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[EightBitNate]

To me it just seems obvious that 343 cuts corners with the story so that they will have reasons to release this yearly. I'm glad reviewers are dinging them on it.

Or else the series end up like Forza or AC or random sports game -- annual release with but minor changes. To play the carrot and stick game with the playerbase deserves a lashing.

Always factor in the single-player campaign.

Cut corners on story? That's a new one. Lol please explain that better. It's not like time constraints would restrict them from telling a better story.

And Halo 4 came out 3 years ago. What's annual about that?

 

[Stinkles]

So I guess Stinkles and crew are enjoying Thanksgiving early. I can just imagine him now...eating his way out of a giant roasted bird.

No I have a lot of crow to eat first for unconnected reasons. When is thanksgiving anyway?

 

[Steverulez]

To me it just seems obvious that 343 cuts corners with the story so that they will have reasons to release this yearly. I'm glad reviewers are dinging them on it.

Or else the series end up like Forza or AC or random sports game -- annual release with but minor changes. To play the carrot and stick game with the playerbase deserves a lashing.

Always factor in the single-player campaign.

Im not understanding the yearly part? 343 have said before they need 3 years to make a Halo game... and its been 3 years since Halo 4. Halo Wars 2 next year is being made by a different developer and MCC/Spartan Assault + Strike were also made by outside teams

 

[Trup1aya]

To me it just seems obvious that 343 cuts corners with the story so that they will have reasons to release this yearly. I'm glad reviewers are dinging them on it.

Or else the series end up like Forza or AC or random sports game -- annual release with but minor changes. To play the carrot and stick game with the playerbase deserves a lashing.

Always factor in the single-player campaign.

Yeah halo isn't an annual release... h4 came out 3 years ago... And I doubt halo 6 launches in 2016.

Neither Forza franchise is annualized... surely you aren't impying the differences between Horizon and Motorsport are akin to an annual sports game...

Seems to me like you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Mattenth]

Umm, that's not what your graph shows at all...

Edit: Oh you edited. Even on the lowest end of that, 30% is a huge amount.

Yeah sorry I totally misread your post <.< Thought you said that they did not matter. If you have a marketing budget, reviews matter an unbelievable amount. But it's also important to remember that those stats are in aggregate - Halo 5 might not matter as much, due to affinity for the Halo universe.

IGN gave it a 9.0: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/26/halo-5-guardians-review

I find it pretty funny that IGN's review alone was enough to offset GameSpot (8/10) and pull metacritic from an 85 to 86. IGN must have some huge weighting to not only move the average, but move the average in spite of another enormous site.

 

[Karak]

IGN gave it a 9 and Ryan agrees...WTF?

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

IGN's Ryan gave Halo 4 a score of 9.8/10 and gives Halo 5 only 9/10. H5 is better in every single department. Shenanigans and bullshit called.

 

[PooBone]

IGN's Ryan gave Halo 4 a score of 9.8/10 and gives Halo 5 only 9/10. H5 is better in every single department. Shenanigans and bullshit called.

H5 really is a better game in every single facet.

Except the boss fights. Worst part of the entire series, hands down imo.

 

[ElRenoRaven]

IGN's Ryan gave Halo 4 a score of 9.8/10 and gives Halo 5 only 9/10. H5 is better in every single department. Shenanigans and bullshit called.

I knew it would happen. He got so much shit for how hyperbolic he was with Halo 4's review. It was obvious he was going to over correct and be harder on 5. Course that said a 9/10 isn't bad at all.

 

[AgentP]

Ryan reviewing Halo is a joke, might as well let Major Nelson guest review it.

 

[Vinc]

Not gonna lie, I freaking love Arena, but I wish BTB was in day one. I feel a bit empty without it.

 

[ResoRai]

IGN's Ryan gave Halo 4 a score of 9.8/10 and gives Halo 5 only 9/10. H5 is better in every single department. Shenanigans and bullshit called.

Ryan reviewing Halo is a joke, might as well let Major Nelson guest review it.

Ryan didn't review Halo 5.

 

[SuperSonic1305]

Master Chief Collection and Halo 5 have the same scores.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Wait, no it doesn't. What?

You're right. MCC should be a 65 at best.

 

[BokehKing]

Game is tons of fun, warzone is awesome it's just not visually appealing, and I'm pretty sure that bothers me.

The 60 FPS is welcome but now I'm left wondering how nice it would have looked if scaled back to 30

 

[Boston]

I consider this half a game.

When the fuck are they releasing Big team battle and Infected? Seriously wtf is this shit. Give the people what they want.

 

[statham]

Ryan reviewing Halo is a joke, might as well let Major Nelson guest review it.

I'm guessing you somehow missed all the drama about Ryan and Halo 5. You might want to read the thread.

 

[statham]

You're right. MCC should be a 65 at best.

maybe at launch, but most things are fixed now, like driveclub the low reviews should be re-visited if it did score that low.

 

[Xan Kriegor]

It's a review thread...hence why this sort of stuff gets discussed (and in the OP you've got a Metacritic link to support such discussions). Doesn't seem out of the ordinary or crazy. Plenty of discussions have touched on this stuff already.

Don't believe it? Then I think you're in the wrong thread bud.

Here I sit, the naive gamer that I am, thinking that review threads are a compilation of reviews for the interested person to get a general idea of a game. Thank you for notifying me that it's actually a contest of having the highest meta score and giving weights to meta scales.

 

[QuikNez]

IGN's Ryan gave Halo 4 a score of 9.8/10 and gives Halo 5 only 9/10. H5 is better in every single department. Shenanigans and bullshit called.

I don't get what you're saying... the bar gets raised constantly, you know this.

More is expected from H5 than was for H4.

 

[AP90]

Just finished Halo 5. First off, hot damn, second off, I need someone to talk about it with.

Build up of emotions......

Its like wow that was some crazy good shit + I am cry. This is a good thing, but I feel like the ending

Spoiler

cliffhanger is a far greater torture Halo 2 was

. And 2-3years time or so for another halo game or odst equivalent side story to come out and release is far too long.

Spoiler

I feel like 343i really did reopen up the franchise and give it more breathing room in terms of the universe for the foreseeable future. And this is a good thing IMO.

Edit: And it took me 8h to complete on normal.. There was especially one part that took me a while.. One day ill beat that part on legendary solo lol

 

[- J - D -]

Not even a 9/10 is good enough for some of you. Hilarious.

 

[Karak]

This right here sounds like the biggest missed opportunity for me when it comes to the campaign. With the specs of the current console they had a chance to produce those epic battles we only read about in the books. :-

Hey bro long time no see.

For me the Warzone feels like some of those. Warzone is just incredible.

 

[wwm0nkey]

I consider this half a game.

When the fuck are they releasing Big team battle and Infected? Seriously wtf is this shit. Give the people what they want.

December for BTB, maybe other gametypes too

 

[TEH-CJ]

IGN's Ryan gave Halo 4 a score of 9.8/10 and gives Halo 5 only 9/10. H5 is better in every single department. Shenanigans and bullshit called.

Better than Halo 4? No fucking way man. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to fight the warden 4 fucking times!! The first time you fight him was bad enough, It is such a badly designed boss. When I fought him for the 4th fucking time I put my xbone on eBay. This Resistance 2 levels of awful.

 

[Game4life]

Better than Halo 4? No fucking way man. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to fight the warden 4 fucking times!! The first time you fight him was bad enough, It is such a badly designed boss. When I fought him for the 4th fucking time I put my xbone on eBay. This Resistance 2 levels of awful.

I wont lie. I enjoyed RE2.

 

[Dub117]

OK so I tried one level of warzone after getting through level 6 campaign. I'm not a btb guy, but that is awesome. We came back from way down and attacked their core and won. Awesome.

 

[PooBone]

Game was great. I liked the story and the ending. The boss fights are just god awful, however.

EDIT: I wanna say reading the novels is probably required to get any real satisfaction out of the plot.

 

[AP90]

Game was great. I liked the story and the ending. The boss fights are just god awful, however.

EDIT: I wanna say reading the novels is probably required to get any real satisfaction out of the plot.

The intel/data pads segments aka audio terminals were decent in the game as well.

 

[Captain Zyrain]

The intel/data pads segments aka audio terminals were decent in the game as well.

Spoiler

Spartan Palmer love poem ftw

 

[jfoul]

I appreciate that bigger sites withheld review scores to test launch MP performance. I guess just go with the reviews/reviewers you trust. I think we have a couple scores remaining, unless I missed them.

IGN: 9.0
Gametrailers: 9.0
Gamespot: 8.0
Gameinformer: ?
Eurogamer: ?

I played the campaign on Legendary today for about 5 hours and I'm on mission 6. I really like it so far, and I'm enjoying the story. My personal score for campaign so far is 8.5. The AI for your squad seems to collapse in Legendary when left to their own devices, or driving vehicles without orders. They also get stuck on objects once in awhile moving to ordered waypoints. Once I'm done with the story solo, I'll play through co-op. The game will probably end up sitting around 9.0 - 9.5 for me once I experience everything, including Forge & BTB in December.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

I don't get what you're saying... the bar gets raised constantly, you know this.

More is expected from H5 than was for H4.

I don't buy that. Mario 64 or Pac Man remain very highly rated games. The old scores don't change based on the modern day bar. It's not like Halo 4 was 10 or 20 years ago.

We've seen Indie games rate better than AAA games in recent times too, food for thought.

 

[Steverulez]

Ryan reviewing Halo is a joke, might as well let Major Nelson guest review it.

Unless he changed his name to Brian Albert then no, he didn't review it.

I don't understand this mentality though, someone said it about Arthur Gies earlier in the thread, should they get people who hate the franchise to review it or something? See if it can turn them from a hater to a lover...

I can only imagine what an awful review you would get on a game like Halo 5 (5th mainline entry plus 3 other AAA titles) if you got someone to review it who had little to no interest in the franchise, it would probably be pointless

 

[Bornstellar]

On Mission 10 (Legendary) right now, I'd give the campaign a 9. Biggest complaint is that Heroic isn't balanced to what I think it should be (a bit more challenging).

I can already see the Halo 2 ending issue though - the story is just getting started and I have very few missions left.

 

[Mattenth]

GameTrailers updated to a 9.0: http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/at14rd/halo-5--guardians-review

 

[Bornstellar]

GameTrailers updated to a 9.0: http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/at14rd/halo-5--guardians-review

What was it before?

 

[Steverulez]

What was it before?

Presumably review in progress like a few others?

 

[bananafactory]

What was it before?

No score

 

[le.phat]

Not even a 9/10 is good enough for some of you. Hilarious.

This is the biggest franchise xbox has, and the only one that has reached critical mass in terms of reception. No wonder people are freaking out over a score that's 'just'good. i'd be pretty disappointed if Mgs 5 scored 'only' a 8.5 as well.

 

[Steverulez]

This is the biggest franchise xbox has, and the only one that has reached critical mass in terms of reception. No wonder people are freaking out over a score that's 'just'good. i'd be pretty disappointed if Mgs 5 scored 'only' a 8.5 as well.

A 9 is not "just good" its 1-10 scale for christ sake, reviewers have been making a bit better use if shuffling scores further down, flagship or not its a very good/great score even if its not at the very top

Also i'd argue Gears of War has a similar critical mass for reception, despite Judgment.

 

[Warm Machine]

Not gonna lie, I freaking love Arena, but I wish BTB was in day one. I feel a bit empty without it.

My guess is to push people into Warzone and have they try something new.

 

[Bornstellar]

This is the biggest franchise xbox has, and the only one that has reached critical mass in terms of reception. No wonder people are freaking out over a score that's 'just'good. i'd be pretty disappointed if Mgs 5 scored 'only' a 8.5 as well.

Regardless of score, the game is excellent, but not without flaws. I'd say a score between 8 and 9 is perfectly reasonable.

 

[ninjablade]

I wish i had xbone, my most missed franchise since moving to playstation.

 

[Grazzt]

I would give the solo campaign a 8.5 and 4 people coop a 9. I hated the boss fights in halo 2, and although halo 5 handles them better I still hate them.

 

[Poodlestrike]

If I might possibly divert from the fascinating discussion of metacritic scores for a moment...

My review after a single-sitting Legendary coop playthrough, from the OT:

Just wrapped up the Legendary campaign which took about 8.5 hours with 4 player coop. HUGELY enjoyed it. Level design and, of course, basic gameplay are an absolute joy. Weirdly, I think I actually might have preferred Prometheans to Covenant this go around; the combat loop is very different from 4, and they're brutally tough. I'll never forget when a bunch of Soldiers grabbed a Warthog and started donging on all four of us. Seriously, it was a slaughter. Must have wiped 5 times trying to kill the damn things. It never really felt unfair, just incredibly difficult, almost darksoulsy. Prometheans in 5 demand precision and strict adherence to their combat patterns; if you just try to go for headshots on everything, you're gonna have a bad, bad time. You need to strip the soldier's armor first, which is best done with an automatic weapon like the Suppressor. The Covenant received a number of interesting new tools and behaviors as well, most notably the pronounced tendency to jump fucking everywhere, stay still god dammit and let me shoot you in the head.

Ahem.

Now, the story. Much has been said of it, and while I say that it was quite good (better than most videogame stories), it does have its issues. The front half or so is rather... unfocused, which weighs things down considerably. I'm going to have to do another playthrough (probably on a lower difficulty) to really soak everything in; a lot of character details are passed on through in-mission banter, which is easy to miss when you're desperately fighting to stay alive. And then of course there's the intel, but I'd prefer not to figure that in to any general accounting of the narrative because let's be real here, most people aren't ever going to hear most of it.

But on the whole it was pretty good. Locke was more interesting than a lot of people claimed him to be, but still the weakest member of Osiris, personality wise. Buck was the strongest, of course, followed by Tanaka and Vale. Blue Team is a whole 'nother kettle of fish; they play a more... driving role in the plot (AKA it is in fact still very much the MC's story), but get less character visibility. Again, from what I saw. Will need to replay.

It does not end on anything resembling Halo 2's cliffhanger, and does not in fact end on any sort of cliffhanger at all. It's a sequel hook, to be sure, but not a cliffhanger by any reasonable definition. Let's put that to bed.

Overall score is Halo/Halo. Damn fine job 343, looking forward to the next one.

 

[BokehKing]

Unless he changed his name to Brian Albert then no, he didn't review it.

I don't understand this mentality though, someone said it about Arthur Gies earlier in the thread, should they get people who hate the franchise to review it or something? See if it can turn them from a hater to a lover...

I can only imagine what an awful review you would get on a game like Halo 5 (5th mainline entry plus 3 other AAA titles) if you got someone to review it who had little to no interest in the franchise, it would probably be pointless

Seems to happen with reviews all the time, people not interested in a certain genre reviewing that type of game, low scores given.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

I want to apologize to Brian Reed for suggesting that Joe Staten replace him. The franchise is in good hands.

Official Campaign rankings

Halo CE > Halo 5 > Halo Reach > ODST > Halo 4 > Halo 3 > Halo 2

I'm loving everything about this.

 

[watership]

I wish i had xbone, my most missed franchise since moving to playstation.

When you say moved, I'm assuming you never own more than one platform?

 

[Deputy Moonman]

I want to apologize to Brian Reed for suggesting that Joe Staten replace him. The franchise is in good hands.

Official Campaign rankings

Halo CE > Halo 5 > Halo Reach > ODST > Halo 4 > Halo 3 > Halo 2

I'm loving everything about this.

First off, I don't have my xbox at the moment and so I haven't played Halo 5 yet. Soon...

But your rankings intrigue me Halo CE will always be my fav followed by Halo 4 and then everything else. Aside from your inclusion of Reach (which personally I couldn't stand) I like your list.

 

[[Call-Me-G]]

I want to apologize to Brian Reed for suggesting that Joe Staten replace him. The franchise is in good hands.

Official Campaign rankings

Halo CE > Halo 5 > Halo Reach > ODST > Halo 4 > Halo 3 > Halo 2

I'm loving everything about this.

Halo Reach > Halo 5 = Halo 3 > Halo 4 > Halo 2.

I haven't played ODST for 4 years, and CE is my favorite by nostalgia, but every time I play it, I struggle to enjoy it. I can't add them to this top.

Halo 5 = Halo 2 (two characters campaign,

Spoiler

the covies conflict

, arbiter) + Halo 3 (sandbox, vehicles) + Halo 4 (art, prometheans,

Spoiler

Cortana

)

 

[RoslindaleOne]

I want to apologize to Brian Reed for suggesting that Joe Staten replace him. The franchise is in good hands.

Official Campaign rankings

Halo CE > Halo 5 > Halo Reach > ODST > Halo 4 > Halo 3 > Halo 2

I'm loving everything about this.

Not a bad list. If it were mine, I would swap Halo 3's and Halo 4's places. Well done.