Halo Series

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Art Andrews

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I tend to go through games without really paying any attention to story... I just shoot things as a distraction and stress reviler. Right after I picked up this site, I bought all the Halo games and just completely playing them all the way through again, TWICE, (third time total) and really paid attention to the story this time. Here is my brief take on a series that is now over 10 years old.

Halo: CE - Even though this game is really old, it is hard not to love it. I had completely forgotten that SOOO much is introduced to us in just one game. For some reason I didn't think the flood was introduced until later games, but no... we get it all right to start with. LOVE LOVE LOVE this game.

Halo 2 - This is the only Xbox (not 360) game I have played and I don't know what the deal was but it made me incredibly motion sick almost the whole way through. I also hated the foley for the guns in this game. Very weak. With that said, it was fun to see the Covenant side of things. Interesting and different and gave a wider view of the universe. The story wasn't bad but didn't stick with me as well as the first game.

Halo 3 - Don't know why but this game is just forgettable to me. Cortana is being weird and cryptic for no real reason. Storyline is just meh... I don't know. Just didn't do anything for me.

Halo 3: ODST - Love the idea of this game, but the game itself is one of THE most boring things I have played in recent memory. Soooo slow, soooo dark and soooo few enemies. Seemed more of a game built to show off the environments than as a FPS.

Halo Wars - I know everyone loves to hate this game but I liked it. It once again broadened the universe a bit and gave you something new and different to do. It wasn't overly original or exciting but it was a nice change of pace.

Halo Reach - THIS is a great game. GREAT game play. GREAT characters. GREAT tugging at the heartstrings and a great precursor to all we know. Just fantastic. One of the best if not THE best.

Halo 4 - I know not everyone agrees but this one is right up there with Reach. This is a great game. Cortana is weird for a reason and you really start to feel a lot for her and the relationship we have seen building for a decade. The game play is fun and different and the graphics are amazing. It is a toss up between this and Reach and the best of the best.

If I had to rank the games from best to worst, it would be hard, but I think it would be:

Halo 4
Halo: Reach
Halo: CE
Halo 2
Halo Wars
Halo 3
Halo 3: ODST

I am sure this has been discussed before, but I'd love to know your take on the games.

Oh, and I am going through the audio books right now too!
 
Halo CE: This one was pretty fun, it's hard not to like the origin story.
Halo 2: I too liked playing as the Arbiter, other than that I thought it was meh.
Halo 3: This one has my favorite campaign of all the halos, I thought it was great. The whole race to stop Truth ark was great, and the AI quotes were great. "Tank beats everything!"
Halo 3: ODST: The ODSTs are so underpowered and the brutes are so powerful, it made for really difficult gameplay. Also, it was really hard to see because it was so dark. The story was good though.
Halo 4: Unorthodox campaign, but does a good job exploring the prometheans and forerunners. Cortana-Chief relationship was good.
Halo Reach: 2nd best campaign, I liked how it explained the backstory as to how the whole thing started. However it doesn't line up with the book the fall of reach.

Ranking in order of best campaign to worst:
Halo 3
Halo Reach
Halo 4
Halo 3: ODST
Halo CE
Halo 2

Ranked in order of multiplayer: (halos 3 and odst combined)
Halo 4
Halo Reach
Halo 3
Halo 2
Halo CE

That's my take, I would also be interested in other peoples'.
 
I have to agree Reach was one of the best games in the series, for exactly the reason why many people hated it: you're not the Master Chief. I like immersion. I like character customization. I like putting something that is "me" into a game, and having an entire campaign that revolves around "me" and Noble Team really sold it for me. Same can be said about Halo 4's Spartan Ops, with the unfortunate lack of any cutscene appearances. Don't get me wrong, the Chief's a cool guy, but I don't like having to play as "someone else's character" all the time.

ODST, I enjoyed that it lent itself more to the stealth approach, being able to actively avoid clusters of enemies where at many points in the other games you had to clear out every encounter before you could safely move on. I mean in ODST there were missions you could do without even firing a single shot, like the Nature Reserve (best mission for getting that achievement, by the way).

Halo 2 was the forgettable one for me, but mostly because I played it through once, maybe twice, and haven't revisited it in years. I do recall enjoying seeing the Covenant perspective, and after CE, feeling like every weapon handed to me was a nerf gun, but other than that, doesn't really stand out.

Halo 3 stays with me simply because once I got the 360, it was the only Halo game to play until I finally picked up ODST (and I only did that because it gave access to the Reach beta). I do recall not liking Halo 3's multiplayer for one reason: the "Jousting/Demolition Derby" that had become the mainstay of our household gaming sessions did not work well at all in Halo 3. But Halo 3 and ODST will always have a special place in my heart for two reasons: the Mauler, and the Chopper. I would love to see these return, especially if the Mauler got beefed up (particularly since it seems moving forward we won't have dual-wield if Halo 4 is any indication).

Halo Wars, I've only played the demo, so I can't really make a call one way or the other except to say I never really got into top-down strategy games. That was always more of my brother's thing. While I could spend a full day playing through a game's story mode or fiddling around in Forge, he has pulled marathon sessions of Civilizations and Age of Empires with such dedication I often don't realize he's home until I hear a trumpet/horn coming from his room. lol.

So my personal ranking would be Reach, then 3, followed by CE, ODST, 4, 2, and Wars is just out there in limbo. 4 sits low for reasons I have ranted about all too often already.
 
Halo: CE - The action was intense, the story was awesome, the Covenant were challenging, the setting was unique (in my opinion anyways :p). The way they introduced the Flood scared the living daylights out of me, and I don't think I have ever loved and hate a level more than The Library. The music for this game was amazing, it totally set the mood during missions and could either hype me up or creep me out.

Halo 2 - I played through it with a friend, which is all I can really say about it. And that's pretty much because he didn't care about the story, and skipped every single cutscene he could. His Xbox, his rules...womp womp.

Halo 3 - I thought the story was pretty decent. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. Brutes got pretty boring as an enemy, and the Flood was just annoying to deal with. Missed having Cortana with me for half of the game, though I assume that has to do with part of the plot in H2. Now I'm just curious, but did anyone experience motion sickness or extreme eyestrain/headaches when the Gravemind would pop up on your visor? Those parts would literally mess me up for several minutes. The multiplayer + Forge = awesome mayhem with friends.

Halo 3: ODST - You were a badass ODST, what more is there to say really? I thought the story was awesome and the gameplay was more challenging. You also got to run around with Mal, Wash, Jayne, and Caprica Six, how awesome is that?!

Halo: Reach - I don't know how I feel about this game. Solid gameplay, it was nice to finally fight against Elites again, and I didn't mind playing as my own Spartan. But I had read The Fall of Reach when CE came out, and it almost ruined this game for me. I personally think that The Fall of Reach storyline is a more solid line of events then what happened in this game. I have an issue with the S-III's basically being S-II's and blah blah blah more issues here and there lol. It was nice to finally fight alongside with other Spartans though, and that they had awesome personalities. Really enjoyed the multiplayer for this game, I think it's the best multiplayer that I've played in the Halo 'verse.

Halo 4 - Thought it was a visually beautiful game. I know some people really disliked the music, but I thought it was pretty good. I still prefer Marty O'Donnell though. The story was...alright? The last scene with Cortana made me pretty sad, not gonna lie. Gameplay was pretty good when fighting the Covies, the Prometheans on the other hand were just annoying and bored me. Multiplayer was blah, I maybe played it for a week. Spartan Ops was pretty cool, though I would have liked to see more variety with the missions.

Halo: Wars - I played the demo but couldn't get used to playing an RTS game with a controller, so I never picked it up. If only it had been ported over to PC...

TL;DR
This is my rank for the games I played:
1. Halo: CE
2. Halo 3: ODST
3. Halo: Reach
4. Halo 3
5. Halo 4

This is a long post, sorry about that lol.
 
I tend to go through games without really paying any attention to story... I just shoot things as a distraction and stress reviler. Right after I picked up this site, I bought all the Halo games and just completely playing them all the way through again, TWICE, (third time total) and really paid attention to the story this time. Here is my brief take on a series that is now over 10 years old.

Halo: CE - Even though this game is really old, it is hard not to love it. I had completely forgotten that SOOO much is introduced to us in just one game. For some reason I didn't think the flood was introduced until later games, but no... we get it all right to start with. LOVE LOVE LOVE this game.

Halo 2 - This is the only Xbox (not 360) game I have played and I don't know what the deal was but it made me incredibly motion sick almost the whole way through. I also hated the foley for the guns in this game. Very weak. With that said, it was fun to see the Covenant side of things. Interesting and different and gave a wider view of the universe. The story wasn't bad but didn't stick with me as well as the first game.

Halo 3 - Don't know why but this game is just forgettable to me. Cortana is being weird and cryptic for no real reason. Storyline is just meh... I don't know. Just didn't do anything for me.

Halo 3: ODST - Love the idea of this game, but the game itself is one of THE most boring things I have played in recent memory. Soooo slow, soooo dark and soooo few enemies. Seemed more of a game built to show off the environments than as a FPS.

Halo Wars - I know everyone loves to hate this game but I liked it. It once again broadened the universe a bit and gave you something new and different to do. It wasn't overly original or exciting but it was a nice change of pace.

Halo Reach - THIS is a great game. GREAT game play. GREAT characters. GREAT tugging at the heartstrings and a great precursor to all we know. Just fantastic. One of the best if not THE best.

Halo 4 - I know not everyone agrees but this one is right up there with Reach. This is a great game. Cortana is weird for a reason and you really start to feel a lot for her and the relationship we have seen building for a decade. The game play is fun and different and the graphics are amazing. It is a toss up between this and Reach and the best of the best.

If I had to rank the games from best to worst, it would be hard, but I think it would be:

Halo 4
Halo: Reach
Halo: CE
Halo 2
Halo Wars
Halo 3
Halo 3: ODST

I am sure this has been discussed before, but I'd love to know your take on the games.

Oh, and I am going through the audio books right now too!

You forgot about Halo spartan Assault :p

Also halo 3 is my n1. Mostly because of the well ballanced multiplayer.
CE 2nd
and reach 3rd
 
Halo Assault... I haven't even heard of it! Need to check into that.

Oh and I can't speak to multiplayer because I never play multiplayer... I am just terrible at it. Kinda like this...

 
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Art Andrews, I think it's time for a playthrough of each on Legendary ;)


Oh and you definitely have to go for all the Vidmaster achievements...
 
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Spartan Assault is awesome! I never was big on Ariel view but it's great!

Sent from my 831C using Tapatalk
 
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