The problem isn’t mechanics, it’s feel and flow of gameplay. DOOM 2016 was different from games releasing around it, but was ruined by the loadout and playable demon systems that were similar to other games around them.
You have to go against the grain to be successful in some cases. Skyrim and Dark Souls released simultaneously with each other (about two months apart) and the two could not be more different in terms of design and style of gameplay. Skyrim is a much more relaxed and casual open-world RPG. Dark Souls is akin to a hardcore almost pen-and-paper level RPG that is darker and more brooding. Both games were wildly successful for different reasons, and Dark Souls in particular spawned a legacy of successors and spin-offs in Soulslikes.
Titanfall 2 is a great example when applied to FPS games. Its level of movement mixed with Titan-based gameplay in its best mode (Attrition) is unlike any other game on the market. Nothing plays quite like Titanfall 2 Attrition, and it’s good. It’s better than good, it’s phenomenal
Sticking in the doughy folds of mediocrity and just pushing out games to try and capture a bit of the market from the big thing on mostly name recognition isn’t going to keep a series alive. Deliberate, intentional, well-thought out design that does something different, will. Halo-Killer used to be a term people would throw out because Halo was the game doing things different. It was global phenomenon, and that died with Halo 4.
And if you notice, they out sell other cross-platform modern FPS games because they grew their fanbases by being the first to implement those features and mechanics in a way that is unmistakably COD or unmistakably BF. Ain’t nobody going to go over ang migrating to games that copy a style and do nothing new. Aside from that, when you look at the top played games COD and BF have been whooping Halo’s butt on XBOX for at least 9 years.
Wolfenstein New order has mechanics from COD, but it does not play like COD. It’s not the mechanics that make something a copy of another game, its how they’re implemented. A FPS is not a copy of COD, that where a lot of modern shooters go wrong and that is why they crash a burn.
Within the realm of them both being RPGs, meaning you can build your character to different things (i.e., playing a role)? Yes, because they are both RPGs that are attempting to accomplish different things and had success pursuing those different pathways. If Dark Souls was just trying to be like Skyrim, but with some minor difference like art-style or camera angle (i.e., being exclusively third person) then Dark Souls would have been left by the wayside.
Dark Souls actively, and still chooses to, go against the grain of modern open-world RPG design. It being different, is why it is successful. Even amongst the realm of its imitators, the weakest Dark Souls game stands heads and shoulders above the strongest imitation.
Halo has the ability to go against the grain of modern FPS design and make something truly spectacular by going back to the root of what Halo is, that being the innovations from Halo 1-3, and finding some way to iterate on it. Smash Brothers has effectively done this since it launched, and it’s been a global phenomenon.
Personally, the entire art style of Halo 5 turned me off so much that every time I try to go back and play it again (because I remember enjoying aspects of the campaign,) I get less than a minute into gameplay before quitting. It just all felt incredibly fake. I don’t think that Infinite is as good as it could be (somehow explosions still look worse than Reach,) but I personally would take a 4K version of Reach over a continuation of 5’s art style, which just didn’t mesh with the military science fiction vibes of the universe (felt more fantasy.)
I agree, Infinite’s plot was weak at best. After Halo 5 though, the universe was very convoluted, and the evil cortana plotline and the prometheans really just didn’t do it for me. Infinite was an attempt to redeem her character, but stopped short of what they really needed to do. From my perspective, they really should have retconned all of Halo 4 and 5. Say they were a fractures universe, say they were a simulation, whatever.
The universe peaked with Halo 3 and trying to start up again and do another massive space opera was the worst idea 343 had. They should have explored another era or moment in the universe, and operated at lower stakes. If now, after 15 years, they were finally coming back to Chief and finding him and Cortana drifting, the world would be so much more interesting to me.
You’re also not wrong, they do literally have fan-fic writers writing Halo now, look at the ridiculous fan-fic that Haruspis writes, that is now published by 343 on this site as “fractures events.”
Hard disagree, the campaign was awful to put it politely, and the multiplayer was sweatier than where Nike used to make their sneakers. Also customization was abysmal, it’s only saving grace in this regard was that you could earn cr through gameplay for loot boxes & color choices.
Most games at one point attempted to have established identities that define the experience by the name alone.
It’s why it was Halo vs CoD, or why Fortnite and Gears of War are two entirely different ways to play a TPS.
There was very little that Halo, CoD, and Battlefield had in common except for the multiplayer and FPS shooter genre elements at one point. Then around Halo 4 the franchise adopted the core mechanics that made CoD great, but didn’t really change how the game was actually played outside of these mechanics which is why it was reviled the way it was. It attempted to be something else when it didn’t need to be.
It’s like the film industry currently, rather than trying to be original, films are starting to adopt the “Cinematic Universe” trope that rebuilt Marvel from a crumbling company to a household name. Despite doing this, they’re simply latching onto a trope instead of incorporating it into the structure in a constructive manner forgoing the reason their own movies were appreciated in favor of a gimmick. While this has been going on for decades, it’s really only gotten worse within the last 10 years specifically. Think of the vast originality represented in the 90’s and prior compared to the limited originality we see now.
To suggest that it’s ‘always been like this’ is accepting the idea purely on a surface level of understanding. You’re not looking deeper into the establishment of what made these titles what they are.
There’s a reason Halo isn’t CoD, CoD isn’t Battlefield, Battlefield isn’t Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike isn’t Apex, etc etc etc. They might all be “first person shooters” but that term doesn’t mean they’re all the same game.
Those differences lie in their aesthetics and storyline. Not their mechanics. The day Halo starts taking on insurgents in the non-descript Middle East, then it’ll be CoD or Battlefield. I remember distinctly when Call of Duty: Infinity was ridiculed as “Call of Duty: We’re Basically Halo” because they introduced space and space warfare.
You don’t gain increased accuracy by standing still in Halo like you would in CSGO
You can’t relocate on the map by carabinering onto a balloon in Battlefield like you can in Apex
Yes, their mechanics alongside the aesthetics and story. You can’t just take parts of a whole that you like while saying the other parts don’t count. A pie isn’t a pie just because of the crust or the filling individually, you need it all or you get stuck with a buttery flaky thing, or a bowl of soupy fruit.
It’s not one or maybe two specific parts, but leaving the third out. It’s all the above, no exceptions.
Don’t be ignorant
Battlefield hasn’t been about insurgent enemies since BF2 my dude, also does that mean BF1 wasn’t a Battlefield game since you were taking on actual historically based armies?
Yeah and rightfully so, but it was a surface level meme at best. It still maintained the core mechanics that made CoD CoD like custom classes and the advanced movement gimmick of the time (that was derived from Titanfall).
Comparisons can be made, but arguments can also be made. Attempting to shut an argument down because you disagree with the narrative suggests your own opinions aren’t strong enough to compete in that arena of thought. Conveniently leaving out aspects of a game that make that game what it is doesn’t make your argument correct, it makes it incomplete in the most transparently cheap way possible.
The multiplayers more important and the staggering incompetence that they managed to deliver a broken game after 6 years. That they couldn’t get Co-Op to work after a year of post launch work. Embarrassing multiplayer story. Broken UI. Etc etc
The complaints about Halo 5 was about a bad coat of paint. Halo Infinite is about the house being on fire.
Sadly, I agree. While there are probably many things about Infinite that are considered “better”, I simply enjoyed playing Halo 5 more than I do Infinite. I’ve been holding on to Infinite in hopes that it gets better, and also because I can’t play Halo 5 anymore. Oh well. Maybe it’s time to start getting into other franchises. Getting into Farcry definitely made my life better after the deplorable state Halo is in right now lmao.
No. Because a Halo game could include the “stand still to retain accuracy” and so long as it matches the aesthetics and story, it’s still a Halo game. This flawed mentality ignores that Halo has not only been an FPS title, but also a RTS, Isometric Shooter, and an Arcade Rail Shooter. I don’t care what you personally think of those games, they are Halo games.
A game is more than its visuals. A game is primarily identified by its gameplay, and if the gameplay is more akin to something else than itself, we lose the identifiable aspects of what that game is. If Blizzard releases a 3rd Person Shooter for Starcraft, it’s still a Starcraft series game, but it’s not Starcraft, which is commonly identified as a Real-Time Strategy game.
This is the same way that Spartan Assault and Wars are Halo games in terms of aesthetics, but not Halo because Halo is an FPS. It started as an FPS, and that’s what draws people into the franchise. That’s the main attraction.
This mentality also fails to account for gameplay differences within an FPS series. Call of Duty was the twitch shooter. Battlefield was the mass battler, with mass amounts of players and vehicles. Halo was a classic-style Arena shooter that did everything a little different. It wasn’t mass amounts of players, but there were game altering vehicles. It wasn’t a twitch-shooter, but existed in a 4v4 space.
When you bring in elements that are alien to the series, you lose what is unique about it. Call of Duty learned this the hard way when their space games had negative receptions and their marketing for WWII was hard focused on “Boots on the Ground!” Halo learned this the hard way, and abandoned 5’s gameplay elements, pairing them down to be much simpler. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it didn’t go far enough because it’s still trying to be like Call of Duty in mechanics so that it can appeal to the Call of Duty market who aren’t interested in Halo to begin with.
I’d rather have the base gameplay and art style of Infinite any day of the week.
But by this point in Halo 5’s lifecycle it was far more content rich and complete than Infinite is. And even on-release it felt like it had more going for it and a LOT less issues.
That said, neither game competes with anything Bungie released, and while I don’t like Halo 4’s base gameplay much it’s by far the best showing from 343 on-release by pure nature of releasing as a content complete game.
Especially if it is serious. I have splotchy desync and i only get it like twice a game but still, that twice a game makes up like halve of my deaths. I mean, we need to shut up about season 3 and forge and make hardcore HI players who have insane desync and youtubers who likewise have it happy. Desync= less HI players+less HI content.
By “commonly identified”, this gives the impression of “not always”. Which is the closest you got to the truth of it all.
The rest is gatekeeping nonsense, really. “The game can only ever be this, and nothing more.” Anything made dealing with the Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg would be a Starcraft game, even if it’s not a RTS. Just like - and I notice you left this one out - World of Warcraft is a Warcraft title because it is set in and continues the aesthetics and storyline of Warcraft. It doesn’t matter one bit that it’s a Third Person MMORPG, it is Warcraft.
Just like Halo Wars, Halo: Spartan Strike, Spartan Assault, Halo: Fireteam Raven, and everything else that crosses the line YOU have drawn is a Halo title. Arena Shooter or no.
You’re trying to conflate trains of thought here in an attempt to get a leg up in a semantics argument rather than respond to the argument as it’s presented.
“Halo” as concept is an arena style sandbox shooter.
“Halo” as a franchise encompasses multiple genres.
The concept of what makes Halo Halo is applied and compared to shooters in a colloquial fashion. It’s why you don’t see the term “Halo-esque* being used to describe comparable RTS/Arcade/Top Down games because “Halo Wars/Halo Fireteam Raven/Halo Spartan Assault” isn’t “Halo the first person shooter”. The games that are compared are specifically cited as such.
If someone points out comparisons between Halo to CoD gameplay, you know damn well they’re not comparing Halo Wars to CoD in that context, and that context is based on the understanding gameplay mechanics. It’s also why most of the time games are referenced for comparison, as mechanics do change over time so establishing an understanding of (as an example) preferable gameplay in one game to compare it to a less preferential example of gameplay lends an understanding of what the comparison is meant to imply.
The franchise and the concept are two entirely different things. We’re talking about Halo the arena style sandbox FPS, not Halo Spartan Assault. There’s no need to be coy.
It’s not an insult but an observation, and the shoe certainly fits so far.
If you’re done trying to pull semantic “gotcha’s”
there’s still a few responses left to reply to now that full context has been applied:
peace? 