Why the reverence for Halo?

I played Halo: CE and Halo 2 when the game out through a friend who was much better off financially than my family was (I still was playing N64 and Playstation when the Xbox was out). It was fun at the time, but mainly because we were all playing together. When I finally got a 360 in 2008, I played Halo 3 online and thought it was great, but I didn't even touch the campaign. I didn't enjoy it. Then, through Halo: ODST, Reach, and Halo 4, I saw the same thing happen. 5-6 hours of multiplayer, but no story interest at all. Even the Halo Anniversary Edition only got my attention for a couple hours, and by the 4th mission I was done with it. I always just felt disconnected with the campaign.

So, with the launch of the Master Chief Collection in a couple weeks, I'm curious as to why people have such a fond reverence of the series. I've looked at buying the MCC, but I am not particularly good at multiplayer and so don't know if I have any reason to buy it. Why do you love/dislike the Halo series?

Dat soundtrack.

Otherwise *shrug* I didn't get the appeal in 2001 and I don't really get it now. I mean, they are very well-made first-person shooters (Library levels aside) and I can see why they helped propel the console FPS genre into the limelight given what else was around and (Goldeneye and a few others being exceptions) how crappy the genre generally was up to that point on consoles really helped it gain traction.

But I just never thought they were that special myself, more power to the fans though.

edit: Also, Master Chief is TOTALLY just Doom Guy with his helmet on. (/joke)

Age of the people that played it when they played it. For my part I had both the Goldeneye and the Halo experience and enjoyed them separately; but I had also played Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 3, and Unreal Tournament so it's not like Halo was the only FPS I played as a kid. Halo is the only reason the X-Box brand survived the PS2 era.

At least Halo isn't a modern military shooter so there's no bizarre confluence of industrial military interests and even political ideology alongside very young children playing it. Halo is a fine series, first three games are overrated but still perfectly competent. The most influential aspect of Halo is regenerating health, which is not a good thing for the most part.

I really liked that it was co-op and that it was a well-made console shooter. My younger brother and I could never really play a co-op shooter before Halo came along. Goldeneye was fun, but it was multi-player focused. It became a sort of tradition for us to play each one. We eventually stopped after Reach came out. We simultaneously burnt out and grew to love our gaming PCs.

I'd like to go and play Halo 4 one day, but I'm not sure when that'll be.

I enjoy the games and the lore behind it. It's the kind of sci-fi I like and all the tech is really cool. That's why I like them.

For a lot of people my age (27ish) it was one of the first big, big games to launch. It launched on an exciting new platform and people where of an age that they didn't have much before it. It's similar to Goldeneye for people who might be of the same age or a little older depending on when they got into games. I never really got into Halo. I was already playing Counterstrike on my mams laptop and we didn't have an xbox in the house. A tonne of my friends who did have an xbox though got super into halo.

I was an avid pc gamer all throughout my teens and early adult life so the love for games like Goldeneye or Halo were a complete mystery to me. When people were drooling over Halo I was playing Battlefield 1942.

I never really saw the appeal myself. When the ps2/xbox generation began I was 12, right in the Halo sweet spot, at least in marketing terms. But my ps2 had MGS2 Devil may cry and soul reaver 2 so halo never really registered for me.

Off the top of my head:

1. The sountrack is incredible and really memorable. It really gives the series a clear identity. Something they really didn't nail in Halo 4
2. The world building is intriguing and the characters are engaging enough to keep you hooked through the story (except in Halo 4 and ODST)
3. The AI and enemy design is among the best in the business (excluding the orange dudes in halo 4). You can't beat Bungie when it comes to building great encounters and making fun enemies to fight against.
4. Large open ended locals give these encounters and the enemies space to breath, a very nice change from other shooters
5. Vehicles feel powerful, are fun to drive and the physics applied to them makes for great gameplay moments. They also feel like part of the world and are not part of some vehicle specific section
6. The coop is among the best in the shooter genre. The general gameplay lends itself perfectly to a coop experience.
7. The competitive multiplayer appeals to a whole new audience. I fucking hate most twitch based multiplayer and Halo showed you could do competitive shooter multiplayer differently from CS, Quake and Unreal.
8. The first game is the main reason why shooters are console games now. Aim assist, the 2 weapon system and other innovations showed you could make a game without the usual ''it's a good game, for a console shooter'' * that came with the genre on consoles.

I think the first three games have a pretty good sci-fi story arc and I have always found the game play a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah, it's the series that kicked off modern shooters, but it balances out its two weapon limit well. You have to have some good strategies with every weapon if you want to finish on Legendary or Heroic.

I played through the entire series earlier this year so I wouldn't buy the MC collection even if I had an Xbox One. I like the games past 3 but not anywhere near as much.

Also, I'd be gushing a lot more if I wasn't typing on a phone.

EDIT: OK, now I'm on a computer! But I still don't feel like typing too much.

I like the games so much at least in part because Halo 1 was the first FPS I really played (in 2007, no less!) and I really loved it. But even after playing tons and tons and tons of games in the FPS genre, I find myself coming back to it an enjoying it. There's something about the way that game plays, and maybe the way I play it, that just feels really badass. My Halo skills are nothing ridiculous but I can still maneuver, I can still come up with clever ways to use the guns and grenades I have on the fly, and more. I guess for me, I try to keep moving. I try to never stop behind cover when playing these games, which isn't always possible but I have always felt like Halo is way better at letting me do that than most other AAA shooters.

That and, as I said above, the first three games deliver a pretty good sci-fi story. The second game in particular, despite its infamous ending, puts together a pretty large-scale plot involving a lot of different characters and factions and it does it all pretty well. I mean, it ain't no Asimov, but as far as video game science fiction goes and especially as far as FPS stories go, Halo 1 and 2 are way up there in quality and Halo 3 is pretty close. Halo 3 is where the series started to show some of its hokeyness and its writing got a little too cheesy, but I still really enjoyed its story.

I like ODST, Reach, and 4, just not as much. Reach's story is good but not remarkably impressive, ODST's open world is cool but underutilized, and 4 is... well, the gameplay in 4 is really good but sometimes it feels like they stretch out levels too much and the story is one huge, hammy, cheesy mess. Possibly entertaining, but not really good.

For the record, I read The Fall of Reach, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx way back in high school. Past that, no, I didn't look into the expanded universe.

One of the first FPS games that seemed tailormade for consoles. The LAN aspect in dorms rooms during CE, and the highly influential role it played for the console online experience (specifically, Xbox Live). Halo 2 was a behemoth, in that regard.

Why is this a question?

The game had a superb campaign AND superb multiplayer. It made console LAN parties (and I'd argue console multiplayer on the whole) a thing, and it remains among the best and most influential console games ever. The graphics were amazing at the time. The animations were great. The soundtrack was incredible. They created some really terrific environments with quality AI enemies that looked cool, and the game had a good story with interesting characters to boot. The scale was awesome, with various vehicles you could choose to commandeer (or not). And control-wise, it might be my favorite game of all-time. There were so many little features that mattered. You could crouch to reduce fall damage (or increase it if you mistimed it). If you were quick enough on the trigger, rapid firing the plasma pistol would pretty much freeze enemies in place while you circled around them for the incredibly satisfying whack on the back. Sticky grenades (and regular grenades) rewarded skillful throws so well, yet weren't overpowered in terms of blast radius. If you were good enough, the standard pistol could get you out of most any situation with three well-placed shots, which made for some awesome balance. The multiplayer maps were mostly great and difficult to exploit. Overshields and cloaks were powerful pickups, but you generally had to earn them. To this day, I still haven't played a game that better rewarded skill. I can't really remember many Halo games where I lost on something I thought was bulls***. It was either that I was better or they were. And that's how it should be. Not "oh, he got a good drop/power-up there; we lost now", or "how fun; he's just going to camp in that poorly-designed room with one door and lay down and point his gun at the entrance". Halo was, and is, awesome. So much so that a remake of it is likely to sell a bunch of new consoles thirteen years later. I'd contend it's among the top five games ever made. Maybe the top game ever made.

So, yeah, it's alright.

I plan on buying the collection once I eventually an Xbox One and giving them another chance. I've played Halo 2 and 3 and they both were pretty bad games. Maybe the collection will make me change my mind, I dunno.

I don't like Halo games so I don't buy them. Other people like Halo games so they buy them.

While there are historical reasons for people to have nostalgia for them- there really isn't anything else that matters.

People easily forget how good the AI was. To this day, Halo is still one of the few FPS games that actually has competent AI. I believe F.E.A.R. is still at the top. But Halo, Rage and some others had actually good AI.

The answer for me, is that it's an enjoyable game to play on higher difficulties. Fighting the Covenant is fun and each encounter is different even if you replay them. Also, I tend to like action packed shooters more by default than cover based shooters.

It's one of the best co-op shooters ever. I try not to be hyperbolic, but I honestly think that it is one of the most fun co-op experiences that I have ever had, from Halo to Halo 4. While I think that the games vary in quality, they are normally all pretty great in my opinion (maybe 4 is not great, but it is certainly a good game and fun with another person) and I would say that they are all a lot of fun. The multiplayer is also fun, though I don't consider myself a multiplayer fan normally.

All in all, it is a great series and the thing that always brings me back is that it's just a fun time, especially with co-op buddies.

It was really the co-op, as others have stated. Being able to play through the whole campaign with a friend was a lot of fun and the different enemy types they came up with made each combat scenario pretty dynamic and interesting. The use of vehicles in the campaign was really fun at the time too, racing Warthogs around, trying to get Banshee's into places they kind of shouldn't be, exploring the massive levels in the game. It was pretty engrossing and liberating stuff at the time. Up to that point I can only really think of Perfect Dark having a co-op campaign, and you can't jump in that game and the objectives are super strict. This was different.

So I'd call what I have a fondness, not reverence. I never got pulled into the lore of the series, I just enjoyed big, spacious, sci-fi levels with interesting enemies to fight in them.

The Halo games I played alone were ODST and Reach. I think being alone suits ODST, but I may have short-changed my Reach experience by playing it that way, found that campaign didn't have momentum all the way through. Good ending though.

I think they're all incredibly fun games, both single and multi-player, and despite the story/fiction not being the greatest out there, I still thoroughly enjoy it and find that it serves it's purpose wonderfully.

It was the second major evolution in FPS games for a broad scope of people. If you were playing with a PC at the time then it might not have hit you personally as hard but when something was big on consoles, it was big on a broader level. I feel like there was a social aspect of it? Like it was the whole word of mouth stuff around school etc.

Anyway, Goldeneye made multiplayer huge with the local 4 player stuff. Halo was the next big step because of the online and larger player count multiplayer. Some games maybe have done certain things before these, but these were the games where the planets aligned to make a game that was good in all aspects.

Feel like my writing is weird. I just rolled out of bed.

But yea. Nostalgia. I've never been that big into Halo. I'm not a big multiplayer person. I didn't have friends to play it with. We were probably playing Counter-Strike and Battlefield 1942 (maybe that was around that time?) I will say that I had the demo of Halo 1 on PC with Blood Gulch multiplayer and I played the hell out of it for a week and then got bored. Didn't end up buying the game until a long time later.

I was and am an avid PC gamer. So, I was playing stuff like Quake, Unreal, and Aliens Vs. Predator in the late 90's, so I -never- understood the love for Goldeneye. Outside of being an FPS on a console, compared to PC FPS games, the control scheme was horrible, the graphics were meh, and whatever gameplay was there was ruined by the 15fps gameplay.

While BF 1942 came out around the time Halo did, Halo did some amazing things for its time.

First and foremost, it controlled brilliantly. If anything, Halo defined how console FPS controls are done. My friend and I, at the time, never really played FPS on consoles. Right off the bat, we were playing Halo comfortably. The same could not be said for Red Faction or other PS2 FPS games.

It was a serious sci-fi FPS with a bright and varied colors. Every alien, every vehicle, every weapon had a distinct look - you knew what things were at a glance.

A 2 player co-op campaign that had levels big enough where you never felt like you were simply doing the same thing at the same time as the other player. Even today, on the PC, I can't think of a FPS title that's as fun in co-op as Halo is. Maybe Borderlands? But whereas enemies in Halo felt like they had AI, Borderlands has bullet sponge enemies that just pop out of monster generators.

I however, never understood the love for Halo pvp multiplayer. The few times I played it, the auto-aim felt real high; like the cursor was set to snap to grid. That, and I was already spoiled to hell by the 1942 demo. College kid me ended up getting a projector from our AV department to toss up that sweet Wake Island map onto my apartment wall. Arena based shooters like Quake 2 and Unreal Tournament 200X made player vs player component of Halo feel so sluggish, too.

The multiplayer is a huge part for sure. And it's a really solid shooting experience overall with fun enemies.

But yeah I dunno, the setting or story doesn't really do much for me. I just shot things and thought that was pretty fun. I can replay the first game at any time just entirely on nostalgia, but I don't have any major interest in the campaign of the other games. Replay or not.

The later Halo games have been incredible in ways that didn't necessarily redefine console shooters like the original did. After the initial sea change for console shooters, they've largely just been solid experiences with really great set-piece encounters that I've always looked forward too. I'd consider Halo: Reach my favorite even with a firm nostalgia for playing the original on my PC way back. Though, maybe as a qualifier I was never a rabid fan of the series and was kind of put off by Halo 2 being a weak entry and multiplayer that got too competitive for my skill when it went online. But it's been a consistently great series other than that.

This seems like the closest to a categorical "right" answer.

Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were important touchstones, but in 2001 nothing played quite like Halo: Combat Evolved. It was the first console-based FPS to whole-heartedly embrace--the first one to really get--dual-analog shooting controls, and synthesized them into a remarkably accessible package. It encouraged players to think quickly, and offered a wealth of forward-thinking mechanical options, rewarding players for experimenting with varied tactics.

To the game's credit, it surrounded those controls with a number of elements that supplemented the gameplay experience nicely. A stark two-weapon system forced players to pick and choose their offense for each particular combat scenario. Having a grenade as a dedicated off-hand command instead of a weapon the player needed to cycle to changed the pace of the combat considerably. The game's AI was more active and reactive than most enemy behaviors in other games of the time.

The narrative and world-building stuff, that all seems secondary to the game's legacy, though it's become more of a concentrated focus in recent years. What was constructed for that first game was a world that felt immense--like it had a lot of history. And not much of that history was divulged to the player directly, so players would get wrapped up in imagining the infinite possibilities of this fictitious cosmos. But again, that was never the really important hook.

Getting the controls just right? That was.

And I haven't even mentioned the impact of its multiplayer.

It was a game-changer. In, like, a dozen corporeal ways.

I really enjoyed all of the stories except 3 I didn't care in the slightest what happened, I didn't even really enjoy the game.

I played them primarily offline and loads of local split screen, My top three are ODST, Reach and 2. I really gravitated towards the story in ODST, but I'd just gotten off mainlining Mass Effect, so my brain was ready. I think it's length and open world helped, due to it being relatively short you don't really have time to dismiss it.

Halo came at a time when a bunch of people had retreated away from their PC FPS's due to lack of graphics cards and moved back to consoles, the promise of the original Xbox to me was always, PC games no need to worry about graphics cards.

Unlike the PS1/2 the Xbox had four controller ports. The only thing I really used to use the PS1 for was Quake 2 with the multitap, I really should revist Quake, it's almost the 20th anniversary.

Because not everyone agrees that it is the quintessential shooter or even one of the best games ever? I'm not really sure why you feel the end to condescend. No one here said it was a terrible game. But I appreciate your incessant need to "1up" a forum poster simply because you think it's one of the greatest games ever and anyone who disagrees is silly.

To everyone else, thanks for the thoughtful answers. I'd love to read more.

I agree with you about Halo: CE. I guess I just have trouble seeing why the rest of the games in the series are heralded, as well. To me, Halo 3 and onward feel like formulas repeated over and over in terms of gameplay (not considering writing/plot). Halo 2 had dual-wielding and online multiplayer, but what exactly did the following games do in terms of advancing shooters?

I don't have much reverence for Halo either. Poor map design, sluggish pacing, shallow writing, poor voice acting, and I personally never enjoyed the music all that much... I can play the Halo games, and garner some level of enjoyment from them but I think they really are pretty poor games in general. I was always a PC fps sort of kid though, so when Halo came out I never really felt like it lived up to the sort of stuff I'd already been playing. I've revisited them all on multiple occasions as I've gotten older and my feelings have mostly stayed the same.
The level design in Halo 1 is still truly abhorrent to me. Copy paste corridors and large outdoor levels padded out with travelling and a poor sense of where you're supposed to be headed next. Bleh.

I have fond memories of playing Halo 3 with friends. I've never really liked the game, but it is fun when I play with people and just goof around.

Big Team Battle 4 Life.

You aren't alone in that opinion. The general consensus is that post-Halo 3 you're looking largely at games that know their formula and execute on it with occasional incremental differences.

But I don't think the games are required to advance the genre to be revered. By Halo 3 you've got a large population of players invested in that universe, in that fiction. There were Halo books coming out before Halo 2 had even released in 2004, so people had put a lot of stock into seeing just how the plot's massive universal circumstances were going to coalesce into anything resembling a conclusion. Halo and Halo 2 were two really important games, two really fantastic games, and the fanbases simply carried on from there.

Halo 3 was probably the first of the franchise to get all of its ambitions right. It's in some ways the Ur-Halo game. It had the controls down, it had the universe down, it had the multiplayer down. It concluded that trilogy narrative and offered online cooperative play (which was missing from Halo 2, to much vocal disdain from franchise fans).

You have to remember that, by 2007, when Halo 3 released, games had been aping the Halo systems for six years already. So the formula was getting tired--even when employed by the team that had created it in the first place. That's why you start seeing these tonal experimentations afterward--ODST, Reach. When Halo 3 accomplished everything Bungie had ever wanted to do or set out to do in a game, they had to grow somewhere, but could only do so in small movements.

Despite adhering to a certain set of formulaic rules, there isn't anything lazy about what Bungie produced in those Post-Halo 3 games, though, which is what I feel like the "yep more Halo" sentiment typically implies.

Halo 2 was my bread and butter for years. It had a stellar campaign & It was THE reason to have xbox live. Halo 3 then came up and did the whole multiplayer thing all over again. great series.

I can only speak for the first Halo, since it is still the only Halo story I like. What made Halo 1 interesting to me was the sense of mystery and exploring & discovering the universe of Halo. With each installment in the Halo series I got less interested every time because they were answering questions that were far more interesting as unanswered questions. I've never found any character interesting (aside from the Arbiter in Halo 2, which Bungie squandered the potential of in Halo 3.) I don't even consider Master Chief a character, he's more of a cross between Duke Nukem and a silent protagonist. A character that has a "cool" sounding voice, but really says nothing interesting.

I think the main reason people enjoy the campaign, and why I still play the Halo games (with friends) despite not really enjoying the story/characters/world is because the basic combat design is still very much engaging and still hasn't been replicated by any other game yet. There's a lot of strategy in Halo combat, from using guns, grenades, melee, vehicles, or armor abilities, from the diverse enemies classes, and because of the wide open maps that warrants more diverse play. those are the reasons why I can still somewhat enjoy the Halo series.

Halo truly is the goldeneye of its generation

Halo 1 as a multiplayer game is fun enough but as a franchise I couldn't care less

Much like the others have said, it's one of the best co-op games to play period. When CE came out my older brother and I went through the campaign together, which was fairly rare of at the time around the N64 era (save for a few games like Gauntlet Legends, Perfect Dark, and Rainbow Six). Most of the time co-op meant waiting for the other player to die and then it's your turn. It was also gorgeous. That moment when you crash landed from the Pillar of Autumn onto Halo you're given a huge area to explore and the feeling you got when you first took down a Banshee with a pistol was just awesome. Halo 2 was lauded for its Xbox Live gameplay and its implementation of matchmaking on the consoles - a standard which most console shooters are still using today.

I would say it's the most important franchise for consoles, given the affect its had for the generations and beyond.

Halo is probably like the 70th best game ever or thereabouts, just throwing that out there. In some ways that's great, in others not so much. The Zero Punctuation of Halo 3 is pretty spot on. The Library should have been 4 times as long.

@fredchuckdave: Really? 70th? Why is that? I figured it could be considered top 20 or so. And is that considering Halo as a series or one game in particular?

Wait, what? You focused on only one thing I said (which, BTW, was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, not condescending), and completely ignored all my reasoning for enjoying Halo. Okay. For the record, I agree that Halo: CE was far better than the rest of the series, but Halo: CE was very, very good and is revered for good reason.

@notnert427: I thought your point was very well made. Some of it on a personal preference level I disagreed with, but someone who agreed wholly with your points (which most do) would be the ideal person that I was essentially asking about originally. That first little bit though wasn't very necessary. Many people love the series, some do not, and I wanted to know why those who love it to the extent of it being the best game of all time feel that way.

I get very nostalgic when I look back on Halo's multiplayer.

A lot of my best multiplayer memories are from Halo 3. Granted, it was the first online console multiplayer I had played so maybe that might have something to do with it, but something about the way it played was so great and has kind of phased out in some of the more recent multiplayer games, Halo 4 included.

I feel Halo's slower movement led to a more strategic way of playing, at least in the way that I played. In the Call of Dutys, the Titanfalls, etc., I tended to sprint around the map, lone-wolfing, just looking to up my K/D. Even when playing with friends I would fall into this habit. But in Halo, at least what I can remember of it (I haven't gotten into it much since 3), there was more teamwork amongst my friends. People would call out enemies they'd see along the map, letting us know if a guy was almost dead, or if someone has a power weapon (Sniper, Rockets, etc.). To me, it was more rewarding to win a match in Halo. The ranking system also probably had something to do with it.

This argument is kind of tired, but I'm feeling very weary of the twitch shooter genre and I cannot wait to get back into Halo when MCC is released.

I played the original Halo on PC, and I think it's still a great game. Couldn't stand Halo 2 though, so I never felt the need to get a 360 for the rest of them.

@mbradley1992: Just the first Halo. There aren't many series with 6 games and basically all of those series that don't involve Activision are pretty good with some ups and downs. There's at least like 7 or 8 better FPS's than Halo and aside from Metroid Prime I can't think of an FPS that ranks up with Super Metroid, Vagrant Story et al. I suppose Doom or Doom 2 would have to be around 15th, Halflife 2 around 25th, and whichever multiplayer shooter you like the most around 30th (Unreal Tournament in my case).

Halo always stood out to me with the way the shooting and the movement feels, it feels tactical in a way I like. I just enjoy it, not a big FPS-fan but Halo just about nails all of it for me personally.

Because no other console shooter put it together like Halo did. Some had ok gameplay, some had ok story, some had ok music, some had ok characters, some had ok AI...actually, I don't think any console shooter had very good AI to that point. Some games had maybe even 2 or 3 out of those 5. No game had all of it though.

Like it or not, the multiplayer was a significant landmark as well for console games, even if you're just playing LAN since the first game had no online play.

People forget there are issues with Halo but then again people forget the issues with Half-Life as well. The constant remakes help obscures the issues.

It should also be noted no one builds shooters with Halo or Half-Life controls either.

The short answer is that it was the best shooter on consoles usurping Goldeneye and preceding Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Taking the next steps to revolutionize FPS gaming on consoles.

Some of the same arguments could be made for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. At the time, the game was amazing and revolutionized 3D action games... but if you play it now without having experienced it when it was new and fresh, you can see a lot of the problems with the mechanics and game design.

Same thing with Halo: it's the game that showed off the potential of console first person shooters. It established the standard for controls and multiplayer options... but it's definitely a product of the time, and subsequent games in the series did not necessarily evolve at the same rate as games that were influenced by Halo.

There are issues with everything ever made. What's your point?

Controls are secondary. Every shooter in recent years gets the 2 weapon system, health regen, a grenade button and aim assist. That's a bunch of very meaningful innovations popularized by Halo: CE. Because of those innovations many people now prefer playing shooters on consoles. Something unheard of before the first Halo came out.

@chiablo: In the case of Zelda Mario 64 did everything that it did first aside from Z targetting. In the case of Halo it's an FPS, you point the gun at the thingy and shoot.

It's all about that combat. A nice mix of situational weapons, with grenade and melee mechanics that feel well-balanced. Throw in some decent multiplayer maps, a co-operative campaign and baby, you've got a stew going.

oh shit you guys carl weathers

I know you aren't being hostile but the question comes off as "huh?" The question was about the "reverence" of some classic game where a comment was made about how it plays and there were loads of problems with those games where design has come a long way (pacing, layout, etc). It isn't so much a problem but a recognition the change in design over the ages. To suggest "controls are secondary" is kind of flippant because this is the interface the real world person has to the game software. As I wrote, no one has these layouts (either Halo or Half-Life) for a good reason.