This is my personal ranking of every halo campaign excluding the twin tick shooter, so yes im including halo wars, as it is a damn good game made by a (now defunct) talented RTS developer. I will include reasoning along with the list to offer explanation. Just so you know I like all the halo campaigns and think they are epic but if I have to rank them this would be it.
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Halo CE: objectively Halo 2 is better than halo ce in every possible way including campaign. Halo 2 rarely if ever made you backtrack through areas that you have already seen and fought through. That being said Halo CE has something that no other Halo has. Halo CE has the same magical thing that A New Hope had to star wars. Just like A new Hope you are dropped into a universe where things are happening and there is no explanation, no back story (not yet anyway). Hell, the opening scene of Halo CE is almost shot for shot the opening of A new Hope! The gameplay of the campaign however was just majestic. At first its corridor shooter, and then on level 2 you’re thrown into an open map with multiple objectives that you can tackle in any order you want. Throughout the campaign everything is new fresh and unfamiliar it almost had this surreal quality to it that sequels could never have.
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Halo 2: This game did everything right. Splitting the perspective between chief and the new character the arbiter was gutsy but overall paid off. Without the experience of playing as the Arbiter he would have hardly been as interesting of a character and would not be a fan favorite today. In terms of narrative Halo 2 greatly expanded on what Halo CE began putting players neck deep in plot and events. Every mission was unique and the addition of new enemy types and weapons. Bungie must have understood that they would not really be able to reproduce that surreal nature of Halo CE in halo 2 because players have familiarized themselves with Halo’s universe. Thus providing the reason for introducing so many new characters and having to plotlines. Seriously halo CE only had 3 and half characters as johnson was unnamed until halo 2.
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Halo Reach: The most ambitious halo campaign out of all of them. Finally showing multiple other spartans in action in one of the most famed battles in all of halo lore. The level design was creative, set pieces well directed, and characters well written. Noble team was memorable and they kicked -Yoink-. It also ha a distinctly different tone than the main trilogy, instead of the epic lone hero saves the universe tone of Chief’s story, Reach is like a really grim war story. It felt like a sci-fi war film and really benefited the game as a whole.
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Halo ODST: A very unique and ambitious campaign in a similar vein of reach. Like noble team the squad featuring ODSTs instead of spartans, was very memorable and well written. The level design was excellent in fact the best to date of all halo fps campaigns. Playing in a sandbox city as the rookie looking for clues as to where the rest of your squad is was awesome. Using stealth never felt so rewarding in any previous halo, and having the game shift perspectives to other squad members upon finding a clue and playing a full length campaign mission was brilliant. The collectibles that told a side story to the invasion of new mombasa was riveting and lead to a interesting encounter if they are all found. The game’s tone was again, like reach different than the main trilogy. It had this film noir inspired theme with a twisting narrative involving a covenant invasion an Oni secrets. The unique Jazz infused score is one of Marty O’Donnell’s best as well.
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Halo Wars: Despite being an RTS halo wars had a very awesome and interesting story, something most strategy games struggle with. However the team at Ensamble Studios were no stranger to good stories in RTS games. A previous title they made called Age of Mythology (a spinoff of Age of Empires) also had an excellent campaign and story. Halo Wars set 20 years before every other game on this list told and awesome story about the battles the UNSC Spirit of Fire was involved in. Sergeant Forge will be remembered as an great badass character along with the spartans of red team. The cutscenes done by blur studios the same team that did halo 2 anniversary’s scenes, were fantastic and graphically stunning when they were new.
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Halo 4: The return of the Chief. Overall this campaign was great. Solid non repetitive level design, with new weapons and a whole new class of enemies made great additions to the franchise. The Didact is the villain the franchise needs after the prophets. The game expanded on chiefs character and no doubt the ending left players sad. However there are some issues that place this campaign second to last despite it’s stellar narrative and good level design. Personally I think 343 went overboard on their redesigns of many aspects of the game. From spartan armor, weapons, marines, vehicles, covenant, halo lost its unique art style quite a bit. The campaign was also too short. It is the shortest campaign of all the games on this list and it should have been longer. Also the new characters were hit or miss, the new spartan IV’s act like bros and just suck, with comander sarah palmer being truly terrible. Lasky is cool, and roland the (infinity’s ship A.I.) is awesome. They really should have featured Roland in the campaign instead of just spartan ops.
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Halo 3: Despite being last it does not mean I dont like Halo 3’s campaign. In fact it is really good, but has the most serious flaws out of all the games. The game starts off perfectly. Great level design, and a solid continuation of the trilogy’s narrative. The biggest issues occur late in the campaign and have to do with level deisgn and huge plot-holes. Firstly the late game flood mission is just bad. Poor level design makes it easily the least fun mission of every halo campaign. Secondly, while the final warthog run at the end is fun, I felt kinda cheated. I expected something very unique from the ending of the trilogy not a rehash of the Halo CE warthog run. Its just lazy, and not memorable. Two major plot-holes are the defeat of the flood and the fact that the ship forward unto dawn was totally empty. Starting with the ship, there is no explanation as to why the ship was empty at the end of the game. Wheres the crew? were’s the soldiers? The Flood didnt get to them because 1. the ship was flying around the whole time and 2 if the flood did kill everyone on the ship it should have been infested with flood. The destruction of the flood also made no sense. First of all it is clear that the forerunners kept flood samples all over the galaxy in various facilities as shown throughout the trilogy. Also in Halo 2 the installation was not fired so the flood on that halo should still be thriving. And upon firing the ring and destroying the Ark in 3, only the flood in that immediate explosion would have been destroyed. It is completely unclear if the gravemind was even there as it controls the flood telepathically and was originally on delta halo, and very well could be alive. IF not it doesnt matter as a new gravemind can easily be made. Ultimately the flood have not been wiped out and probably should reenter the narrative in order to clean up this gaping plot-hole.
