I’m just going to leave this here - a multiple comment reply I made to a youtube video about Halo 4 being a failure. Sectioned off by each individual comment. Incoming wall of text.
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I think I may have a unique relationship with the Halo franchise. I played, and absolutely adored, Halo: CE on both the original Xbox and the PC. I read the books, played custom maps on the PC version, even used that old school Pre-Xbox Live “internet LAN” trick to play the Xbox version online. Then Halo 2 was released, and it was an abomination of auto aim and imbalance in the MP, plus nuked canon and **** level design for the SP.
Halo 2 single-handedly made me stop playing Halo. I got heavily into PC gaming again after that, and just kind of brushed Halo 3 off. I played through the SP and actually had less fun with it than H2’s campaign. The multiplayer just didn’t “click” for me either, so I didn’t get much back into a Halo game until ODST - because of firefight. Then came Reach, which honestly is what sucked me back in. However, because of still being a primarily PC gamer I drifted off from that after a while as well.
Now I’ve just gotten back from a tour in Afghanistan, and my time there has kind of pushed me away from a lot of PC games… Plus I got Halo 4, and it’s pulled me back in again. Now on to my main point after the long-winded windup. I always notice that everyone who professes to be some form of a Halo purist sites Halo 3 as the Holy Grail of the series, while I was unimpressed. Who has stopped to think that there may be a reason behind that, rather than it actually being the truth?
Halo 3 was the first Halo released on the 360, so may have been the first Halo many, many fans played (or the first one they were old enough to truly get into in a lot of cases). It was also the last one to be released before Call of Duty showed up to take Halo’s crown as the king of console FPS games. It also had a 3 year run before Reach was released, since ODST wasn’t so much a stand alone game as an expansion pack. Which means people puts hundreds to thousands of hours into playing Halo 3.
Then Reach comes along, and while at it’s core still Halo (even though I hated Halo 2, and wasn’t a fan of Halo 3, every Halo has nailed the “core” of the series as CessiCB said. It’s just the details that muck things up), it added and changed a /lot/, being the first real standalone title released in the post Call of Duty era (Right at the very highest point of it’s popularity at that).
So you take a group of competitive and/or hardcore Halo 3 players, and throw all the changes made in Halo: Reach at them. At first? Awesome. Amazing. Great. New car smell. Then they start noticing things that aren’t like Halo 3 that they, through 3 years of conditioning, enjoyed more the way Halo 3 did it. Then you add some time, and see all this nits that they can’t help but pick on top of that. Then you add some more time, and actual meta-game, overpowered/broken things show their ugly head.
Then the population crash happens where all the bandwagon players move on to the next thing or the more popular thing with more of their friends playing (CoD). So then you have just the real fans, the hardcores, and the competitive guys left more or less… Who slowly start to change the meta game and refine things until everyone is using the most broken tactic/loadout/weapon/whatever they can find… And suddenly, all of those people are crying that the game is a failure, the game is terrible.
Why? Not because it actually is, of course. It’s because that meta that everyone runs with, the most effective tactic, weapon, style of play, etc… Isn’t what it was in Halo 3, the game they logged umpteen amount of hours on. Over time even those people kind of fade away (like what is happening to the video poster with H4) leaving the people who like the new meta better, and the franchise loyal fans… These people are the ones who put in most of the input for the /next/ Halo installment.
So things get tweeked between Reach and Halo 4, such as the obviously overpowered Armor lock getting changed to light shield in H4. Or the Reach version of the Jetpack that ruined map design gets toned down. A few new ideas get thrown in to combat problems, like Ordnance calldowns being added to combat the age-old Halo problem of people completely locking down the map once they secure the power weapons, or PV (Ala Blacklight: Retribution’s Hyper Reality Visor) being added to combat camping.
However, as always, this is a double edged sword… Now you have the same problem that Reach had. Once the new car smell wears off, the Halo 3 fans hate Halo 4 for the same reasons they hated Reach. They may hate it less, because of improvemtns, or may hate it more because of additions… Now you also have the Reach crowd hating it on it for those same reasons though - they liked (and played a ton of) Reach, so the additions and changes eventually start to bug them wether they were good or bad.
Then follow the same timeline as with Reach. Nits start getting picked. A new meta game forms, and then actual overpowered/broken things start being noticed because everyone starts using the most powerful weapons/tactics/abilities exclusively. Then the exodus of casuals happens… etc, etc, etc. Which brings us to this particular time in H4’s life cycle. The population has stabilized more or less, and over the next however long, the continuing fanbase will decide on changes to the game.
Then later, they’ll start giving ideas on what needs to happen in Halo 5, so the process starts over again. Where am I going with this? What was my original point? I don’t know really. It’s just late and I was watching Halo 4 videos that lead me to ketchum’s videos on why Halo 4 is bad.
Is Halo 4 better or worse than any other Halo? More or less balanced? More or less casual? Who knows. You just have your opinion, like my earlier reasons for hating Halo 2, while it’s some other peoples favorite
So I suppose if you’ve cared enough to read all my late-night rambling posts on a random -Yoink- youtube video… Just try to take some perspective out of what I’ve said. If you think a game is bad, try to understand exactly why you think so… Then if there’s nothing that can be done about it, move on to a game you don’t think is bad.
For me, the guy who played the -Yoink- out of a Halo game he thought was horrible… I’ll be here either way with every new release.
Sincerely,
A random Halo fan.