Anyone else like me and really think the series is in a slow decline in terms of gameplay quality? So much has changed from the old Halo games you wonder if the 343 guys should just arrange a classic Halo day, play through some 4 vs 4 team objective on Zanzibar etc and then try some big team Halo 5 and see how it pails in comparison…
Ranking for instance - Where’s the excitement now? The constant struggle of trying to achieve the impossible in trying to set a new highest rank? We used to religiously play Doubles for years and only managed skill level 43/44 because a single defeat was always a set back… but we still wanted to keep trying. What’s the point with seasonal when you know your rank always get reset every month or so?
Just one instance where they’ve focused on the MLG player and left their core fan base behind…
Seasonal league ranking was a stupid idea introduced by Bungie that 343 has since run away with. The same with the introduction of ‘Mythic, Noble’ and other non Military ranks that take away any sense of realism on that front.
REQs - Say goodbye to unlocking things through completing challenges, missions etc Just buy them with credits, or better yet - real money.
In Halo 5 there is no connection between your multiplayer persona and your campaign. what so ever…
Gameplay is the biggest travesty of the lot. Radar, Forgettable maps, ugly style of graphics. Why does the game look so good in campaign but fricken awful in multiplayer? No split screen. ‘Let’s make the flag carrier visible to the enemy team’. Let’s minimise the amount of blood making the combat much less visceral. Introduce down sight aiming popularised by COD… gunplay doesn’t have any meat to it - the sounds of the weapons are impressive enough but when you shoot something why is it like you’ve just hit them with a pellet gun no matter what weapon you used?
The whole multiplayer scene in Halo has become very fast paced, hit and run, noob-friendly.
I’d always pick the Bungie Halo games over 343
I for one am glad that Halo is not Bungie anymore. Sure, Bungie revolutionized gaming by making Halo CE, but we all know what Bungie has become (just look at Destiny). To this day, they blame constant disconnects on the player community and have 0 customer support, yes, not even a means to contact them “one of our dedicated forum moderators will reply”… Bungie today, is a disgrace of a money pumping company. They grew too fast, too rich, just like football players that come from the slums, end up multi-millionaires in no time, and then screw it all up. Also, I am amazed by the work 343 put up for the MCC. I had a long break, come back, ODST ready to download, man, I can’t wait to play this after Halo 2 (ODST has easiest legendary SP campaign btw).
In regards of connection between single and multiplayer, I think there needs to be a separation (my personal opinion). The most important to me in Halo is the story and the lore. I am playing the campaigns for the third time now (started over on legendary and new xbox account because microsoft did not want to help me reactivate my old account since I do not know the security code of my stupid 12 year old CC…), but I am having a blast. Only after all of that, would I venture to multiplayer. Halo multiplayer (especially these days), most the players have not even completed the campaign on easy or normal level (campaigns suck they say…), and I do not really think that is the point of the game, even if it has a strong multiplayer.
As for my campaign looks better, well, campaigns eat up most of the budget, which is good, because you want to pull the end-user right into the lore. Halo has a big story. Besides the games it has several books, even a meh film (teenie movie), episodes, and let’s hope for the real deal at some point, but MP should never outshine SP in a game such as Halo. In a blind shooter like COD/BF, why not, but not Halo. This is a work of art we are talking about after all. MP oriented people that do not care about campaigns should definitely not expect 343 to make MP much better than SP, Halo has too much story, characters, fiction etc to throw it all away for repetitive Multiplayer maps.
Even if you consider that a valid point, the campaign in Halo 5 is hardly one of the best. IMO it was okay, but the campaigns were far better in Halo 1,3 and Reach…
Reach should serve as the pinnacle of Halo story telling so far, great characterisation, moody set pieces and a sombre sound track. One of the greatest finales of any game let alone any FPS in the way it links into Halo CE and has a post game mission where failure is only ever going to be the outcome - but just take down as many as you can! Genius. In Halo 5 it was more a case of, let’s get through this and get it out of the way with… bringing back Cortana and turning her into the villain of the piece is also pretty cheap.
Ultimately, whilst the campaign is very important, the multiplayer is what gives a game it’s longevity if you still want people talking about beyond the first few months after release.
Aside from the fact that they bought in Blue team and made them playable (criminally undercooked it as well btw) Halo 5’s story was quite forgettable.
Both companies have benefited the franchise in different ways. I like aspects from both of the companies. I personally prefer Bungie though
Bungie Halo games all the way better than 343
Hi OP, we generally ask that users not make these types of comparison threads. Both companies have their faults and both have done some great things. Threads like these, despite best intentions, always end up devolving into developer bashing which isn’t something we want to promote here on the forums. Thanks 