Halo: The Master Chief Collection now on Steam

[JDR13]

2) Why does everyone and their dog seem to hate Halo 5? I mean, can't be worse than 4.

Believe me... somehow it manages to be worse. I don’t even know where to begin. If that’s how you felt about 4 then I wouldn’t touch 5 with a 10 foot pole.

Was Halo 5 the first one that wasn't made by Bungie?

 

[wahrk]

2) Why does everyone and their dog seem to hate Halo 5? I mean, can't be worse than 4.

Believe me... somehow it manages to be worse. I don’t even know where to begin. If that’s how you felt about 4 then I wouldn’t touch 5 with a 10 foot pole.

Was Halo 5 the first one that wasn't made by Bungie?

Halo 4 was the first 343 game. Bungie’s last Halo game was Reach.

 

[baud]

I'd say most of the better levels are in the second half of the ops

Worth a test run, then.

I wrote some more before in the thread:

Spoiler

I finished all the Spartan ops.

It was a mixed bag and surely something that's better played with friends.
There was a lot of reused maps, but they got better at how they were reusing it in the second half of the ops, with adding some new parts to existing maps and new maps altogether.

The way you respawn as if playing coop instead of going back to a checkpoint makes it way easier, since there's little penalties to dying (apart from whatever weapons you were carrying, which can be an issue if you lose the last rocket launcher of the map and there's still some hunters around); it allow allow to grind through some tough encounters (I played mostly on heroic this time). Though the spawn are sometime either right in firing range of enemies or a hundred meters away.
Another issue is how weapons despawn too quickly, which is compounded by the starting weapon limitations (only carbines and assault rifles from all races available, no shotty or sniper).
Sometime, the game will spawn enemies (like a quartet of hunter or a squad of elites) all around you, leading in an instant kill before you've had time to react.
In the second half of the campaign, the encounters get more interesting, less 'let's spawn a few waves around the player to pad the map length'. There's one with big swarm of promethean drones attacking a position while you activate turrets to help you. Another is a tank session with a lot of promethean drones and knights, so you have to balance destroying the knights attacking you and dealing with the drones respawning the knights and additional turrets, though it is hampered by the stupid tank control (vehicles go where the mouse is pointing) and the very narrow corridors in which you have to drive. Some elites are given promethean shotgun, which is a nice touch, but usually make them less of a threat.

There's also a map with a big vehicle that feel a little out of place, more for something like Gears of War:

Spoiler

Story is also a mixed bag, since what's told in the CGI cutscenes has nothing to do with what you're doing for the first half, since the cutscenes are about a different squad than the one the player is part of. Though in the second half, the story picks up enough that what the player does things related to what's told in the cinematics and I was more invested in what I was doing.

 

[U-8D8]

I need to hunt down some postmortem. How you can dig deeper than Halo 4 must be fascinating

At the risk of sounding cliche, it's not what's wrong with Halo 5, it's what isn't.

Note that I haven't played any of the 343 games and I experienced the shitstorm second hand, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

As I've heard it, it doubles down on Halo 4's gameplay and adds "kewl" spartan abilities like the ability to slam into the ground or dodge like in the Unreals. They decided for the anal reason that because it breaks lore to have three people playing with you in co-op without the game acknowledging them that you must be perpetually joined at the hip with three braindead AIs meant to take the place of your co-op partners. I'm pretty sure that they completely removed the marines from singleplayer too, so if you expect anything approaching "fun" from your AI companions, you're outta luck because they're six different flavors of "stoic." The story was hyped up as Chief going AWOL and that some Spartan spook trying to hunt him down with a lot of "choose your side" garbage that didn't end up into the main game. 343 instead makes a plot that angered both the old fans that hated 4 and the new fans that liked it. SPOILERS, Cortana is alive somehow and she's evil now. All the robo-skellies follow her now for some reason and she wants to control the universe. Add on top of all of this that they said this would be the longest Halo campaign yet and it ended up the shortest.

I could get into the multiplayer and how they didn't include even some of basic modes from past Halo games or how they added the most aggressive monetization in a Halo game yet with what was basically pay-to-win mechanics for one game-mode and justified it with whatever the hell this is. Timestamped for your convenience.


There are some fan campaigns for the pc version of Halo CE if you're still interested. They're of varying quality, but I'd at least suggest The Silent Cartographer: Evolved which is pretty neat and also only one level to boot. Ignore what people say and avoid SPV3 like the plague. If you want a rabbit-hole, that's a rabbit-hole.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Just installed this thing on PC. I played the original Halo in 2001 and Halo 3 in 2007.

Would you recommend starting with Reach?

 

[Israfael]

Onwards to .... ODST? the fuck is this

What difficulty were you playing on? I fairly often wished there were less enemies on the streets of Mombasa in ODST as there's no good tools to kill them on legendary (apart from the carbine which was a rare and prized find for me). Added some extra to survival theme of the game.

 

[Dayyālu]

What difficulty were you playing on? I fairly often wished there were less enemies on the streets of Mombasa in ODST as there's no good tools to kill them on legendary (apart from the carbine which was a rare and prized find for me). Added some extra to survival theme of the game.

Heroic. I played Halo: CE on Legendary and I didn't like it too much: I play FPS nowadays to relax.

Would you recommend starting with Reach?

Personally, no. Halo 2&3 are for me the best experience played one after the other, while Reach already has fatigue and gameplay rot setting in. Other, smarter people elaborated on Reach's shortcomings - sprinting, gun design - but it's an inferior SP experience to even ODST.

 

[Israfael]

Heroic. I played Halo: CE on Legendary and I didn't like it too much: I play FPS nowadays to relax.

Well, that explains it, thanks.

 

[baud]

Would you recommend starting with Reach?

Personally, no. Halo 2&3 are for me the best experience played one after the other, while Reach already has fatigue and gameplay rot setting in. Other, smarter people elaborated on Reach's shortcomings - sprinting, gun design - but it's an inferior SP experience to even ODST.

starting with Reach, you mostly go up in quality, but only if you play all/most games.

 

[Israfael]

I'd say Reach is better than Halo 1, although I really hate the vehicle sections there. Halo 1 was all around mediocre - repetitive empty levels, lots of backtracking (hi Silent Cartographer), weird ballistics model even on PC.

 

[baud]

I'd say Reach is better than Halo 1, although I really hate the vehicle sections there. Halo 1 was all around mediocre - repetitive empty levels, lots of backtracking (hi Silent Cartographer), weird ballistics model even on PC.

personally for me that's other way around, I felt the ambiance is better, the encounters less boring (with the arrival of the flood and sentinels midway through) and I didn't really mind the weird ballistics, mostly because I felt each weapon has its uses/at least its niche, unlike some of reach weapons which were borderline gimmicky/fucking useless. And for the backtracking I usually had vehicles

 

[Israfael]

And for the backtracking I usually had vehicles

Most of the backtracking happens inside the same building (well, same effling model), how can you use any vehicle inside that?

mostly because I felt each weapon has its uses/at least its niche,

Define niches for the starting autorifle, SMG and the plasma gun, they are useless even on non-legendary difficulties. Only H2 needler is probably worse than them, but no idea how it was in the MP (I guess the same as you have basically the same shield/hp as your adversaries). But yes, focus rifle was pure aids, not sure how you can kill anyone with it in MP (and you'll most probably get shredded with it in the campaign as well)

 

[ferratilis]

Playing Halo CE for the first time, on Heroic. First of all, the music is amazing, some of the best I've heard in any game. The enemy AI is quite good, I expected some kind of braindead enemies randomly shooting at you, but these guys know how to dodge grenades, sneak behind you, work as a team and, most of all, not do the same thing over and over again. It was a pleasant surprise. The game is at its best while in open environments imo, it's like a small sandbox of destruction that is interesting to play in, especially on Heroic. The vehicles are also fun to use, especially that purple hovering thing. It's nimble and has good firing rate. I find myself switching between the new and old graphics, and tbh, the old looks better because it's less busy. Sometimes less is more. Guns also sound better in the old one. But both have merits.

BUT, there is something terrible, and it's any kind of interior level design. Holy shit, I've never seen worse level design in a game than this. Corridor after corridor of copy pasted levels. I find myself lost all the time because the levels were designed like shit. Imagine your levels being so bad that you have to put arrows on the floor to guide the player. And then the Flood. God, what a shitty enemy. On Heroic, those little shits will make you tear your hair out (now I'm glad I didn't pick Legendary). Don't know what's worse, the little cauliflower guys or the exploding fatsoes. At least the assault rifle works well against them (the only situation where it's useful tbh.) I had to take a break while playing the Library because it was getting annoying.

Overall, it's more good than bad. Just because of the music, some things can be forgiven. This track in particular is 10/10:

 

[Alienman]

Level design gets greatly improved after the first Halo.

 

[Taurist]

I bought this in the sale, and I'm about an hour into Reach and I'm finding it really boring and terrible. Is it going to get any better or should I refund.

 

[ferratilis]

Refund.

 

[Taurist]

Cheers. The guns feels so wimpy.

 

[JDR13]

I bought this in the sale, and I'm about an hour into Reach and I'm finding it really boring and terrible. Is it going to get any better or should I refund.

Reach isn't one of the better games if the series imo, but all of them are a bit on the easy side if that's what you mean.

 

[Yeoman]

I hear a lot of people say that Reach's weapon sandbox is one of the worst in the series and it's kinda true. The combat balance is heavily skewed towards precision headshot weapons, especially the DMR. The Halo series has some of the best difficulty modes because they actually affect AI behavior, unfortunately the higher difficulty modes also buff enemy health to excessive amounts. Automatic weapons such as the AR and Plasma Repeater just feel awful to use in any difficulty level above Normal. I play on Heroic and you really have to pull yourself away from using the DMR because other weapons take a lot more effort to use to be effective.

I found out recently that you can easily tweak player and enemy attributes in the game's Firefight (wave survival) mode. I set the player damage to 125% and I also set the player speed to 110% to make the Sprint ability not be so vital. On Heroic difficulty, I think the result is incredibly good. The AR finally feels great to use, and Covenant weapons that I wouldn't even bother picking up before such as the Plasma Repeater and the Concussion Rifle are now pretty useful. If only we could also tweak the variables in the campaign in the same way.

I don't think there's a proper updated and working balance mod for Reach yet. There's the Mythic Overhaul mod but it adds several redundant weapons instead of just fixing the balance problems. Also, even simple tweak mods have to be several GBs in size because each level in the game has their own file and contains all the damn assets and gameplay parameters.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Well, it happened...

I've become a Gaylo fan

 

[mediocrepoet]

Well, it happened...

I've become a Gaylo fan

Something's wrong with your Steam settings. Everything's showing up as gibberish. I think it got infected with consolitis.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Everything's showing up as gibberish.

Nah, that's simply what a language looks like.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Everything's showing up as gibberish.

Nah, that's simply what a language looks like.

A parrot language? As in, what someone would use when they don't actually understand language, but try to mimic their betters who put a tophat and monocle on it for laughs?

Checks out.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

A parrot language?

Simply put, it's a language Philosoraptors can never hope to surpass

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Anyway.
Despite the 30 hours of play time, I haven't been able to play much of the campgain both because of computer problems and irl obligations.

Still in regards to Halo's campgain, I've more recentely completed Assault on Control Room.
Playing on Heroic, because I hear Halo 2 Legendary is bullshit and I don't want to deal with that when I eventually jump to 2.
Also playing with the classic graphics.

The 1st mission is very basic and it did really validate alot of those old "baby's first fps" insults from fellow PC Master Race associates.
Almost refunded the game after that - I only didn't because I immediately tried H1 multiplayer after.
And I'm gald I didn't - not just for the multiplayer - because I gave the campgain another chance and wow the 2nd mission (the first on Halo) is a great deal better in every regard.
In fact, after getting my first warthog I realised "this is basically Crysis 1" - you're dropped into a big open sandbox and given an objective that the game lets you pursue in whichever way you see fit.
Allied with good level design, nice pacing and a charming artstyle (plus details, like the marines commenting on your performance), yeah the game is pretty fun.

Then there's enemy design.
Something I though the game would be rudimentary, but to my surprise it so far succeeds quite well.
Each covenenat alien is so distinct from behaviour, down to silhouette, that there's no confusing them - you can distinguish a Grunt, a Jackal, an Elite and a Hunter from a mile away.
More importantly their AI complement each other:

• Grunts are the fodder enemies, whose advantage is primarly their large numbers - but their behaviour does alternate between attacking and defending, depending of the player's performance.
• Jackals are these annoying bastards that stay on the defense and have surprisingly good accuracy - one charged shot of their plasma pistol and the Master Chief loses all his shield.
• Hunters are though to take down and deal massive damage if their attack connects, but there's very few of them and they aren't difficult to "dance" around - needlers are particularly useful agaisnt them, are fortunately they are plentyful.
• the Elites - the star of this whole show - like many PC bros, I used to think people that said Halo's AI was excellent were delusional, but now I see this has been nothing but ignorance and prejudice from my part, it's good to be humbled - the dynamism of the Elites behaviour really does to put shame the enemy AI of a great deal of action games, even 24 years after Halo CE release - they are quick to identify and react threats, they actively try to stay alive but will exploit opportunities when the player makes a mistake, they have very good pathfinding, they can be patient as hell if they perceive waiting for the player to come to them is the most advantageous course of action, and overall they are capable, dangerous figthers both in long and short range - they are an excellent and iconic enemy.

I also like the little details, like how if you kill an Elite commander then all the Grunts in the area start panicking like the goofy little idiots they are :3

Also the hate for it's mechanics is unjustified.
Aim assist?
With mouse and keyboard controls, if aim assits is not actually turned off, then it's so massively reduced it is pretty much inconsequential - and at the end of the day, it is a mechanic made specifically for controllers, which after plugging in mine to try it for a bit, I found it's not near as overriding of player skill as detractors make out to be, the game still remained fairly challenging.
Health Regen?
Super well integrated into the game's flow. You have a shield that can take a small amount of damage before expiring, and only regenerates after a few seconds of not taking damage. And then you have your actual HP, which despite larger than the shield, does not regenerate and you must replenish by finding health packs. Essentially, the shield is the game's leniency to your short term mistakes and the HP represents your long term punishment. There's a real battle of attrition for the latter, because levels are very big and filled with many firefigths, so the more mistake you make, the tenser and less forgiving the subsequent battles become.
And thankfully, that aspect never becomes annoying or downright merciless, because the shield exists. As such, there's never a situation so precarious the player can't prevail through sheer skill alone (and also because being forced to hunt for med packs in levels this big, in order to have a chance to survive, would itself be dull and annoying).
Only 2 available weapons?
Completely fine. Every weapon is viable. Weapon placements are suited for each location and firefight. And overall the flow of game and enemy design encourages not sticking to any particular gun.


Onto the 3rd mission - Truth and Reconciliation
The first third is awesome - sneaking around, snipping grunts, fighting alongside a marine platoon, ending with an assault on the gravity lift.
But man after that, does the quality take a plunge. There's a few challenging segments, like the hangar bay , but most of it is just corridor after corridor.
Were not the the strong start, this mission imo would be worse than even the first.

Fortunately, the 4th mission is the Silent Cartographer.

Nothing else to be said really.

The 5th mission, Assault on Control Room, imo comes close to the quality of the previous one but the ending segment goes for a bit too long.
Great mission still.

And I believe this is the 1st half of Halo CE campgain.
A couple of rough moments, but overall it's been quite enjoyable to play and also discover it's influence on the genre.
It might not be a masterpiece, but it's a fun game with thoughtful design.
Really, unless the next 5 missions are a complete downhill decline in quality, I don't see what's so egregiously bad about Halo CE...

And this is not even talking about Multiplayer. Which has been 90% of my playtime with MCC.
After more than 25 hours with Halo CE, Halo 2 and Halo 3 multiplayer, I get it now. I finally understand why Bungie's Halo was as absurdly massive as it was back in the day.
You want to know why?

Spoiler

It's fun.

And Halo 2 multiplayer in particular was innovative for it's time.

EDIT: Oh by the way, I forgot to mention. The music is fucking amazing: