SatansReverence
Hipster Princess
More players does not automatically equal more fun.
Halo's sweet spot is 4v4 on small maps.
Halo 4, One Year Later: What Happened?
- Thread starter FyreWulff
- Start date
- Status
More players does not automatically equal more fun.
Halo's sweet spot is 4v4 on small maps.
The Antitype
Banned
SatansReverence
Hipster Princess
I'd argue the best Halo you can play is 8v8 on BTB objective maps.
8v8 is still a long way from 16v16 or 32v32.
Would need the maps to support it. FYI, a higher player count was considered for Reach at one point, but the mode got cancelled so they went for the usual player count.
Amazing.
Man, this thread makes me depressed.
Halo was one of my favorite franchises, and 343i seemed so passionate when they were talking about it during development
.
It seemed like they would take everything Bungie did, improve it, and then do more.
Graphics in previous games were lackluster, so they updated the engine & the art was gorgeous. Sound was SO WEAK in Halo 2 & 3, and they gave it a much needed boost. The previous Halo games rarely connected to canon, so I was excited the books would finally play role for once. They claimed "classic" playlist will be available, Halo still felt like Halo, etc.
But with the new graphics came frame rate drops, weaker split-screen, and some forge maps were unplayable.
The sound just felt wrong on my headphones, I expected something similar to Battlefield in quality but idk, maybe its just me but it wasn't there.
And yea, the story was connected to the books... but while games like Halo Reach had pretty much no relation to the books, Halo 4 had too much connection. Not everyone reads them, and even then the story was so-so.
And at launch, file share wasn't available. Seriously?
But even then, I still have hope for Halo 5. Frankie and the studio seems to be listening if the recent updates & hirings at Halo 4/343i are any indication. And the movement & aiming in Halo 4 felt great. Hopefully they go back to what made previous games great.
Halo was one of my favorite franchises, and 343i seemed so passionate when they were talking about it during development
.It seemed like they would take everything Bungie did, improve it, and then do more.
Graphics in previous games were lackluster, so they updated the engine & the art was gorgeous. Sound was SO WEAK in Halo 2 & 3, and they gave it a much needed boost. The previous Halo games rarely connected to canon, so I was excited the books would finally play role for once. They claimed "classic" playlist will be available, Halo still felt like Halo, etc.
But with the new graphics came frame rate drops, weaker split-screen, and some forge maps were unplayable.
The sound just felt wrong on my headphones, I expected something similar to Battlefield in quality but idk, maybe its just me but it wasn't there.
And yea, the story was connected to the books... but while games like Halo Reach had pretty much no relation to the books, Halo 4 had too much connection. Not everyone reads them, and even then the story was so-so.
And at launch, file share wasn't available. Seriously?
But even then, I still have hope for Halo 5. Frankie and the studio seems to be listening if the recent updates & hirings at Halo 4/343i are any indication. And the movement & aiming in Halo 4 felt great. Hopefully they go back to what made previous games great.
Caayn
Member
Halo CE and Halo 2 were graphically the better games at their time. Halo 3 was the first Halo that didn't push graphics, but had tons of other cool technical highlights such as the water and the lighting. But I didn't care, the scale was improved over Halo 2. And with each Halo after Halo 3 the scale was bumped up. Halo 4 took the scale down and choose graphics over scale
As for the art it's arguable if Halo 4 has the better art style yes or no. I think not, forerunner structures used to have a ancient, yet sophisticated, feel to them. In Halo 4 it seems like the forerunners were the worlds biggest fan of TRON. Also the new armor look for the Master Chief was really unasked for and would have been better if they kept the old style. Same goes for the forward unto dawn. Same goes for the multiplayer armor, it just doesn't look right. Armor in Reach has the best style imo. Reach had great male and female character models.
Also why is it that Forward unto Dawn looks version of Halo 3 and Halo 4 look completely different.
As for the art it's arguable if Halo 4 has the better art style yes or no. I think not, forerunner structures used to have a ancient, yet sophisticated, feel to them. In Halo 4 it seems like the forerunners were the worlds biggest fan of TRON. Also the new armor look for the Master Chief was really unasked for and would have been better if they kept the old style. Same goes for the forward unto dawn. Same goes for the multiplayer armor, it just doesn't look right. Armor in Reach has the best style imo. Reach had great male and female character models.
Also why is it that Forward unto Dawn looks version of Halo 3 and Halo 4 look completely different.
Twilight Gap
Member
The Antitype
Banned
Halo CE and Halo 2 were graphically the better games at their time. Halo 3 was the first Halo that didn't push graphics, but had tons of other cool technical highlights such as the water and the lighting. But I didn't care, the scale was improved over Halo 2. And with each Halo after Halo 3 the scale was bumped up. Halo 4 took the scale down and choose graphics over scale
As for the art it's arguable if Halo 4 has the better art style yes or no. I think not, forerunner structures used to have a ancient, yet sophisticated, feel to them. In Halo 4 it seems like the forerunners were the worlds biggest fan of TRON. Also the new armor look for the Master Chief was really unasked for and would have been better if they kept the old style. Same goes for the forward unto dawn. Same goes for the multiplayer armor, it just doesn't look right. Armor in Reach has the best style imo. Reach had great male and female character models.
Also why is it that Forward unto Dawn looks version of Halo 3 and Halo 4 look completely different.
Really? I thought that was the one artistic change they made to the staples of the series that was a marked improvement. Chief looked like less of a clunky, lumbering tank, and more high-performance. He still looked tough and armored, but he also looked athletic and built to move, not just stand there and take bullets. They turned him from a Panzer Tank into a Porsche. I loved the change and hope it sticks.
But I mean, obviously I like it. Check out the avatar, lol.
LOL
I have said it before and I will say it again, because it is so indisputable that you'd have to be deluded to question it.
ODST is where the franchises image went downhill, Reach and 4 is where the gameplay went downhill with it. Halo 3 was the most fun, and most popular game in the series. It is the apex of old Halo.
HiredN00bs
Banned
Halo 4 was a triumph.
But they outbungied bungie.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
343 Industries
We do what we must
because of CoD.
For the good of all of us
Except the franchise that's dead.
But there's no sense crying over every lost fan.
You just keep on publishing games for The Man.
The development's done.
And you made some lame guns.
For the people who are
still around.
The Antitype
Banned
Only in terms of not offering a full $60 worth of game for the price. ODST is still held up by many as one of the best stories of all the Halo games, as well as some of the best mood/atmosphere and music.
I can't say I agree, but the Chief's look is relatively restrained at least. Many of the other Spartan armour designs were flat out awful, overbusy jaggy messes influenced far too much by Bay's Transformers.
I still amazes me that for the Promethians 343 did dozens of designs and picked literally the worst one out of all of them that fit the least with anything Forerunner.
Photolysis
Banned
I don't think you can praise something graphically for having those horrendous load times, where textures and bump mapping would take seconds to be applied during cutscenes. It looked like a buggy mess and like the product had been rushed out the door.
Which it kind of was.
Let's get this clear, because even to this date classics such as TheOddOne and Barry the Bouncer (StalkerUKCG) still don't get this.
Halo 3:ODST is a great game
The problem I take however, is with the bolded. People treat this like it's a trivial issue, which it clearly isn't. Launching an expansion pack at full price versus the most wildly anticipated sequel of all time (MW2) was one of the worst business moves in entertainment history. This is what started the downfall of the Halo IP, no reasonable person would deny the damage that caused to the brand.
Twilight Gap
Member
ODST's price is when Microsoft started shooting themselves in the foot.
3m people bought ODST despite the game being at full price. Id call that making money not shooting yourself in the foot.
Monocle
Member
Nope. Just played a ton of the ODST campaign tonight and it is easily the best Halo game after the original, with Halo 3 a very close third. Such a masterful blend of different moods and gameplay styles, all perfectly paced. It's the tightest, most consistent, most varied Halo game by a mile. I rank it after Halo only because the original's strongest campaign levels have yet to be topped. An absolute masterpiece.
Reach is where things started to go downhill, with the introduction of loadouts, armor abilities, and the inferior sandbox.
Monocle
Member
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Sorc3r3r
Member
Halo 4 was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
343 Industries
We do what we must
because of CoD.
For the good of all of us
Except the franchise that's dead.
But there's no sense crying over every lost fan.
You just keep on publishing games for The Man.
The development's done.
And you made some lame guns.
For the people who are
still around.
The Antitype
Banned
Really? I thought the opposite.
I thought the mission levels, while fine, felt pretty pedestrian. Standard Halo, which is always good, but nothing particularly mind-blowing or attention grabbing that would stand up with the best missions from Halo:CE, Halo 3 or even Reach.
Wandering around the dark, rainy city with the jazzy music in the background, evading or taking out patrols, getting the visual leads from the Superintendent and finding the terminals to figure out what happened to the little girl, that was where the real sense of mood and place hit, and really made the game feel distinctive from other Halo titles.
Ah well, each to their own.
Monocle
Member
No need to wander. The mission start points are highlighted on your map and take ten minutes to reach, at most. Personally, the nighttime hub city is one of my favorite parts of the game. It works because it contrasts with the brighter, more conventional, more linear settings of the actual missions, while tying all those disparate pieces together. That, combined with the soundtrack and all the little nooks, weapon caches, and Easter eggs to discover, makes the hub world a memorable and interesting location. ODST would be a much weaker game without it.
Lostconfused
Member
But they were, slightly. I remember people going on in the ODST official thread about how Hunters were a much bigger threat because oh how much slower the player movement was.
hooijdonk17
Member
ODST campaign was amazing and very immersive. The ODSTs really did feel a lot more vulnerable, I remember how difficult it was to fight enemies like a bunch of Brutes I could cut through like Butter in Halo 3 and how fucking terrifying sniper Jackals were. I think ODST ranks as my mosdt enjoyable Halo experience with Halo 3, or one notch below that. For me, personally:
Halo 3>ODST>Reach>Halo>Halo 2>>>>>Halo 4
Halo 3>ODST>Reach>Halo>Halo 2>>>>>Halo 4
The Antitype
Banned
They were, to a degree. Slower, less jump height, less health, they had to use health-packs (they had a little bit of recharging 'stamina' but no shields of any kind), and they couldn't dual-wield.
One of the things that bugged me was that they gave you that cool silenced SMG, but the fact that it was silenced was pretty meaningless. It wasn't strong enough to kill anything quickly, so entering battle with it pretty much always led to alerting all the enemies in the vicinity. I just stopped using the thing entirely and went with the pistol and the BR (which you could find in stockpiles around the city).
Monocle
Member
The SMG is pretty good for popping shields, on Heroic and below anyway. Good way to kill shielded Brutes when you can't get to the Engineer.
illmatic19
Member
It didn't feel like a Halo game at all. Reach took a step in that direction but it still had the pace that the franchise is known for. 343i stripped it all away and gave us something completely different.
AdventureRacing
Member
This has been discussed in this thread. What you're saying isn't backed up by the numbers. It doesn't explain why halo 3 was able to keep up such impressive numbers for 3 years despite going head to head with multiple COD games. It also doesn't explain why reach was able to keep a much larger playerbase than halo 4 has been able to (despite reach being a pretty damn big disappointment itself).
That plus the impressive early sales for halo 4 indicated that there was demand for a new halo. People didn't jump off because it wasn't COD (it was more like COD than any other halo). They stopped playing because they didn't like the game and frankly didn't get what they were expecting, a new halo game.
Your post ignores all the discussion that has happened in this thread. You can't just say 'nothing wrong with halo 4' when you have this massive thread full of people articulating exactly what did go wrong. This isn't people who have switched to COD or got bored of halo either. These are fans of the franchise who have been turned off because of halo 4.
That's not to say that halo could have remained as popular or that it could ever get back to halo 3 levels. Obviously a monster franchise like COD (and now BF to a lesser extent) in the same genre is going to impact things. I don't think it explains the franchise having this big of a dropoff in popularity.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Damnit Conor, I want to defend/believe some of the things you say.. but this is just offensive.
Halo 3 fans are delusional. Kind of like the people that say Super Mario Sunshine is better than M64. Or the people that say MGS2 is the best of all the MGS games. It's an opinion I find hard to take seriously. I would be much more willing to accept that Halo: CE is the best Halo game but Halo 3 is pushing it. It's like an inside joke I'm not in on.
Personally, I enjoyed Halo 4's multiplayer but it did have issues. For example, I wanted to play Team Slayer with friends but we could only play on like 3 maps, and it was always the same 3 maps. That decision was stupid. We always ended up playing on Haven, and after a while that just got boring. Same thing for big team slayer, etc.
Then they released DLC, which wasn't free, and we didn't even bother. Just kept playing CoD. Also, the fact that you even needed the install to play Halo 4 was another knock off. Considering I only have a couple of original 20 gig hard-drives, I didn't want to waste the space for a game nobody really played.
It's a shame really. Halo 4's multiplayer to me is probably my favorite, I really enjoyed the ordinance drops and all of the weapons. The maps and overall design of the game just ruined it.
Then they released DLC, which wasn't free, and we didn't even bother. Just kept playing CoD. Also, the fact that you even needed the install to play Halo 4 was another knock off. Considering I only have a couple of original 20 gig hard-drives, I didn't want to waste the space for a game nobody really played.
It's a shame really. Halo 4's multiplayer to me is probably my favorite, I really enjoyed the ordinance drops and all of the weapons. The maps and overall design of the game just ruined it.
The Antitype
Banned
And I think Halo 2 fans are too busy drowning in rose-colored nostalgia for their opinions to be taken seriously. It's like old men sitting on a porch pining for the 'good old days', while everybody removed from the emotional attachment can pretty clearly see how things have improved.
Single-player:
Halo: CE > Halo 3 > Halo: Reach > Halo 4 > Halo 2
Multiplayer:
Halo 3 > Halo: CE > Halo 2 > Halo: Reach > Halo 4
Feature Set:
Halo 3 > Halo Reach > Halo 4 > Halo 2 > Halo: CE
Single-player:
Halo Reach > Halo 3 > Halo: CE > Halo 4 = Halo 2 = Halo 3: ODST
Multiplayer:
Halo 3/ ODST > Halo 2 > Halo: CE > Halo: Reach
FTFY
jk
The Antitype
Banned
Agreed, I was just saying, it may as well have not been silenced. It could have been a standard SMG and filled the same purpose.
Have you played Halo 4 MP?
Yes. I love it.
I've played about 500 games of it and I still think it's a load of fun.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I just miss Bungie's vision of Halo MP, pre-Reach. Halo 4 MP for me was just the bastard off spring of CoD and Reach.
500 isn't a lot for a "Halo fan".
The Antitype
Banned
I think everybody here liked them all to some degree, I think it's a matter of which game people liked the most.
As for why that matters, I think it goes to the discussion of the direction that 343i should take with the series moving forward.
Is Halo 2 the ideal they should shoot for as far as balance/feel? Or is it Halo 3?
Whichever they choose, it's obviously only going to be a starting point though. They're not going to release a game that basically just amounts to a prettier version of the Sandbox from a 10 year old or 7 year old game.
They do have to try and push Halo forward, without undermining the tenets of what makes Halo great.
I don't really care what a "Halo fan" should have played. I've bought and played every single Halo game on launch day. I've played every campaign through multiple times on Legendary. I have put hundreds of hours into the Halo series. Multiple days into every game.
I think it's fair to say I'm a "Halo fan".
McBradders
NeoGAF: my new HOME
Ugh. I am the only true Halo fan on GAF the rest of you are anything but.
That's great if you love campaign and all but I'm really concerned about multiplayer. I've played all the games from a casual to a competitive level (22,000+ games) and can tell you the series went bad with Reach and Lindsay Lohan with 4. The whole series future is 1 more bad game away from becoming Sonic and it sucks as a fan. You may like whatever thrown at you but most of the population would seem to disagree. 343 has some brought on some real talent recently, I really hope it pays off.
With the latest games they've released it's clear to me that neither 343 nor Bungie before them have any idea what made Halo great. Or to put it more charitably, their idea is very different from mine (and judging from the population chart, a lot of other people as well). Reach and H4 were already their attempts at "pushing Halo forward", so what now?
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