I actually liked ODST more than any of the first three Halo games. I was never a big Master Chief fan, and Cortana kind of annoys me (so you can just imagine how much I enjoyed Halo 3 ). But I loved the atmosphere of ODST and the sense of camaraderie between Buck and his squad. I think Bungie made the right call by making Reach about an entire squad--Noble Team, in this case--saving the day, rather than just one person. My only issue with ODST was its price. It really shouldn't have been $60. But I never bought it myself (just played my brother's copy), so whatever.
^ I felt like I got a great deal out of ODST. It contained all of the H3 map packs (none of which I had bought at that point, due to them being, well, overpriced ), it contained guaranteed access to Reach's multiplayer Beta, it contained Firefight - and the Singleplayer campaign didn't feel short to me. Actually, between slowly but steadily working my way through on Legendary and searching for all the Audio Logs, it felt long enough to be sold as a stand-alone. And that doesn't even take into account my above-mentioned enthusiasm for the gameplay and combat mechanics, which really took me back to Halo: Combat Evolved in places.
The best part of ODST was the non-interactive parts, the audio logs. I don't think I even put in the multiplayer disc.
You know, seeing as I've never owned an xBox (or a PS3 for that matter) I can't help but feel I'm missing out on something here. Are any of these games ever going to come out on Windows, or does Microsoft not like that platform or something?
Well, it's not so much that M$ doesn't like the Games for Windows platform (they tried to use Halo 2 to push Windows Vista by making it incompatible with earlier Windows releases), it's more about them strengthening their market position with the Xbox 360 by keeping Halo 3, ODST and Reach exclusive console titles.
I think it was initially part of their strategy. Release the first part on PC to get people hooked then make them buy an Xbox. Hell, it worked on me. I picked up Halo 1 for PC waaay back when it was in a bargain bin for like £10 (Just before Halo 2 came out). I installed it on Friday evening and completed it before Sunday evening. Hellova weekend. If you enjoy it the first one on PC, I'd say its likely you'll enjoy the sequels and such on Xbox, and if you have an Xbox, you might as well go and enjoy all the other great games like Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption and Gears of War.
Well seeing as I already own Mass Effect and indeed the first Halo on the PC, I can't see myself rushing off to buy a console. IF I were to buy one however, it'd probably be a PS3 since it would also save me from buying a separate BluRay player. I thought the first Halo was OK, not great, but OK. I had a quick go on the second one once and was thoroughly bored within an hour, but from what I gather the second one didn't go down so well with the fans either so it could have been an anomaly.
Halo doesn't have the same impact when you play it on the PC because part of the appeal of Halo CE was that it was an FPS that played extremely well on a console, something unusual at the time. I used to be a PC purist, whenever I played shooters on consoles I always got frustrated by not having a keyboard and mouse, but when I first played Halo CE, I didn't have the same frustration. Halo really helped console shooters and drove them in the right direction, and now I prefer playing action games on consoles and only use the PC for strategy games. I enjoyed Halo 2 and 3, I prefer them both to the first game, but they didn't really innovate as much as the first game, they threw in some new weapons and abilities, but the core game remained the same. Also, they took away the pistol of doom. Sometimes I could take down a hunter with one shot on legendary difficulty using that pistol. My brother is a Halo fanboy and he's really psyched for Reach, so we've been playing through the the games over the last few months and I have to admit that Halo CE has some of the most boring level designs in a video game. Take that mission in the ice canyon where you walk through was is essentially the same room about two dozen times, it's really repetitive. Then, later in the game, you have to walk backwards through that same level! And don't even get me started on the library level. The best thing about Halo 2 and 3 is that they shook things up and you rarely feel like you're walking through through the same room twice.
Yeah, those level designs in the first Halo were a drag. I suppose what bothered me most about what little I saw of the second one was what I felt was repetitive game-play. Just clearing one room after another is the kind of mindless shooter that does very little for me. Maybe I've been spoilt by Valve who are masters of pacing and seamlessly weaving narrative into the world that anything else tends to feel a little shallow. More than anything though, Halo just feels like it lacks any real personality and the world just has a certain "safe" bland vanilla feel to it. I wouldn't call myself a PC purist or anything, just lacking in funds so sticking with a platform I already own just makes sense and the savings are generally worth missing out on the odd console exclusive title. By and large, a lot of the really good games come out on PC still and the prices tend to drop a lot more and indeed, more rapidly too than console titles.
Very true. I used to belong to the same school of thought and didn't ever touch a console FPS. Halo proved to be very influential for the FPS genre, not only in terms of controls, but also with (semi-)innovations like well-designed vehicular combat, and restrictions to the amount of weapons one could carry around - making picking up new weapons a tough, strategic choice. I'm curious, do you prefer H2 and H3 over the original because of singleplayer or multiplayer aspects? Or both? I for one think the original Halo: Combat Evolved is still unmatched in the franchise in terms of the multiplayer mechanics, skill-requirements and balancing. I agree that the original Halo had some repetitive level designs - but it also had some of the best level geometry I have ever played in. Silent Cartographer remains one of my favorite singleplayer and co-op environments to this day. It wasn't even that big a level, but it felt huge, and it gave you several routes and objectives to complete in whatever order you saw fit. Halo 2 and 3 took away some of the more sandbox-y elements in the level design, they heavily restricted exploration via invisible barriers (H3 is especially guilty of this, H2 not so much) and they prohibited backtracking through the levels by cutting you off at certain points (mostly a hardware-related issue). I would have hoped for more non-linear/semi-linear level designs in H2 and H3 - in short, more Silent Cartographer Reach looks promising in that area as well.
I really hope the campaign is epic. With all this hype about multi player now it would be great to see an amazing campaign. Can't wait for Reach.
wasn't the original HALO meant to be a Sandbox RTS of sorts? *I believe the game was in development hell since the 80's*
It was originally going to be an RTS for Windows and MacOS, yes, but development certainly didn't start in the 1980s because Bungie didn't exist until 1991. Its first public unveil, as an RTS, was at MacWorld in 1999. In 2000, Microsoft bought the studio and Halo (the "Combat Evolved" subtitle was forced on Bungie by Microsoft, who was concerned that consumers would not look to a game titled Halo for an FPS) became an Xbox launch title.
The main thing I enjoy about the Halo games are the big action set-pieces and how epic it feels when you're in the middle of them. Sadly, there's not much of that in Halo CE, that game plays more like a standard FPS where you're a guy out to save the galaxy on your own, and most of the action takes place in rooms and corridors. The library level in particular bores me because it's just you in the same brown corridors for an hour or two shooting the same bad guys. There's only a couple of moments where Halo CE feels epic, such as the beginning of the Silent Cartographer mission, or the final warthog run. Halo 2 is better in this regard, the action is bigger and most of the time you're working with a group of guys rather than on your own. Then, Halo 3 made things even bigger, most of the missions have at least 1 big action moment, and it's great fun trying to take down a Covenant scarab tank with a squad of rocket troopers on mongeese. This is one of the reasons why I wasn't a fan of ODST, all the big action set-pieces happened during the day, but the night-time section was just you on your own shooting your way through a repetitive city. There was some good moments, but it was mainly walking from courtyard to courtyard taking down Covenant troops on the way. I only got a PS2 because I was a huge GTA fanboy and couldn't stand waiting for Vice City to show up on PC, and even then I tended to play the PC more. But with the Xbox 360, I really got into console gaming, it's nice to be able to play games with my feet up rather than being hunched at my desk. Now my PC is used only for strategy games, because you can't play a "proper" strategy game with anything other than a keyboard and mouse. I only prefer the singleplayer games, I don't play much multiplayer, and when I do I don't mind the differences between the four games. But the most fun I had in Halo multiplayer was in Halo CE in a 1v1 match. The two of us were fairly evenly matched and we played the game very strategically. With all the extra weapons and abilities in the newer games, it probably wouldn't have been as tense.