Why the reverence for anything? For many people, it hit at the right time in the right way.

But since you asked, why do I dislike Halo?

• Sluggish/floaty gameplay
• Selection of weapons boring and mostly useless
• Squirrely vehicle controls
• Sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi plot without any humanity to ground it
• The Library

Then again I'm the sort of person that is incapable of enjoying any shooter on consoles that isn't Vanquish. On the other hand my first experience with Halo:CE was on my PC with M&KB so who knows. Just not for me, and I've put at least a few hours into most of them.

It's very much the same has how fondly people think of golden eye. It set the standard for shooters on consoles at that time. Halo set how online shooters should work and created that connected environment when it came to shooters on consoles. I think its something that may be lost picking it up now given how many of these things have become standards.

I don't get it either but I have noticed that its more popular with people who were <16 when it first came out. That said I have played through the campaigns of 3 and Reach to see what it is like. It ain't my type of game.

And one thing that never gets mentioned is how floaty the controls feel. I mentioned that to my work colleagues and they didn't get it. I had to explain it to them and then it clicked.

Halo is all about the combat sandbox, in both multiplayer and against the great campaign AI.

Halo was the first shooter that really made me think about how to approach enemy encounters instead of holding down the trigger and circle strafing.

For me, most of my love for the original halo was based on the campaign in co-op with my buddies but when they weren't around i enjoyed cranking up the difficulty and playing it solo. When the PC version of Combat Evolved came out, i grew to really love halo as a multiplayer game and i still do to this day. But the most special thing for me is the way the game changes on higher difficulties.

Halo on Legendary brings you to interesting situations gameplay wise. On lower difficulties or even with friends, you can plow straight through hordes and hordes of enemies with little to no problem. On higher difficulties, you're forced to adjust your tactics. Stick to cover, discover weapon caches you maybe didn't know were there, and pick the right tool for the job. Most other shooters i play still don't get this right. Take Call of Duty for example. When you crank up the difficulty on Call of Duty's campaign, you can take less damage and enemies deadly accurate with grenades. In Halo, you might get pinned down by multiples of what's usually there or a higher level enemy who has extra health and an overshield. It's at that point you are forced to scout out the sandbox and maybe you discover a cache of sniper ammo or rockets, that you didn't know was there because you never had the problem of having to look for it. It's that sandbox that makes Halo special to me. That and i love the multiplayer.

People have different tastes and opinions. I like Halo's story, gameplay, and the multiplayer. I like the entire series. If you don't then why comment on it? Are you a fan of the Metal Gear series, or Final Fantasy X? If so, then I don't understand why, but I'm not going to bug you about it.

Also I don't think the Golden Eye comparison people are making is exactly fair. Sure they were both very successful console shooters, in times where most of them were bad. But Halo Combat Evolved isn't hard to go back to, and Golden Eye is almost unplayable. Only the most diehard enthusiasts can, and even then only for a bit.

I still love Goldeneye, but the control scheme/controller is its biggest limitation. Everyone is used to two sticks for look/turn now. Thus, going back to what was essentially an awkwardly-placed, worse D-pad for movement or looking, depending on your chosen scheme (none of which were good) and not really being able to really move and aim simultaneously feels wonky as hell now. It doesn't take away from how awesome the game was, though. Still, Halo has definitely aged better.

Halo defined the FPS on consoles. It was the only game I had on XBOX for several months. I played through that game so many times! I read the books and spent hours on the bungie forums back in the days between Halo 1 and 2. I no longer care much though. I have not even finished Halo 4.

Despite CoD playing slightly different the basic controls have remained the same since Halo. Left stick for movement, right stick for look and right trigger for shooting. This have never been challanged since Halo. I played FPS games on console before like Goldeneye or Quakue 2 on PS1 and they all had different controls. Halo standardized the controls for a FPS and most importanly made it work. You no longer felt like FPS games were unplayable with a controller.

@ungodly: Because I asked for both sides of the opinion. I don't want just a bunch of reasons why Halo is awesome. I could Google that and find tons of top ten articles that give me that. I wanted the opinions of people who both like and dislike the series to prompt some discussion on if it truly stands up as one of the best or if it was incredible in its own time.

I honestly have no idea. They aren't terrible or anything, but there are FAR better FPS series out there, both on console and PC. I assume it must be a lot of nostalgia, but who knows?

@quarters: Such as? (Not arguing, just wondering what you consider to be far better).

@mbradley1992:

Yeah, I have to apologize. I thought this was a "I hate what you like" thread, then like a goober read your actual post. So yeah I'm an jack ass. Sorry.

I'll come up with a list of stuff that will finally make you like Halo and understand give me a few mins.

It brought many things to an audience that hadn't seen them before, to be as rudimentary as possible. It's absolutely nothing special if you compare it to the PC FPSs that came before it, but, to all of my friends that hadn't played those, it was mind-blowing. Even having done so, I still enjoyed more than my fair share of system link multiplayer almost every day after school for a couple years, there.

The multiplayer is superb. It's well balanced and offers a lot of variety in terms of different play types and game modes.

1 and 3 also have great campaigns (never finished 2, and 4 was pretty weak).

Alright, this will admittedly get into subjective territory, but I'll just throw out which ones I personally think of. I'm sure many will disagree with most(and these are in no particular order).

• Call of Duty
• Killzone
• Deus Ex
• Brothers in Arms
• Crysis
• Condemned(though that's debatable whether it's an FPS)
• Resistance(especially 3)
• Metro
• Rainbow Six(more the Vegas series for me)
• SWAT 4
• PAYDAY

And other random ones here and there. While Halo does have a distinct gameplay style, I still don't necessarily think it's better. Also, I've always thought the story overly pretentious without actually earning any of the respect it so desperately seeks. It's a shame though, as I think it's an interesting universe with some real potential. I just think they have no idea how to make good on that potential. Forward Unto Dawn was pretty dope, though.

The first Halo was something special, and a big enough hit to spawn what we see today. Though you can also make the argument that Bungie, and Microsoft, hit on a perfect way to market their product that lead to it's continued success despite not much in the way of improvements to the series. Halo Reach was pretty great though.

Anyways, this is a discussion best had years ago, when people actually gave a shit.

I like the single-player campaigns. In a era where the single-player can last all of 6 hours for even the less than skillful, the Halo campaigns were meaty and (mostly) varied. I played some co-op and a reasonable amount of competitive multiplayer, but what's always attracted me if the opportunity to run around in that world and blow things up. Reach was easily my favorite of the bunch, though.