Countdown seemed to have a similar flow, at least the MM version in the division I was playing in back in the day. Common to hold the attics. Construct, too. Top of purple lifts vs gold.
It depends what exactly you mean by asymmetrically, because every map has those intentional imbalances, but if you're referring to half vs half, maps with one line of symmetry would be the closest to what you're describing. Ivory Tower, The Pit, Gemini, Colossus, Countdown, etc.
For the record, I don't think it's completely ruined. It is still interesting, but I disagree that it is richer. The new approach to the Forerunners appears to lack any sort of subtlety. The plot point of the Precursors becoming the Flood seems like an odd choice. Having ancient humans and Prophets be buddies is also strange; it's really not helpful to the overall Universe. I don't think the writing in 5 was appalling, but it was certainly not up to scratch. It seemed like a late-night, poorly thought out, "this will shock them all" idea.
I think that the h4 campaign was really good as a stand alone experience, but wasn't very good in context. --- Double Post Merged, Mar 13, 2016 --- I don't think it's fair to compare halo to prometheus. That was one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and not because of the backstory.
Uh. What. Halo EXISTED before 343 took over? Yeah, but 99% of their contributions to the lore are so uninteresting and generic that it does nothing but make the story convoluted. And their writing is a cut above complete trash. Watch these two clips. See the quality of writing there? How it differentiates the characters, the motives. The tone of the music, the subtlety of every line. It doesn't matter if it's not insanely 'deep'. It's just well written, composed, directed, everything. Halo 3 took a huge step back in the quality of writing but at least it still felt epic and mysterious. Now watch this. That ^ one cutscene more or less summarizes my feelings towards the quality of any 343 campaign. It's just over delivered lines ontop of borderline childish writing with unnecessarily generic sci fi element bullshit. I can't imagine how people can play through any of the Bungie Halos and then a 343 Halo campaign and even have the balls to compare the two. I cringe every time I watch a Halo 5 cutscene and listen to Locke's lines. The story is a cut above trash. If it weren't for the COD franchise I'd say Halo 4 and 5 had the worst writing I've seen in any AAA game.
The dialog in Halo 2 alone is in a league of its own. The Blur cutscenes were proof of how well it held up from a directing and writing standpoint. And that's with Blur messing up some of the scenes. e.g. when Arbiter and Rtas were on the Phantom going to the gas mine, the last shot with them was a close up with them facing each other. When Arbiter says "That makes two of us", Rtas smiles fondly as if to show his respect. Blur for some reason decided to take out the subtlety by doing a shot reverse shot and it ruined his reaction. That's nerdy cinematography stuff though.
Can I ask why you think this? I've heard this opinion before, but I don't really understand where it comes from. It may not be quite H2 level dialogue, but I'd hardly call it a "huge step back".
Also one more thing. Don't ****ing patronize me and tell me that I'm "holding myself back" and just sitting here trying to get everyone to circlejerk over Marty and Bungie and hate 343. Contrary to belief I don't just sit at home and castrate myself with the Halo 2 disk for pleasure and cry myself to sleep every night as visions of Frank o Connor and Achilles armor flash before my eyes. I play Halo 5, probably more than I should. I played Halo 4. I suffered through a year of MCC just like everyone else on this forum. I picked up Halo CE the night it came out, just like I've done with every single Halo game since, including halo 5. And I've probably played more Halo than anyone on this forum because it's what I've been playing almost exclusively for the last 15 years. I can play the game and enjoy the same things everyone else does, I just don't ****ing sit here and trick myself into believing that something in particular isn't complete dog ****, when it is. I can look at something objectively and realize it ****ing sucks. I love Halo 3, it's probably my favorite Halo, but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like it has any competitive potential due to the random BR spread, **** strafe, **** net code, poor weapon sandbox, **** maps, so forth. You can enjoy reading Harry Potter more than you can enjoy reading anything written by Tolkien, you're entitled to your opinion. That doesn't make any less ****ing retarded. If you like the writing in 343 Halo campaign, that's fine. But you're just showing me that you have no understanding of the actual substance and you probably shouldn't discuss it if you're going to get butthurt when someone doesn't have the patience to explain to you why you're being an idiot. And guess what, you too can enjoy 343's Halo games! That's fine, but if you're going to post and pretend like they haven't absolutely massacred the franchise that used to be the face of console gaming where Chief sat right next to Mario, into something that half the time isn't even the XBL Top 10 played. Stop and realize that for a second. The xbox as a console and franchise WOULDN'T EXIST if it weren't for Halo, this isn't my opinion. This is a statement that's been mimicked by microsoft employees countless times over the last decade. Those are global daily population charts for Halo 3, Reach, and 4. It doesn't show 2007 for Halo 3 but in the 6 months or so following launch there were days where it had more than 1,000,000 players online. Think about that for a second. If you truly want me to find an image of it, I will. As **** of a game that Reach was, it also performed similarly for the first 2 years. It wasn't until year 3 that Reach began to tank, as was expected given it's flaws. Halo 3 maintained an average of 400k to 800k daily players for 3 YEARS AFTER LAUNCH. Reach averaged 400k for 2 years. Below that you'll find the Halo 4 population graph, initial day clocked in over 1 million active players but it doesn't show it here (Halo 4 actually outsold Halo 3). Within 3 MONTHS Halo 4 averaged 30k players a day and never rose above that. I'm going to repeat what I just said because the people I'm arguing with are idiots. Halo 3 / Reach maintained 400k - 800k population for 3 years. Halo 4 dropped to 30k within 3 months. MCC probably tanked further than that. What does this have to do with anything, you're wondering. Halo 5 is doing worse than Halo 4 numerically. Not only were initial sales terrible (343 boasts above highest initial sales figures but that includes console and controller bundle cash, which is around $400 out of the $450 per bundle, every single game distributer globally said Halo 5 is selling atrocious). So Halo 5 sold terribly, which is expected after the bullshit of Halo 4 and MCC. Keep in mind that there are more Xbox One's sold now then there were 360's in its own lifespan, so potential buyers isn't the issue. But OF the initial sales, Halo 5 has the WORST retention of any Halo game to date. Worse than Halo 4. Halotracker has logged in every gamertag to play a game of Halo 5 since launch and last season reports less than 10k people actually placed in any rank. Less than 25k people played on any day. The easiest place to look is the XBL Top 10 most played where Halo floats anywhere from #6 to below the 15 games listen. Often beaten about by two different years of Fifa, two years of Call of Duty's, ****ing Battlefield 4, and Destiny.. A game that with ALL it's flaws and lack of content and has been out for A YEAR AND A HALF and only after a 6 month drought of content just now dropped below Halo 5. Halo used to be the game that you wouldn't even have to ASK someone if they owned when they told you they played Xbox, you just now. If someone had Xbox Live when I was in high school, you'd be like "Damn, I wonder what rank that guy is in Halo 2". No one gives a flying **** about Halo anymore. It's not popular competitively (during the global championships it hardly breaks top 5 on twitch), it's not popular casually (Halo 4 was all casual, Halo 5 has nothing casual) it's not ANYTHING. The campaign gets worse from 4 to 5 (both are terrible), their soundtracks are generic sci fi military bullshit that could be played in any Hollywood movie about killing Osama and you wouldn't question it, the writing is a cut above trash, the campaign level design is linear, the enemies are brainless bullet sponges that are worse than Halo CE AI made 15 years ago, the multiplayers map are either hilariously bad or completely safe and unoriginal, the theatre gets worse and worse EVERY single Halo game, the UI is a ****ing JOKE, it's already been done and laid out for them with Reach! WHY NOT COPY IT. The studio heads like Josh Holmes and Frankie constantly lie to their consumers (if you need me provide examples, I'll give you 10), and MCC was the most broken game in the history of gaming that was SUPPOSED to be the lifeline of the Xbox One to be played it's entire duration and host esports but was the most catastrophic failure and is STILL HORRENDOUSLY broken a year and a half later, and Halo 5 has launched with the least content of any Halo game that's ever come out. Bungie with 2 years on Halo 2 launched with 3x the gametypes, a longer BETTER campaign, a better UI, just...everything. Compare the content of Halo 3/Reach to Halo 5, both were made within 3 years. Halo 5 is a ****ing joke and the numbers show it. The game dived to 30k average within 2 months and has been floating there ever since. Don't even get me started on the horrendous mismatch of multiplayer mechanics that have no place being in Halo because I'm guessing some of the people on this forum actually LIKE sprint, and ADS, and shoulder charge, and all that other nonsense without actually having any grasp of game design and what it means for gameplay. And then I get told that I'm just being salty and 343 isn't that bad? Give me a ****ing break. I've never seen a developer misunderstand and skew and trash a franchise the way that 343 has done to Halo. Anyone, LITERALLY ANYONE would've been better than this joke of a studio. Consumers aren't robots, Halo is dying and the numbers are there for literally anyone to see. Yeah, Halo 5 is a step up and the community now is the best it's been since Reach. Wow. Great. So it's the best piece of **** that's come out of 343 studios compared to H4 and MCC. It's a cut above complete garbage. This game's population tanked and there won't be an 3rd global tournament for Halo 5 because there won't even be an interest at that point. In fact, I've never seen less interest for a GLOBAL world championship with this large of a prize pool than I have for halo 5 (and whoever runs the Halo esport scene is doing an awful job at exposure). Has Halo 5 even received a weapon balancing update since it has come out? Does it take a genius to see that the storm rifle is too strong? Or the sniper is too easy? It's been what, 5 months. Valve is **** at listening to consumers, but even they roll out updates to CSGO and when they receive feedback, the game is updated THE NEXT DAY. Why, because they value their game competitively and don't want to sit there for 6 months as people cross map AR ADS each other. IN HALO. The only weapon balancing updates Halo 5 has received at all is in Warzone, shocker. A complete ****ing abomination of a game mode on so many levels. Does it take a genius to know the UI is complete trash? And who's decision was it to make everything completely unplayable without dedicated servers. So glad I can't ****ing solo forge on my own because 343 doesn't know how to maintain their own servers so I'm either A: unable to connect because of "retrieving data" or B: am lagging balls to the walls when I'm in a forge game. ON MY OWN. Every single decision this studio has made in the last 4 years, EVERY single one has been completely ****ing retarded. The last good thing they've done is put in 0 Bloom settings in Reach MM, and guess what! They removed them right after! Everywhere except the MLG playlist which had their own settings. Like I said, I'm not a grumpy old man who sits around all day throwing **** at kids who walk in front of my house as I sit on my porch withering away hating 343. I have a life, I play other games. I go to school, I work. I'm in a pretty good mood almost all the time if you actually talk to me on Xbox Live. But wow I can't help but imagine that anyone who doesn't think 343 is complete ****ing trash probably just enjoys getting **** on and being completely complacent with literally anything. The entire Halo community is in such a pathetic state where anything that happens we go "Well it's not TERRIBLE", or "Well it could be worse! It's better than Halo 4!" Everyone is complacent with something being better than Halo 4. THIS IS ****ING HALO. This game SHOULD be the face of console gaming, the unchallenged #1 most played on Xbox Live, ALL THE TIME. But it's not. No one gives two shits about Halo anymore. The franchise is hardly popular beyond the name. The community is on average, a completely complacent retard who will literally accept anything. The ONLY redeeming factor about 343 is the forge team and nothing else. If you think I'm salty and negative. Go **** yourself. Try thinking critically for yourself for once and your life and take a look at what 343 has actually done for this franchise. I'm done posting for a while.
Lulz at the people here that actually think the campaign and lore in CE through H3 was anything other than generic. Yes, it was a great story, but we're kind of putting it on a ****ing pedestal here. The Halo universe has been fleshed out so much since 343i took over, and while its not exactly amazing, the standard of quality hasn't much changed. The nostalgia goggles are so real with the Halo community. Halo kids are such ****ing ungrateful little shits at times. I swear, all the fanbase ever does is cry.
And that's true. But do you honestly think the difference between a 400k player average and 30k current player average is negligible.
I don't agree. I think there's a lot to see when I'm looking at 1 million players log on halo 3 in a day for the first 6 months, compared to halo 5 which never goes above the #5 spot in most played. But I can at least see what you mean and respect that opinion. That's another thing I didn't mention. Halo 3 wss the most played game for 2007 (beating cod 4) , 2008 (beating cod 4 / waw), and 2009 (battled with mw2 but eventually came out on top) only to be knocked out in 2010. by the next halo game. Halo 5 was not the most played of 2015, and will certainly not be most played of 2016 or any year after that. All the numbers were released by major Nelson and can be checked through his posts.
Here’s the breakdown of launch week sales:Halo 3 – 3.81 million, Halo Reach – 3.70 million, Halo 4 – 3.66 million, ODST – 2.21 million, Halo 5: Guardians – 1.46 million, Halo: TMCC – 0.90 million, Halo Anniversary – 0.73 million and Halo Wars – 0.60 million. Something like that