Sir, permission to start the Halo thread.

"For what purpose, Trar?"

The sci-fi shooter series that made the Xbox and had consistently good games until Halo 5. Halo Infinite has been delayed to fall of next year; personally I'm not sure if I'll pick it up then. I want to see if it's any good, and if I can even run it, before I buy it.

I was last playing MCC on PC to finish Spartan Ops, which is a slog through waves of enemies meant for multiple players to fight on mostly repeated maps. Since very few people want to play it cooperatively now, I ended up finishing it by myself.

I thought Halo 5 did all the same things as the other Halo games so I don't know why people don't like it.

Lack of interesting characters and world-building, I think. I didn't care about anyone, while I was completely fascinated by Cortana , Guilty Spark and the Arbiter and so many other characters in the Bungie games. It was still a perfectly fun video game but I borrowed it from a friend and had no interest in buying it again or exploring the world.

I loved this series, and Halo 2 is still one of my top games ever. Marathon got my friends and I banned from the school computer lab for playing too much...

I have kind of a weird relationship with Halo.

I like it, what I've seen, but... first person shooters aren't really my thing.

And I'm not sure real-time strategy is, either; I prefer turn-based.

At least I've got Spartan Assault! I just wish they'd bring Spartan Strike to consoles. And that I could get any of the merchandise for that game.

Despite my sucking at FPS, though, what they showed of Infinite... really looks fun to me? It really makes me want to try it.

Halo's great!
I recently used the PC release of the Master Chief Collection to play all the Halos in a row.
Halo's fascinating because it used to be The New Kind of FPS and now... it just isn't. Halo has just as much in common with Doom 2 as it does with your modern Call of Duties or Battlefields. It's this kind of middle space that takes the core concept Doom's weapon and enemy balance, boils it down, and goes "okay now you have to choose which options you even have access to." It can't be stated thoroughly enough that Halo also handles incredibly. Halo Reach is one of the finest-feeling FPSes I've played to this day. It's only real competition is, like, Doom and Destiny 2, and the thing about Destiny 2 is that it just controls like Halo Reach.

Here's what I think about the Halo games I've played:
Halo 1: revolutionary, still shines, has a few levels that are real rough and unfortunately very memorable for the wrong reasons
Halo 2: best storytelling in the series, worst levels in the series - tons of time are spent in wave defense segments
Halo 3: the best FPS of its subtype, starts strong and never stops
Halo Reach: see Halo 3, the story is a step back because of its place in the timeline, but there are no Flood in this one so it levels out
Halo ODST: oh no i don't like this one; it's still solid and better than Halo 2, but I don't like the pacing of the encounters as much as I like Halo 3 and Reach's

Sadly, players were very upset about the coolest parts of the setting and super into the worst parts of the setting, so the focus on how human and covenant social structures mirror each other was reduced the further in the series you get. I understand there are More Halo Games after Reach, and I'm probably going to play 4 at some point, but 4 and onward being in the hands of a different dev team is a very convenient breaking point where I can go "these are the ones I like!"

I have some of the MegaConstrux Halo minifigures and they're maybe the best little dudes I've ever owned in my life. Master Chief and the Arbiter are sharing a Mongoose on one of my shelves somewhere.

I very recently played through the original trilogy for the first time on Master Chief Collection, and was shocked at how balls-to-the-wall crazy the writing/lore is. I had this sense of Halo as a fairly grim shootmans game, I wasn't expecting a ridiculous SyFy original movie built around what a 12 year old would think is the coolest thing in the world feat. little men that call you a bitch. Also it might be my favorite "run/drive between a bunch of big setpieces" shooter now? I started up ODST but never finished it, I should give it another go

Edit: Also I hated the Flood until I realized that the secret is you aren't supposed to try to kill all of them. Every time they appear your real objective is to reach some point or another, and they won't overwhelm you if you keep moving

Thought just crossed my mind...

While I'm not exactly clamoring for more LEGO games, I think I might be able to make an exception for a Mega Construx Halo game in a similar vein that tells truncated versions of the stories grouped together in one package.

(Part of that is that I really like the aesthetic, and want to get some of the mini-figs.)

Halo is great. My understanding is that Halo 5 made a lot of changes that made it less like Halo and more like other popular shooters? ADS, sprinting, etc?

Halo is my comfort food. If I'm stressed, depressed, tired, or otherwise at a loss for what I want to play, Halo is it. This makes it probably the single most-played series of games for me, aided in no small part because they take fairly little time to get through.

I'm one of those weirdos who plays first-person shooters for the campaign almost exclusively, for various reasons. When I have dipped my toe into the multiplayer end of the pool, it's been with either Halo or Destiny. I love the pulpy sci-fi weirdness of it, the juxtaposition of the futuristic and the mind-bogglingly ancient, and the sense of desperate hope and heroism of the series. It's probably fair to say that it's a power fantasy in some sense, with the Master Chief being a nigh unstoppable force of almost supernatural tenacity and determination, but I like that about it. Sometimes, a power fantasy is exactly what I'm after -- hell, what I need after a rough day of whatever it is that's got me down.

I don't dislike 343 Industries' handling of the series, but I'm not as excited about it as I am about Bungie's era. I'm entertained by what's shaping up to be an AI war story, but it doesn't grab me in quite the same way as the pre-343 era of the series did. In that way, I suppose, I'm glad Bungie was able to wrap the series up before handing it off. It's slightly less weird to experience a creator transition when it's a new story in the same setting, rather than a continuation of an existing story.

Halo 5 wasn't my favorite of the lot, but I still enjoyed it. My main gripe with the story side of it was that I felt as if I was expected to know who all the characters were already. Fireteam Osiris was presented to us as if we should already know who these people are, despite only one of them (Buck) being a real returning character, another one (Locke) being seen previously solely as an element of the framing device for the Halo 2 remaster, and the other two being total unknowns unless you're familiar with the expanded universe. Which is probably my one really big gripe with 343's handling of the franchise overall, I guess: It seems like you're expected to keep up with all the ancillary stuff now to really appreciate what's going on. That stuff seemed to be extra when Bungie was running the show; now it feels practically essential.

I think my favorite stretch of the series is Halo 3, ODST, and Reach. Halo 1 and 2 are always a little hard for me to go back to because of the difficulty. Halo 1's environments are difficult for me to navigate at times, and Halo 2's enemies come in numbers too great, and are a little too bullet-sponge-y, for my tastes. Halo 4 was fine, but a little stingy with the ammo, but otherwise fine. Halo 5's campaign seemed like it was barely there, but since it was harder to die (thanks to a version of Gears of Wars "downed" mechanic), that made the campaign fly by.

madhair60 said:

Halo is great. My understanding is that Halo 5 made a lot of changes that made it less like Halo and more like other popular shooters? ADS, sprinting, etc?

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I honestly don't remember them adding ADS, but it's worth noting that you play Not Master Chief for a majority of the game and a few levels are just talking to people in a small environment with no shooting. As far as sprinting, when I replayed the first four games recently I found myself often wondering why there wasn't a sprint button.

FWIW I haven't played 5 (or 4, yet...), and I'm sure I'd have a good time with it.

I only played Halo when I got myself a 360 well, well, well after it died, and I came to it very late expecting not to be particularly impressed with it, and I was pretty much blown away by the game feel and the spectacular atmosphere and scale of it all. Even the levels people seem to hate really worked for me.

I'm playing 4 now!
It's really weird how much the Chief and Cortana talk, especially about Book / Marathon Hold-Over Stuff.
Just the bit where Cortana's like "Let's talk about rampancy!" took me out of the experience in a weird way. It's like, suddenly the lore has arrived. Which lore? All of it.

If it helps at all, Rampancy is handled very differently in Halo. It's a bit like AI dementia, basically, not something to be evolved through as in Marathon.

That said, if you really don't lime the introduction of it into the story, you may want to hit the eject lever.

I don't mind it, it's just the biggest obvious difference in the tone.
Really, I'm playing to see if I can endure Infinite when it comes out, because Halo But More Big appeals to me.

It's very funny to me that Halo 5 will be the only Halo not on PC.

I knew we had a thread! I've been playing the Halo Infinite multiplayer beta through Gamepass and like it, and am quite happy the campaign is also available through Gamepass at launch. As much as I love these games I'm terrible at them so I don't really care about all the leveling complaints people have for multiplayer.

Also from another thread before I found this one:

Violentvixen said:

I played a couple rounds of the Halo Infinite beta, it's fun! Then I figured why the hell not try the tutorial. It surprisingly had an opening cutscene, that focused on someone being rescued by Spartans. I was already excited that it's focusing on the development of a black woman in a leadership role, but then it showed she's wearing a bee necklace.

I am freaking out that this could be an ilovebees reference, I'd heard SPDR was mentioned in other trailers but didn't think much of it and now I'm really, really excited because that is no question my favourite game tie-in of all time and a hell of a thing to bring back.

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Anyway, I was almost through the first mission (a big chunk of which is just the trailer from 2020 I think) then remembered it noted there was a skull on the opening screen and hadn't seen it yet. I looked it up and it turns out a few of them are missable! So if you care about Skulls I'd recommend checking a guide or else you have to restart your entire game since you can't load missions like previous games.

Definitely saucy that co-op isn't available at launch, and looks like it won't be until next May? I got Gamepass through one of the $1 deals so I can't really complain but oh man would I be annoyed if I'd bought this independently.

This seems relevant:


To elaborate:

I've been something of a Halo fan, but never really played the mainline games. I've got some of the novels, some MEGA Construx, seen one or two of the animations, watched some of Red vs. Blue (for what that's worth), and my Halo game of choice has been Halo: Spartan Assault. (Aside: WTF is Halo: Spartan Strike not on Xbox?! I have that, too, on PC, but never played it.)

I've long had an aversion to FPS for some reason. Maybe it was my tendency to frequently yet unintentionally shoot people in the groin in GoldenEye. Maybe it's because I got absolutely slaughtered in multiplayer at the Halo 2 launch event. Maybe I just like being able to aim myself, as I preferred Metroid Prime 3 to the first two games. Or maybe it's the same reason I don't like to use a cockpit view in stuff like Forza, as there's a disconnect where I should normally be able to look around me when I turn my head, and that doesn't really work there (unless you're in a VR game).

Whatever the case... I don't know what it is, but when I first saw Halo Infinite, I thought "I want to play that."

And now, here I am, getting ready to play that.

So, my hope is that it goes well. And by "well," I mean "engages me in a way that expands my gaming horizons so that I'm more open to FPS now."

LBD_Nytetrayn said:

This seems relevant:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1469457583199113216

To elaborate:

I've been something of a Halo fan, but never really played the mainline games. I've got some of the novels, some MEGA Construx, seen one or two of the animations, watched some of Red vs. Blue (for what that's worth), and my Halo game of choice has been Halo: Spartan Assault. (Aside: WTF is Halo: Spartan Strike not on Xbox?! I have that, too, on PC, but never played it.)

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I either would look up where the story is when the game opens, or be aware that you will have absolutely no idea what is happening at the start of the game. I won't spoil more but just FYI that you're missing a lot of background if you've only played those two mainline games. I've played all the mainline ones and a couple of the offshoots and still had to brush up since it's been so long. Of course if you've read the novels you might be up to date I just don't know what those cover.

The lore is definitely not at all necessary to enjoy everything, just be aware the game gives you no setup at all plot-wise. We have something tonight but I'll try to catch some of this!

For me, I'm still adjusting to having this Assassin's Creed/Horizon Zero Dawn open world to go through in a Halo game. But then I got a Warthog and a Ghost and was thrilled and just started careening everywhere because the Warthog feels just as ludicrous as it used to.

It feels like Normal in this game is closer to Heroic in the previous ones, and it's also odd that you can't change the difficulty once you start playing.

I have still not gotten over the lack of co-op at launch.

I watched a recap of the series a while back, I think GameTrailers did one in the leadup to... I want to say Halo 5?

So I have the gist, but it's not dedicated to memory, either.

As long as a comprehensive knowledge of the past titles isn't necessary to enjoying this one, I think/hope I'll be fine. I'm looking at it more like Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, aka the "first" Star Wars. i.e. we know a bunch of stuff happened in the past that's alluded to, but it's there here and now that matters most.

ProTip: If you're going to stream the first time you play the Halo Infinite campaign, make sure you've got the campaign downloaded (the other two times you thought you did don't count, apparently), or else you're going to have to play something else until it finishes installing.

The marines are a lot of fun to have around this time. If I'm starting or have just freed a bunch of them it's enough to alter my next planned move, which is not something I expected to happen.

Infinite is not Halo + Breath of the Wild, it is Halo + Skyrim. And I really like it! Careening down a mountain in a Warthog is joy.

Also I very much enjoy the grunt radio towers/stations that just yell about how dumb humans are. I kind of don't want to smash them sometimes.

A female Elite as the villain is a neat twist. The Skimmers are waaaaay too good of shots though and I don't look forward to meeting them again.

I'm playing this a little. The MP part at least. Nice of them to make that f2p. The mechanics are mostly rock solid (aside from the lack of body collision makes timing melee attacks way too hard when you lunge through an enemy and hit empty air behind them) and the game plays pretty well on my aging gpu and still looks decent which is nice. There's a fun game here at its core, as it's just More Halo, which is a good recipe. But good god, every other aspect of this game feels incomplete and illconsidered. It's pretty obvious this game was rushed to meet the holiday window.

Matchmaking is a nightmare when you can't even choose your game type. There's no system to actually report players for hacking or bad behavior so the game is getting increasingly toxic. And while I don't really care at all about the battle pass/exp system myself, the system itself is just utter cancer. Any time in MP games like this where you incentivize individual goals, it causes players to chase those instead of working to win/play as a team. It just makes games not fun. It's mega lame when half your team starts intentionally sabotaging your match by say, picking up the enemy flag and running it back to the enemy base. It wouldn't be a big problem if I could just pick slayer-type games only to avoid it, but again, you can't pick the game types.

We finally got to give this a go earlier.


I'm going to try to write something later, but put simply: I'm having fun.

WisteriaHysteria said:

MP Stuff

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I believe the patch that adds a Slayer-only playlist and makes a bunch of other MP improvements hits today.

But yes, clearly not yet a complete game. Even after playing and enjoying it I still stick with what I said earlier: I'm glad it's through Gamepass for me, if I'd paid for it I would have been pissed.

Bassus fight some bullshit

chud_666 said:

Bassus fight some bullshit

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He took me a couple tries then I remembered I could grapple around, lit him up with grenades and then Master Chief is best described as having a case of the zoomies and I won.

I am playing on Normal so ignore this if you're on Heroic or anything more intense, doubt it would work.

I'm having a real good time with this campaign so far. Played about 3 hours.

I haven't had a block of time with TV/Xbox access for a couple weeks and have been really sad I haven't been able to play this. Hoping to just sit down and binge after work tomorrow.

Same. I've played what I did on stream, and I'm dying for more.

Played more. Touched down on Halo Zeta earlier this evening, and took the base.

Gameplay loop is different from what I'm used to, but I'm enjoying myself.

Didn't die, but I'm playing on Easy. Came close a few times, though. I imagine anything greater, and I'd be scrapped in no time.

Question from a Halo noob: Is there a way to re-center your crosshairs besides just trying to eyeball it and nudge it back with the stick?