I liked 2 because I felt like it was something different at time, for me at least. They took a big risk having you play as Arbiter for most of the game. I'd say finish it, if you like the story at all.
I like ODST the best though, that score and atmosphere are great.

Halo 2's campaign was a huge let down at the time because the level they showed to promote the game - hijacking cars from brutes etc - was total bullshit. i spent the whole game going... okay next level is gonna be that level, and then it ended.

But hey, that made no real odds after that, and yeah the campaign is worth playing, not as good as some of the others, especially the second half, but still solid halo.

Halo 2 had awesome multiplayer though, easily my favorite of the series.

If we're talking about campaigns I would have to go with ODST, even though I prefer dealing with the master chief's regenerating health rather than pick-ups, I love the score and vibe of ODST, and it's pretty good for rolling out exciting set pieces all the way to the end.

My heart says Halo 1. But dammit, Halo 3 is the best Halo. I love ODST and thought Reach was competent (if safe) but HALO 3 IS THE GREATEST. It's the realisation of everything Halo had hinted at being but never quite managed due to the limitations of the technology during the original Xbox era.

Halo 2 is the game I hold most dear due to the hundreds upon hundreds of hours of multiplayer I've played, but Halo 3 is the overall best in the series.

The multiplayer of Halo 3 is the finest example of classic Halo MP, whereas Halo Reach and to an even greater extent Halo 4 really went in a direction that made it not quite Halo in some fundamental ways. Halo 3 takes everything that made Halo 2 on Xbox Live great and refines it while also adding a ton of great new features like Forge, saved films, file share, and great variety of playlists and game modes to fit whatever mood you could be in.

The single player might not have the best story of the series, as both ODST and Reach are great character driven stories about tight knit squads going through hell together, but Halo 3 certainly has the best campaign of the trilogy. It wraps up everything in a pretty satisfying way, the addition of 4 player co-op made it infinitely replayable, and it has a great variety in its environments and encounter types. Of course, Halo 3 is also just as great as the rest of the series in terms of its satisfying weapon handling, great AI, and interesting weapons.

Halo Reach is my favourite. Fantastic campaign that I feel is far and away the best in the series and I really loved the additions Bungie made to the multiplayer formula with the armour abilities. I thought it was a goddamn amazing send-off for the series from Bungie.

Halo 2 has the best multiplayer--it has never and will never be matched again in the series, I'm sure. Halo 4 has the best campaign overall, but I really like the night segments of ODST. It was just too bad the actual missions in that game were kinda bleh.

ODST, without a doubt.

My head says Reach, my heart says ODST.

I don't have a favorite. Halo CE is probably my least favorite if I really had to choose. I'm actually listening to the ODST soundtrack right now (which also isn't my favorite. I like them all).

@jadegl said:

Basically this, ODST had the stronger campaign but for what it's worth it's more of an expansion to Halo 3 than a full game. Reach was the full package, new engine, most substantial campaign of the entire series and the best multiplayer of any game on the 360.

Still have a huge soft spot for ODST though. Sucks that the 2 best games in the series aren't the ones getting revamped.

Though I may like the stories of both games a lot more because I was super into the Republic Commando books and game.

Only ever played about 20 minutes of ODST, but was initially turned off by what are now rather unorthodox controls for an FPS game; can distinctly remember accidentally throwing grenades at myself. Really oughta go back to it sometime... I own it after all so, I should probably attempt get my monies worth out of it.

@hh: My brother and I were just disappointed because the night stage looked so cool setting wise, and then you get the day time one. I was disappointed, but after a while I liked the look of what we got in the final game as well.

Wow... Weird. This looks much worse than I remember it being. I thought it was night time before. What the heck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_y3cbIV-Xg

I will say that I am more interested in the MC collection for the singleplayer/coop, and the multiplayer is secondary, but I definitely will play some deathmatch (or whatever they call it).

Agree with this too. ODST stands out for me in the Halo franchise. I think Reach does more for Halo's MP then ODST did but ODST's campaign has more heart.

Halo 2 = Multiplayer

Halo 3 = Campaign + co-op campaign

Halo: Reach = Firefight

I'm all-in on Halo 1 being the best Halo. I feel like it may have been nostalgia, but blowing through it in a couple of sittings on Legendary recently with my brother, god damn, that is a good game. The in-engine multiplayer is exciting, too; we spent the better part of an hour on Silent Cartographer bashing Warthogs off of each other.

@jadegl: Same. I loved ODST's tone but I think the hub world stuff was half-baked and ended up being a drag by the end. Reach had the most consistently good campaign of all the games.

@conmulligan: I didn't mind the hub world so much, but yeah, if you just wanted to advance the story, it eventually gets in the way of that. :)

Halo 3, easily. I'm practically getting an Xbox One and this collection just to play that game in 1080p 60fps.

I think 4 had the best campaign and 3 had the best multiplayer.

Halo 3 is where everything came together. The campaign is probably the second best behind Halo CE but the multiplayer, co-op, forge and file sharing added so much to the game that it surpassed Halo 1 all things put together.

I still maintain that people who say ODST is the best Halo probably only played it for a few hours and remember liking it so much because "ooo jazz". ODST has the worst main missions by far which is what you spend most of your time doing. Sure the overworld is cool but the actual missions are so forgettable.

I thought parts of the Reach campaign were kinda lame and all the armour abilities and that in multiplayer signalled that Halo multiplayer had peaked in 3 and was now on a downwards curve

Kind of a difficult pick. I want to say the first one because it has "the highest highs", as in, the best moments. But it also has the "lowest lows", as in, The Library level.

It certainly has the best story out of all the Halo games. Instead of being philosophical or mystical or having an oversized piranha plant speak using poetry, it was content to just set up a situation (marooned on an unfamiliar object in space) and spiral out from there. I mean, it's not fucking literature, but it's still a pretty good sci-fi story. Everything afterwards ranged from "OK" to "what the fuck?"

Yeah, I'll say Halo 1. Reach has the best pacing but I just find that game pretty unmemorable. Most of the Arbiter's levels in 2 are not good, and a good chunk of that game is played from the perspective of the Arbiter. 3 has a lot of awesome gameplay moments and sets them up well but its story doesn't quite measure up to the first game's (and it's the easiest of the lot). ODST is a great experiment but there's a lot of walking in that game that I don't want to do.

I'm talking about single player campaigns only, by the way. Anytime someone asks "best video game out of a series?", I automatically think about single player unless someone notes that the multiplayer matters. Sure, I played a ton of Halo 3 multiplayer, and that was pretty great, but eh. It still doesn't really factor into what I think of the game.

ODST will forever be my favorite campaign. Combat Evolved has a special place in my heart in terms of having great co-op & multiplayer especially for a game released in 2001.

Combat Evolved is a gahd damn masterpiece. Nothing has touched it since.

Halo 2 or 3 had the best Live multiplayer though.

I voted 3, but I think they all have something to recommend them, other than 1 (huge props for the time, natch). 2 had the best music, 3 had the best campaign/set pieces (the most fun to play in single player), ODST had the best atmosphere, Reach had the best multiplayer (okay, I'm biased in favor of firefight), and 4 had the best story and best weapons.

Halo 3 had the best of everything and then some. I really liked Halo 2 as well and despite everyone's claims about the story, I did appreciate the campaign since the beginning. The content felt it needed more expansion beyond the second game and it paid off with the third one. I also liked the multiplayer as well for being evolutionary and revolutionary, gameplay and design-wise.

I do have appreciation to all the other Halo games including 4.

ODST, because I care not for Halo's story or setting, so the differences in ODST were a big plus for me. "Halo except interesting", as I like to think of it.

With regard to competitive multiplayer, definitely Halo 2. I played that game so damn much while I was in college, and Halo multiplayer just hasn't clicked with me in the same way since then (although Halo 4 definitely started to bring me back around to it).

In terms of the campaign, it's a bit tough to choose. A lot of the games have standout moments, but right now I'm leaning towards Halo: Reach possibly being my favorite.

I know I'm in the minority here, but Halo 4 is the only game in the series I have truly loved. I like all of the games, but I really like ODST.

@shagge said:

I found ODST the least interesting of them all. I do understand why people like it but personally the effort done to show a more microscopic perspective wasn't strong enough for me to care about the characters nor their actions done. Surely a view of post-slipspace New Mombasa is very interesting to witness but there are inconsistencies with some of the details that help make the world engrossing.

Original game is my favorite in every way. Played the shit out of Halo 3 MP though.

The rest of the series I haven't touched much.

Single player, or multiplayer? Single player it's ODST, multiplayer it's Reach. I voted Reach because I care more about Halo multiplayer than single player.

I still love Halo 1, and 3 is right up there.

But Reach was so well put together, with some great storytelling and a very memorable atmosphere.

I've only played the original three, so those are the only ones I can consider. My choice is without a doubt Halo 3. Such a memorable, epic and fulfilling experience. An experience that I seven years later still remember. Though from the answers here it seems like I probably should've played ODST and Reach before I sold my 360.

I <3 Reach

Halo Reach has a awesome Campaign despite the flaws in reach MP i really liked it a ton, fuck it I love em all. (Except Halo Wars, never finished it)

Marathon 2

I still think it's the first one for me. I love the weapon balance. The pistol is one of my favorite guns in any FPS ever. Also love the whacky physics.

I really liked Reach's Firefight mode too.

I'm right there with you. The entire franchise is great and all, but Halo 4 was freaking outstanding. It's one of those games I wish I could play for the first time again.

ODST in my opinion. Dat saxaphone!

CE 4 Life Dawg

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.

Halo Wars

Halo 1 story Halo 2 multiplayer

It's a mix between Reach and 4 for me. Reach had a really emotional story and was kind of really mindblowing for the Halo series when it came out, but then 4 came out and even managed to top it.

I really liked 2, but that could be less because of the game and more because of the people that I played it with.

I liked 4 a lot as well, but I just had no idea what was happening with the Librarians or whatever and everything outside of the Chief/Cortana storyline went completely over my head.

While I'll always have a great fondness for Halo 3's multiplayer, Reach is definitely the strongest entry for me. The multiplayer and the upgraded Forge mode were excellent, and the ability to download custom maps and modes right from the game and play them within seconds (a feature outrageously left out of 4) was fantastic.

Halo is about multiplayer first, Master Chief and Cortana second. This is a fact. (And this is coming from someone deeply invested in the story, read most of the books, etc.) Halo 2 had the best multiplayer in any Halo game to date. This is a fact.

Halo 2 is the best Halo game. All other answers are wrong.

My answer is Halo 1, for nostalgia's and legacy's sake. But it's tough to say with clarity. I feel, when you judge a Halo game, you can really only judge it against itself, since the franchise rewrote so many credos inherent to the language of the first-person shooter. And, on those merits, each of the Halo games brings something pretty special to the conversation.

Apart from the original, which is the only one of the series that was an out-and-out cultural gamechanger, I tend to think Reach and ODST hold up especially well under scrutiny. Both of those games understand and explore their own unique narrative tones with such attention to detail that they end up elevating other dimensions of the package.

I picked Halo 3 because of the amount of time i sunk into that game in middle school has given me a lot of great memories. Nothing beat an afternoon of playing a bunch of user created game modes with a group of friends. Also playing the campaign on legendary in co-op was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had with a game. Reach is up their as my second but Halo 3 is number one just because of the nostalgia i have for it. The worst one would have to be in my opinion Halo 4. It was just so tedious and boring for me and that's coming from someone who beat all the other games including Halo Wars. Just something felt off the whole time i was playing it and the multiplayer felt different and not for the better.

Looks like the winner is Halo 1 by a healthy 9 points. That was my vote, since I only had a choice of 1 or 2. I hope I get to play the rest of the quadrilogy in November. At least from the responses here it doesn't look like the series just went straight down hill from game one.

I still hope they also bring the two spinoffs to the current gen in the future, but maybe those weren't as popular as the Master Chief games.