All of them have minor and major flaws that turned off its audience, all of which consisted of competitive players and "casual" folk who just want a good time before going to work.
Halo CE is adored by the competitive community for its flawless aim assist, the fast kills times with the pistol, and the awesome melee combat. However, CE is hampered by the lack of good online play (I'm looking at you, PC version), and a polarizing campaign with both amazing and shit levels. But Halo CE today is still enjoyable because of the perfect AI and combat that not even the sequels can touch, in my opinion. It has something to do with the OOMPH that the guns and melee attacks have, as well as the the movement speed. It's just awesome.
Halo2 got complaints from the pedantic competitive community for making the marksman weapon a burst fire weapon that takes 4 headshots to kill instead of 3 shots, but the dorrito-munching-dude-bros loved Halo2's multiplayer. It was faster, tighter, and more dynamic than Halo CE's with dual wielding, the energy sword, the increased movement speed, the stickier aim assist, and the BXR exploits. The campaign, however, was very disappointing as is the result of Bungie redoing the game from scratch and having serious time constraints. It's still amazing that Halo2 even exists and manages to be a classic.
Halo3, despite its faults, has got to be the best Halo in the series. It's got an awesome editor where thousands of maps and incredibly fun game modes spawned; it's got a theater mode where beautiful and unbelievable things were recorded from this game alone; it had an epic and beautiful campaign which allowed 4 of your friends to play in; and it had a multiplayer mode with so much depth and content that I think no console shooter has even touched it yet, not even Call of Duty. However, it was very imbalanced - BR spread, gimmicky and annoying gadgets, fire grenades, useless detachable weapons, crap hit detection, ugly net code, and the worst melee combat in the series. But somehow, it isn't enough to stop this game from being my most favorite.
Halo ODST, in my very humble opinion, has the best campaign in the series. I just loved it. Firefight, even by myself, was addictive. Though the game didn't last me very long, it was quite the experience.
Halo Reach... Man, Bungie fucked that up. This game is the worst Halo game, bar none. The crosshair bloom with the DMR was broken, the armor abilities were poorly balanced, and the different weapons and mechanics at play made the best game modes in Halo3 practically unplayable. The campaign was frustrating, boring, and poorly paced. This was the battle of Reach, the most bombastic battle in the lore, and all I got was Halo3 with retarded enemies that were gifted with aim hacks and infinite shields. Forge world, though great in theory, was a gigantic mess in the end. With so much room, there was very little freedom and assets to utilize. They even removed tons of options in the editor, making forging and game designing harder than ever. Firefight was no longer about holding off against waves for as long as possible; instead, it was currency farming. I just did not like Halo Reach at all.
Halo 4 was okay. Good feeling weapons and great production values. Game felt like a fan fiction writer's attempt at making a Halo game, but it wasn't bad in the end.
In short, Halo3 all the way.
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