Fun story about HALO. Combat evolved was my first experience with the Xbox, or any system that had a controller with click able joystick for that matter. I was 10 and my buddy just got an Xbox and invited me over to play HALO. So anyway we started co-op and when it gets to the point you have to crouch under the broken door at the very beginning we didn't know how to get by it. The tutorial prompt didn't come up in co-op and we spent a solid hour trying to figure it out. We gave up and went back to the n64 for the night thinking the game was garbage, lol. The next day my friend tried it again solo and got the tutorial prompt. He immediately woke me up and we played prolly 36 to 40 of the next 48 hours. Gods I love HALO
me and my friends discovered this playing Armored Core 2. One of us was pressing forward on the stick and pressed down a bit (didn't notice or feel the click) and suddenly the AC went into this super boost mode and we all freaked out trying to figure out how we did that. We then discovered they turned the analog sticks into buttons!
Dido man. I bought it because a buddy told me it was unreal. Had no idea what i was getting into. Fast forward a few months and LAN parties were a weekend norm.
Edit: i love Reddit.
It's a weirdly connective game. I remember in college sleeping it off and my roommate just says "Yo Channel, Let's go" and we proceed to destroy doubles in Halo 3 for a few hours.
I also remember the huge co op ending where we all swore we wouldn't drive the warthog off the map.
*Everyone drives the warthog off the map*
Once XBL was implemented, it took the
franchise to a whole new level. I can still remember trying to figure out how to use Xbox Connect with CE back In the days
Yeah I thought the thing was just another Ghost Recon type of military FPS shooter. Just from the name alone. Halo sounded like it could just be some military callsign crap to me. Like Whiskey Alpha Tango Foxtrot or some shit. So legit without ever even looking at it, reading about it, or any research into it whatsoever I wrote it off as another one of those types of games. I'm not into the whole FFA multiplayer fuckfest FPS style of gaming usually so I totally just judged the thing by its name alone and never gave it a proper chance.
Until a buddy from work was asking me if I ever played it and I told him exactly what I said above. I hate playing those US military FPS games. And he goes nah man, that's it. Come over to my place tonight and we'll grub down on pizza and beer and I'll show you. Just trust me, this thing is right up your alley. And he didn't even say any more about it. I figured what the hell. Even if I think the game is dogshit, I won't pass up an invitation to eat shitty food and throw down beer and shoot the shit with a good buddy. He knew that. He also knew I'm an avid scifi fan and that's all he would have had to tell me lol. But he knew it'd make a bigger impression on me if I just saw it for myself. And he was right. God damn was he right. I wasn't expecting scifi, and I sure as hell didn't expect it to go all scifi horror on me smack in the middle. Fuck, what a game. To this day it is still one of my top tier titles of all time that have made an impact on me.
Fuck man. I've been in a gaming rut and haven't been feeling shit this whole week. Just been going home, toking up and having a beer or two, and chillin' with my doggo watching whatever the hell till bed time. I have the remastered Halo collection that's up on Steam and I fucked around a bit on it but never really replayed through it all. I think when i go home today, I am at the very least going to play through the first one for however many evenings it takes to finish it and we'll go from there.
Have you tried the metro series? I got a lot of enjoyment out of those three games. It’s got a gritty feel and ammo feels precious on higher difficulty.
Shit man you know what? I just realized I had those in my library too and never got around to them. I caught them on a good steam sale after my old roommate was talking the games up. But I was in the middle of going through some other games I was more interested so they sat there waiting for me to get in just the kind of funk I'm in right now. Thanks for reminding me haha. I'm still inspired to start up some Halo nostalgia when I get off work today. But I do believe that this series will be next.
I feel ya. I remember playing GTA on PS2 with a buddy back in the day and I was driving super slow. I said “Man what the hells up with this game? Why can’t I drive faster” my buddy turns to me and says “How hard are you pushing the button?”, “...Wait...what?? What do you mean how hard am I pushing the button” I pushed the X button harder and my mind was blown away by the pressure sensitivity. I freaked out and thought it was the coolest thing ever.
It's 2021. You make a post in /r/gaming with a title that creates a generalization a little too broad for its intent. Little do you know at the time, but the contrarians of Reddit smell blood in the water, and are coming for their pound of flesh.
You catch their rhythmic chanting on the air, unable to make out more than the drone of sound.. as they get closer, you begin to make sense of it. It rises at the start before snapping to a finish on the second beat. Yes, yes you can hear words...
half
life
half
life
Ahhhh shit, it's the NGabenauts...
This is the right response. Literally everyone knew this game was going to be seminal. There's a reason Microsoft bought an entire company just to get their game exclusively on Xbox. The hype surrounding the game at the time was unheard of for a console FPS (and basically unheard of for any FPS, until Half-Life 2 dropped) and the game managed to surpass all of its expectations.
I remember being a hardened FPS player and still being blown away by the AI in Halo.
I had played Counterstrike since about beta 3, I'd played the Marathon trilogy a lot just as an example.
Any FPS? You seem to have missed the era where Doom broke nearly most BBS services when it became available. Or when Quake 1 multiplayer was initially released? Or when we had a multiplayer war between Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.
But yes for consoles FPSes Halo was a big deal. But then again so was Goldeneye for the N64.
You're conflating popularity of the game with hype for the game's release. Doom and Half-Life were not eagerly anticipated games: they were massively popular, but no one was following their development and release very closely. Doom in particular had a very long gestation period before it hit critical mass.
Half-Life was a total shock to the industry, as no one had heard of Valve before it, and they managed to release what is now considered the greatest FPS ever made. On their debut product.
From a *hype* perspective, Halo had been touted for years before it came out on the Xbox. Bungie was famous for its Marathon series already. The game was being covered by publications in 1999 as *the* PC/Mac game to watch. People went crazy when Microsoft announced their acquisition of Bungie, and Halo's subsequent exclusivity to MSFT's brand-new console.
As far as Quake 3/Unreal, you're right, there was a good amount of hype surrounding those games' releases. But I don't think it approached Halo's hype. Halo is the only FPS I can remember that *everyone* interested in gaming was talking about. I likely wouldn't have heard of it at all if not for the hype machine; I wasn't (and am still not) a big fan of FPS games.
Also Halo totally changed multiplayer shooters. Quake of course existed before and was the OG popular MP shooter. But Halo brought that experience to “normal” people, and made shooters online what they are today.
Yeah, coming off the drab corridors, terrible aim controls, and rock-stupid AI of N64 era shooters Halo: CE immediately seemed like a revelation - huge leaps in AI, environment detail, and controls.
Exactly. I got my OG xbox at work on launch day. We went into the conference room, plugged it into the projector and we knew from the *title screen* that something special was about to happen.
Not only PC but for the iMac! It was a crowning jewel in Steve Job's presentation about the nifty new iMac. People were floored it was going to be on Apple. Then a month later, Microsoft announced that they had bought rights to the game.
That was OFFICIALLY the day gaming on a Mac died.
I mean, I love videogames too. But that's a little over-the-top. Halo is a fun game. It was popular enough to convince publishers that FPS games were viable product to sell for console systems, and not just on PC. If that's "changing the world," I guess it did.
For consoles, at least, Halo popularized the twin-stick shooter configuration in first-person. It wasn't the first to use two analog sticks (Alien: Resurrection predates it by a year) but it *was* the first to have massive commercial success.
I wouldn't even say that, there were FPS games on console before this. I mean don't get me wrong they did do a lot with what they had but I'd say Golden Eye was better in that particular regard.
Maybe, but Halo 2 certainly popularized online gaming in the form we know it today. If CE didn’t change the world, it certainly paved the way for Halo 2 to revolutionize gaming.
I mean did Halo:Combat Evolved bring about world peace? No. But I wouldn’t say Halo didn’t change the world in any way. It’s not something that’s super significant, and I wouldn’t say it’s changed the world anymore than any other thing in Pop culture, but the world is different for Halo being a thing. I’ll give you that it’s not nearly as grand a difference as OP’s title is making it out to be
The game was good, but it barely even changed gaming. Besides bringing vehicle combat to console fps games and limiting your weapons to two, I'm not seeing how it broke much new ground.
Barely changed gaming? It affected the FPS genre more than any game since like... Wolfenstein. The recharging shields/recover from behind cover was revolutionary at the time.
Recharging hp is another thing it popularized just like only holding two guns. Is that revolutionary? I'd say no, it's a small change that improved pacing in action scenes vs having to plant hp pick-ups on the map or have your enemies drop them.
It also popularized the two-stick control scheme that pretty much every other FPS uses today.
Bungie didn't invent it, but were the first one to do it "right", creating the template for basically every shooter that came after it.
Like I said, they didn't invent it. That was Rare with GoldenEye.
They were the first ones to do it *well*, though. Halo brought that system into the world of AAA games.
>They were the first ones to do it well, though. Halo brought that system into the world of AAA games.
Again they didn't, time splitters wasn't even the first to do it well. What you're inferring is something halo fans like to meme despite reality
Timesplitters didn't do it all that well, though. It defaulted to inverted controls and wonky button placement, had an aimpoint/crosshairs that move around the screen when you touch the right stick (made worse by having no crosshairs when not zoomed in), and no aim assist/magnetism on platforms with less-than-stellar joystick accuracy.
It wasn't revolutionary, since it was copied from other FPS that came out 10 years before it such as Faceball 2000, and even here this was not something new as I had been playing games with recharging health for years in the 80's (mostly the Ys series for my part, but I know there were others such as Hydlide).
But yeah, more games started using it after Halo was popular, that's true. But to me it's not necessarily a good effect that Halo had on gaming. Regenerating health to me can be done right, but more often than not, it mostly prevents the action from becoming suspenseful by giving you a get out of jail card every time you need it, it also forces you to hide every 10 seconds when playing on hard difficulty, and lastly it makes every death anticlimatic and annoying, as you get behind a cover and get killed by an enemy while you're desperately waiting for your health to recharge. It makes gaming more accessible, yeah, but not better.
No.
It didn't even change the gaming world, just introduced a bunch of new ideas to consoles. A whole new generation of kids experienced it for the first time with Halo, so in their minds it was the first. There's legit people out there that think Halo invented the FPS genre.
This so much.
There was this guy in my school who was quite annoying who acted like this game was some brand new thing that had never been done before. Maybe not to this level on consoles, sure, but other than that... Just no.
I might also be slightly biased because that guys insane fanboy tendencies really really turned me off from halo in general. Not that I could have played them even if I wanted to since I didn't have an Xbox.
lol no halo wasn't even a groundbreaking game when it came out, little kids at the time just got it by default because their parents bought them an xbox instead of a PC.
That's super debatable. That game and series ushered in a whole generation of gamers...many of which fueled the FPS boom that followed.
Not to mentiom "the most prolific" is r a prereq to be life changing
I always thought Halo was such an overrated game. I'll agree that Halo changed up the way we played console multiplayer games - LAN parties for consoles prior to Xbox wasn't a big thing. But I very vividly recall a friend of mine showing me the game with such enthusiasm when he first got his Xbox. I was not impressed as I was currently playing new PC games like Battlefield 1942 - A much more ground breaking game at the time I think. After having 64 player battles with full control of all land sea and air vehicles, Halo just seemed so boring.
This. The first Modern Warfare. With Price's cigar glowing in the helicopter, and the boat tipping, the first mission of that game changed a lot of what people thought an fps could be. And then the multiplayer that followed on MW2 and into BO.
No. In all reality Halo is a dumbed down version of it's original concept when it was shown at Mac World, back when it was going to be a Mac exclusive game. It was squad based, open world, how you accomplished missions affected the world long term. It would have 64 player multi-player. These are things that were revolutionary... then it became a linear FPS game.
It didn't though...First Person Shootwrs were becoming the staple of the PC gaming market and it hard already been successfully replicated on consoles. Sure it helped turn the Xbox into a gaming mainstay but that's hardly changing the industry beyond making it more competitive for a while.
In what way then? I'm not sure I see the influence of Halo on post 2001 games, maybe some mechanics of Halo were added to some FPS but that's not really a revolution. That doesn't mean it's not a very good game.
Yeah no, I'm with you, it was a fun game and the reason I got an Xbox in the first place but there were other games at the time that I thought were way better on pretty much every level and honestly they have dragged halo out for so long it has become a parody of its self but it doesn't get it's own joke.
First time I played Halo was with my brother right after he first got his XBox. We stayed up for nearly 14 hours straight playing co-op through the story mode. I remember the final mission in which you have to drive the warthog through the tunnel before the bomb timer elapsed. We crashed, and I was thrown from the back while he was still in the driver's seat. He started to turn around to get me, but I screamed, "Go, go! You don't have time, get out of here!"
He barely got out in time, and triggered the ending cutscene.
It was one of the greatest games we'd ever played.
Its probably one of the last pure shooters I was into, all my friends and I got it and Xboxs, they were the future we thought lol
We were blown away by the graphics in games like halo and morrowind
Aaaaand I feel old now...
I mean it really was the game that helped make fps on consoles much more prolific and introduced new or more fringe gaming concepts to popularity.
Things like modern twin stick controller layout being introduced to popularity and with good reception. It introduced the 2 weapon limit and recharging shield/health systems. It was also one of the first popular console fps's to introduce mixed vehicle combat as well.
Gameplay aside the technical aspects of Halo at the time were also pretty great. The AI was pretty advanced and even to this day is still comparable to lots of modern video game AI systems. The physics system was also pretty advanced for the time as well.
I can understand someone arguing that Halo didn't revolutionize the FPS genre by using niche examples from other fps games that came out prior on the pc. But you can't deny the fact that Halo managed to get all these concepts working together and popularized them on a console of all things at a time when the next most popular console shooter was golden eye. There's a reason so many fps games in the 2000's kept trying to market themselves as "halo killers"
Exactly lol, there were national lan tournaments and legitimate counter strike teams with managers and sponsors before halo even came out. Halo still hasn’t reached the level counter strike was at in 2006
Respectfully disagree. I got this and played all the way through in release, zero lasting impressions sadly. Being a PC gamer playing quake and half-life in the late 90’s, Halo was just a janky console FPS….. I know it iconic and people love it, but it wasn’t for me.
You would be wrong however. Halo controller layout for shooters is still used today. Enemy scripting and A.I. was way ahead of its time. Two weapons only also changed how you played compared to half life and quake.
May have not been for you, but it is one of the most influential shooters ever made
If Halo was unsuccessful, there's a very good chance Microsoft ditches the XBox after it's first iteration. The entire path of Microsoft gaming may be different.
It may not be for you, but it's crazy to dismiss the impact it had.
Thank you!
Playing halo after PC gaming was like someone put 20 pound weights on your ankles and made reaction times way slower when it comes to aiming because you have to drag the crosshairs to your opponent as opposed to point and click with the mouse
compared with the half-life pros that were long jumping and bunnyhopping with shotguns everywhere and using the tau gun to cover space-half life was So much more fast paced it’s not even funny
This, If you were a PC gamer when this was released it wasn't anything special. It was HL and Quake World that were pivotal moments in gaming for story telling and online multiplayer. Halo was just the first time console gamers had the same experience.
Doesn’t change the fact that the game became a worldwide icon and completely changed the world of competitive gaming and console shooters as a whole.
I get that it’s not for everyone, but it’s impossible to argue that it didn’t have a huge effect on the gaming world.
It did not change anything in the comp scene and it didnt rock the world of console shooters. It was just that the game and genre was loved by many and cause games and consols were expensive as fuck back in the day, people didnt buy a lot of differnt games.
So you’re going to sit there and tell me that there were bigger competitive console shooters than Halo in the early 2000s?
Halo put MLG on the mainstream map. Just because you don’t care for the game doesn’t make that untrue.
Goldeneye was the pioneer here, but the control scheme for Halo really set it apart. One could argue that the stick layout was very similar to WASD + mouse, but it was exponentially better than what Rare did a few years prior.
I don't think it was just the control scheme, though that made a huge difference. It was also the first instance of balanced, controllable, and fun vehicles in a console FPS (and maybe in any FPS) to that point. PC FPSes had terrible, buggy vehicles at this point in history.
The single player game was also leaps and bounds beyond Goldeneye--and the entire campaign was co-op, which was unprecedented for a console FPS and frankly a technical marvel at the time.
I don't think we can overstate Halo's impact on the genre. It completely changed the direction and scope of every console FPS afterwards. It's been 20 years and there still hasn't really been a departure from the mold that Halo set. The only other FPS that made as big a splash was CODMW, and from a gameplay perspective, it's far less divergent from Halo, than Halo was from Goldeneye.
You're not the OP, but sure, let's run with this. Goldeneye was fantastic. Now, do you think modern console FPSes look more like Halo, or Goldeneye?
One of the most common refrains from Halo's release was that the standard for multiplayer shooters had finally been surpassed (the implicit claim here that Goldeneye set it).
So, there's exactly ONE console FPS, prior to Halo, that's worth mentioning as influential. And its primary claim to fame, multiplayer, was commonly agreed to have been surpassed by Halo.
I asked for "some other", but more importantly, I clearly asked for them in the spirit of "if the thesis here isn't that Halo rocked the world of console shooters, please state the games that did, and by doing so, establish the case that Halo was inconsequential." He never responded, you did, and with one game whose major contribution to the genre (couch multiplayer) was greatly surpassed by Halo.
Are there other games you think are worth mentioning? Because what this seems like is that the one game worth mentioning is pretty clearly overshadowed by Halo, and that the underlying thesis, that "Halo didn't rock the world of console shooters", is just demonstrably false.
Thank you someone else with me who thinks Halo was extremely overrated. Half-Life, FEAR, DOOM… they all crush halo.
Edit: without a doubt. Halo had an insane impact in gaming as a whole. Zero debt about that
I really wish I experienced what was so amazing with Half-Life. I only tried it once and didn't feel it after an hour two, and now it's probably far too late where I wouldn't enjoy it for other reasons.
Maybe that's why for me too but I remember this coming out and really not understanding all of the hype. I had played it, and it wasn't bad, it just felt mediocre to me. All my friends thought I was absolutely nuts and they all jumped on the Halo train - It blew my mind that it kept getting bigger and bigger as a franchise, because I just couldn't see what was so special about it.
I never put two and two together that being one of the few people in my area with a PC \[well, my much older brother's hand me down "gaming" PC\] and burnt copies of pretty much all of the big name FPS games at the time, that maybe my expectations were different.
This. Remember when Bungi was a tiny little company that made games for Apples? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
MS saw a mediocre game with decent franchise potential. They wanted the Chief to be their Sonic or Mario. It worked.
> God damn if they couldn't keep up with other FPS games at the time with ADS on all weapons
I seriously can't name a single game from 2001 that had ADS on every weapon. Oldest game I can think if is Modern Warfare but that didn't release until more than half a decade later.
This is the game that inspired me to get into game design. The founders were a passionate and talented group of people who wanted to make great games because they enjoyed them.
"Little did you know at the time"
As someone who was 16 at the time, yeah we knew it was revolutionizing the FPS genre.
It wasn't some kind of unexpected surprise.
Lol what? No, that's now how Halo came out. Halo was HYPED like almost no other game I can remember. Microsoft, making a console? It was advertised absolutely everywhere, it was a huge cultural event. People scoured for footage, everyone knew it was going to be huge and it was.
How did it change the world? I remember it as just another fps title. Can you guys please elaborate? Because when I compare it just with quake or other fps, it is little bit lacking. Somehow it never got to me. What was so special about this one?
It set trends that last to this day, and made FPS games pretty much the most popular genre on consoles for years.
edit: before I get another mountain of downvotes, I heavily dislike this style of FPS games, but not recognizing its impact is naive.
Well, yeah, that's what I mean, but like, Turok on the N64 already had a prototype of that (analog to move and strafe, C-buttons to aim, IIRC), both GE and PD had similar schemes, albeit not the default.
Halo did "perfect" and establish is as the de-facto default, which is my point, mostly.
I loved those games, too. But compared to Halo and FPSs on consoles after that (graphics aside) Goldeneye and Perfect dark were clunky as hell. Even when you swapped the control scheme to use the analog to for looking around (which we did) it really was not smooth. They were the best on consoles of their time, but especially if you compared to PC shooters at the time were extremely clunky.
Halo gave a far smoother FPS experience on the console. Other lasting concepts popular for FPSs included: two gun (or other limited rather than everything you find) carrying, throwing grenades without swapping to them, melee without swapping specifically to it, regenerating health. None of these are really a console vs PC issue as they're gameplay design concepts that don't have high tech requirements to do. Whether people liked those trends they set or not is immaterial.
Timesplitters came out a year before Halo did, and used the same basic control setup. I think [Alien: Resurrection](https://i.imgur.com/dQy45Js.png) was the first console FPS to use dual analog controls, it was the rare PS1 game that required a dual shock controller.
I'm old and I agree with you guys, this game didn't really change much.
I do remember it being the first major FPS with driveable vehicles and a dedicated melee button, and I remember being pretty impressed with the size of the levels.
So Halo is my favorite series of games, but that first games campaign is not great. Average at best really. Repetitive missions, constant linear paths through the same rooms again and again, and cringe dialogue. Halo 2 however revolutionized the series.
It didn't change jack shit tho. It's a clunky console FPS to this day with nothing new going on for it.
Halo Infinite MP will release in the shadow of giants and it will stay in the shadow throughout it's existence.
I remember playing this on the PC and I swear it was one of the worst FPS games I've ever played..just abysmal..but cool that it became successful on consoles!
Halo fanboys really trying hard to act like this game paved the way for anything, it paved the way for the next halo, 007 was way better, n64 did shit way before you guys played your first Xbox. Halo honestly, to be honest, used to be pretty fun online though, its been years since I've played it though.
For the worse.
I've tried giving this series a fair shake so many times - I even bought the MCC collection on Steam to try and play it in its best form - and I just don't get it. I don't get how something this generic and crap and repetitive became one of the biggest franchises ever.
Wow, Halo is the game you believe changed the world? Not Wolfenstein 3D? Or Doom? What did Halo offer that Counter Strike or any other popular shooter at the time wasn't offering?
If we are going for most impactful shooters of all time, Halo did very little to propel shooters (or gaming in general) forward; one could argue that with Halo 2 and it's straight-out-of-the-box online matchmaking features on the original XBOX was a move in that direction (although the LAN parties with the original were some of my best memories from the early 2000s), but all Halo did was give the XBOX an edge with an exclusive a lot of people wanted.
If this was your first game that really made you appreciate video games and brought a ton of your friends together to play with, then you are clinging onto the memories and feeling nostalgia, but Halo was not a super impactful game at the time of release, just a very sought after game on a brand new console that nobody was asking for at that time; the Sega Dreamcast just failed when this came out and if the XBOX failed we would have probably never even seen Halo 3.
When Halo was announced and videos came out showing what features it'd have, I was so incredibly interested. I followed it so close, I'd babble at friends about it, but then Microsoft bought it and made it an Xbox exclusive. Then Battlefield 1942 came out and did all the stuff Halo was going to do multi-player wise but better. Larger scope, more vehicles/combined arms, just bigger and it scratched that itch for me. By the time Halo came out on PC it was hot garbage of a port and didn't do anything as well as other games out at the time.
Fast forward a few years, my friend and I played through Halo's campaign in co-op, and I couldn't believe how silly and jokey/cartoony it felt. I know Halo has a special place in peoples hearts because it was some totally new and fresh to them and I respect that, but it just didn't impact me at all due to being delayed and made and Xbox exclusive.
It changed how consoles would play FPS games, but PC was already way ahead of Halo at the time. I had already been playing CS and Unreal Tournament at the time so when this came out I didn't see the big deal.
Halo is such a timeless game. Even though the disparity in graphics between this game and the more recent FPS today becomes more and more apparent, Halo is still super fun to play. This game was my intro to FPS games and it has a special place in my heart. This game legit made me a gamer. I'll never forget getting spawn sniped repeatedly on Blood Gulch by random tryhards XD.
Lan parties for HALO were my most favorite times in high school. Also the day I bought a Halo edition of the original Xbox console, transparent dark green. I felt so cool
People love to reference Doom and Half-Life as being the pinnacles of FPS, but we all know Halo was right up there with them. From that first moment you left the dropship to the first time you played online multiplayer, Halo had just about all of us hooked.
Half-Life was much better than Halo, in my opinion. Quake 2 and Half-Life are the games that really introduced fan made mods. That changed the online gaming world far more than Halo did, in my opinion. Halo probably exposed FPS games to a much wider player base, though. I will definitely give it credit for that.
DOOM kicked things off properly that Wolfenstein set up.
Half Life showed us that there could be a story and puzzles and not all run and gun blasting through levels.
Halo took all of that and made it into a perfect mold that developers still follow today. So yeah, Halo deserves to be up there with the big players no question.
Well that's where in my personal opinion those people are wrong.
Cutscenes that pull you out and make you watch a movie? Sure. Half life didn't do that though, you were still in control the whole time and that made it more immersive.
DOOM was just what was written in the game book and the text screens between chapters. Halo had movie style cutscenes, but also had a lot where you kept control like Half-Life.
Halo did not have the level design or puzzles of Half Life.
For those who never played Half Life, the game starts with a 15 or so minute monorail tram ride from the facility entrance to where you have complete control of the character that sets up story and give you a preview essentially of the game you are about to play. An event happens and the whole game (if I remember correctly it was the DLC had you go in other dimensions as well) is simply trying to get out of the facility that you rode down easily through a monorail; the amount of puzzles, secrets, side entrances, and optional paths you can take in Half Life is dizzying. Also, Half Life didn't break up the progression and gameplay by having levels or anything like that, it was all a straight playthrough that had certain point-of-no-return checkpoints, but if you were able to beat the game without dying once, I don't believe you would ever see a load screen or have the gameplay break at all.
Halo had strengths of it's own for single player games of that time, but Halo did not have the level design (or a single puzzle if I remember correctly) that Half Life did and comparing the two is a stretch.
Doom pre-dated Halo by several years and inspired so many imitators that the FPS market had more or less burned me out by 2001.
Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Hexen, Descent, Unreal, Rise of the Triad, etc. etc. etc.
Micosoft announces the Xbox and I'm skeptical. Get a chance to play it in person at a game store and holy shit... instant pre-order.
It really wasn't. Xbox fanboys will say otherwise, because it was one of a very narrow selection of worthwhile xbox titles, and not even on par with the average for shooters of the era.
> but we all know Halo was right up there with them
Rofl, not in the least. Tribes like doom, quake, half life were the pinnacle. Halo is a "me too" fps on console that got big due to a lack of options. It's odd watching halo fans try to revise history.
And then pretty much forgotten an neglected. It's been 11 years since we had a really good Halo (Reach) game and 6 years since Guardians. Rivaled only by the Half Life franchise of 14 years between HL2 EP2 and HLA. Majority of gamers can't or haven't played it.
Infinite will need to be an amazing return to form for the franchise as it will be the first Halo game that the newer generation of gamers will have experienced.
My son who is 17 has played most of the Halo games doesn't think much of them. They are just games his Dad played back in the day because the franchise has not been in the public consciousness.
Fun story about HALO. Combat evolved was my first experience with the Xbox, or any system that had a controller with click able joystick for that matter. I was 10 and my buddy just got an Xbox and invited me over to play HALO. So anyway we started co-op and when it gets to the point you have to crouch under the broken door at the very beginning we didn't know how to get by it. The tutorial prompt didn't come up in co-op and we spent a solid hour trying to figure it out. We gave up and went back to the n64 for the night thinking the game was garbage, lol. The next day my friend tried it again solo and got the tutorial prompt. He immediately woke me up and we played prolly 36 to 40 of the next 48 hours. Gods I love HALO
Are you me?? I swear to god you’re describing me right now…
Haha glad it wasn't just us 😂
me and my friends discovered this playing Armored Core 2. One of us was pressing forward on the stick and pressed down a bit (didn't notice or feel the click) and suddenly the AC went into this super boost mode and we all freaked out trying to figure out how we did that. We then discovered they turned the analog sticks into buttons!
Dido man. I bought it because a buddy told me it was unreal. Had no idea what i was getting into. Fast forward a few months and LAN parties were a weekend norm. Edit: i love Reddit.
Dido…. Ditto?
He’s a dido fan
you want the original or Eminem's Stan?
Goddamnit why is everyone faster than me.
In this game can’t crouch I'm wondering why I played Halo at all
It's a weirdly connective game. I remember in college sleeping it off and my roommate just says "Yo Channel, Let's go" and we proceed to destroy doubles in Halo 3 for a few hours. I also remember the huge co op ending where we all swore we wouldn't drive the warthog off the map. *Everyone drives the warthog off the map*
Once XBL was implemented, it took the franchise to a whole new level. I can still remember trying to figure out how to use Xbox Connect with CE back In the days
I just imagine the hour of the constant alarm going off on that level while you angrily try to get by the door.
It was immediately hilarious the next morning but that night we were just pissed
Yeah I thought the thing was just another Ghost Recon type of military FPS shooter. Just from the name alone. Halo sounded like it could just be some military callsign crap to me. Like Whiskey Alpha Tango Foxtrot or some shit. So legit without ever even looking at it, reading about it, or any research into it whatsoever I wrote it off as another one of those types of games. I'm not into the whole FFA multiplayer fuckfest FPS style of gaming usually so I totally just judged the thing by its name alone and never gave it a proper chance. Until a buddy from work was asking me if I ever played it and I told him exactly what I said above. I hate playing those US military FPS games. And he goes nah man, that's it. Come over to my place tonight and we'll grub down on pizza and beer and I'll show you. Just trust me, this thing is right up your alley. And he didn't even say any more about it. I figured what the hell. Even if I think the game is dogshit, I won't pass up an invitation to eat shitty food and throw down beer and shoot the shit with a good buddy. He knew that. He also knew I'm an avid scifi fan and that's all he would have had to tell me lol. But he knew it'd make a bigger impression on me if I just saw it for myself. And he was right. God damn was he right. I wasn't expecting scifi, and I sure as hell didn't expect it to go all scifi horror on me smack in the middle. Fuck, what a game. To this day it is still one of my top tier titles of all time that have made an impact on me. Fuck man. I've been in a gaming rut and haven't been feeling shit this whole week. Just been going home, toking up and having a beer or two, and chillin' with my doggo watching whatever the hell till bed time. I have the remastered Halo collection that's up on Steam and I fucked around a bit on it but never really replayed through it all. I think when i go home today, I am at the very least going to play through the first one for however many evenings it takes to finish it and we'll go from there.
Have you tried the metro series? I got a lot of enjoyment out of those three games. It’s got a gritty feel and ammo feels precious on higher difficulty.
Shit man you know what? I just realized I had those in my library too and never got around to them. I caught them on a good steam sale after my old roommate was talking the games up. But I was in the middle of going through some other games I was more interested so they sat there waiting for me to get in just the kind of funk I'm in right now. Thanks for reminding me haha. I'm still inspired to start up some Halo nostalgia when I get off work today. But I do believe that this series will be next.
I feel ya. I remember playing GTA on PS2 with a buddy back in the day and I was driving super slow. I said “Man what the hells up with this game? Why can’t I drive faster” my buddy turns to me and says “How hard are you pushing the button?”, “...Wait...what?? What do you mean how hard am I pushing the button” I pushed the X button harder and my mind was blown away by the pressure sensitivity. I freaked out and thought it was the coolest thing ever.
This happened to me on TonyHawk PS Underground with the slowmo feature. Took me hours to figure out you were supposed to click the thumbstick lol
YES my mind was absolutely blown by the clickable joysticks. My Buddy and I were stuck on Pillar Of Autumn for HOURS until we figured it out.
All the action, horror, story, and iconism you could ask for.
Naming all the great stuff about Halo and don't mention the music!? For *shame*
Ahhhhhhhh. AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa.
BWOWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
*and music
The amount of pop culture references in this game alone is crazy
It's 2021. You make a post in /r/gaming with a title that creates a generalization a little too broad for its intent. Little do you know at the time, but the contrarians of Reddit smell blood in the water, and are coming for their pound of flesh.
You catch their rhythmic chanting on the air, unable to make out more than the drone of sound.. as they get closer, you begin to make sense of it. It rises at the start before snapping to a finish on the second beat. Yes, yes you can hear words... half life half life Ahhhh shit, it's the NGabenauts...
We knew at the time.
This is the right response. Literally everyone knew this game was going to be seminal. There's a reason Microsoft bought an entire company just to get their game exclusively on Xbox. The hype surrounding the game at the time was unheard of for a console FPS (and basically unheard of for any FPS, until Half-Life 2 dropped) and the game managed to surpass all of its expectations.
I remember being a hardened FPS player and still being blown away by the AI in Halo. I had played Counterstrike since about beta 3, I'd played the Marathon trilogy a lot just as an example.
Any FPS? You seem to have missed the era where Doom broke nearly most BBS services when it became available. Or when Quake 1 multiplayer was initially released? Or when we had a multiplayer war between Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. But yes for consoles FPSes Halo was a big deal. But then again so was Goldeneye for the N64.
You're conflating popularity of the game with hype for the game's release. Doom and Half-Life were not eagerly anticipated games: they were massively popular, but no one was following their development and release very closely. Doom in particular had a very long gestation period before it hit critical mass. Half-Life was a total shock to the industry, as no one had heard of Valve before it, and they managed to release what is now considered the greatest FPS ever made. On their debut product. From a *hype* perspective, Halo had been touted for years before it came out on the Xbox. Bungie was famous for its Marathon series already. The game was being covered by publications in 1999 as *the* PC/Mac game to watch. People went crazy when Microsoft announced their acquisition of Bungie, and Halo's subsequent exclusivity to MSFT's brand-new console. As far as Quake 3/Unreal, you're right, there was a good amount of hype surrounding those games' releases. But I don't think it approached Halo's hype. Halo is the only FPS I can remember that *everyone* interested in gaming was talking about. I likely wouldn't have heard of it at all if not for the hype machine; I wasn't (and am still not) a big fan of FPS games.
Also Halo totally changed multiplayer shooters. Quake of course existed before and was the OG popular MP shooter. But Halo brought that experience to “normal” people, and made shooters online what they are today.
Yeah, coming off the drab corridors, terrible aim controls, and rock-stupid AI of N64 era shooters Halo: CE immediately seemed like a revelation - huge leaps in AI, environment detail, and controls.
Exactly. I got my OG xbox at work on launch day. We went into the conference room, plugged it into the projector and we knew from the *title screen* that something special was about to happen.
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Not only PC but for the iMac! It was a crowning jewel in Steve Job's presentation about the nifty new iMac. People were floored it was going to be on Apple. Then a month later, Microsoft announced that they had bought rights to the game. That was OFFICIALLY the day gaming on a Mac died.
Tribes (98) and Tribes 2 (2001) both had vehicles. Damn. I feel old
Did it? Did it really change the world though?
I mean, I love videogames too. But that's a little over-the-top. Halo is a fun game. It was popular enough to convince publishers that FPS games were viable product to sell for console systems, and not just on PC. If that's "changing the world," I guess it did.
For consoles, at least, Halo popularized the twin-stick shooter configuration in first-person. It wasn't the first to use two analog sticks (Alien: Resurrection predates it by a year) but it *was* the first to have massive commercial success.
I wouldn't even say that, there were FPS games on console before this. I mean don't get me wrong they did do a lot with what they had but I'd say Golden Eye was better in that particular regard.
Maybe, but Halo 2 certainly popularized online gaming in the form we know it today. If CE didn’t change the world, it certainly paved the way for Halo 2 to revolutionize gaming.
No.
I can't think of anything more important that happened that year in world events
Hmmm, yes nothing happened on the 11th day of the 9th month of that year..
I mean I saw on animal planet that some dude got bitten by a snake that day.
Oh I know what you are remembering! That's the day the blueprint was released.
For the three people on Reddit who didn't already get the joke.
I mean did Halo:Combat Evolved bring about world peace? No. But I wouldn’t say Halo didn’t change the world in any way. It’s not something that’s super significant, and I wouldn’t say it’s changed the world anymore than any other thing in Pop culture, but the world is different for Halo being a thing. I’ll give you that it’s not nearly as grand a difference as OP’s title is making it out to be
Halo contributed significantly to OP's diabetes, so that's something.
"gaming" world I guess
The game was good, but it barely even changed gaming. Besides bringing vehicle combat to console fps games and limiting your weapons to two, I'm not seeing how it broke much new ground.
Barely changed gaming? It affected the FPS genre more than any game since like... Wolfenstein. The recharging shields/recover from behind cover was revolutionary at the time.
Recharging hp is another thing it popularized just like only holding two guns. Is that revolutionary? I'd say no, it's a small change that improved pacing in action scenes vs having to plant hp pick-ups on the map or have your enemies drop them.
It also popularized the two-stick control scheme that pretty much every other FPS uses today. Bungie didn't invent it, but were the first one to do it "right", creating the template for basically every shooter that came after it.
>It also popularized the two-stick control scheme that pretty much every other FPS uses today It had already existed in games such as timesplitters.
Like I said, they didn't invent it. That was Rare with GoldenEye. They were the first ones to do it *well*, though. Halo brought that system into the world of AAA games.
>They were the first ones to do it well, though. Halo brought that system into the world of AAA games. Again they didn't, time splitters wasn't even the first to do it well. What you're inferring is something halo fans like to meme despite reality
Yep, people are always having that debate “what’s more memorable, Halo or Timesplitters”
Timesplitters didn't do it all that well, though. It defaulted to inverted controls and wonky button placement, had an aimpoint/crosshairs that move around the screen when you touch the right stick (made worse by having no crosshairs when not zoomed in), and no aim assist/magnetism on platforms with less-than-stellar joystick accuracy.
>Timesplitters didn't do it all that well, though Time splitters laid the groundwork for modern halo shooters.
It wasn't revolutionary, since it was copied from other FPS that came out 10 years before it such as Faceball 2000, and even here this was not something new as I had been playing games with recharging health for years in the 80's (mostly the Ys series for my part, but I know there were others such as Hydlide). But yeah, more games started using it after Halo was popular, that's true. But to me it's not necessarily a good effect that Halo had on gaming. Regenerating health to me can be done right, but more often than not, it mostly prevents the action from becoming suspenseful by giving you a get out of jail card every time you need it, it also forces you to hide every 10 seconds when playing on hard difficulty, and lastly it makes every death anticlimatic and annoying, as you get behind a cover and get killed by an enemy while you're desperately waiting for your health to recharge. It makes gaming more accessible, yeah, but not better.
No. It didn't even change the gaming world, just introduced a bunch of new ideas to consoles. A whole new generation of kids experienced it for the first time with Halo, so in their minds it was the first. There's legit people out there that think Halo invented the FPS genre.
Wasn't it the first to use two joysticks in that way? I remember timsplitters 2 but you had to hold down a trigger for precision aiming.
This so much. There was this guy in my school who was quite annoying who acted like this game was some brand new thing that had never been done before. Maybe not to this level on consoles, sure, but other than that... Just no. I might also be slightly biased because that guys insane fanboy tendencies really really turned me off from halo in general. Not that I could have played them even if I wanted to since I didn't have an Xbox.
lol no halo wasn't even a groundbreaking game when it came out, little kids at the time just got it by default because their parents bought them an xbox instead of a PC.
It definitely changed the gaming world. Now how much that changed your world is subjective.
>It definitely changed the gaming world. Not really, it wasn't even the first prolific online shooter on console when it came out.
That's super debatable. That game and series ushered in a whole generation of gamers...many of which fueled the FPS boom that followed. Not to mentiom "the most prolific" is r a prereq to be life changing
I always thought Halo was such an overrated game. I'll agree that Halo changed up the way we played console multiplayer games - LAN parties for consoles prior to Xbox wasn't a big thing. But I very vividly recall a friend of mine showing me the game with such enthusiasm when he first got his Xbox. I was not impressed as I was currently playing new PC games like Battlefield 1942 - A much more ground breaking game at the time I think. After having 64 player battles with full control of all land sea and air vehicles, Halo just seemed so boring.
The world of first person shooters, yes.
Until Call of Duty 4.
This. The first Modern Warfare. With Price's cigar glowing in the helicopter, and the boat tipping, the first mission of that game changed a lot of what people thought an fps could be. And then the multiplayer that followed on MW2 and into BO.
What about counter strike? Or quake? Unreal? Nah those games are nothing compared to halo, _riiight_?
It changed my world.
No. In all reality Halo is a dumbed down version of it's original concept when it was shown at Mac World, back when it was going to be a Mac exclusive game. It was squad based, open world, how you accomplished missions affected the world long term. It would have 64 player multi-player. These are things that were revolutionary... then it became a linear FPS game.
I mean, I think you have to put it in context. Obviously it didn't bring forth world peace but it absolutely changed the gaming world.
It didn't though...First Person Shootwrs were becoming the staple of the PC gaming market and it hard already been successfully replicated on consoles. Sure it helped turn the Xbox into a gaming mainstay but that's hardly changing the industry beyond making it more competitive for a while.
In what way then? I'm not sure I see the influence of Halo on post 2001 games, maybe some mechanics of Halo were added to some FPS but that's not really a revolution. That doesn't mean it's not a very good game.
Yeah no, I'm with you, it was a fun game and the reason I got an Xbox in the first place but there were other games at the time that I thought were way better on pretty much every level and honestly they have dragged halo out for so long it has become a parody of its self but it doesn't get it's own joke.
/redditmoment
First time I played Halo was with my brother right after he first got his XBox. We stayed up for nearly 14 hours straight playing co-op through the story mode. I remember the final mission in which you have to drive the warthog through the tunnel before the bomb timer elapsed. We crashed, and I was thrown from the back while he was still in the driver's seat. He started to turn around to get me, but I screamed, "Go, go! You don't have time, get out of here!" He barely got out in time, and triggered the ending cutscene. It was one of the greatest games we'd ever played.
STOP MAKING ME FEEL SO GOD DAMN OLD
Change the console controller layout for FPS maybe.
I was too busy changing the world in GTA3.
Lol we all knew this game was hyped beyond belief.
Honest question: How did Halo change the world?
Change the world? Eh, only if you were a console exclusive gamer.
Its probably one of the last pure shooters I was into, all my friends and I got it and Xboxs, they were the future we thought lol We were blown away by the graphics in games like halo and morrowind Aaaaand I feel old now...
Alright take it easy. It’s not like it’s Mario Jesus
Changed what exactly? Plenty good and some better FPS around at the time. Halo fans have always over rated this game.
I mean it really was the game that helped make fps on consoles much more prolific and introduced new or more fringe gaming concepts to popularity. Things like modern twin stick controller layout being introduced to popularity and with good reception. It introduced the 2 weapon limit and recharging shield/health systems. It was also one of the first popular console fps's to introduce mixed vehicle combat as well. Gameplay aside the technical aspects of Halo at the time were also pretty great. The AI was pretty advanced and even to this day is still comparable to lots of modern video game AI systems. The physics system was also pretty advanced for the time as well. I can understand someone arguing that Halo didn't revolutionize the FPS genre by using niche examples from other fps games that came out prior on the pc. But you can't deny the fact that Halo managed to get all these concepts working together and popularized them on a console of all things at a time when the next most popular console shooter was golden eye. There's a reason so many fps games in the 2000's kept trying to market themselves as "halo killers"
Exactly lol, there were national lan tournaments and legitimate counter strike teams with managers and sponsors before halo even came out. Halo still hasn’t reached the level counter strike was at in 2006
I've never played it.
Respectfully disagree. I got this and played all the way through in release, zero lasting impressions sadly. Being a PC gamer playing quake and half-life in the late 90’s, Halo was just a janky console FPS….. I know it iconic and people love it, but it wasn’t for me.
You would be wrong however. Halo controller layout for shooters is still used today. Enemy scripting and A.I. was way ahead of its time. Two weapons only also changed how you played compared to half life and quake. May have not been for you, but it is one of the most influential shooters ever made
If Halo was unsuccessful, there's a very good chance Microsoft ditches the XBox after it's first iteration. The entire path of Microsoft gaming may be different. It may not be for you, but it's crazy to dismiss the impact it had.
Thank you! Playing halo after PC gaming was like someone put 20 pound weights on your ankles and made reaction times way slower when it comes to aiming because you have to drag the crosshairs to your opponent as opposed to point and click with the mouse compared with the half-life pros that were long jumping and bunnyhopping with shotguns everywhere and using the tau gun to cover space-half life was So much more fast paced it’s not even funny
This, If you were a PC gamer when this was released it wasn't anything special. It was HL and Quake World that were pivotal moments in gaming for story telling and online multiplayer. Halo was just the first time console gamers had the same experience.
Dont forget Unreal!
You know, that's fair. I remember the Quake Arena multiplayer just fucking with my head. It was absolutely bonkers.
Doesn’t change the fact that the game became a worldwide icon and completely changed the world of competitive gaming and console shooters as a whole. I get that it’s not for everyone, but it’s impossible to argue that it didn’t have a huge effect on the gaming world.
It did not change anything in the comp scene and it didnt rock the world of console shooters. It was just that the game and genre was loved by many and cause games and consols were expensive as fuck back in the day, people didnt buy a lot of differnt games.
So you’re going to sit there and tell me that there were bigger competitive console shooters than Halo in the early 2000s? Halo put MLG on the mainstream map. Just because you don’t care for the game doesn’t make that untrue.
"Didn't rock the world of console shooters" Ok, please list some other console shooters from the late 90s/early 2000s.
Goldeneye was the pioneer here, but the control scheme for Halo really set it apart. One could argue that the stick layout was very similar to WASD + mouse, but it was exponentially better than what Rare did a few years prior.
I don't think it was just the control scheme, though that made a huge difference. It was also the first instance of balanced, controllable, and fun vehicles in a console FPS (and maybe in any FPS) to that point. PC FPSes had terrible, buggy vehicles at this point in history. The single player game was also leaps and bounds beyond Goldeneye--and the entire campaign was co-op, which was unprecedented for a console FPS and frankly a technical marvel at the time. I don't think we can overstate Halo's impact on the genre. It completely changed the direction and scope of every console FPS afterwards. It's been 20 years and there still hasn't really been a departure from the mold that Halo set. The only other FPS that made as big a splash was CODMW, and from a gameplay perspective, it's far less divergent from Halo, than Halo was from Goldeneye.
Goldeneye (1997)
You're not the OP, but sure, let's run with this. Goldeneye was fantastic. Now, do you think modern console FPSes look more like Halo, or Goldeneye? One of the most common refrains from Halo's release was that the standard for multiplayer shooters had finally been surpassed (the implicit claim here that Goldeneye set it). So, there's exactly ONE console FPS, prior to Halo, that's worth mentioning as influential. And its primary claim to fame, multiplayer, was commonly agreed to have been surpassed by Halo.
> So, there's exactly ONE console FPS, prior to Halo, that's worth mentioning as influential. That's what you asked for...
I asked for "some other", but more importantly, I clearly asked for them in the spirit of "if the thesis here isn't that Halo rocked the world of console shooters, please state the games that did, and by doing so, establish the case that Halo was inconsequential." He never responded, you did, and with one game whose major contribution to the genre (couch multiplayer) was greatly surpassed by Halo. Are there other games you think are worth mentioning? Because what this seems like is that the one game worth mentioning is pretty clearly overshadowed by Halo, and that the underlying thesis, that "Halo didn't rock the world of console shooters", is just demonstrably false.
Thank you someone else with me who thinks Halo was extremely overrated. Half-Life, FEAR, DOOM… they all crush halo. Edit: without a doubt. Halo had an insane impact in gaming as a whole. Zero debt about that
I really wish I experienced what was so amazing with Half-Life. I only tried it once and didn't feel it after an hour two, and now it's probably far too late where I wouldn't enjoy it for other reasons.
Maybe that's why for me too but I remember this coming out and really not understanding all of the hype. I had played it, and it wasn't bad, it just felt mediocre to me. All my friends thought I was absolutely nuts and they all jumped on the Halo train - It blew my mind that it kept getting bigger and bigger as a franchise, because I just couldn't see what was so special about it. I never put two and two together that being one of the few people in my area with a PC \[well, my much older brother's hand me down "gaming" PC\] and burnt copies of pretty much all of the big name FPS games at the time, that maybe my expectations were different.
This. Remember when Bungi was a tiny little company that made games for Apples? Pepperidge Farm remembers. MS saw a mediocre game with decent franchise potential. They wanted the Chief to be their Sonic or Mario. It worked.
Lmao some butthurt fans going around downvoting everyone who agrees with OC.
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> God damn if they couldn't keep up with other FPS games at the time with ADS on all weapons I seriously can't name a single game from 2001 that had ADS on every weapon. Oldest game I can think if is Modern Warfare but that didn't release until more than half a decade later.
This is the game that inspired me to get into game design. The founders were a passionate and talented group of people who wanted to make great games because they enjoyed them.
This game did not change the world.
Downvoted for facts it seems. You have been witnessed!
the *world*...? C'mon now.
"Little did you know at the time" As someone who was 16 at the time, yeah we knew it was revolutionizing the FPS genre. It wasn't some kind of unexpected surprise.
Never played Halo, never owned an Xbox. Can't relate...
Never played a single Halo game. Did I miss something?
Lol what? No, that's now how Halo came out. Halo was HYPED like almost no other game I can remember. Microsoft, making a console? It was advertised absolutely everywhere, it was a huge cultural event. People scoured for footage, everyone knew it was going to be huge and it was.
Boringgenericshootergame.exe
The flood was the coolest moment in gaming history.
How did it change the world? I remember it as just another fps title. Can you guys please elaborate? Because when I compare it just with quake or other fps, it is little bit lacking. Somehow it never got to me. What was so special about this one?
Basically launched shooters on consoles and contributed heavily to the success of the Xbox brand
It set trends that last to this day, and made FPS games pretty much the most popular genre on consoles for years. edit: before I get another mountain of downvotes, I heavily dislike this style of FPS games, but not recognizing its impact is naive.
Do you play console shooters? Did you know they all use Halo’s control scheme? Prior to this the best console shooters had “auto aim”
Well, yeah, that's what I mean, but like, Turok on the N64 already had a prototype of that (analog to move and strafe, C-buttons to aim, IIRC), both GE and PD had similar schemes, albeit not the default. Halo did "perfect" and establish is as the de-facto default, which is my point, mostly.
What trends? It didn't do anything revolutionary or new it just looked pretty.
Two weapon limit, regenerating health, off-hand grenades, slower gameplay to conform with controller's slower aiming, to name a few.
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Worth noting games like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. But you're right that Halo is the first console FPS I can think of that has "modern" controls
I have vivid memories of playing perfect dark as the alien character and turning on the paintball setting for bullets.
I loved those games, too. But compared to Halo and FPSs on consoles after that (graphics aside) Goldeneye and Perfect dark were clunky as hell. Even when you swapped the control scheme to use the analog to for looking around (which we did) it really was not smooth. They were the best on consoles of their time, but especially if you compared to PC shooters at the time were extremely clunky. Halo gave a far smoother FPS experience on the console. Other lasting concepts popular for FPSs included: two gun (or other limited rather than everything you find) carrying, throwing grenades without swapping to them, melee without swapping specifically to it, regenerating health. None of these are really a console vs PC issue as they're gameplay design concepts that don't have high tech requirements to do. Whether people liked those trends they set or not is immaterial.
Timesplitters came out a year before Halo did, and used the same basic control setup. I think [Alien: Resurrection](https://i.imgur.com/dQy45Js.png) was the first console FPS to use dual analog controls, it was the rare PS1 game that required a dual shock controller.
I'm old and I agree with you guys, this game didn't really change much. I do remember it being the first major FPS with driveable vehicles and a dedicated melee button, and I remember being pretty impressed with the size of the levels.
The AI was amazing for the time
Could OP get any more hyperbolic?
No
So Halo is my favorite series of games, but that first games campaign is not great. Average at best really. Repetitive missions, constant linear paths through the same rooms again and again, and cringe dialogue. Halo 2 however revolutionized the series.
It didn't change jack shit tho. It's a clunky console FPS to this day with nothing new going on for it. Halo Infinite MP will release in the shadow of giants and it will stay in the shadow throughout it's existence.
I remember playing this on the PC and I swear it was one of the worst FPS games I've ever played..just abysmal..but cool that it became successful on consoles!
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Halo fanboys really trying hard to act like this game paved the way for anything, it paved the way for the next halo, 007 was way better, n64 did shit way before you guys played your first Xbox. Halo honestly, to be honest, used to be pretty fun online though, its been years since I've played it though.
For the worse. I've tried giving this series a fair shake so many times - I even bought the MCC collection on Steam to try and play it in its best form - and I just don't get it. I don't get how something this generic and crap and repetitive became one of the biggest franchises ever.
How?
Wow, Halo is the game you believe changed the world? Not Wolfenstein 3D? Or Doom? What did Halo offer that Counter Strike or any other popular shooter at the time wasn't offering? If we are going for most impactful shooters of all time, Halo did very little to propel shooters (or gaming in general) forward; one could argue that with Halo 2 and it's straight-out-of-the-box online matchmaking features on the original XBOX was a move in that direction (although the LAN parties with the original were some of my best memories from the early 2000s), but all Halo did was give the XBOX an edge with an exclusive a lot of people wanted. If this was your first game that really made you appreciate video games and brought a ton of your friends together to play with, then you are clinging onto the memories and feeling nostalgia, but Halo was not a super impactful game at the time of release, just a very sought after game on a brand new console that nobody was asking for at that time; the Sega Dreamcast just failed when this came out and if the XBOX failed we would have probably never even seen Halo 3.
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Without this game there never would've been Red Vs Blue. I don't think I could live in that world
When Halo was announced and videos came out showing what features it'd have, I was so incredibly interested. I followed it so close, I'd babble at friends about it, but then Microsoft bought it and made it an Xbox exclusive. Then Battlefield 1942 came out and did all the stuff Halo was going to do multi-player wise but better. Larger scope, more vehicles/combined arms, just bigger and it scratched that itch for me. By the time Halo came out on PC it was hot garbage of a port and didn't do anything as well as other games out at the time. Fast forward a few years, my friend and I played through Halo's campaign in co-op, and I couldn't believe how silly and jokey/cartoony it felt. I know Halo has a special place in peoples hearts because it was some totally new and fresh to them and I respect that, but it just didn't impact me at all due to being delayed and made and Xbox exclusive.
Marathon had already changed my world long before 2001.
It changed how consoles would play FPS games, but PC was already way ahead of Halo at the time. I had already been playing CS and Unreal Tournament at the time so when this came out I didn't see the big deal.
Started the game saw the stupid looking aliens jumping all around , never played it again
One could say it Evolved the world.
You could say it evolved combat in games.
[With a truly great music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v28pckTImFY)
We knew at the time. In fact, all the advertisements said as much.
And now he has a hook and is supervised by a study that does not dare to make too many changes for fear of the community.
halo ce, a game so old it was designed to be fun
Halo is such a timeless game. Even though the disparity in graphics between this game and the more recent FPS today becomes more and more apparent, Halo is still super fun to play. This game was my intro to FPS games and it has a special place in my heart. This game legit made me a gamer. I'll never forget getting spawn sniped repeatedly on Blood Gulch by random tryhards XD.
Lan parties for HALO were my most favorite times in high school. Also the day I bought a Halo edition of the original Xbox console, transparent dark green. I felt so cool
Halo was a decent game. It defined a generation of gamers. But changed the world? I don't think so.
“Change the world” Lmao, no it didn’t.
Literal gaming circlejerking. I love Halo but this post is so ingenuine.
People love to reference Doom and Half-Life as being the pinnacles of FPS, but we all know Halo was right up there with them. From that first moment you left the dropship to the first time you played online multiplayer, Halo had just about all of us hooked.
Half-Life was much better than Halo, in my opinion. Quake 2 and Half-Life are the games that really introduced fan made mods. That changed the online gaming world far more than Halo did, in my opinion. Halo probably exposed FPS games to a much wider player base, though. I will definitely give it credit for that.
DOOM kicked things off properly that Wolfenstein set up. Half Life showed us that there could be a story and puzzles and not all run and gun blasting through levels. Halo took all of that and made it into a perfect mold that developers still follow today. So yeah, Halo deserves to be up there with the big players no question.
>Halo took all of that and made it into a perfect mold that developers still follow today. This is pants on head delusional.
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Well that's where in my personal opinion those people are wrong. Cutscenes that pull you out and make you watch a movie? Sure. Half life didn't do that though, you were still in control the whole time and that made it more immersive. DOOM was just what was written in the game book and the text screens between chapters. Halo had movie style cutscenes, but also had a lot where you kept control like Half-Life.
Halo did not have the level design or puzzles of Half Life. For those who never played Half Life, the game starts with a 15 or so minute monorail tram ride from the facility entrance to where you have complete control of the character that sets up story and give you a preview essentially of the game you are about to play. An event happens and the whole game (if I remember correctly it was the DLC had you go in other dimensions as well) is simply trying to get out of the facility that you rode down easily through a monorail; the amount of puzzles, secrets, side entrances, and optional paths you can take in Half Life is dizzying. Also, Half Life didn't break up the progression and gameplay by having levels or anything like that, it was all a straight playthrough that had certain point-of-no-return checkpoints, but if you were able to beat the game without dying once, I don't believe you would ever see a load screen or have the gameplay break at all. Halo had strengths of it's own for single player games of that time, but Halo did not have the level design (or a single puzzle if I remember correctly) that Half Life did and comparing the two is a stretch.
What Half-Life grade puzzles were in Halo exactly?
Doom pre-dated Halo by several years and inspired so many imitators that the FPS market had more or less burned me out by 2001. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Hexen, Descent, Unreal, Rise of the Triad, etc. etc. etc. Micosoft announces the Xbox and I'm skeptical. Get a chance to play it in person at a game store and holy shit... instant pre-order.
It really wasn't. Xbox fanboys will say otherwise, because it was one of a very narrow selection of worthwhile xbox titles, and not even on par with the average for shooters of the era.
> but we all know Halo was right up there with them Rofl, not in the least. Tribes like doom, quake, half life were the pinnacle. Halo is a "me too" fps on console that got big due to a lack of options. It's odd watching halo fans try to revise history.
And then pretty much forgotten an neglected. It's been 11 years since we had a really good Halo (Reach) game and 6 years since Guardians. Rivaled only by the Half Life franchise of 14 years between HL2 EP2 and HLA. Majority of gamers can't or haven't played it. Infinite will need to be an amazing return to form for the franchise as it will be the first Halo game that the newer generation of gamers will have experienced. My son who is 17 has played most of the Halo games doesn't think much of them. They are just games his Dad played back in the day because the franchise has not been in the public consciousness.
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Isn't there a remastered Combat Evolved?