Eh. (Gaming)

by ManKitten, The Stugotz is strong in me., Monday, October 24, 2022, 14:17 (543 days ago) @ squidnh3
edited by ManKitten, Monday, October 24, 2022, 14:20

But there was absolutely never anything remotely on the level of backlash that 343's games get. Not people denouncing the MS acquisition. Not Halo2sucks.com. Not people complaining about bullet spread. Not HRINC. Nothing.

I spent way too much time on Bungie.net back in the day, and my personal recollection is that most of the reaction to Halo 2 was negative for a variety of reasons. The different feel from Halo 1, the campaign ending, playing as the Arbiter, Matchmaking in lieu of a game list. Melee lunge, bullet magnetism (Halo 2 is noobified), the sword, SMG vs. BR starts, BXR, power weapon respawns, superbouncing, cheating, ranks, bla bla bla. It was only after Halo 3 came out that Halo 2 became a pinnacle of the series.

That being said, despite all the complaining, people kept playing, and many of those initial negative reactions were obviously wrong in retrospect. The same doesn't seem to be true of 343's Halo games, probably for many different reasons.

A lot of what made Halo so special was how unique it was. Nothing like that had ever happened. N64 Goldeneye was the biggest game trend that had ever happened! (at least in my world). Split screen multiplayer FPS and it was a blast!

Then Halo came out. It slipped in under the radar and grew into a monster. Throw on LAN capabilities and XBConnect and it was (basically) the first online console game, and party based FPS to boot. It was THE game. It was THE moment.

With Halo 2, considering the curse of the "sophomore effort" that every creative entity has, Halo 2 was amazing. The campaign lacked but what they did for online multiplayer was the pinnacle that almost every developer trying to duplicate.

I put Halo in a category with Star Wars and The Beatles. Stand-alone, they are really good. Put compared to their peers of the time? Whoo....nothing to compare. And that's magic. Magic that only happens in that moment.

Halo is still fun, I still have a crush on MC (In fact my full mjolnir suit will be done in a couple days.) but it's not what it used to be...it can't. I felt "the magic" when I played DayZ on PC 8 years ago. Then again with Fortnite 4 years ago. Then again with Warzone 2 years ago. Now, I've not played Warzone in 3 months, and I'll never play the previous two again. But I still play Halo, for what that's worth.

Things come, things go. While Halo used to be amazingly great, it can still be "good" today. And there is nothing wrong with "good". There is a large area between Terrible and Awesome, which seems to be the only two options people consider these days.