It’s been close to a year sense I’ve been to these parts of the internet and actually took up posting. First off, I would like to apologize to anyone I may have offended in the past. As it stands, it is snowing outside so I have nothing better to do but surf the web. Me and my significant other broke up after two years, so what does any person do when they are upset? Well play Halo of course! So I pop my Halo 4 disk in, connect to Xbox Live, and start playing. The updates done to the game have turned a (In my opinion) mediocre game into a rather good game. This shows me 343i is definitely capable of listening to fans and bringing a good Halo experience to the game. I am not here to talk about Halo 4, this is the Halo Xbox One forums. (Lets be real, Halo 5)
As of February 6th, 2014 the state of gaming is quite interesting. You have the King debacle over suing everything with “candy” in it. The Angry Birds craze has died down a little. Next-gen consoles have been released sending many people to PC gaming, and zombies are all but done for. As it stands the gaming market really doesn’t know what people want to play. There is one constant however. A game I’m sure many of you have heard of, Flappy Bird. This game has taken the world by storm which may seem odd. When you look at it, how can a game so pointless as making a bird jump through Super Mario pipes be so addicting to a great portion of the worlds population?
When you take a deeper look at the game mechanics you start to see why it is so successful. Our world is dominated by competition, just look at sports and how popular that is. It makes sense really, we are all biologically programmed to want to be the best. At Flappy Bird’s heart there is a certain competitive nature to the game. You have Facebook, Twitter, in game Leaderboards and of course word of mouth. Just go on Facebook and search #FlapFlap to see how many people are competing for a high score.
Of course this competition would be nothing if it weren’t for how the game plays. If the game is easy enough anyone could get an insane high score in a few minutes, then it defeats the purpose. Flappy Bird has an easy to learn, difficult to master mindset. The controls are clear and defined, yet there is a learning curve that isn’t steep enough to discourage people from playing, yet isn’t easy enough to eliminate competition. The controls are simple. Tap to elevate. Slower tapping drops altitude, faster tapping raises altitude. Once you get this down, you can hop through spaces with relative ease. The trick comes with practice. Learning the perfect timing. This is how you get massive scores.
This game is one of the few modern games that makes you laugh when you beat your high score. One of the few games that can get someone pissed off yet keep them playing because they have to beat their friends. Hell, in the middle of class we all gathered around people playing the game to see if they could master it. Many laughs, yells, and fun came out of this social gathering of people who don’t always agree with each other. So if a simple game made by someone with maybe a few months of programming skill can bring people together just to beat each other. Bring out the competitive nature in people, why can’t Halo?
If we want Halo to be the go to game like it was in 2007, 343i need to learn a little from this game Flappy Bird. Obviously we can’t have Spartans hopping through hoops, but maybe Halo needs to go back to simplicity? Go back to the static loadout, with everything from Armor Abilities to Weapons pick-ups on the map.
It’s also time to bring back competition to Halo. People have the most fun when they get to show off their skills. Even if you suck, getting that Level 10 in Halo 3 was a very rewarding experience. Halo 5 needs something like this, a true measure of skill that gets shown to everyone from friends to strangers in a Lobby. Something where you can call up your best friend and say “Hey, I just beat your score of 30! Bet you can’t get a higher trueskill then that!” This keeps people coming back, playing, and having fun.
Then the final thing is that the game needs a reason to be competitive. Professional football wouldn’t be entertaining if anybody and their grandfather could compete at a pro-level. Same with Halo. If anybody could have gotten a 50 in Halo 3 without having much practice then the point of getting a 50 would be moot. It needs to be easy for someone to pick the game up, play, and be helpful which is a big problem with earlier Halo’s. However in order to be really good you must have a lot of experience and skill.
If Halo can hit all three of these things, then I believe that Halo 5 may be another incredible game in the Halo franchise. I feel that if the current trend of overcomplicating basic features, while holding someones hand throughout the whole game and defeating any incentive to be better than anyone else, then it will be just another game. As it stands, if Halo is truly awesome it stands as being similar to how the original three Halo’s dominated the market. People are bored of CoD and Battlefield has lost what made it Battlefield. If Halo stands as something unique, while providing skill and competitive gameplay, then it will be heralded as one of the best games released.
TL;DR-Halo needs to learn a few things from Flappy Bird, simplicity, competitive gameplay, and a skill curve.