So I’ve finally reached (pun intended) the point where I’ve become too frustrated with Halo 5 to play it. So I decided to get out my old copy of Reach to see if backwards compatibility was working well enough. Luckily, it was. While I was playing I realized that there are so many things that Reach does better than Halo 5.
Sprint - It’s simple in Reach. Lower your gun and run for 7 seconds. Nothing more. Halo 5 has sprint, but… It takes a considerable amount of time to reach top speed, during that period any attack will make you stop running. Essentially, if you’re ambushed there’s 0% chance for escape. Your shields won’t recharge while sprinting, and the fact that time-to-kill is much quicker in 5 than Reach means that if you encounter someone while sprinting, you’re at a huge disadvantage. Basically, Halo 5 has sprint, but you’re punished for using it.
Weapon Balance - Halo is supposed to be a tactical shooter. The utter lack of bloom in all Halo games except Reach gives them more of a twitch feel, emphasizing the importance of getting the first shot. Reach is the only game where if I get shot first, I consistently have a fair chance of making a comeback.
Splitscreen > 60FPS - When people talk about playing games that run at 30 frames per second they howl as if it’s worse than getting their limbs sliced off. I honestly don’t see what the big deal is, 60fps game play isn’t worth the lack of splitscreen. (They could have done both, anyway. Mario Kart 8 runs at 60fps normally and can lower the FPS in splitscreen)
Esports, MLG, and other BS: Almost every single aspect of Halo 5 was designed with competitive play in mind. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in 343’s case they have almost completely forsaken casual players. Every ranked playlist and Warzone is filled with super-coordinated teams, and as someone else on waypoint said they’re more organized than the Japanese railway. So if you want to play any of these on your own, you’re shooting yourself in the foot (Big Team Battle is the least-likely to have this problem). Social playlists come and go, and when they arrive they usually just attract sweaty stat-padders. The only real social playlist Halo 5 has is infection, which really isn’t much in the grand scheme of things and Reach has had that playlist all along.
One last pet-peeve of mine - In Reach, when the game ends you just hear “Game Over” then it shows each player’s score on screen. But In Halo 5, if you lose then it will rub it in your face with the message DEFEAT. …Really, 343? Halo never had this BS, why did you all think it was necessary to suddenly put it in when you took Halo? No one asked for it, it doesn’t add anything to the game except more frustration.
Of course, none of this means that I hate 343 and Halo 5. I just think that Reach did things better, and I think that I’ll be playing it more often than 5 this Summer. I’ll see you all on the battlefield.