game, there's a waypoint on screen at all times so you know where to go and what to do. God forbid I try to figure something out for myself. The level design in general was awful. So linear and restrictive.
There is zero humour or charm in the game, everything is super serious and dark & melodramatic. The OTT Chief flying death animation is gone, the covenant no longer speak English so no more funny lines of dialogue from them & your fellow marines (the few occasions when you're with them) spout generic grunt dialogue you're heard in every military shooter before. And the music, good lord. It's more background noise than music. I think there was one memorable track in the game that stood out and it was right at the end at some point in the final mission.
They reduced the ammo count on all weapons presumably to make you switch to the new weapons and not stick with the ol' favourites, but it goes way too far. It felt like I had to pick up a new gun off the floor every 30 seconds, they lasted no time at all. Didn't like the new enemies much, either. Almost all of them were bullet sponges, the knights in particular and the flying butterfly ones annoyed me to no end. They just weren't fun to fight. And is it just me or are enemies that teleport into the battlefield out of thin air just the laziest shit? The covenant at least come in on ships or have a reason to be there. Not a fan of the newly re-designed enemies, either
Even though I've finished the game I would be hard pressed to tell you what the story was actually about, it's told that badly. I know I joked earlier about feeling like I missed a game in between 1 & 2 but that eventually made sense. However, here I really do think I missed something. I think I saw the main bad guy 2 or 3 times max in the entire game and barely knew what he was about at the end. I don't even remember his name at the time of writing. Everything about the story on either side was a convoluted mess.
The one and only mission I actually enjoyed was the one were you are going through the desert valley on top of a humongous vehicle with the sniping part at the end.
What an awful game. I was so pissed off after playing this that I forego going straight into 5 (as I figured it would be more of the same) and went back to play ODST and finish the MCC instead.
Halo 3: ODST
Holy shit, it's the Firefly crew! (And Six from Battlestar Galactica). Amazing voice cast straight off the bat.
This was easily the shortest of all the games I've played so far. A lot of levels could actually be completed in mere minutes. The MCC shows the par times before a mission and some of them were 2 or 3 minutes. Some missions just required you to get from point A to B and you could run or drive there without even engaging in any combat.
I wasn't a fan of the "investigation" levels at all. So boring and sparse. Walking through the same empty streets again and again wasn't fun, especially at the movement speed this game has. The music was odd, too, there was a lot of sad jazzy piano going on in parts which I wasn't a big fan of. I realize it fit the tone of loneliness & isolation in the Rookie missions but I just didn't like it all that much.
The actual flashback missions were really good, though. After the shit that was Halo 4 it was refreshing to have old-school levels again and a lot of vehicle combat and great enemy encounters. I especially enjoyed the last 2 or 3 missions where it's Buck & Six escorting the Engineer Alien thingy and it really finished on a high with that Coastal Highway mission.
The story in this was very straightforward and simple which again was refreshing coming off the back of 4.
Halo 5: Guardians
First impressions of this weren't the best. That opening cut-scene was some ridiculous shit. Why bother with all these marines at all when Team Osiris can fuck up the entire covenant army at ease like this by themselves? It was so dumb. It brought back memories of The Twin Snakes that depicted a massively different Snake in the cut-scenes thank in-game. First thing I did upon starting the game proper was change the controls back to the Halo 4 config. Throwing grenades with the B button?! Aiming down the sights with the L trigger? ADS in MY Halo? Fuck off with that shit. Get back to the right stick click where you belong. I don't think I used the ADS for the entire game except when using sniper rifles and such, just like you do in the previous games. I'm glad they give you the option to bury the ADS at least, but it shouldn't be in there in the first place.
After that was done I could get on with hating this like I did 4. Except I kinda....really liked this. I can't quite explain it. It's something I never expected but 343 corrected a lot of the problems I had with 4. I presume they actually listened to the fans, did other people have the same complaints I did?
The covenant speak English again! This is huge for me and part of the reason why I enjoyed the series. And that also means that some of the humour is back. The enemies are also less bullet spongy. The Knights are more tolerable now and the flying cunts are put down in seconds. The combat and general enemy encounters were much improved over 4. Best of all, the waypoint is now hidden and only shows up when you hit d-pad down if you actually want it. Another case of them letting you hide something that I'd prefer wasn't there but at least it's not prominent any more.
The plot was OK. It actually made sense this time. I'm glad Cortana was absent for the majority of the game but I would have preferred if there were more Blue Team missions. Only 3 missions out of 15 as Master Chief is a bit of a joke. A half n' half mix like Halo 2 would have been better. Speaking of Halo 2, motherfucking ARBITER! I was delighted to see him back. I really enjoyed his little part of the story. Unfortunately again, you don't get to play as him which is a shame. While I enjoyed the return of Buck from ODST, the rest of Team Osiris were completely forgettable, the lead character in particular. What a boring, bland monotone-voiced lead. I don't even remember the squadmembers names except Buck. Chief's Blue Team members were even worse, though. Creating new characters is not 343's strongpoint, it seems.
As for the gameplay, well, it's not really the same Halo anymore but I did enjoy the new mobility and the speed you have. It played more like Titanfall with the way you can zip around.
The biggest problem with the game was the repeated fight with the Warden. I was so fucking sick of this cunt by the end. Were they taking the piss with this or what? I think I fought him 7 times. SEVEN! Same fucking boss every time. What the hell were thinking?
Halo Reach
This was something special. I'm glad I left it until last. The jump in graphics between Halo 3 & 4 made more sense after playing this as it sits nicely between the two from a graphical standpoint.
It took a while to get used to it at the start coming from 6 Halo's in a row that ran at 60fps to Reach's 30. The motion blur was kinda jarring. Why oh why didn't they give this a facelift while they were doing all the other games? I quickly got over it due to the game being so goddamn great, though.
It probably had the best missions in the series. These massive levels were very impressive and I loved the seamless transitions from point to point on the map in the dropship. Also loved the new space combat. That mission was epic, especially with the way it ended being thrown to safety to finish the fight. What a cool moment. There was also an open-world type mission which felt a lot like Crimson Skies on the original Xbox, one of my favourite games.
The squad members of Noble Team were all memorable and well-written. It was heartbreaking to see them get killed off one by one. That final mission (and epilogue), my god. Just stunning. What a way for Bungie to bow out of the series.
Come to think of it, a certain Star Wars movie ripped off a lot of story beats from this game, didn't it? A prequel story with a bunch of characters you've never heard of before in an established series, on a mission to deliver something that could change the war, sacrificing themselves one by one in a story that leads right up to the start of the original in the series. Hmm, that all seems mightily familiar!
To be honest, I can't find a single thing that truly bothered me. There were little things here and there that I wasn't too fond of (the covenant don't speak English etc) but overall there was nothing to truly complain about. An amazing game.
Anyway, in terms of ranking them I'd probably go:
1. Halo Reach
2. Halo 3
3. Halo 2
4. Halo 5
5. Halo CE
6. Halo 3: ODST
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7. Halo 4
It was a fun month.
