The title is slightly misleading because I don’t necessarily dislike bleed through, but I do prefer the Reach’s health system. In my opinion, it allows the player to have more control over all situations, and it gives certainty to most kills and deaths. For example, in every instance you know it will take 2 beat downs and you know that a shield has to be popped in order to beat someone down. Now I understand the argument that a person who is shot twice shouldn’t be able to end up with equal health after both parties hit the beat down button, but at the same time, I feel as though this situation is something everyone knows before hand, and can thus prepare for or adjust to.
Sidenote, I feel the same way about the bloom. Yes it does get completely out of control at times, and should have been reduced, but it could always be controlled from day one. Most people just preferred to spam in the heat of the moment rather than slow their final shot by a split second.
Back to the topic. I actually prefer Reach’s system to Halo 3’s because I remember the hundreds (exaggeration) of times where I would be in a battle and we both would shoot each other twice and we both would go in for the beatdown, but only one of us would end up dying. It seemed that it could be sometimes random which player would end up getting the beat down kill. There were even instances where I would put in a third shot to someones second, and the situation would still seem random, or both of us would die.
So just in my personal opinion, I prefer knowing that every time I, or someone else goes in for the beat down with shields not popped their will be no death, and every time a shield is popped it will result in death. When Halo 4 comes out I’ll be glad to go back to the old system, but I definitely enjoyed the no bleed through while it was in Reach.