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Halo review

I grew up on Halo. What this really means in reality of course, is that I spent some medium amount of time with Halo 3 as a young child and it happened to cement in my head. Time pink washes memories, especially if they recorded through pink glasses to begin with.

But try explaining that to someone who is bragging about (long) past achievements...

Anyways, tho I invested time in later entries and Halo Legends, still I have no fucking idea what the story is supposed to be. So, I picked up the dusty Master Chief's Collection from my shelf, and ended up with some thoughts on game design.

Halo 1

Enemies

Let me tell you about the obstacles before I explain the solutions.

There are 4 kinds of aliens belonging to the so called Covenant:

Grunts will chip away at your health or cut your way of retreat while you are busy with tougher enemies.

Jackals have shields that protects not only them, but their teammates too.

Elites are the real danger. They are fast, tough and heavy hitting. Some are able to cloak and or carry oneshotting energy swords.

Hunters are mini-boss type thugs. Large health pool, small weak points, with multiple ways to one shot the player.

Then, in the second third of the game, the Flood is introduced. They are:

these little-shits called infectors:

Bursters:

And zombies:

Infectors come in great numbers and will suicide headbutt you. Bursters slowly limp in smaller numbers and attempt to Christmas festival you. Zombies are zombies, but they carry guns and shoot at you sometimes.

Then, there is the occasional "Sentinel" which is a floating drone, trying to fry you.

It is polishing that makes a video game good.

Recently I played a "totally not asset flip" "extraction shooter" at a con type event. Each component was OK on a surface level, but there was no holistic angle.

The Covenant enemies have just that. Most of the time you will be fighting against groups of the first 3 species. They are responsive and lively enough that the encounters never become boring. For example:

The point is, that combat is in the sweat spot: hard to predict, but not bullshit. Screw the first one up and you are left with boring enemies that stand around waiting to be shot. Screw the second one up and you get catmario.

May it not be lost on you that I'm basically explaining how it only feels good to kill something that feels alive.

The zombies; they are zombies... They come in hordes. It feels good to kill them, for a while. As implied, eventually they become boring.

The Sentinels barely contribute, but I guess I'm glad they are here.

Tools

If, given this line up, you were assigned an assault rifle, to kill those alien bastards, the game would be unplayable. Thankfully, this game has something called design.

There are numerous weapons and each and every one of them is good. Your preferred gun will constantly shift depending on the encounter ahead. Different enemy compositions ask for different weapon combinations(!). Deciding which weapons to take with you is a real decision. You also have to manage your limited ammo. There was one occasion where I was soft locked by my weapons and their lack of ammo. Usually you can backtrack to get a more appropriate gun; this happened at one of the few exceptions.

Grenades. Grenades are the bread-and-butter of the game. A well placed grenade is the difference between 8 enemies and none at all. They are high risk, high reward toys. And, the devs rightfully give you plenty enough.

You have two life lines: an energy armour and a health bar. Shield regenerates, health requires pickups, shrimple as. Health not so much a safety-net, more like a resource: something I am rationing between rooms. It allows me to get into better positions or finish of enemies running for the backline, thereby saving ammo.

Maps and arenas are spacious and you are given room to maneuver. Given that enemies do not always agro you -they could be unaware of your position or fighting other foes-, you will often be flanking. Conflict is also not always the solution: Sometimes you have to clutch your teeth and run for the objective. Its also worth mentioning that there are rewards hidden away: health, ammo, rare guns, even power ups.

Difficulty

Since I'm a masochistic bastard, I went with Legendary difficulty, which is the hardest from the 4 provided options. This proved to be the correct call. The game was hard, but far from impossible or frustrating. This is all thanks to the rest of the game design: I was always given the tools and space to find a working solution.

I could always find a combination of guns, good grenade throws and movement that would eventually allow me to progress. I was coming up with my own solutions.

Now going back to that extraction-shooter. Since it was a tech demo and I had limited time with it, i wanted to progress as fast as possible.

During the tutorial, I'm presented with a barricade of bookshelves that I'm told to shoot. Since that's retarded, I melee it and instead of the intended breaking into a million pieces, it floats as a low gravity object. It featured SCP-173 which, unless observed, its running at you at mach 3 to snap your neck. So, I was trying to look back occasionally trying to limit its movement. For 3 peaks it was not even in the same corridor, but before the fourth I was face down on the floor. Then, you progress into an office space with generic zombies that you can slalom in between, but then you will have trouble picking up the required fuses because the hitbox of their interaction is too small. For all of the above choices, the devs -who were watching over my shoulder- though I was retarded.

Why aren't you following the clear instructions? Because I'm not a puppet and you are most definitely not my master. I'm here to experience something, not to follow your motions.

Art requires interpretation and people differ.

Should be self evident, but there is always a bigger retard retarding around.

The difficulty is flat. Over all each part is similarly hard (with the notable exception that the Flood missions are easy as hell). More on that a bit later.

Verdict

Its fun, go play it. It also contains many examples of good game design. However, let it be known, tho I abstained from mentioning the flaws its not a perfect master piece.

Halo 2

Just about anything that Halo 1 did right Halo 2 fucks up.

I have to start with the difficulty for the rest to make sense. Again, I went with Legendary assuming the game knowns the definition of insanity. I quickly learn that 1v1-ing an Elite face-to-face always kills me and even a single Grunt is a serious threat to my life. Then, in the very first map, I am locked in a room with waves of enemies; the real problem being that I'm missing all my tools.

I have no ammo. The cap has been brought lower on human guns and I'm not allowed to backtrack. Even if I were to bring a different gun here, I would be fucked.

I have no space to maneuver. I am physically locked in a room the size of something that you would expect from a Call of Dáty campaign.

I am given heaps of grenades, with the asterisk that the blast radius is smaller and not even a direct hit can kill an Elite.

So, I swallowed hard and lowered the difficulty to Normal.

What followed was laughable.

I performed the w+M1 equivalent of a controller. The new SMG in particular has the dps of an orbital cannon. You can just run head-first into gunfire and your gun that requires no aiming will mown EVERYONE down.

There are vehicle sections that go on for way too long.

I am constantly waiting for some shitty ship to land, or a door to open.

I am running from meaningless-short-cutscene to short-meaningless-cutscene.

I can not tell where I'm going. Often times I walk into what seems to be a dead-end, only to find it has a narrow passage on a random side that loops back to the general direction I came from. Other times I cover so much empty ground forwards that I start to wonder whether I broke the game somehow.

Then, I am given as a mission as an Elite. It looked actually exciting. Look, I am even given a plasma sword and the cloak ability!

5 minutes later I find myself with a broken sword, thinking about that I am not given the opportunity to use my poorly polished cloak, while I am casually shooting at my teammates because there is no visual distinction between them and us.

Aaand there are bossfights now? Except it takes longer to kill a Hunter than this flying nigger. For the next one, you have to beat up the elderly, which is fine, except he bleeds if you stab him. Therefor, it takes me 10 minutes to realize that I should be jumping onto his space-wheelchair with X to start dealing damage.

I just sort of zoned out during the mid section. The combat became harder, however, most of the time I can just skip encounters. I have no inceptive to fight -its not fun and there is no reward-, so I'm just running forward.

The Gravemind

Then comes The Gravemind and the last 3 levels following it and gameplay takes a 180.

The level design returns to its roots; now my positioning actually matters. I catch myself paying attention to my ammo. The new Covenant enemies, Brutes, mean business. Their reaction to getting shot is comparable to that of a brick wall; yes, like the rest of the enemy AI, but their large health pool and general demeanor justifies it, making it a non-issue. They also go berserk from time to type, caving your skull in with their fists. This alone makes the game feel much more responsive. Plus, the Elites I'm supposed to be killing are visually distinct:

Difficulty

And, as implied, the difficulty goes up. I would say that the last 3th on Normal is slightly below of what was Legendary in Halo 1. Which -as established- is my preferred difficulty.

Now, without sperging about difficulty curves (as that deserves its own schitzo rant), Halo 1 has flat difficulty, while Halo 2 is increasing. The problem is, that this is a game where I choose my difficulty. I was asked to input my expectation and I did. Then, the first game provided with just that while keeping the encounters diverse, while the second spit in my face and provided me with easy-normal-hard regardless. That also means that I would have had the most fun with Halo 2 if I had been increasingly lowering my difficulty setting. Do you see how that's a problem? I honestly think this roots from the designers misinterpreting what a difficulty curve is.

Verdict

I would say play it from The Gravemind onwards, but funnily enough you only get access to the mission select after beating the game. I think you should pass.

Halo 1 && Halo 2 Looks

It is of note that Master Chief's Collection provides you with the so called anniversary editions of 1 and 2. As far as I know, these are functionally identical to the originals. The difference being that you can dynamically toggle between the original looks and remake looks based on Halo 3. Plus there are "terminals" you can activate for extra cutscenes.

So, as mentioned, there is a dedicated button for changing between the old and the remake rendering.

The original is ugly for starters, but it also has things the new is missing.

The atmosphere is different. The game is dark, appropriately so for a survival experience. You have a flashlight, one that is a serious resource, but completely useless with the new looks.

The higher contrast colors are much easier to read too. When fighting Jackals, I would switch so I could 1) aim easier, 2) time my charged shots better. It also helped me finding the way forwards. On one occasion, I was lost in a large room. Switching to the old looks, everything was dark, except for a light blinking next to a door. Switching back, I realized that the light was still there, except its small and emits no light, rather just blinks to itself. This clearly shows that whoever reworked that room had no idea of basic level design.

Halo 1 && Halo 2 Checkpoints

Checkpoint triggers are very volatile and the bigger problem is that they cascade.

What I mean by that is that checkpoint A would simply not activate sometimes, but then checkpoint B would have a lower chance of activating.

I would progressed 3 rooms and be set back, only to activate a checkpoint after the first room on my next life.

Backtracking would grant me extra checkpoints sometimes, but only once for a specific area.

Still, this is much preferable to the checkpoint trigger being assigned to the last enemy in the room. Mostly the Halo 2 is guilty of this, where 1) I would not get a checkpoint unless I found the Grunt covering in the corner, or 2) even worse, I would not be allowed to progress until I did.

Halo 3

So I revisited Halo 3 after what must have been over 10 years. Oh, my childhood game, how nice it will feel! Well, I think I'm unable to experience nostalgia. That, or I have dementia; which is also a distinct possibility as I remembered very little of the missions.

Enemies

Elites have been completely dropped for Brutes, the only ones present are friendly. Remember how I said Brutes will go berserk? Yeah, forget that. They are just large, imposing, dumb apes that refuse to acknowledge the concept of "stopping power". They might as well be Sub-Saharan Africans for all it matters. That said, they are not bad enemies, just bland.

The Jackals we are facing are all apparently from the same special needs school. These guys are not smart enough to know that they must keep their shields between them and (You) to not get munched.

There are new Flood enemies. They are fun, or would be anyways, if they weren't so unreasonably spongy.

Speaking of spongy, that describes well how the combat has changed. With no more Elites and their shields, with Jackal shields being more of a set piece than a consideration, and waves of Flood with large health pools, your main concern is putting out damage while not dying.

Weapons

I haven't discussed weapons in detail for the previous titles because it was not needed. They formed a nice, closed eco-system of situationalism. Now it only remains to the extent of terrain, but the subtle rock-paper-scissors by enemy composition is lost.

The Needler:

has aim assist and triggers an explosion if the enemy has enough of damage build up inflicted, but has a low range and Jackals and Hunters would completely block its projectiles. Depending on what was in front of you, it went from OP, to OK, to useless. Now it has become simply over-all mediocre.

The Plasma-pistol:

has a charged alternative fire that could be used to bring down Elite or Jackal shields with a single shot, or to spasm out at grunts in a panic when caught with your pants down. But, there are no Elites, the Jackals are no longer problematic AND it no longer even takes down their shields.

The Plasma-rifle:

-which is confusingly is still a pistol- would be excellent at breaking shields and acting as a higher range battle-rifle alternative, that is severely more limited on ammo.

One of the things I remembered this game having and then being really upset when Halo 4 did not, is dual-wielding of short arms. Honestly, I found myself doing that once or twice tops. Its not too useful.

Mind you, it could be, but with the changed utility of side arms, it falls flat.

To the above, add your M6 series pocket sniper and the SMG which already melted anything that wondered directly in front of it.

There also used to be a mechanic, where the speed of your melee attacks depended on the firearm you carried. Bye-bye to that too.

You have power ups tho. Too bad that they are seldom useful and not all that common. They add very little.

Difficulty

I can see how 12 year old me could have beaten this game. Except for select few sections, all of which involve ridiculously beefy Flood-ites & low ammo, the game is not all that hard.

Regarding the exceptions: the level named Cortana. There was one room where I've spent atleast 20 minutes with my winning try, where the only thing you can do is jump in though a door which is an anus and takes a second to open, fire a mag, and jump back. You may die during this maneuver and you VILL run out of ammo multiple times. This room is the crowd jewel of the trend they started adopting, where you are shoved into a situation without cover, retreat, firepower, and the enemies are numerous and far away.

Verdict

Halo 3 is a military shooter with a Halo skin. Funnily enough, there is the game Halo 3 ODST -to which I've yet to get to- which has this exact premise.

Its still good tho, just not great. For the most part I had fun.

Its more beginner friendly then the previous 2 entries. You know, something a kid would have their as their favourite game...

Halo 4

Story

I haven't mentioned the story so far, because all it is appropriate. Intriguing enough to hold your interest, has a satisfying arch, not the focus and does not take itself too seriously.

Very quick recap: Humanity and the alliance of alien races called the Covenant are at war. Master Chief, the legendary cyborg super soldier created by the Spartan-II project and his AGI GF companion Cortana serve on board of a battleship which is shot down. They evacuate to the surface of what is an ancient alien installation called a Halo and is a holy site to the covenant. They discover it is a weapon that wipes all life across the galaxy except for what is safeguarded within, was built by prehistoric humans, and have previously been used to exterminate the Flood, which is now free again. The Halo is destroyed, the Flood set back, Chief & Cortana escape and the Elite leader present is court-marshaled for his failure. The Covenant is lead by the race called the Prophets, who dictate religion and are lightly used for redditor fedora-tipping. The Prophets sentence the Elite leader to become an Arbiter, which used to be a holy warrior-emperor position in Elite culture, but is now a deliberate humiliation-ritual to send out those would could endanger the status-quo into suicide missions. The Covenant accidentally discover the location of Earth, the Flood spreads, Chief and Cortana must separate, a second Halo is about to be activated to bring about The Great Journey which is the Second Coming event of space-jews, and the Elites are betrayed and genocided by the Prophets in favour of Brutes. Finally, the Prophets and the Flood are defeated, Chief and Cortana reunite, Humanity and the Elites arrive at piece and the Arbiter position regains its respect.

Fucking hell, that's quite verbose for a "quick recap".

Now that you know who Cortana is, I can mention that she is depicted as a blue, naked, hologram woman (with a bob-cut). Regarding her being naked, it was a nothing burger so far. With her being rarely on screen and it being a background fact, she felt more like a roman statue then some sort of coomer bait. In 4 however, her model was scaled up and the player has to repeatedly plug her into consoles, all of which project her ass directly into their face. I would describe this as transparent and annoying.

Further more, she is experiencing Rampancy, which is the humbug old age of AGI, making her glitch out constantly and is about to die unless we get back to Earth soon.

But oh no, an evil Forerunner is awakened by the remnant faction of the Covenant and is now planning on exterminating the human race out of revenge, using some bullshit weapon and his robot army.

Regarding the specifics, I have no fucking clue what is going on. Everything is beyond confusing and convoluted.

Somehow tho, Cortana sacrifices herself to kill the Forerunner guy.

This is narratively very dumb.

Think of it from a meta perspective:

The amount of time we spent trying to save her significantly out-weights the amount of time she was a useful side-kick.

The one thing they handled well about it is Chief's attitude. He talks little, his spirit never breaks, but he clearly cares deeply about Cortana. Its a good depiction of Stoicism, which is quite rare.

The only satisfying part about the ending is this piece of dialog:

It was my job to take care of you. We were supposed to take care of each other. And we did.

Gameplay

Forget the Brutes, we reverted back to Elites. The Flood is gone and the new faction, the Forerunners are well designed. Fighting the Forerunners require target selection, resource management and epic skillz.

The power-ups are still present, and they fixed them. They are no longer one use, but on a cool down and more importantly they were given practical effects.

What some maps get wrong is how they play with space. If you place an army of deadly enemies at a distance, the player will attempt to take them down from the backline, because running into them is not worth the risk -especially with the still janky checkpoint-system. Again, this trend they started in the previous game.

You can also feel the quality decline towards the end. I assume it had to do with dead lines, but the map design, difficulty and enemy placement are all over the place, which is further dragged down by the fact that the same three types of Forerunner enemies are getting old.

They added a new kind of grenade. It is orange and inflicts area of effect damage before exploding. It is also insanely useless, because all enemies will dodge away before the explosion. There is exactly 1 (one) instance when its used, and if you play the game for yourself you will know exactly which part I'm referring to.

Verdict

Its great. Its fun.

Most of it feels on pair with Halo 1 and the better parts of Halo 2.

Halo 5

Story

Remember how I said "I am confused, I barely know what is going on"? Yeah, now I'm completely fucking lost.

We are fighting more Forerunners, there is squad diversity and Cortana is evil now?

I give up.

The only interesting thing here for me is the Elite civil-war lead by the Arbiter.

Frankly, I would have rather played an entire game of just that.

Cortana -besides being AI-space-Hitler or some shit- is dressed now. I am pissed. It went from naked, to naked and sexualized, to clothed. Microsoft did the retard-dance both ways, where they had Clarissa McFucktoy the Z-cupped mud-wrestler, then they turned her into Johna Sterile the Girlboss. Just fuckin' amazin'.

Enemies

I apparently have Wished Upon a Blackstar, because there is a new type of Forerunner. Insanely creatively named Soldier, it is a bullet sponge that teleports behind you.

It has no interesting qualities or behaviours, except for the afore mentioned teleportation, which is just plain fucking annoying.

They are -of course- spammed without discrimination.

Generally speaking tho, every enemy has a larger health pool, while the damage deviation of guns have been normalized.

As a result, I no longer care what is in my hand and my trigger finger is developing (an early stage of) Emacs-Pinky syndrome.

The Warden is also introduced, which is a mini boss. It has the signature attacks of yellow death ray and homing death black hole, both of which instantly down you.

The battle field is bleak as ever. If Halo 3 was a military shooter with a Halo skin, Halo 5 is puppeteering with the corpse of the franchise over webcam in an attempt to defraud his bank.

Gameplay

Previously, you would either have to carefully monitor your health, or give little of a fuck because it tended to be enough more often than not. Here, it does not feel like I have a health.

Everything is extremely deadly at close-quarters -except you- therefor you will be keeping your distance.

You know the trend I've been bringing up? Its just that now, and it takes twice as long to kill any enemy and there are twice as many of them.

As a result tho, you are not taking noticeable damage most of the time.

And then you are dead. From Halo 2 onwards, there were single kill snipers. Halo 5 says, "what if we hid them and made their AI infuriating?". Mind you, all AI is shitty in this game, but its especially bad when one of these niggers can jump out of cover and instantly vaporize you. As I understand it, for a sniper to take a shot, it is required to target you idly for some amount of time, which is supposed to be your time buffer to react. However the shitty code makes it so that they can sometimes do that without a direct line of sight.

And there are the explosives. The plasma-grenade attacks that were well telegraphed to begin are less accurate than ever. However, you will be under constant mortal fire from the other side of the map by multiple fiends. How fun!

The Warden I mentioned, he will constantly one shot you from a distance.

Teammates

You are always playing with Spartan companions.

They will barely fucking hit anything unless you are spamming designated target.

There is a downed mechanic. This means that if I die in my single-player game, I have to wait for the AI to maybe revive me, maybe not. Surprisingly, their path finding is fine: not once were they unable to find their way to me. The problem is, that they have no survival instincts and if they happen to approach you from an angle that is out of cover, though luck. You can generally tell when and where they will be able to pick you up, yet you can not consider this as part of your strategy. Many of the one-shot attacks will just straight up kill you. So, you cannot turn off this annoying "feature" and you cannot depend on it. Amazin'. If Load last checkpoint had been removed, I would have not finished Halo 5.

The way they move looks like something out of a parody of a video game. Their decision making is sluggish, they will stand still as they preprocess tasks, only to start running in a perfectly straight, robotic line.

Sound design

They talk and they won't stop talking.

There is a relatively large state-machine controlling the chatter of your companions. For example they can accurately shout out "Crawlers from the right" or "Taking fire from the balcony". It is however not complex enough to combine those into "Crawlers firing from the balcony on the right". Not that I would like that, its just painfully obvious how they recorded the most common predicate-subject combinations. And its even more painful when they did not. When one of them is injured, the chatter will sound something like this:

"Vale is down!" (AI dies) "Go help Vale!" (player command) "You are not out of the fight yet, Vale!" (AI revives AI) "Thanks, Spartan!" (AI reacts)

What do you mean Spartan? What the FUCK do you mean Spartan? I had to listen to the name of this faggot 3 times in the past 2 seconds, but you cannot thank your teammate by name???

The chatter expands to other elements too. Chief talks more than in the previous 4 games combined. Somebody is constantly talking into your ear, and the most trivial shit ever. It feels like the game was created for Alphies who must constantly be overstimulated or they have a breakdown.

Even the fucking enemies talk. The Soldiers -who I do not even know if they are supposed to be alive or machine- will yell "Opening fire."/"Target hit."/"I am damaged.".

If that wasn't enough, every 30 seconds you spend in an area without completing the objective, someone will remind you.

"We cannot progress unless all the Forerunners are eliminated!" "Quickly, locate the reactor, it has to be somewhere around here!"

There are audio logs scattered around the maps. I have not once found one by intent, since anything looks like an audio log is not and any bullshit little pixel might be one, but you will be picking them up randomly as they are scattered on the battlefield. Activating one by accident will freeze you in place and certainly kill you, but I digress. Point is, these will be played over whatever is happening and there is a 100% chance that someone else is actively talking too.

Ugh, STFU already!

Not only is the chatter annoying, it is also the only thing you will hear. No attacks are predictable though sounds. May it be a shotgun mowing down your teammates behind your back or the mortal shot slowly approaching your skull, you either see it -which you won't- or you die.

Movement

Halo 4 had a dodge power up, which would launch you at whichever direction you were walking. It was fun, but it was also useless, as the cooldown was too high to rely on it.

Halo 5 added the dodge as part of the base movement. It feels better. And it is more useless than ever. Problem being that there are no attacks that can be consciously dodged, nor any map design involvement.

You can also spartan charge now. The man who was responsible for naming things should be beheaded. This is a bonus dodge forward which can be activated after enough sprinting forwards. They tried to involve this in map design by adding lame, cardboard-cutout destructible entrances. Not only are these pathetic, but they prove that the Sangeili city used extensive copy-pasting.

There is also edge-climbing, sliding and ground-pounding, all of which are irrelevant.

I would like to note that the above are all nice assets in multiplayer, but the fact that they had no way to exploit them in single-player, indicates that they simply tacked on modern bullshit without discrimination.

Difficulty

You may think based on my description that Halo 5 is hard. It is not, it is simply annoying. No skills are required, unless you count the patience to output the required damage, and, just in general your actions have very little to do with the outcome.

After my usual Legendary playthrough, I went back and played the first mission on Easy. Turns out the reason everything felt so shit, is because they applied (atleast?) a times two health to your foes indiscriminately. This is, exactly what you never, EVER do. With that, you suddenly eliminated melee, spartan charge and ground-pound as tools; every kill requires an intermittent reload; even the more powerful guns will feel like shit; etc.

Verdict

Halo 5 is liquid shit.