Things I Like About The New Halo Games

Community General Discussion
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I am an old time Halo veteran, started playing Halo back on PC in 2003. I owned a 360, but never got an Xbox One, so all my Halo 5 experience comes from playing full house multiplayer on PC in Customs and Forge, so I won’t be commenting on campaign mechanics etc. I am not a big supporter of 343, I don’t like their direction they’ve taken with Halo at all, call me a Bungie fanboy all you want your claims are invalid, because I didn’t like Reach either. With all that said, 343 has made some positive changes which I would like to highlight here in this thread, because it’s good to be objective.

1.) They made automatic weapons somewhat useful. Before precision weapons would be better at pretty much every range, now the automatic weapons such as the AR have more bite to them and don’t feel entirely useless.

2.) Switching vehicle seats without leaving the vehicle. Very cool feature.

3.) The automatic turrets and hardlight shield from Halo 4. Those turrets were great, with some tweaking such as who they target, they would be welcome back. The hardlight shield even though it was just a spiritual successor to the energy shield the Elite had in the very early Halo CE trailers, it was still cool. Bring those back.

4.) Forge is now phenomenal. Even though I still have some major beefs with it and custom games, it’s such a great editor, it’s come a very long way.

5.) Variety of weapon and vehicle variants. Choice is good, and some of the vehicle variants that behave differently are neat, although I believe they should focus more on adding in new vehicles, and maintaining old ones, such as adding in the Grizzly tank (like SPV3 did), Pelican, Elephant, Mammoth, and bring back the Hornet, Falcon, Troop Transport Warthog, that would be a better use of resources than a Warthog that is painted black and has AoE rounds instead of normal shots. Just my opinion.

6.) The ability to make Infected look like Flood, was a neat change up in Halo 4, even though they could only use energy swords which basically killed the gametype, bring back that aesthetic option for customs.

7.) Armor abilities and enhanced mobility. I think classic Halo gameplay is far superior and should be the standard experience, however, these extra abilities do allow players to make cool custom games, such as parkour maps with the clamber and thruster pack, so having them in the game as an option in customs is nice.

I think that about wraps it up. Thanks for reading and please keep the replies civil

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Edit: Few mistakes corrected and reformatted to be more friendly with the mobile Waypoint layout. This should teach me not to post at work…

I too, am a Halo “old timer”, having played Halo since CE on the OG Xbox. Those days were great, I remember when games had actual quality control and they didn’t require an internet connection almost all of the time. I totally agree that both Bungie and 343 have made their fair share of mistakes with the franchise, so I feel that I may at times offer a nice contrast to your post, given our history with Halo.

1.) I love the increased viability of automatic weapons, although, I would like to see automatic weapons lose their accuracy bonus when zoomed (Smart-scope).

2.) Vehicle seat switching is one of the best features 343 have ever devised, definitely a quality of life improvement and a welcome addition to the franchise.

3.) I didn’t like the auto turrets or whatever they were called, they just felt bland and uninspired to me, especially as you have no control as to who they target. The hardlight shield was great, but if it were to return, it would have to be in a limited capacity so as not to affect competitive gametypes, maybe even as a pickup with limited refills.

4.) I agree that this version of Forge is easily the best yet. 343 took their time implementing it, but it was worth it. Now we just need AI, wave settings and waypoints to set up custom campaigns and I’ll be set for life.

5.) Weapon and vehicle variety is great, only problem I have is that each higher tier weapon or vehicle completely outclasses the last (with a couple of exceptions) and I would much prefer that each variant have both strengths and weaknesses. All that said, I would love to see more of the franchise’s more obscure vehicles and weapons.

6.) I miss Halo 4’s infected Spartan models more than I should, but making the Flood in Halo 4 have such annoying voice effects was a huge mistake and it easily ruined the experience more than any model change ever could.

7.) When it comes to the divide between the new mobility-centric gameplay and the strategic classic gameplay, myself and many any others have been saying from the start: two playlists! Classic and Evolved. Problem solved.

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well, one thing i like is ability to change the seats on vehicles without exiting them. There might be other things but not that memorable at least.
and i too have played since the Halo: Combat Evolved on the original xbox.

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I agree with #4. Best forge ever. And the custom games browser means that the things you do in forge can actually see use even if you’re not willing to start your own youtube channel and campaign to get your maps into rotation.

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I agree with you, especially about the automatics, armor abilities, and enhanced mobility.

Having the Sentry Turret in Halo 4 was awesome, and really helpful in campaign mode. I’d love to see it and other armor abilities come back to spice up custom games and warzone.

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Spartan Charge and Ground Pound. You are half a ton of bad in a can. You should be able to use it.

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The seat switching is one of the few things that I actually like about Halo 5. It almost makes one-man-hogging a viable strategy.

Forge is the best it ever has been, and the infected Spartans from Halo 4 where an awesome addition to Infection, though I reckon their assassinations could have been more violent to suit the theme.
Oh and I like the aesthetic of the covenant vehicles from Halo 5, as long as we’re saying that they are the Sangheili variants of them and not the ‘they always looked like this’ designs.