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| quote: | Originally posted by weymouth
I'm a firm believer that Halo is only popular because Xbox had horrible games until Halo came out. If you equate Halo to any FPS experience with all platforms at that time then it was just another FPS with nothing special but if you compared Halo to all the other Xbox games at that time it was special and a must have for the system. |
Umm... Halo was an X-Box launch title. It was there from the beginning.
Anyways, I'm pretty much an FPS veteran. I started with Wolf 3D, I was about 7 years old at the time. Shortly after that was the original Doom, which I fondly remember playing in the dark at 8 years old and getting the crap scared out of me (in a fun way though). I got Doom 2 for Christmas after that and I was one happy kid. After that I played Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad, Hexen... and I feel like I'm forgetting some others, but alas it was a long time ago. Anyways, after that came Quake 2. I got a Monster 3D for my Birthday to go in my Pentium so that I could run OpenGL in Quake 2 right when it was still cutting edge. Good times. Q2 and AQ2 became the first FPS games that I played online seriously. After Q2 was Half-Life. I've played that game inside and out, just about every mod you can imagine. It was here that I started to get heavily into online play. I've since played in top-level TFC, CS, Day of Defeat, Natural Selection, Quake 3, and Quake 3 Fortress clans. I've since moved on from the clan scene, but I still play just about every FPS I can get my hands on.
So yeah. I've played them all.
I enjoyed Halo. My first time playing it was on the PC (which was a pretty shoddy port, by the way, but fun nonetheless). I greatly enjoyed the fact that you could carry only two weapons at a time. Even in a fantasy Sci-Fi FPS game, I can appreciate the realism of not being able to carry an entire fucking arsenal with you in some magic hat. That was my one major gripe with Half Life, and then later Half Life 2. HL really defined the FPS as a mature genre. The game took place in a world that felt real--health, weapons, and ammunition weren't found lying around in secret rooms as if some magical fairy had left them there for you. They were found in logical places. The environments weren't a series of maze-like arenas with set entrances and exits, for which you had to find colored keys to advance from. And yet, you could somehow manage to carry a crowbar, two pistols, a shotgun, an mp5, a crossbow, an RPG, a gauss gun, a gluon gun, an alien bee launcher, a variety of grenades and mines, as well as a small litter of cute but vicious little alien creatures called snarks. I understand the enjoyment of a variety of weapons, but still, it's kind of hard to believe sometimes. So, Halo's weapon system was an enjoyable breath of fresh air for me.
I also liked how you could bash anyone in the face with whatever weapon you were holding at that moment.
I also enjoyed the huge, open air environments, and the seamless transitions into various vehicles.
I also enjoyed the relatively slower pace of your movements. Firefights were more about cover and strategy, rather than running in, guns blazing. Floating jumps are still really fucking weird, though. I guess you could argue that the ring has a lower gravity, but whatever, I'm not that picky.
I enjoyed the teamwork with NPC characters. Fighting off an assault with a few NPC marines, then loading into a jeep and running down some elites was an enjoyable experience.
I enjoyed Halo 2 as well, for all the same reasons pretty much
The storyline is mediocre, and the game is by no means perfect, but I think it's one of the more enjoyable FPS games that I've played in my time.
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NEW MIX [Feb/March 2008]
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