Debate Which Halo game is best?

HAlo: Combat Evolved was by far the best. The story line felt like it actually made sense, and the characters and enemies it introduced felt original at the time. The vehicles were much more fun, what with less braking, so you could splatter people much more easily. Weapons were somewhat unbalanced, but at least they weren't all underpowered/overpowered like in HAlo 2 and Halo 3.

 

My opinion is Halo 1>Halo 2>>>>>>>>>>Halo 3.

My reasons.

Halo 1.

Halo 1 actually had diversity in weapons. There was a huge difference between a Plasma Rifle and an Assault Rifle. In Halo 3. The Plasma Rifle is the exact same as an SMG. No two weapons in Halo 1 were the same.

Then the maps in Halo 1 were far superior to Halo 3's. Halo 3 has maps that suck, remakes that destroy the original and "Spiritual copies" that make no sense as they later make a remake of the map that was "spiritualy copied." Halo 1 had a nice small chotic teleporting map that was hard to learn. It had Sidewinder and Blood Gulch which had some amazing vehicle battles.

Halo 2.

Halo 2 was good. The Campaign sucked but the core gameplay was awesome. They got rid of unique guns and they made everything balanced which ws offset by the weapons that were horribly overpowered. But they had some maps that were awesome! Headlong, Lockout and accension are three that come to mind. Later, they added actual good DLC, unlike Halo 3s crappy DLC, Relic, Terminal and Backwash are three that come to mind.

Each of these maps has a unique gameplay element that made you change your style, if only just a bit. The fog in Backwash made stealthy people better and Snipers worse. The teleporter on Relic gave people a small objective on assault and capture the flag. And Terminal made using the train tracks a slightly risky option.

Halo 3.

The only redeeming quality is Forge and Theater.

 

I'm sorry, but this just isn't true, the H3 SMG and Plas Rifle are very different. Whilst they do perform in a kinda similar way at very close range, the lower rate of fire and slower bullet travel of the Plas Rifle make it perform very differently as soon as the range increases even a little, especially with strafing involved. But seriously, the most important difference is that you can actually viably kill someone with bullets from the SMG, whilst the Plas Rifle really needs a beatdown to kill on its own. I'd say that the increased number of weapons in H3 does bring some nice diversity. Even though some weapons are more similar to others, they all perform their own role and also serve to provide for a wider variety of playstyles. I personally never use Spikers, but there have been a few times where someone used them perfectly in a given situation, raped me, and there was very little I could do about it.

And finally, the 3-shot Pistol was the defining factor in H:CE and whilst I did love it, I really think that its removal was for the best. The weaponset in H:CE just wasn't as developed and refined as it is now, it was great for its time and made a revolutionary game but it was an embryonic stage of Halo as I now know and love it.

The gameplay feel and control response choices made in H:CE make it quite a different game from both H2 and H3, as does the heavier emphasis on vehicle use. Blood Glutch was great in H:CE, didn't work as well for me in H2, and would need some serious re-engineering to work in H3. I know you'll hate me for this as you don't like the reimaginations that Bungie have been doing, but I think that the way H3 plays just means that maps have to be constructed differently.

I agree with you that some of the maps in H2 were truly awesome, mostly because it pretty much abandoned vehicle use as a central element. Close to mid range battle in FPS was defined in H2, simple as that. It also introduced the factor that really makes Halo, online play. But it was kinda broken in certain ways (the exploits and dodgy gun/bullet mechanics left alot to be desired by widening the skill gaps, especially in online play where hosting came into play), and the loss of effective competitive vehicle use was a bit sad. H2 was amazing, revolutionary and simply awesome, but not perfect. H3 isn't perfect either by all means, but its been refined with the experience gained from watching H2 grow into what it did.

I couldn't disagree more. Whilst those are great features which help bring H3 to the top of my list, I think the best thing about it is the gameplay mechanics system. Once I got used to it, the way your player reacts to controls and the environment makes H3 the best game I have ever played by far. They fixed the grenade throw from H2 finally making it perfectly competitive and useable. Bullet transmission, especially on the BR, and headboxes were improved alot. It just feels more refined, polished and functional than H2 and it also allows for a much wider range to playstyles and skill levels.

Sorry, but my order would be the opposite of yours. I don't think H3 is perfect, but its still the best there is to date.

 

Easily halo 1.

The only thing halo 1 has in common with 2 and 3 is the name lol. It was a completely different game to what we have now. The gameplay, the physics, the feeling and dynamic all changed for the worse. I wasn't swept up with the halo 2 popularity phenomena (I was a playstation player during its generation) but looking back that game was so poor and sloppy compared to halo 1 even with its older graphics etc. Halo 2s redeeming features were a classic much loved overpowered weapon and some really nice maps, halo 1 had both of those with none of the flaws in the rest of the game. Over powered weapons may be bad for a game in theory but as far as I'm concerned the pistol and the BR made halo 1 and 2 kept the games alive and loved.

When I first saw halo 1 it was a real jaw hits the floor and underwear hits the ceiling moment. The sequels lost so much of the magic. Halo 2 and 3 are still good games but my thoughts will always lead the question "why didn't they do it like in halo 1?".

 

Sure, a minor difference. In Halo 1, the Plasma Rifle 'Froze' the enemy. It wasn't as obvious if you were doing a 'charge the enemy' tactic but when circiling, it dominated the enemy. And against it's equivalent, it had longer range and less 'spray' on it's bullets.

Story wise, the weapons in Halo 3 are good. In gameplay, Spiker=Plasma=Spiker. Only difference is that the damage dealt with each weapon is deifferent and how the bullet travels. The Spiker has higer damage for each shot but has lower clips, the PR has less damage done and has lower RoF and the SMG has the worst damage done but has he higest RoF.

In Halo 1, you had the weapons you NEEDED for gameplay. You had a sniper, shotgun, Assault Rifle, Rocket Launcher and Pistol. Those 5 weapons are those that every game has. Then they added the Needler, PR, and PP. The Needler caused no damage upon impact but when several hit you, you blew up. The PP got rid of shields, no questions asked and the PR froze the enemy. With those weapons, you can find a difference between a PR and an AR without going into how a weapon hits the enemy.

I don't want Bungie to remake anything. Each map they remade sucked, hard. Blackout is missing that touch, Avalanche was ruined with all the infantry moving patterns and Last Resort's base was ruined. IMO, Bungie needs to stop looking back and saying, "Let's remake that."

Halo 2 ruined something that I liked about Halo 1. Health. In Halo 1, it's very hard to go through a lot of encounters and win each one. If they kept health, camping would be made much harder as after each wave, the enemy gets progressivly weaker and eventually, they die.

The revolutionary part about Halo 1 was the vehicles. People were amazed how the vehicles were. And that's something I love about the Halos. I remember when I played UT3 and CoD3, I remember looking at the vehicles and saying, "Wow, I can't even snipe the driver out." or, "What's the point of the vehicle? One shot from a stray bullet while in a jeep means you're dead." Halo 1, 2 and 3 did vehicles the best.

It may be more polished but that doesn't mean it's better. Granted, the BR and weapon changes were needed but with the difficulty of glitches means a commnity just made a community a shadow of its former self. Sure, thew still do a lot of glitches but not as much as they used to.

The grenade throw in Halo 2 was fine. It wasn't so big that someone can throw a grenade from one side of the map and actually hit someone.

In Halo 2, their were a lot of playstyles and they still exist in Halo 3. They are just slightly tweaked. It's not like the playstyle change that GoW 2 seems to be going through.

And rankings is something that pisses me off about Halo 3. In Halo 2, it was a privelage to be a level 16. You were one of the best. After those levels, it was MLG pros. Then Bungie wanted the ranking easier and then it was level 30 that was a privelge but that was okay. Halo 3's ranking is terrible. In 50 matches, you can get to level 50. And even then, players at level 50 have a huge skill gap. Some of them can pull a noscope from across the map if they wanted to and other can barely aim a BR.

I don't know why you're appoligising...

 

If you really like the vehicle use so much, which I do too, then how can you think that H2 is better than H3? H2 killed vehicles, the mechanics were bad and the homing rockets didn't help either. H3 isn't as great vehicle wise as H:CE was, but I still like the way their implemented and find it a reasonable compromise between that and on-foot battles at smaller ranges.

The one thing I cannot argue with is your points about the ranking in H3, its simply stupid and the update doesn't look like its gonna do much to fix that. Trueskill has its perks, but I don't like the way its been implemented in H3 and feel that they really could have done better there. Still, it doesn't ruin the game, just annoys me.

 

Simple, while those additions made it hard on drivers, the Rockets could be dodged, unlike the splaser, and there was no other infantry anti-vehicle other then Close combat. Vehicles in Halo 3 are ****ed beyond repair. A AR bullet flips a Mongoose. Warthogs have really bad turning which ruiins it, the Mongoose is the same speed as the Warthog but has no turning disadvantage. Being in a vehicle in Halo 3 is like sating,"Goodbye cruel world!"

IMO, Halo 3 should have had Halo 1 Ghost, Halo 2 warthog, Scorpion from Halo 1, Chopper and Specter. All with Halo2s vehicle physics. In Halo 2, a warthog could jump over one of the ribs on Burrial Mounds and that took skill. In Halo 3, there is no skill jumps on Vehicles.

 

Wow. Looks like my favorite was Halo 2 mainly because if you love a good storyline it was amazing. My only hate about the story were two things. One: Brutes. Two: Arbiters armor didnt have longer cloaking. The games gameplay was truly fun and super bounces were always fun. If you and some friends were bored you would go onto headlong and get out of the map. Zombies was born in Halo 2 which led to an epidemic of it being an actual gametype in Halo 3. Halo 1 and 3 were quite good and had fun gameplay but the fact of Halo 1 not having Live killed it. And Halo 3 is only good because of forge really. Halo 1 was amazing with the health bars and was a great idea but they took that out in Halo 2 which I also didnt like but didnt mind. Everyday before Halo 3 I would be on Halo 2 playing with friends either making machinima or playing some fun honor rules gametypes.

 

Im gonna have to say 3, 1, then 2.

Halo 3 is just alot more fun for me than the other 2 games mostly because of the orginality of the options in custom games. Halo 3 also has alot (More) weapons even though the duels arent very good alone, every other weapon is kind of diverse from eachother, even CQB weapons. There is alot of gametypes too which I like most. Alot of vehicles too.

Oh and I forgot forge and the revolutionary theater. Halo 3 is the only halo game with a built in map modifier of any kind. And I don't need to explain the rest because everyone knows what I'm saying.

Theater is also great. Its probably the most advance from of video making being able to be omnipresent on something that already happened and have it go at any speed you want. How many movie makers can have that? I'm also wondering how many other games besides GoW2 will have halo 3's theater too.

Campaign wasn't the best though, it was better then halo 2 though. At least there is Co-op, more scarab fights, boss fight with guilty spark, and the flood has to be the most dimented thing I have seen until Dead Space.

Halo 1 on the xbox I didn't have too much fun on because after campaign it was boring. Only 4 people can play multiplayer at a time and that was rare too and 1v1 isn't alot of fun to me. And there was only 2 weapons on the game, of course I mean the Pistol and the Sniper. The rocket launcher is kind of useless on BG.

I did have Halo PC (With CE) though but I'm not getting into that because halo 3 isn't on the comp yet and I havent played Halo 2 Vista.

Halo 2 was my least favorite. I sucked at the multiplayer because I couldent BXR or I would get owned by the BR and I couldent snipe at the time and the modders. even though Halo 2 had the best maps. The campaign was ****. There was no ending and alot of back tracking I just didn't like it much.

 

Diverse is extremly debatable. In your example, the only diversity is that Sword and Hammer just increase the power of your melee. That's not diversity. The Hammer is diverse. The others aren't. They just made the damage deliverence different.

Theater isn't revolutionary. PC games have had this for much longer. If you meant for consols however...

This part is where I disagree the most with. In Halo 1, each weapon was diverse and you could find an actual difference between them. In Halo 3, this is very hard if you discount RoF and delivery of damage. Halo 3 might as well have 9 weapons. AR, BR, Sniper, Rockets, Splaser, Shotgun, Pistols, PP and SMG. And that's IF you discount any overpowered thought. If you use overpowered... You get AR, BR, Sniper, Rockets, Shotgun. And Splaser is on so very few competitive maps...

Granted, BxR and Co. were annoying but if you discounted them, the game was brilliant.

On the Campaign thing, are you confuinsg it with Halo 1? That sounds like Halo 1s campaign to me.

 

I'm going to have to correct you on some of what you said above. Rockets were very hard to dodge in Halo 2, if not near impossible depending on your location. The splaser is much easier to dodge than any rocket I've even encountered.

An mongoose can be flipped at the right angle depending on which way the player is driving....its all physics.

Most importantly the mongoose is NOT as fast as the warthog. I'd like to quote Lightsout225 here

"The mongoose is quicker, but the Warthog is faster."

Don't believe me? Go see for yourself. Halo 3's vehicles are much, much better than Halo 2's. And the boarding system is missed much when I play Halo CE. But as far as the whole package goes, Halo CE was the best. The story line had more significance. The plot was simple, but it was all layed out for you. Halo 2 and 3's story lines were much more cryptic....so it was much harder to actually care about what was happening.

 

Entirely depends now what vehicle you're using. I've dodged Rockets in a Warthog, Ghost and Banshee.

I've never dodged a laser out in the open, ever. The laser is a 'Fire and Forget' weapon which means, just like a particularly good machinima said, Fire and forget it took absolutly no skill to use.

On another note, who the hel have you went against? Nobody misses with the laser on the maps it's on! In situations of close combat, not even the Rockets could work there!

No. This is most obvious on the last level of Halo 3. Do the whole mission with a Mongoose and you'll find that just about everything can flip the Mongoose if it just so much as hits the thing. Really annoying when in the air or when turning.

I know. But in a genaral use situation, Mongoose will always get somewhere faster as the Warthog can't turn for **** without losing all it's speed.

But Halo 3s physics mess a lot of it up. An AR can screw up the jumps of certain vehicles with only one bullet. In Halo 3, there are no jumps that need the skill to do.(Vehicle)

And thank you for reminding me about boarding. Why did Bungie make it so you can't move turn or do anything when you get boarded? Bungie really needs to learn the saying, "If it 'ain't broke, don't fix it."

 

I'm a damn good driver. =)

Its actually funny you mention that. I was in a competition to see who could finish the last level in the Mongoose the quickest (I placed 3rd behind Lightsout225 and Devinish). I'm one of the better drivers of the Mongoose and I can say that when you learn how handle those situations, flipping can be avoided. It takes some practice though, which can be considered "skill"

A warthog can loose some of its speed while its turning, and it should. Plan a path of attack, so minimal turning is required...or learn how to cut corners using the E-break. It works wonders.

Valhalla has quite a few jumps that require the right vehicle and the right speed. Maybe you aren't looking close enough...

I agree with you to an extent on this one. In Halo 2, when being boarded, if you positioned yourself correctly you could easily assassinate the attacker. Vehicles in Halo 3 are much more dominant, so they wanted to make sure that people who were able to board the vehicles stood a chance against the original driver. I think they made a good overall decision, however frustrating it may seem at times.

 

Out of curiosity, what was your time finishing it. I did it as well and I died once, I think...

I know how to do all that but th Mongoose can do the exact same things and better in most cases.

The only one I can think of is the jump from the rocks outside the bases into the base. Other then that one, I can't think of any jump that has a good use.

I want to correct you on the vehicle dominance thing.

On maps that have no rockets and wide open areas, no splaser, no Missle pod, no brute shot and no plasma grenades, vehicles are dominant.

Seriously, if they wanted to get rid of some dominance, they should have just changed the animation so that both people finished the boarding animation at the same time. That would have been fair. Hell, they could have put the guy getting boarded facing the other way.

Now, on cases such as the Ghost and Chopper, it was the stupidest idea ever. As soon as you get boarded, you're screwed. A typical situation. You drive through the map, you get boarded he then eitheir 1, runs away or 2, he turns around kills you before you have any chance to move in any direction properly.

I can understand the loss of shield but not the slow movement.

 

My best time was around 5:18 and I didn't die or flip once. I stumbled slightly a few times, but that was it. We time the run from when the headlights first turned on the mongoose to when the rear wheels leave the final ramp. LIGHTSOUT225 has the current record at a time under 5 minutes (I don't know the exact time off the top of my head). Its an amazing run and I think he has it on his file share somewhere. It's very impressive.

I just said they were more dominant than their Halo 2 counterparts. The vehicles can take a much heavier beating than they could before, making it harder to kill the vehicle in a situation without power weapons.

 

Damn. I have 10 mins from after you kill spark all the way to the Final jump using the Mongoose. Imma have to do that again.

Or a Bruteshot, greanade, close quarters.

 

Halo 1 definitely had the campaign.
Halo 2 definitely had the maps.
Halo 3 definitely has forge and custom games.

 

I would have to say that halo 3 is on the bottom of the list for me, on the longevity wise basis. I didn't even own halo 1 and played it more often the H3. Halo 1 had the ORIGINAL sidewinder, which was a map I could play forever. With the tanks, ghosts, and other vehicles it was fun anywhere from 2 to 4 players. I still have memories of crouching to avoid a ghost, and "leading the receiver" with the rockets. Campaign was actually FUN also.

Halo 2 was a little bit worse, but I still played it on live for quite a long time.

Halo 3 was maybe a 2 month fad and I moved on :[

 

I prefer Halo 3 out of the three of them!