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Do people still like the old Halo campaigns?

Windom Earle

Windom Earle

Banned
I recently watched some MCC footage of the Halo 2 campaign. Is it just me or did the game age terribly? It does not look fun at all and you can seemingly run past huge parts of the game.

Are the newer Halo games better in this regard or do people mostly buy it for the mp?
 
After loving Halo CE's campaign back in the day I decided to run through it on MCC and it was so bad! The amount of backtracking and bad lvl design made it a real chore and I never want to play through it again.
 
Replayed them in the MCC and IMO CE's is tedious, repetitive, and just all around boring. 3's is still my favorite by far.
 
Yes. In fact, with MCC I have a whole new appreciation for the Halo 2 campaign hat I didn't at launch.



Some of the best campaigns ever made.


If only they could've squeezed Reach and ODST in as well..
 
Still loving them, though 3 has been my favourite since it came out. 1 & 2 still hold well imo and I'd rather play those than a lot of more recent FPS games.
 
R dott B said:
After loving Halo CE's campaign back in the day I decided to run through it on MCC and it was so bad! The amount of backtracking and bad lvl design made it a real chore and I never want to play through it again.
Click to expand...

You can say that again!

Not owning an OG Xbox or a 360 it wasn't until a month ago that a friend lent me his 360 that I played Halo CE's campaign for the very first time (Anniversary Ed) and not having the handicap of nostalgia goggles myself I found the single player game atrocious. Especially the latter half what with its insufferable copy/pasting, backtracking and all around just boring and repetitive as shit missions. Im convinced that ppl who say Halo CE's campaign is the best of the series either havent played it in 10 years or they don't know any better.

Not everything I have to say is bad. Last week, thanks to the same 360 I was lent, I finished Halo 4's campaign and not only do I think its the best in the series (I had played Halo 2 and 3's campaign in the past, unlike 1 and 4), but one of the best overall single player campaigns in any traditional mission-based FPS I've ever played. And those graphics? Probably the best I ever saw on a 360.

I still think Master Chief is a tool and as boring a character as it can get, though.
 
Well Halo 2 is the second worst campaign of the franchise, so I undertsnad why you'd say that.
 
Kind of weird to say but CE is the one that aged the most, it was fun still but like 10% of the fun i had back on the ogXbox

H2A was fantastic tho, they did a great job with the remaster

Still have to play through 3 and 4, too much stuff to play as of lately
 
I enjoyed them very much, but I decided to hold off on getting the MCC because, you know, I have been there and done that. Especially with the first two, which I played the hell out of on the first Xbox. But I do think it will be fun to run through them again down the road during a lull and on the cheap.
 
Halo 2 was the weakest of the bungie games outside of ODST to begin with. But that makes sense since they had to basically redo the entire game in like 12 months. Never forget the E3 demo. For what it was, it was okay, although it was clearly lacking.

I'll always say 3, 1, and Reach were really great campaigns, and they impacted me in different ways
 
The only campaign I have ever played more then once and enjoyed was diablo 1, and 2.

Also the original Starcraft

Now I did enjoy halo 1 coop with my best friend. Outside of that eh.
 
Halo 2 still has the best Campaign, so yes.


"Running past" huge portions is possible in every single Halo game except CE and ODST; due to the way their loading zones/mission structure works. (This is not a good thing; CE is very linear for most of the Campaign!) Even in CE large portions of the game can be skipped with a number of big tricks.
 
Random17 said:
Halo 2 still has the best Campaign, so yes.


"Running past" huge portions is possible in every single Halo game except CE and ODST; due to the way their loading zones/mission structure works. Even in CE large portions of the game can be skipped with a number of big tricks.
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Best?
 
Peterpan said:
Best?
Click to expand...

Yes, best.

-Best dialogue
-Best cutscenes
-Best characters/world building/story
-Best soundtrack
-Many missions which are still some of the best in the series (Outskirts for the number of things you can do, Arbiter for the stealth gameplay, Delta Halo etc)
-Arbiter and his active camouflage
-Best set of skulls
 
CE is pretty rough...sooo much backtracking, samey looking environments all over the place, and it really tests your endurance in the second half with some really bullshitty levels.

3 still holds up damn well though, and is my favorite Halo campaign along with Reach(though I haven't played Reach in awhile).
 
Absolutely.

Halo: CE had some obvious issues with backtracking but it was a launch title that changed platforms and direction (it originally a 3PS for Mac FFS) and had some of the greatest FPS levels of ALL time (Truth and Reconciliation, Silent Cartographer, Assualt on the Control Room).

Halo 2 was paced great and introduced a new side to the Halo lore by exploring the Covenant hierarchy which had largely been left to the books to flesh out. Also New Mombasa and Delta Halo are fantastic levels in my opinion.

Halo 3 is relevant because it tied the first two games visions together. Tight gunplay with an epic story snd again featuring some amazing levels (The Storm, The Ark, The Covenant).

To this day I can sit down and play any of these campaigns and love every second of it.

I didn't include Halo 4 because it's still relatively recent. I loved H4 as well, graphically it is incredible for the hardware it's on and the games pace and new mechanics are welcomed in my opinion.

EDIT: And I'd buy the hell out of an improved ODST and Reach as DLC for MCC. ODST may be my favourite Halo game of them all.
 
Random17 said:
Yes, best.

-Best dialogue
-Best cutscenes
-Best characters/world building/story
-Best soundtrack
-Many missions which are still some of the best in the series (Outskirts for the number of things you can do, Arbiter for the stealth gameplay, Delta Halo etc)
-Arbiter and his active camouflage
-Best set of skulls
Click to expand...
100% agree
Halo 2 isn't flawless (brutes, ending) but it's one of the best campaigns ever.
 
tootsi666 said:
100% agree
Halo 2 isn't flawless (brutes, ending) but it's one of the best campaigns ever.
Click to expand...

I'm seemingly one of the few people that actually found the Brutes fun to mess around with, especially when they were berserking (relative to their Halo 3 counterparts).

I think Halo 2's biggest concern is the abundance of some poorly scripted moments, such as Oracle's elevator, QZ's platform, boss battles etc. They are annoyingly bad sections in what is otherwise my favorite campaign in the series.
 
I played through halo CE multiple times on my xbox, halo 2 just once on the system, halo 3 a few times and halo 4 once.

When I went through the MCC last month I thought the halo ce didn't hold up very well. 2 was better than expected and 3 was excellent.
 
Random17 said:
I'm seemingly one of the few people that actually found the Brutes fun to mess around with, especially when they were berserking (relative to their Halo 3 counterparts).

I think Halo 2's biggest concern is the abundance of some poorly scripted moments, such as Oracle's elevator, QZ's platform, boss battles etc. They are annoyingly bad sections in what is otherwise my favorite campaign in the series.
Click to expand...
Brutes just had too much health. I never got the hate for boss battles or some scripted sections. They aren't the best part of the campaign, but they are a nice change of pace.

Spend ~55 mins trying to kill Regret on Legendary couple nights ago. I regret nothing.
 
I never found the Halo campaigns good to begin with. I can still remember forcing myself to finish Halo 2, and hoping the end would come ASAP.

Halo's saving grace is its combat. It's what gets you through everything else.
 
I still like CE the best, but I'm one of those crazies that even likes the library and sees some kind of challenge in massive flood waves. I'm not that phazed by repetition, at least not when I sorta like the repetition ;)
 
Yes, they're still great, and a lot of fun to play (as opposed to watch, perhaps, there are not as many Michael Bay moments as in many modern blockbusters).

That said, having finished the Halo: CE campaign 5 or 6 times now (my personal record, I believe), I think I'm done with it for good.
 
Halo 2 campaign is _terrible_ apart from the story.
Balance is all over the place. Grunts need to be meleed FOUR times on Heroic until they finally fall over.


Halo 3 is freaking amazing though.
 
Yes, H2 is still my favorite Halo campaign.

And after replaying AOTCR (Halo: CE) and The Covenant (Halo 3) are still the GOAT's if FPS campaign missions.
 
After playing through Halo CE campaign on the MCC I can say...my love for the game is clearly dead. I hated it. I haven't moved on to two yet, but I assume it will be a different story.
 
My friend started playing Halo 1 Anniversary and he really loves how the combat flows. And me? I love the older Halo campaigns. Don't know why people don't like Halo 2. Seems good to me.
 
Halo CE is the worst "old" campaign for me. Levels like AotCR were pretty damn good, but in the end the game was just backtracking, revisiting areas and same floor layouts in certain levels.
Halo 2 was seriously too dificult on Legendary, especially for people that never played Halo before.
Halo 3 is just perfect in my eyes. Huge battles, pretty good level designs (except maybe Crows Nest and Cortana) and did I say huge battles? Only thing, that is annoying is those Cortana and Gravemind moments.

Mindwipe said:
Halo 3's campaign is still amazing. Indeed, quite a step above many modern games.
Click to expand...

Yep. It's my favourite FPS campaign and I have a feeling it will stay like this forever.
 
ShinUltramanJ said:
I never found the Halo campaigns good to begin with. I can still remember forcing myself to finish Halo 2, and hoping the end would come ASAP.

Halo's saving grace is its combat. It's what gets you through everything else.
Click to expand...

I know this is an obvious joke, but this is seriously sounding like what a lot of people usually say in Destiny threads nowadays.
 
Halo 2 has the worst Halo campaign. Worse than Halo 4, by far.

Practically all the others are better.

Halo CE has issues, but the encounter design and gameplay are top notch.
It was unbelievably state-of-the art in late 2001 early 2002, and it still plays exceptionally well.

That being said, the repetitive levels might be grating when played today.

The graphics and gameplay are less impressive in 2014 than they were in November 2001.
Halo 3 is pretty much as good gameplay wise, and it is far less repetitive.
 
I never played the Halos when they came out, basically only played Reach, ODST and 4.

Having finished Halo 1 recently with the MCC I can understand why people love the game. Some of those levels are amazing especially if you consider the time the game came out.

Finished it on legendary solo. Heroic felt too easy.
 
Even when CE came out in 2001 I thought the level design was boring and repetitive, and so was the gameplay. I remember making forum posts about how it was "Clear area, move on. Clear area, move on". The game had its moments. It was the first FPS with huge environments like that but to me the game was still pretty average. Way too repetitive to be played through again.

Halo 2 suffered from the same problems but it was already significantly better.

From Halo3 onward the campaigns were fun. H3 and H4 are games that I could totally see myself going through again. I probably will at some point.
 
I feel the Halo CE campaign doesn't hold up any more. The level design is repetitive, the last levels are just copy and pasted. Halo 3 is probably my favorite, or Halo 4. I kind of wish I hadn't played the MCC. It killed the nostalgia I had for Halo CE.
 
I'm not huge on FPS, and I don't play much single player anything these days, but I didn't play them until recently and Halo 3, ODST, and Reach had really great campaigns. Reach is especially memorable.
 
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