> I have always considered Halo 2 the best Halo game and there are many reasons why I consider it the best. In this thread I want to talk about Halo 2’s fantastic maps.
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> I loved almost every map in the game. I felt like the Halo map quality took a down turn in Halo 3 and beyond.
Map design is the one area I believe cannot be debated when comparing games in the halo series. People may have different feelings about each entry for a variety of reasons, but it’s simply fact that Halo 2 has the best maps of the series, and some of the best maps to ever grace an online multiplayer game.
For all the focus on gameplay changes made since Halo 2, I’ve actually been okay with a majority of them, despite considering myself an old school Halo player. Sure, armor abilities and excessive ordinance drops can be annoying from time to time, but the series needed to evolve yet still manage to maintain that “halo feel”. From a gameplay standpoint, I think both ends have been achieved.
The three things that have worked to sour on the halo experience since Halo 2 have been clear since day 1: subpar map design, the lack of focus on objective gametypes/maps, and an ineffective ranking system. Reach’s map selection in particular was an absolute disgrace, and no number of well forged maps entered into matchmaking could change that. While there have been a number of standouts over the years (Guardian, Haven, etc), the overall quality of map design has declined sharply. Many of the “worst” maps in Halo 2 are superior to 90% of maps the series has seen since.
Even more frustrating is the fact that the objective gametype has essentially disappeared altogether. In Halo 2 alone, just for Big Team Battle, you had fantastic maps such as Coagulation, Terminal, Containment, Headlong, and Waterworks, along with other solid entries like Zanzibar, Relic and Burial Mounds. There wasn’t a bad map among the bunch. A majority of the BTB maps we have seen since then have been catered to the team slayer crowd, even if they did host objective gametypes as well. The end result with Halo 4 is now the BTB objective gametypes have disappeared entirely. I never thought I’d see the day when such a formerly beloved gametype ceased to exist on the Halo servers.
It’s also hurt to have the ranking system so watered down that the phrase “competitive gameplay” has lost almost all meaning. I miss the old days of desperately trying to grind my way up to that 35 in BTB, only to be disappointed when I fell back down to a 33 and had to work my way back up again.
The series is going to continue to change moving forward, and I’m looking forward to whatever comes next. However, there’s really no excuse for not having the three aforementioned aspects integrated into future games in the series. For the people like us that miss the “good old days” of Halo, this is what needs to happen.