First of all, this is my first topic here, and I hope it isn’t out of place or out of the forum’s culture in any way.
So, I had been a Halo CE player on PC, for a long time. Both Combat Evolved and Custom Edition .
THE OLD DAYS
I haven’t played them for more than five years, so I don’t really know if there are still any people who play, but I’ll take a guess that many still do. I know for sure that they kept going strong for more than fifteen years.
A few primary reasons that kept players hooked are:
- Halo CE is -still- a visually appealing and lightweight game.
- It dives straight to the point. Start it in mere seconds, be greeted by an awesome soundtrack and a rotating Halo ring, choose “Multiplayer” from a minimal main menu, enter a full-screen game browser, and choose what you like from the buffet while listening to the awesomest and most iconic Halo theme.
Moreover, the game was fun and with very little restrictions:
- You could have multiple profiles with their own settings and key bindings, and choose whatever silly name you’d like (though there was a character limit). It was always funny to see a “was killed by his ex-wife” or “was killed by a hamburger” kind of message.
- You could chat with everyone - including your own team of course (and even have private chats on board vehicles) - trash talk them, compliment them, befriend them, annoy them… anything you’d like. Mayhem, yeah. Fun, yeah.
- Maps were rather unique, legendary and versatile, and half of them were big.
- Vehicles were fun to drive around and perform stunts with.
- You could witness the Combat, with blood, bullet decals, scorched ground, explosions and smoke.
- The player collisions allowed for funny stuff as well (standing on top of your teammates and making human trees etc.)…
- … and the list can go on.
I believe that the game browser was the core element that kept it alive. I mean, a server list with ALL the information that you’d like before your eyes??? How many servers, how many players, which players, what current score, what map, what mode, how long, what rules, how many empty slots, with or without vehicles etc. etc. Okay, that, and the fact that Halo CE had a cracked portable version that made it rather accessible to a lot of people. Shouldn’t omit that. That helped too, hahaha…
THE PRESENT-DAY
So I’ve played and completed every Halo campaign there is on PC and Xbox, but never really devoted much time into their multiplayer, until Halo Infinite (I had tried to enjoy Halo 2 Vista, but annoyances like Windows Live accounts eventually drove me away). While I do enjoy playing Halo Infinite’s multiplayer a lot, at the same time I’m constantly feeling that I’m playing an inferior game . There are features of Infinite that I would really be missing if I ever returned to CE, such as sprinting , ledge grabbing , parkour movements, and all the ability items, and perhaps not having these would discourage me from enjoying it again. These make Halo Infinite a fun experience, but for many other features and changes, I can’t help but keep seeing it as a lesser experience. I’ll present a small list of them below.
I will not compare the Halo Custom Edition content to Infinite’s since Forge is not out yet and thus it wouldn’t be a fair comparison. I’ll stick to Halo Combat Evolved vs Infinite (leaving any graphics comparison out of this of course). I should also mention that I recognize that many of the things that I’m mentioning below, happened through the years in previous Halo games and not just in Infinite.
1) WEAPONS
Alright, I like Infinite’s weapons A LOT, but there are a few disappointments.:
- No flamethrower
- No fuel rod
- I prefer not getting de-scoped immediately when shot while I’m sniping.
- The shotgun kinda sucks, and…
- … please let there be a better pistol - it used to be the primary weapon of pro players! I miss all the pistol showdowns. Now I’m mostly getting spam shooting from assault rifles.
2) VEHICLES
I think that overall they are lame.
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Banshee doesn’t have its green bomb? C’mon.
Also, I haven’t seen yet any crowded air fights (and I doubt that there will be any due to powerful weapons such as the Skewer)… and maps are not having more than one or two Banshees available. Unless Forge saves the day, we may not see any interesting air combat ever again (I’m talking about 4 vs 4 banshees!). -
Ghosts are almost perfect BUT they don’t do wheelies anymore and they can’t even climb a pavement. I mean, for real? It’s a vehicle that levitates using anti-gravity!
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Warthogs are 4X4 off-roader vehicles that can’t even climb pavements, rocks and other stuff. We’d once use them to trivially climb pavements, to race against other players (I really hope that they’ll bring Race mode back in the upcoming seasons) and to perform various stunts. Now you can’t even get off the turret at the angle you want (and jump to the driver or passenger seat while on the move), because you’re forced to exit through the rear of the warthog! Also, entering and exiting vehicles is slower.
Worth mentioning that you cannot drive while carrying the flag, but I am indifferent about this particular change.
3) GAME BROWSER
The matchmaking and the playlists are nice. I dig it. However, it’s an inferior experience compared to a full-screen “Internet Lobby”. I could write an entire essay to explain why, but this post is already too long so I’ll just leave it to common sense. The fact that I can’t repeat a match (same map and players) or play against the same players is very sad on its own.
4) NO ALL CHAT
Lame. Boring. Less fun. I’ll leave this to common sense as well. Other people are disgruntled too in relevant Steam and Reddit discussions.
5) NO PLAYER COLLISIONS
No player collisions? Not colliding with opponents was a gameplay crime. But I think they’ve fixed that (if anyone knows for sure, say so in the comments). No team player collisions? Lame. Less fun. No selfies of team trees anymore. No sniping while standing on my teammate’s head and shoulders. No friendly beach slapping.
6) NO FALL DAMAGE
I’m aware that this was changed in as early as Halo 2. Speaking of Halo 2, it gave us a really awesome feature. Dual-wielding. Nice job removing it in Halo 4.
So, no fall damage, yeah. Apparently you can now jump as high as you like and land on your feet just fine. That takes a major strategic element out of the game . I get it that Spartans are depicted as super soldiers and they should be able to do super hero landings on TV series etc. but c’mon, don’t completely remove it. You could have simply reduced it.
7) NO WOUNDS
I think that it made a lot of sense to have a health bar under the shield and get wounded once your shield went down. It was another major strategic element that was taken out of the game. It made the game more interesting and strategic by knowing that you’ve wounded your opponent and that he might retreat towards a white health pack. Plus, back then you could tell when your opponent had lost his shield. Now I can’t even distinguish that particular spark effect.
8) UNRELIABLE MOTION TRACKER
I’ve read various discussions about it, but I still don’t know whether it’s me who doesn’t understand how the new motion tracker works or if the tracker is being unreliable.
Some people claim that it only detects when enemies are shooting, walking, and sprinting and that it only doesn’t detect crouch-walking, and standing still. In other words, the same functionality as in Halo CE.
But I guess it doesn’t detect walking , otherwise I can’t explain how enemies (that were not standing still or crouching) suddenly appear in my tracker when they are suddenly at 2 meters distance. Even if it doesn’t detect walking, it doesn’t make sense how they came to be at less than 5 meters away and went undetected while being within the range of the 18 meters that the tracker can supposedly detect… especially when I know for a fact that they were sprinting or when I see them sprinting within that range!
Also, it’s lame that they reduced the tracker’s range. I mean, enemies can now sprint and close the gap much faster than in the older games. They can even jump down from a rather tall building and land on your head without dying. Reducing the range is illogical.
9) SPECIAL EFFECTS, FRAGS, BLOOD
I feel as if there’s a lot less mayhem.
No blood pools?
No bullet marks/decals? You used to be able to draw on walls and write stuff with pistol bullets or clearly see the aftermath of an indoors fight!
Fragmentation grenades would scorch the ground and produce lots of smoke. It felt more like war.
Vehicles were responsible for a lot more carnage too.
10) HALO OR STREET FIGHTER?
Halo used to require skills to land a hit on another player if he wasn’t standing still or accidentally run into you.
You’d dance around with your opponent to be able to land a hit. Well, that is, if you managed to get close enough to each other… since, you know… the game once involved lots of shooting and dodging bullets like a proper FPS game… and it didn’t feel like playing… Street Fighter.
The only weapon in Halo CE that had lunging and aim lock was the energy sword. Now everyone is melee lunging despite what weapon they’re carrying. And as a result it now makes much sense to run towards someone while he is shooting at you, no matter what weapon you’re carrying.
This hurts the shooting experience, and you also can’t easily fight with multiple people at once when one is running towards you to aimbot the f out of you with his melee lunge and while another one is shooting at you from a distance. You could once enjoy a gunfight with multiple opponents while dodging and hiding, but now you’re too dependent on a teammate being present at all times by your side, because some one will try to run towards you for sure (since the game now has sprinting AND melee lunging) and if he doesn’t kill you, another one will finish you off.
It feels as if more than half of the kills in Infinite are melee kills plus gunfire assists. It’s now rarer to see one on one showdowns in team game modes. Part of the reason is that all games now are either squad games on small Arena maps, or BTB in a handful of maps. More on maps, below.
There used to be a lot of maps in Halo CE with plenty of opportunities for fights and mayhem to spread across the map .
You’d play Blood Gulch or Sidewinder and there would be people fighting inside bases, on top of bases, at the hills, inside caves/caverns, on top of hills, out in the open, in the air etc. I’m still talking about team battles, not FFA!
11) GAME MODES
Infinite has plenty of modes. Race and Zombies / Infection are still missing, but I believe that they will add them in the future.
My only complaint is about KotH. I think that the new King of the Hill is less fun since the contested area is stationary until captured. It used to move around randomly every x seconds, and it was fun for teams to chase it.
I understand that the developers may think it’s fairer this way, because it sucks when the hill spawns far away from you, but at the same time when it is stationary and you are killed, it allows for the opponents to camp there and defend it while you spawn at the other side of the map! I mean, if they wanted it to be fair, at least make it so that you spawn somewhere nearby.
In my opinion they should add an additional game mode, the Classic King of the Hill.
12) THE MAPS
The Arena maps are good on their own. They are also very good if you compare them to the small Halo CE maps, and some -in my opinion- are admittedly much better than Halo CE’s.
However, in an overall comparison, Halo Infinite’s maps are not half as good as Halo CE’s were:
https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Halo:_Combat_Evolved_Multiplayer_Maps
There should be more open maps with more scenery , more nature and variety. With big bases and forts. More balanced and symmetric maps too!
The Breaker map of Season 2 is really fun and unique, however we still only have 4 BTB maps. Compared to maps like… Blood Gulch , Boarding Action , Danger Canyon , Death Island , Gephyrophobia , Ice Fields , Infinity , Sidewinder , and Timberland … all of which were unique and amazing on their own! They had big bases, forts, caverns, daylight and space darkness, snow, sea, space battles, teleporters… oh right - where the f are the teleporters, seriously!?
Breaker is cool with its lava, structures, multi-level platforms, passageways, variety of colors etc. but other than that, the entire map collection of the BTB maps feels dull compared to all the above cool maps.
Even the Campaign is somewhat dull. I mean, I’ve had enough of grass, trees, and constantly seeing the same scenery in daylight. Give me at least some snow.
13) NO 8 VS 8
In Halo CE ALL the maps , whether big or small, could be played with teams of 8.
Okay, 12 vs 12 is even better. But there are only four BTB maps so far in comparison to Halo CE which had around nine, and some of which were REALLY big.
So far the Arena maps are the main focus of the game, and you can only play them with teams if you’re in a squad. Squads are great and nice to have, but not nearly as much fun as the 8 vs 8 mayhem, be it in a big or small map. Moreover, one noob or braindead teammate who won’t co-operate can really ruin your game when playing with squads, especially while the entire enemy squad is running at you trying to melee lunge you, whereas in a team of 8 even if two of your mates sucked the rest could still shine.
This won’t be a problem if we get twice as many BTB maps in the upcoming Seasons and if the good old legacy maps come back in Forge.
That’d be it. 
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So while de-scoping was meant to be in Halo CE, it didn’t work properly most of the time in online multiplayer, if at all. I found a video on YouTube titled as “HALO CE | DESCOPE IS FIXED!!!” where the uploader says “In vanilla Halo PC/CE You don’t get de-scoped most of the time when you take damage”, and that in order to fix it you can install a third-party patch from Github called “Chimera” by SnowyMouse.