Anime The mistake a lot of modern boomer shooters make

[MasterofThunder]

Halo was NOT responsible for the decline of the first-person shooter genre

It did however popularize the limited loadout mechanic in FPS games leading to a clumsy and limited approach in encounter design. Compare that to Half-Life with it's numerous ways to approach them by it's flexible and volatile selection of weapons.

Halo utterly OBLITERATES Half-Life.

Lol, lmao even

The two-weapon limit in Halo isn't a limitation, if anything it forces players to use weapons they otherwise wouldn't have out of necessity. One weapon runs out of ammo?, switch to another. Shotgun ran out of bullets?, I suppose the plasma rifle has to do. In other retro shooters, the instinct is to stick with the best weapon you have. Which more often than not only equates to a shotgun/super shotgun, a minigun, or a rocket/grenade launcher of some sort. It's an illusion of choice, and it's the same case with Half-Life. Half the weapons are situational or redundant, and you aren't even given enough ammo to use the coolest one (i.e the Tau cannon) for very long. There are also shitty meme weapons like the Snark and the Hornet. Meanwhile in Halo, literally every weapon has a use one way or the other. And you are always swapping them out, which keeps things fresh.

Don't compare Halo's two-weapon limit to the likes of Call of Duty's two weapon limit, you do the game a GREAT disservice by doing that.

 

[MasterofThunder]

Halo was NOT responsible for the decline of the first-person shooter genre

It did however popularize the limited loadout mechanic in FPS games leading to a clumsy and limited approach in encounter design. Compare that to Half-Life with it's numerous ways to approach them by it's flexible and volatile selection of weapons.

And regen health.

Halo singleplayer is utter trite, somebody needs to explain what they actually see in it, but when they do they rant about technology and influence (irrelevant and often false claims anyway, see above), not the godawful game design. The multiplayer is far more notable, things like regen health and weapon limits actually work there for optimal balancing. But it really can't be blamed for the decline. Everyone sucked. Obsessed with realism. Graphics whoring. Storytelling. Streamlining. Endless braindead military shooters. It all sucked. I have far more respect for third person shooters of the 2000s. FPS' reign belongs to the glorious 90s.

I see a pattern with those who brush off Halo. They fail to really quantify why they feel that way, or why it's such a supposed step back from 90s shooters in any way that isn't superficial and skin-deep. Believe it or not, many 90s shooters weren't actually all that great. For every Doom and Quake, you had Shadow Warrior, Blood, Shogo, Redneck Rampage, Blood II, Chex Quest, P'Oed. The list goes on. Halo as a series completely decimates many of the SLOP that released during the 90s. You're viewing the era through rose-tinted glasses, to say the least. And let's not even pretend the aforementioned Blood and Shadow Warrior were great games, they weren't. Duke 3D was the best Build Engine game by far, always has been.

 

[deuxhero]

Platforming is an absolute must for true 3D level design, as well as combat depth. Very, very few action games fare well in its absence unless they heavily compensate in other regards, e.g Survival Horrors lean into puzzles, resource & inventory management, among other things. The removal of platforming in action games post-decline is probably the number 1 measurably obvious decline. No longer can you jump over walls and other obstacles. No longer must you watch your footing during combat. No longer can secret areas be creatively hidden. No longer is there any airborne combat (e.g jump over melee enemies or low elevation projectiles). No longer is there complex verticality in level design. Just massive decline.

I am suddenly reminded of the force jump from Dark Forces 2. Literally the best force power you could level up due to how many places and alternative routes it opens up to you.

Speed is just as if not more important and has uses besides secrets.

 

[Ash]

If Halo is boring, Half-Life must be torment. What does Half-Life offer from a 'gameplay' perspective that Halo doesn't?. Is the shooting better?, no. Are the guns more unique and varied?, no. Are the enemies unique and memorable?, no. Is the level design better?, debatable. Halo's second half suffers from a reuse of assets, which again is the fault of it's development crunch and lack of time. But even as is, Halo's levels are more varied in terrms of visuals and stick with you FAR more than anything in Half-Life. More often than not if you asked a gamer what he remembers most about Half-Life, it's either the ridiculously long introduction tram ride, the resonance cascade, the helicopter sequence in the canyon, or Xen. And nobody likes Xen. You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels.

Debatable regarding level design? You can't be serious. That's one of the main areas that it destroys Halo. Halo doesn't have level design (slight exaggeration), just spaces depicting a location. Half-Life on the other hand Black Mesa itself is half the challenge and every new location offers something different, from puzzles, to environmental hazards, to hidden content, to swimming sections, platforming gauntlets etc etc. Content-packed, very varied, at times demands smarts (navigation, puzzles, combat encounters etc) and everything has purpose. Not to mention the environmental storytelling within and the immersive design (believable layout and execution).

Visually stick? Certainly not my primary concern, but Gaylo is dull, sparse in detail, and ugly.

I certainly like the fact that I have to actually manage the entire arsenal, pick the right weapon for the job to play most efficiently, have freedom to use the ones I desire (within reason), and that ammo conservation is in effect both short term and long.

"And nobody likes Xen."

Vocal minority of casuals, and sheep that parrot the crowd. A few fairly minor issues aside, Xen is a masterpiece.

"You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels."

Those aren't gamers. They're casuals

Even if you were interested in Half-Life for it's half-baked "lore", there is no expansive multimedia effort to sink your teeth into.

I just want one piece of media to stand alone and complete. What in the actual fuck do I need all this extra cash-grabby shit squeezing out everything they can from the concept for? If a sequel or spinoff comes and it is great, awesome. If nothing comes, who cares. If it comes and it is bad however, then it is a stain upon the name. For example, Half-Life would be a more respectable name to me if it weren't also tied to Half-Life 2 muddying the waters. Anyway, we're not criticising sequels and multimedia here, just Halo: Combat "Evolved".

Anyways, most of this stuff as usual is not really a defense of the poor game design, but perceived value that isn't going to be there for those that were adequately gaming before 2001, talking in favor of metaverse crap, and appealing to the anecdotes of casuals. Nice job defending your decline!

Believe it or not, many 90s shooters weren't actually all that great.

I am aware. There will always be bad games. However for FPS there are like 15 good ones and 15 great ones in the decade. While the 2000s has like 8 good ones and ZERO great ones. In terms of singleplayer. It was the decade of multiplayer and that it did do fairly well, it just should not be the focus of gaming.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Half-Life is a fast-paced shooter-platformer. Nobody copied it.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Halo was NOT responsible for the decline of the first-person shooter genre

It did however popularize the limited loadout mechanic in FPS games leading to a clumsy and limited approach in encounter design. Compare that to Half-Life with it's numerous ways to approach them by it's flexible and volatile selection of weapons.

Halo utterly OBLITERATES Half-Life.

Lol, lmao even

The two-weapon limit in Halo isn't a limitation, if anything it forces players to use weapons they otherwise wouldn't have out of necessity. One weapon runs out of ammo?, switch to another. Shotgun ran out of bullets?, I suppose the plasma rifle has to do. In other retro shooters, the instinct is to stick with the best weapon you have. Which more often than not only equates to a shotgun/super shotgun, a minigun, or a rocket/grenade launcher of some sort. It's an illusion of choice, and it's the same case with Half-Life. Half the weapons are situational or redundant, and you aren't even given enough ammo to use the coolest one (i.e the Tau cannon) for very long. There are also shitty meme weapons like the Snark and the Hornet. Meanwhile in Halo, literally every weapon has a use one way or the other. And you are always swapping them out, which keeps things fresh.

Don't compare Halo's two-weapon limit to the likes of Call of Duty's two weapon limit, you do the game a GREAT disservice by doing that.

You should ignore Ash, he's retarded and has to stop to aim in FPS games. His opinions invalid.

2 weapon is a limitation and it should force weapon switching but Halo gives you way too much ammo for the best weapons in the game constantly. The pistol/BR/DMR is so good there's never a real reason to use anything else except to drop an Elite's shields. Which is a real shame.

The snarks are great weapons and something Halo has lost since 343. Those dumb weird weapons with niche useage are ideal for a Halo sandbox. Snarks being used as heat seeking grenades is cool. Hornets shooting round corners is cool. I wouldn't say they're great but they're at least interesting and something some people will get a real kick out of.

 

[NecroLord]

If Halo is boring, Half-Life must be torment. What does Half-Life offer from a 'gameplay' perspective that Halo doesn't?. Is the shooting better?, no. Are the guns more unique and varied?, no. Are the enemies unique and memorable?, no. Is the level design better?, debatable. Halo's second half suffers from a reuse of assets, which again is the fault of it's development crunch and lack of time. But even as is, Halo's levels are more varied in terrms of visuals and stick with you FAR more than anything in Half-Life. More often than not if you asked a gamer what he remembers most about Half-Life, it's either the ridiculously long introduction tram ride, the resonance cascade, the helicopter sequence in the canyon, or Xen. And nobody likes Xen. You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels.

Debatable regarding level design? You can't be serious. That's one of the main areas that it destroys Halo. Halo doesn't have level design (slight exaggeration), just spaces depicting a location. Half-Life on the other hand Black Mesa itself is half the challenge and every new location offers something different, from puzzles, to environmental hazards, to hidden content, to swimming sections, platforming gauntlets etc etc. Content-packed, very varied, at times demands smarts (navigation, puzzles, combat encounters etc) and everything has purpose. Not to mention the environmental storytelling within and the immersive design (believable layout and execution).

Visually stick? Certainly not my primary concern, but Gaylo is dull, sparse in detail, and ugly.

I certainly like the fact that I have to actually manage the entire arsenal, pick the right weapon for the job to play most efficiently, have freedom to use the ones I desire (within reason), and that ammo conservation is in effect both short term and long.

"And nobody likes Xen."

Vocal minority of casuals, and sheep that parrot the crowd. A few fairly minor issues aside, Xen is a masterpiece.

"You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels."

Those aren't gamers. They're casuals

Even if you were interested in Half-Life for it's half-baked "lore", there is no expansive multimedia effort to sink your teeth into.

I just want one piece of media to stand alone and complete. What in the actual fuck do I need all this extra cash-grabby shit squeezing out everything they can from the concept for? If a sequel or spinoff comes and it is great, awesome. If nothing comes, who cares. If it comes and it is bad however, then it is a stain upon the name. For example, Half-Life would be a more respectable name to me if it weren't also tied to Half-Life 2 muddying the waters. Anyway, we're not criticising sequels and multimedia here, just Halo: Combat "Evolved".

Anyways, most of this stuff as usual is not really a defense of the poor game design, but perceived value that isn't going to be there for those that were adequately gaming before 2001, talking in favor of metaverse crap, and appealing to the anecdotes of casuals. Nice job defending your decline!

Believe it or not, many 90s shooters weren't actually all that great.

I am aware. There will always be bad games. However for FPS there are like 15 good ones and 15 great ones in the decade. While the 2000s has like 8 good ones and ZERO great ones. In terms of singleplayer. It was the decade of multiplayer and that it did do fairly well, it just should not be the focus of gaming.

So HALO is now some kind of masterpiece?

 

[MasterofThunder]

If Halo is boring, Half-Life must be torment. What does Half-Life offer from a 'gameplay' perspective that Halo doesn't?. Is the shooting better?, no. Are the guns more unique and varied?, no. Are the enemies unique and memorable?, no. Is the level design better?, debatable. Halo's second half suffers from a reuse of assets, which again is the fault of it's development crunch and lack of time. But even as is, Halo's levels are more varied in terrms of visuals and stick with you FAR more than anything in Half-Life. More often than not if you asked a gamer what he remembers most about Half-Life, it's either the ridiculously long introduction tram ride, the resonance cascade, the helicopter sequence in the canyon, or Xen. And nobody likes Xen. You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels.

Debatable regarding level design? You can't be serious. That's one of the main areas that it destroys Halo. Halo doesn't have level design (slight exaggeration), just spaces depicting a location. Half-Life on the other hand Black Mesa itself is half the challenge and every new location offers something different, from puzzles, to environmental hazards, to hidden content, to swimming sections, platforming gauntlets etc etc. Content-packed, very varied, at times demands smarts (navigation, puzzles, combat encounters etc) and everything has purpose. Not to mention the environmental storytelling within and the immersive design (believable layout and execution).

Visually stick? Certainly not my primary concern, but Gaylo is dull, sparse in detail, and ugly.

I certainly like the fact that I have to actually manage the entire arsenal, pick the right weapon for the job to play most efficiently, have freedom to use the ones I desire (within reason), and that ammo conservation is in effect both short term and long.

"And nobody likes Xen."

Vocal minority of casuals, and sheep that parrot the crowd. A few fairly minor issues aside, Xen is a masterpiece.

"You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels."

Those aren't gamers. They're casuals

Even if you were interested in Half-Life for it's half-baked "lore", there is no expansive multimedia effort to sink your teeth into.

I just want one piece of media to stand alone and complete. What in the actual fuck do I need all this extra cash-grabby shit squeezing out everything they can from the concept for? If a sequel or spinoff comes and it is great, awesome. If nothing comes, who cares. If it comes and it is bad however, then it is a stain upon the name. For example, Half-Life would be a more respectable name to me if it weren't also tied to Half-Life 2 muddying the waters. Anyway, we're not criticising sequels and multimedia here, just Halo: Combat "Evolved".

Anyways, most of this stuff as usual is not really a defense of the poor game design, but perceived value that isn't going to be there for those that were adequately gaming before 2001, talking in favor of metaverse crap, and appealing to the anecdotes of casuals. Nice job defending your decline!

Believe it or not, many 90s shooters weren't actually all that great.

I am aware. There will always be bad games. However for FPS there are like 15 good ones and 15 great ones in the decade. While the 2000s has like 8 good ones and ZERO great ones. In terms of singleplayer. It was the decade of multiplayer and that it did do fairly well, it just should not be the focus of gaming.

I will admit that Half-Life does a better job at depicting """realistic""" environments, but that isn't what Halo was going for. Halo didn't set out to depict the offices of some glow-in-the-dark government agency, it set out to depict an alien ringworld where you do battle with other aliens in dynamic, explosive combat encounters. Nothing in Halo is as """realistic""" as Black Mesa, but nothing in Black Mesa comes close to the second level of Combat Evolved. The wide open areas where you can drive a vehicle, and rescue soldiers who then aid you in combat against squads of Covenant forces. The best you get in Half-Life is some low-fi soyentist opening a door for you, or a security guard killing a single enemy for you, if it doesn't kill him first. Halo's level design, as flawed as it is, still accomplishes what it originally set out to do- make you feel lost in an alien environment. And it's a colorful one too, unlike Half-Life cornucopia of dull greys and greens (Assault on the Control Room notwithstanding).

On the topic of Xen, let's not revise history and claim that only a handful of chuds disliked it. Most people who played Half-Life remark the final Xen chapters as a chore, and that's the part they tend to SKIP entirely on repeat playthroughs. Xen is a dull, tedious trek through ugly Super Mario 64-esque blocks of land that literally hover in an empty void. The closest Halo comes to being that bad is the Library, but even that gets less of a bad rep than Xen does. The one thing the Black Mesa fan remake supposedly did well was overhauling that shitty part of the game, and it was all the better for it. Halo was inspired by Half-Life's attempt at being more cinematic, but it knew better than to take away player agency and replayability with forced, scripted setpieces. Every cutscene is Halo can be skipped, levels can be played in any order after completion without feeling like something's "missing", and it overall does a lot more to bring the genre forward than Half-Life ever did. Half-Life is the sort of game (((people))) like Neil Druckmann look back on fondly, as they sip their Kosher wine and remark at "how far" the industry has come forward in their favor.

 

[NecroLord]

If Halo is boring, Half-Life must be torment. What does Half-Life offer from a 'gameplay' perspective that Halo doesn't?. Is the shooting better?, no. Are the guns more unique and varied?, no. Are the enemies unique and memorable?, no. Is the level design better?, debatable. Halo's second half suffers from a reuse of assets, which again is the fault of it's development crunch and lack of time. But even as is, Halo's levels are more varied in terrms of visuals and stick with you FAR more than anything in Half-Life. More often than not if you asked a gamer what he remembers most about Half-Life, it's either the ridiculously long introduction tram ride, the resonance cascade, the helicopter sequence in the canyon, or Xen. And nobody likes Xen. You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels.

Debatable regarding level design? You can't be serious. That's one of the main areas that it destroys Halo. Halo doesn't have level design (slight exaggeration), just spaces depicting a location. Half-Life on the other hand Black Mesa itself is half the challenge and every new location offers something different, from puzzles, to environmental hazards, to hidden content, to swimming sections, platforming gauntlets etc etc. Content-packed, very varied, at times demands smarts (navigation, puzzles, combat encounters etc) and everything has purpose. Not to mention the environmental storytelling within and the immersive design (believable layout and execution).

Visually stick? Certainly not my primary concern, but Gaylo is dull, sparse in detail, and ugly.

I certainly like the fact that I have to actually manage the entire arsenal, pick the right weapon for the job to play most efficiently, have freedom to use the ones I desire (within reason), and that ammo conservation is in effect both short term and long.

"And nobody likes Xen."

Vocal minority of casuals, and sheep that parrot the crowd. A few fairly minor issues aside, Xen is a masterpiece.

"You ask a gamer who's played Halo what he remembers, and he will give you a detailed list of all the cool places he remembers playing through, and the setpieces that stuck with him. Especially in later sequels."

Those aren't gamers. They're casuals

Even if you were interested in Half-Life for it's half-baked "lore", there is no expansive multimedia effort to sink your teeth into.

I just want one piece of media to stand alone and complete. What in the actual fuck do I need all this extra cash-grabby shit squeezing out everything they can from the concept for? If a sequel or spinoff comes and it is great, awesome. If nothing comes, who cares. If it comes and it is bad however, then it is a stain upon the name. For example, Half-Life would be a more respectable name to me if it weren't also tied to Half-Life 2 muddying the waters. Anyway, we're not criticising sequels and multimedia here, just Halo: Combat "Evolved".

Anyways, most of this stuff as usual is not really a defense of the poor game design, but perceived value that isn't going to be there for those that were adequately gaming before 2001, talking in favor of metaverse crap, and appealing to the anecdotes of casuals. Nice job defending your decline!

Believe it or not, many 90s shooters weren't actually all that great.

I am aware. There will always be bad games. However for FPS there are like 15 good ones and 15 great ones in the decade. While the 2000s has like 8 good ones and ZERO great ones. In terms of singleplayer. It was the decade of multiplayer and that it did do fairly well, it just should not be the focus of gaming.

I will admit that Half-Life does a better job at depicting """realistic""" environments, but that isn't what Halo was going for. Halo didn't set out to depict the offices of some glow-in-the-dark government agency, it set out to depict an alien ringworld where you do battle with other aliens in dynamic, explosive combat encounters. Nothing in Halo is as """realistic""" as Black Mesa, but nothing in Black Mesa comes close to the second level of Combat Evolved. The wide open areas where you can drive a vehicle, and rescue soldiers who then aid you in combat against squads of Covenant forces. The best you get in Half-Life is some low-fi soyentist opening a door for you, or a security guard killing a single enemy for you, if it doesn't kill him first. Halo's level design, as flawed as it is, still accomplishes what it originally set out to do- make you feel lost in an alien environment. And it's a colorful one too, unlike Half-Life cornucopia of dull greys and greens (Assault on the Control Room notwithstanding).

On the topic of Xen, let's not revise history and claim that only a handful of chuds disliked it. Most people who played Half-Life remark the final Xen chapters as a chore, and that's the part they tend to SKIP entirely on repeat playthroughs. Xen is a dull, tedious trek through ugly Super Mario 64-esque blocks of land that literally hover in an empty void. The closest Halo comes to being that bad is the Library, but even that gets less of a bad rep than Xen does. The one thing the Black Mesa fan remake supposedly did well was overhauling that shitty part of the game, and it was all the better for it. Halo was inspired by Half-Life's attempt at being more cinematic, but it knew better than to take away player agency and replayability with forced, scripted setpieces. Every cutscene is Halo can be skipped, levels can be played in any order after completion without feeling like something's "missing", and it overall does a lot more to bring the genre forward than Half-Life ever did. Half-Life is the sort of game (((people))) like Neil Druckmann look back on fondly, as they sip their Kosher wine and remark at "how far" the industry has come forward in their favor.

The platforming in Xen is my main issue with it.
It still looks really cool.

 

[Lemming42]

The one thing the Black Mesa fan remake supposedly did well was overhauling that shitty part of the game, and it was all the better for it.

I like some of Black Mesa's Xen but it feels like they misunderstood it to some extent. They make it into the big action finale, complete with the ridiculous battle at the end of alien factory, but that's not really what Xen is meant to be, I think.

The beauty of Half-Life is that it's a constant escalation of threats - the progession from the Sector C labs through to the Lambda Complex is one constant rapid raising of stakes and intensifying of action. There's breathers where things go a little more quiet (On A Rail, Residue Processing), but it's generally a perpetual upward scale of action. By the time you get to the Lambda Core, you've already fought tanks, dodged attack helicopters, surivved enormous explosions, battled both HECU marines and Alien grunts, and performed death-defying feats of acrobatics.

Then Xen hits and suddenly, the wind's taken out of your sails. For the first time ever, the level of action has actually gone down. You geared up in the control room beforehand preparing to be a big swinging dick and face the greatest threat yet, but instead you're just alone, in a void, in outer space. You're not really an action hero anymore, you're just lost and alone. And then, of course, the game lets you glimpse behind the veil and get a hint that everything was even worse than you thought - the aliens you've been fighting the whole game are just grunts and slaves, and the real threat is Nihilanth... and even that is just a vanguard for the real real threat, something so extraordinary in scale that you can't comprehend it.

The trip to Xen isn't meant to be a big showdown, it's meant to be a frightening and brief dip into the unknown, a deliberate anticlimax after the previous hours of running through the facility besting marines and blowing shit up. You thought you were unstoppable, turns out you're cosmically irrelevant. You thought saving Black Mesa would save the day, turns out you can't even begin to know the scale of the true threat. You thought you'd tear through Xen with your big guns, turns out you're just lost in the coldness of space. You thought Xen was the alien fortress that needed destroying, turns out it's a "borderworld" and its destruction is almost inconsequential.

The levels themselves do suck and this isn't an attempt to defend the level design; virtually all of Interloper is total shit and actively boring to play, and the Gonarch fight is so bad that I just noclip past it half the time. But Xen does have a strong thematic purpose in Half-Life, and I believe the anticlimactic nature of it is deliberate. Black Mesa's Xen is fun but it's just not how the story is meant to end; it actively empowers the player at a time when they should be feeling scared and weak. It makes Gordon into a superhero when he should be, as the chapter title suggests, an interloper, wandering through a place he can't understand and doesn't belong, and in which he realises he's nowhere near as important as he thought he was.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I enjoy FPS platforming and I like Xen for it's alien feel. The slower pace and more exploration focused 3rd act isn't going to hit for everyone but for me it felt like truly being isolated and built up the horror rather than the action. Freeman no longer has Barnies to help him, it's him crawling through weird caves and finding the corpses of all who came before him. Big Mama is an intimidating boss and seeing Gargs wandering round while you lack supplies and have to run past them is pretty creepy.

I can understand people not seeing the action escalating but it escalates in other ways.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I love Xen!

 

[Saldrone]

In other retro shooters, the instinct is to stick with the best weapon you have.

Meanwhile in Halo, literally every weapon has a use one way or the other. And you are always swapping them out, which keeps things fresh.

Yeah, since in Halo CE practically everything you need in the game is the "Noob Combo" consisting of only the M6D Pistol and Plasma Pistol for 90% of the time and you have little reason to make a different loadout. (Same goes for Assault Rifle/Shotgun in Flood sections)

And you say it's an "illusion of choice" for dealing with enemies like HECU squads with different approachs such as throwing grenades or launching the SMG variants, lasering them with the tau canon, sniping them with the pistol/crossbow from a distance, planting satchel charges and laser trapmines, or flooding them with snarks? c'mon...

 

[MasterofThunder]

Most every game has an "ideal combo", Half-Life is absolutely included in that. Gamers naturally take the path of least resistance. That doesn't mean you can't actually force yourself to play a different way. If you treat Halo like a cover shooter, or as a simple one-two combo game, you're pigeon-holing the experience and ultimately ignoring what the developers actually wanted you to do. In Halo's case, they wanted the player's arsenal to be changing according to the situation, and according to the player's own strategies for how they want to engage with each combat scenario. The one-two combo is just one strategy, but there are others. Halo empowers the player to experiment, unlike 99% of other FPS games where there is usually a tiny handful of good weapons and the rest are just meme throwaways. Every gun is useful in Halo, even ones that players tend to dislike more. Let's now throw unwarranted shade at a masterpiece like Halo, when it's "faults" are present in literally every other first-person shooter ever made.

 

[Saldrone]

I forget to adress other points.

Half-Life is a bad story told poorly. Halo offers a Sci-Fi universe of intrigue and depth that was elaborated on in further sequels and novels.

I'am sorry but clumsy exposition where stories has to be told bia external content will never be better over elegant brevity and self-explanatory scenes where ambiguity that only enhances the sense of tension, mystery and intrigue. And a common criticism Halo 2 has is it's spread out story in books with the lack of information we get about things like the Arbiter prior his judgement and punishment.

Half-Life 2 outright retcons the first game by injecting in characters that were never there,

Yeah, i agree that Half-Life 2 retrocontuinity wasn't very good. Won't argue against that

As cartoonish as Halo CE was at times, every enemy stands out and is fun to fight. They have personality. The enemies in Half-Life, while somewhat interesting visually, don't have any personality. Best it has are the HECU marines with their radio chatter.

You must pretty autistic if you think that everything like alien animals and mind-controlled alien species has to have a kirky and cartoonish personalities to be somewhat interesting when they already show characteristic behaviors (Headcrabs are natural prey while Bullsquid are natural predators that preys on them while also being territorial showing hostility to other nearby bullsquids, Houndeyes hunts on packs, etc...) And there is various videos that go in depth with Xen wildlife

Half-Life stagnated and is now a completely dead franchise that only aging gen x-ers and millennials remember ironically. "Where is Half-Life 3" is more of a joke now than it ever was. Nobody actually wants it, because nobody cares anymore. Halo on the other hand, despite the abuse it's suffered, still has a diehard following that will happily play and discuss the classics for years to come.

Very weird that you touched the topic of atemporal relevance wihthout bringing up Halo 5 and Infinite fiascos (Which is already a huge red flag and hard cope since you deliberately asume that the Half-Life series is all about memes and jokes digging further your Halo favoritism ignoring that the franchise has even bigger circuses btw.)

 

[Hell Swarm]

In other retro shooters, the instinct is to stick with the best weapon you have.

Meanwhile in Halo, literally every weapon has a use one way or the other. And you are always swapping them out, which keeps things fresh.

Yeah, since in Halo CE practically everything you need in the game is the "Noob Combo" consisting of only the M6D Pistol and Plasma Pistol for 90% of the time and you have little reason to make a different loadout. (Same goes for Assault Rifle/Shotgun in Flood sections)

And you say it's an "illusion of choice" for dealing with enemies like HECU squads with different approachs such as throwing grenades or launching the SMG variants, lasering them with the tau canon, sniping them with the pistol/crossbow from a distance, planting satchel charges and laser trapmines, or flooding them with snarks? c'mon...

The noob combo is optimal for most situations it's not the only weapon combo you will be using. Some times you want a needler or a a plasma rifle. Some levels make the noob combo impossible to use for the whole level too.

Halo 1 is more proof of concept for the later games where the sandbox fleshes out then gets polarised by the BR.