- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I thought that would get your attention.This is my first actual post, but I've been reading the forums for over a year. I was one of the guys who didn't get into Halo until H2. I could explain, but that would suck. I played Halo 2, got really good at it, and then one day after a LAN asked the friend who had introduced me to it, "What was Halo 1 like?". His reply was simply, "There's no going back." Well, I don't have XBL, so I thought I'd give it a go. My first time through, I thought I'd familiarize myself with it first, so I set it to normal and went for it. I really prefer the graphical look and feel of the game. Much more sci-fi-ish, and it helped add to the feeling of being lost and alone, a rebel refusing to die. I won't narrate that experience, but I really liked it so I decided to try it on a harder difficulty. I got good at heroic, and gave legendary a whirl. OH. MY. GOSH. That was the most painfully difficult experience I have ever, uh, experienced. This is something that bothers me deeply, because all too often in this very forum I see people saying, "H1 was better because it required more skill" and then someone else agrees with them, saying, "Yeah and because H2's campaign was way too hard on legendary". Now I am NOT saying that all of the hardcore H1 fans think that way, so don't flame me for this, reply like an intelligent human being. So yeah, read this.
Harder? No, because....
1.Statistically, H1 is harder. For instance, the pistol--3 headshots to kill. BR--4 headshots to kill (in multiplayer). Now, that makes the pistol slightly more powerful than the BR. In Halo 2, on legendary, you can kill a Minor elite (the blue ones) with 7 headshots. In Halo 1, the same Minor elites take somewhere in the neighborhood of a clip and a half to kill. I haven't counted exactly how many it takes, but it's about 18 headshots. That's the equivalent of killing an Ultra in Halo 2.
2. Various factors that were present in H1 and were absent in H2 add to the "cakewalkish" nature of H2's campaign. Plasma freeze made it more difficult to flee from pursuing enemies.
I don't know about you guys, but jumping is an important part of the way I play halo. In H1, You couldn't jump nearly as high, and if you fell from any kind of considerable height you would suffer from the fall penalty, which, although I agree added the need for skill in multiplayer, was not something I would call a good thing. It was an annoyance. I have enough to think about during a slayer match without worrying about "hurting my feet". Also, the fact that I could get hit and severly injured by a melee attack that I SAW GO PAST MY FACE was straight out bullcrap. There are a few other minor problems but nothing wortth mentioning.
3. The assault rifle(which was intended to be the main weapon), as cool as it looked, sucked. An entire clip couldn't kill a minor on legendary. In Halo 2, you always had access to a weapon that would easily get you past a situation...usually the battle rifle would do the trick. The fact that the BR's projectiles were faster leveled it with the pistol(in campaign).
Better? Technically, because....
Halo CE had a small number of things called "gaming flaws", some of which are listed above as contributors to the hardness of the game. So whether your biased opinion of the game says "it was better than H2" or not, Halo 2 did not have any problems with vehicle control, repeating levels (that didn't bother me personally, but it's a boo-boo) or the melee attack hitting you unreasonably. How "balanced" it was is purely opinion. I could say that Halo 2 was more balanced, but that would just be my opinion. The fact is that Halo 2 got more perfect scores from more people.
I think that it all boils down to this: you can never play Halo for the first time twice. I remember playing it (H2 in my case), hearing the theme music, and realizing that it was no ordinary game. But I think of it like this: if an ordinary American were to go his entire life without pizza, and then one day be given a fresh slice of Digornio(sp?), he would love it to death. Three years later, if you gave him a slice of fresh Pizza hut, Domino's, whichever, he would love it, it would be nostalgic, and it would probably be better, but it would not be able to compare to the first time he drooled over the glorious triangle of Pizza.
So there. I don't even know if it matters, because I'm confident H3 wil take the cake.