I’m not talking about the story here. We’re talking strictly gameplay.
The Flood. The enemies that just use human or covenant weapons and literally have one attack behaviour: Zerg Rush. They may come in many different forms but I guarantee you that their design fell VERY short in comparison to the Covenant. As in it fell flat on it’s face.
At least Watchers can bring up hardlight shields and throw grenades back. Knights can even teleport which already makes them more interesting to fight than an enemy who mindlessly charges you and only kills you because it had a shotgun that you couldn’t even see until the last second. At least the Prometheans got their own set of weapons to help differentiate them from other enemies. They had their flaws, but they were a step above the Flood. The Flood never got a unique “weapon” until the annoying porcupine things in Halo 3 that could take 2 whole reloads to kill or just one smack from your fist.
Anytime you fight the Flood you’re either trying to quickly rush through the mission as fast as possible like in Cortana, Floodgate and 343 Guilty Spark, or you’re reduced to a painfully slow pace to fend them off in nearly endless waves like in The Library, The Oracle and the gondola on Sacred Icon. That elevator horde mode in The Oracle has to be some of the most horrid gameplay ever to be in a Halo game. It’s just Flood raining down on you while the elevator slooowwwwwly rotates and moves about 4 inches every 30 seconds until you’ve made a mountain of dead bodies so high that you don’t even need a -Yoink- elevator anymore! (yes I know it goes down, not up). Seriously, find me one encounter with the Flood that doesn’t involve going really fast or going really slow. They’ll always spawn in endless droves because there’s nothing interesting or tactical about fighting them, just keep your finger on the trigger and hope you have enough bullets.
Take notes here with The Oracle. Did you notice anything you would consider to be bad design? I did, let me show you. The first 3 rooms of this mission amount to over 10 minutes of gameplay and are entirely horde mode scenarios that you cannot progress through until you’ve killed enough enemies for the door to open. I don’t care how you slice it or try to justify it, that’s bad design. Just because it’s in a Halo game that doesn’t make it excusable.
I don’t know about you guys but the Flood left me feeling frustrated and bored because there was nothing interesting about fighting them. They just aren’t well designed. They make you camp forever or they make you run past them altogether. They randomly have strong weapons that will cheaply kill you out of nowhere. Most areas that the Flood fight the player in are completely desolate and devoid of any cover or things to interact with. Don’t believe me? Load up any level that has the Flood in it and see for yourself. The best strategy for killing the popcorn Flood is to literally let them kill themselves by attacking you. Wow, what a terrifying enemy.
The idea of a parasite isn’t even so bad, it sounds like it could be a whole lot of fun. But in Halo, it’s not. You wanna know what good design is for this type of enemy? Look at Dead Space. Necromorphs move quickly and need to be shot in the limbs. That requires accuracy and is a pretty cool change of pace from just headshotting everything before. Some of them puke on you, some grab you, others leap through the air at you, some of them will just run away from you until you eventually turn your back on them. They all have distinct visual cues. A high-pitched yelp lets the player know that a suicide bomber is lurking around, screaming packs of kids notify you that you’re about to get swarmed by weaker, melee-only enemies. A constant raptor-like roar means that a Stalker is charging you from it’s hiding spot and will knock you on the ground soon if you don’t do anything.
Look at Gears of War 3 with the Lambent. They all explode when they die. Some of them mutate and start shooting goo at you that hits you even if you’re in cover. Some of them mutate to shoot fire out of their face like a flamethrower. There are various Lambent enemies, from your standard Drudge, to smaller but faster Polyps. Even huge enemies like Gunkers are in the game and they throw huge mortar-like projectiles that can kill you in one hit, they’re pretty much a Wraith in Halo. Hell, sometimes when you kill a Drudge you can find it’s head slithering around on the ground like a snake and it actually tries to kill you!
Other games have done this concept and they’ve done it much better. The Flood is just straight up boring cannon fodder. The Covenant is like a well-done steak that is made to be of high quality. The Flood is like someone throwing an endless stream of greasy french fries at you in a hope to satisfy you.
The Flood are also bad because they have no relationship with the player like the Covenant do. What I mean by that is this: All of the Covenant enemies react to what you do and to the battlefield itself, whether its them jumping out of the way or taunting you. They scream, laugh, freak out and chat with their teammates. Grunts exclaim: “His boots are mine!” when they kill you. Elites proudly state how they are getting a reward from the Prophets for slaying the Demon. Some Jackals drop their Beam Rifles and run when you get into melee range! This doesn’t exist with the Flood. They are just boring space zombies.
One of 343’s many challenges with Halo 5 was to make the Promethean enemies as interesting as the Covenant and to bring back that relationship with the player that was absent with them in Halo 4. That’s why you now see more variety to Promethean enemies and that’s why they talk now. It’s also why the Covenant are back to speaking English in Halo 5. The player-enemy relationship is an extremely important part of Halo that many people gloss over or aren’t really aware of.
The Flood is important to the story of Halo. In gameplay, they are actually a piece that doesn’t fit into the puzzle. Bungie could have done it right but they didn’t. They made the Flood a knockoff cannon fodder enemy with some of the worst campaign missions being born as a result.
