As a Halo lover who has been playing since Halo: CE first came out (back when I was too young to do anything BUT play video games), 343 and the Halo franchise has my utmost respect. But where Halo’s campaign is deserving of praise, the multiplayer capabilities have slipped through the cracks. The issue at hand, in my humble opinion doesn’t lie with the gameplay, but rather the selection of maps.
First, there are too few of them. There may be 13 available maps, but between Big Team and Infinity, we’re left to only 5 maps a piece. When we vote for a map, we’re constantly stuck with the same 3 options- between Ragnarok, Exile, Longbow, Vortex, and Meltdown (Ragnorak is always #1 pick because of simple familiarity) for BTS, and Haven, Adrift, Abandon, Solace, and Complex (where Adrift is always the #1 choice because it’s arguably the best Halo 4 original map) for regular slayer. Multiplayer Slayer gets boring after about an hour of gameplay because of the redundancy of played maps. We’d like some variety.
Now we all know of the new map packs that are due out within the coming months, which will answer my plea of differentiation, but they are new maps after new maps that each player has to get familiar with. Why not go back to your roots? There are 4 halo games that preceded H4 with maps of plentiful to choose from, and I can confidently say that we all would love to see some modernized remakes. Each game in the past has done this, so I’m sure 343, as a developer would rather show off their own map-making skills than to rip off another map creators work… But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Players would have to change their pants if you brought back any (OR ALL) of the following:
Hang 'Em High, Blood Gulch, Sidewinder, Damnation, Ascension, Headlong, Ivory Tower, Relic, Terminal, Zanzibar, Narrows, The Pit, Rat’s Nest, Ghost Town, Boardwalk, Countdown, Sword Base, and any other that people would fight for. This list is just (from my gaming experience) the most played and loved maps.
Thirdly, the next focus is the “look” of the maps. Don’t get me wrong, what has been done in terms of quality is very impressive, but many players will stray from voting for a map simply because of the aesthetic appeal. My best example is Vortex vs Exile- Vortex is a legitimately good map, with plenty of aspects to enjoy, but the “feel” of it is all wrong. It’s dark, moldy and gloomy… Players will instantly select the picture of rich greenery and sunlight of Exile before looking at Vortex, even though Vortex is arguably better gameplay-wise. This is the same case with Complex vs Abandon; Complex is really pretty and is chosen more that it’s eery counterpart but in terms of gameplay- the fun of Abandon outweighs the frustrations of Complex any day.
The possibility of good (and “pretty”) remakes is very real, and I’d love nothing more than to see the Halo franchise succeed.
-Doctor F00L