Essentially this is a rant on why Warzone Firefight makes me sad.
I love Halo. I remember my first experience playing 4 player split screen CE in my friend’s basement for his 13th birthday. I remember first connecting to Xbox Live for Halo 2 multiplayer online. I remember finishing the fight in Halo 3, and being skeptical of playing a different Spartan team in Reach, then being blown away by it being the best of the franchise. I love all of it, I even read the books. And Firefight in Reach was what I thought the future of Halo gaming was for me.
But then Halo 4 was lackluster in content and execution. I figured, hey, it’s 343’s first attempt after Bungie’s split. I’ll cut them some slack. They replaced Firefight with their episodic mission thing. It was pretty cool, I loved the concept, but it still wasn’t playing as fun as Firefight was.
Now with Halo 5 they continue to take steps backwards in almost every aspect. You made the graphics super cool, good for you! (However personally I’m not a fan of how vibrantly colorful everything is, it’s Halo, not a Disney movie.) But a visual upgrade is only good if you want a trophy wife. And I’m not that shallow. Halo has been so well established with the story and gameplay, it’s almost like you have to go out of your way to get it wrong. The opportunities, the ideas, the framework are all there, but the execution is a huge miss. Halo 4 not having firefight upset me, but the episodic missions that replaced it were a good idea and while not as good as firefight, I could accept it.
Now bring in Halo 5. Just like Halo 4, campaign story is out there and difficulty level is exponentially increased. Going back to play CE though reminds you that Heroic and Legendary were pretty darn hard in the beginning too. So I’ll get over it. But Halo 5 doesn’t have firefight. It has Warzone now, which is okay, but still just feels like big team battle. But wait, there’s a patch bringing in Warzone Firefight! Hallelujah I’ve been waiting for this day! The patch drops, my hopes are naively high, and my heart is crushed again as find my self repeatedly screaming obscenities at my TV.
Imbalance. I’ve never seen levels this high. The “bullet sponge” enemies have is ridiculous. Multiple clips to take out a single soldier? I guess you’re trying to enforce teamwork, fine. But the AI damage is also ridiculous! Here is my frequent experience with the game.
I get hit once and I’m almost dead, so I take cover immediately. Oh nevermind there’s 15 more enemies doing god mode damage as well coming from 4 different flanks. And now I have to wait for a ridiculous respawn. Finally I’m back on the field, I take 5 steps out of the base, and immediately I’m under fire again from 15 enemies again, I’m flanked, and I’m stuck being spawn camped by AI.
I haven’t won a Warzone Firefight match in the past 2 days, probably 7 or 8 matches. That’s insane. Maybe I just suck now, I don’t know, I was pretty good at the previous Halo games. But I’m just so frustrated by this. Yet I keep coming back to the game because I can’t let go of the Halo I love, so I’m BEGGING you 343i, PLEASE just rebalance Firefight to something reasonable. Two things need to be cut in half: Enemy damage output, and respawn time.
Sincerely,
Broken Hearted Halo Fan