I recently replayed Halo 3 and it's still one of the best FPS games ever made.
Crysis 1 was far more ambitious but also extremely cumbersome to play. Halo 3 is just smooth from start to finish. I can't think of an FPS game that comes remotely close in terms of scale, scope, mechanical diversity, and having a challenging AI.
Halo 2 and 3 are some of the best FPS campaigns in the history of gaming, especially in coop (unless you do Legendary in 2). That has always been the case and only contrarians tried to say otherwise at the time.
Its the exact moment when the games could reach their peak of distilling what people want from the genre, before needing to "innovate" to stand out against the crowd and limiting themselves to only being enjoyed by certain people.
I re-played the Halo campaigns a couple years ago and was blown away at how good they are. I did not appreciate them as much as I should have when I was a teenager.
God willing we'll get that kind of quality again from AAA but it won't be any time soon.
Yeah, but Halo 1 suffers from being way too big and samey in its environments that most levels are a slog to play, and that's if you don't get lost in them.
Impressive scale for the time, but I'll pick 2/3 any time.
However, I will agree that some levels are hard to orient yourself into, but that is only because you're not paying attention to rather obvious context clues. I know because I got lost more than once, but also found out why.
I think Halo CE's level design incorporates and unexpected mechanism of exploration that I don't think modern audiences actually respect because of how on-rails the level designs of most shooters are, COD being the particularly worst example.
Halo, as a franchise, has been accused of simply having too slow of a shooter design, but I feel that that criticism is misplaced particularly with the first 4 games because even though Halo is a shooter, it is more importantly a puzzle game using fire fights; especially in the first game. Too many people were hoping Halo could become Quake or COD without understanding why Halo works.
GameStop is not wrong.
I recently replayed Halo 3 and it's still one of the best FPS games ever made.
Crysis 1 was far more ambitious but also extremely cumbersome to play. Halo 3 is just smooth from start to finish. I can't think of an FPS game that comes remotely close in terms of scale, scope, mechanical diversity, and having a challenging AI.
Halo 2 and 3 are some of the best FPS campaigns in the history of gaming, especially in coop (unless you do Legendary in 2). That has always been the case and only contrarians tried to say otherwise at the time.
Its the exact moment when the games could reach their peak of distilling what people want from the genre, before needing to "innovate" to stand out against the crowd and limiting themselves to only being enjoyed by certain people.
I re-played the Halo campaigns a couple years ago and was blown away at how good they are. I did not appreciate them as much as I should have when I was a teenager.
God willing we'll get that kind of quality again from AAA but it won't be any time soon.
Halo 1 still has the best enemy AI of any FPS. It's not even close, even compared to other Halo games.
Yeah, but Halo 1 suffers from being way too big and samey in its environments that most levels are a slog to play, and that's if you don't get lost in them.
Impressive scale for the time, but I'll pick 2/3 any time.
hard disagree on samey environments.
However, I will agree that some levels are hard to orient yourself into, but that is only because you're not paying attention to rather obvious context clues. I know because I got lost more than once, but also found out why.
I think Halo CE's level design incorporates and unexpected mechanism of exploration that I don't think modern audiences actually respect because of how on-rails the level designs of most shooters are, COD being the particularly worst example.
Halo, as a franchise, has been accused of simply having too slow of a shooter design, but I feel that that criticism is misplaced particularly with the first 4 games because even though Halo is a shooter, it is more importantly a puzzle game using fire fights; especially in the first game. Too many people were hoping Halo could become Quake or COD without understanding why Halo works.