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> > The gaming landscape is completely different now compared to 2007. I don’t think Halo 3 would be as successful if it was released now because the features it had in 2007 would be considered standard and even sub-par compared to today’s standards.
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> I’ve got to agree with this. Halo 3 did introduce some amazing features such as theater and forge, which is something that even a few modern shooters lack all these years later. However, the most important element is gameplay, and Halo 3’s hasn’t aged all that well. Narrow FOV makes the game feel slow, projectile weapons make weapons feel inconsistent, especially in laggy matches. And the weapon sandbox itself is not balanced very well.
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> This might sound like sacrilege to some, but personally, I think that Halo 3 (and 2, for that matter) were both successful due to a lack of competition. Since Halo was the online shooter (at least for consoles) at the time, there weren’t other games to compare it to. When I go back to play them on the MCC, I find myself missing certain features that I’m used to when I play other shooters. Even some of the simplest things are missing, like knowing where I’m getting shot from, instead of just having the screen turn red with no visible bullet trails.
I agree with most of your post but this is the part i’m going to focus on:
“This might sound like sacrilege to some, but personally, I think that Halo 3 (and 2, for that matter) were both successful due to a lack of competition. Since Halo was the online shooter (at least for consoles) at the time, there weren’t other games to compare it to.”
I have to disagree, Halo 2 and 3 were both massively popular because they revolutionised the FPS industry, whilst also revolutionising console online play.
- Regenerating shields/health
- Two weapon system
- Grenades being assigned to a single button press rather than weapon slot
- Melee being available with a button press without changing weapon
- TruSkill matchmaking (competitive ranking system)
- Aim assist
- ‘Cinematic story’
- Theatre (Halo 3)
- Forge (Halo 3)
The other giants at the time such as Half-Life were on PC whilst in the console field, the last revolutionary game was Goldeneye, which established the basics in an FPS shooter on console. Timesplitters was a continuation of that formula and whilst still popular, couldn’t compete with the modern Halo franchise. Basically, it’s more than just the online play but rather the gameplay itself that was completely dominant, though online play was definitely a major contributing factor.
However, Halo 3 was more of an evolution rather than a revolutionary title. Meanwhile, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare released shortly after, bringing with it the next wave of FPS revolution:
- Low time to kill
- Popularised ADS
- ‘Michael Bay’ story
- Killstreaks
- Create a class
- XP based progression system
The above made, combined with being available on all platforms (later on the Wii), helped to make CoD more accessible to casuals than Halo. The sales and popularity of the franchise support this and as we know, CoD would go on to be the dominant shooter.
Since then, we’ve seen some very good games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (e-sports, round based competitive gameplay) and Overwatch (Team based Hero shooter) but none have quite gripped the casual market like Halo and Call of Duty did.
Nowadays we’ve got the Battle Royale genre, which appears to be the next big ‘revolution’ in the market but the point is, Halo earned its spot as has the other titles mentioned. It had no competition because nothing else revolutionised the genre, and Halo was great at what it did.