- disgruntledfan2
- |
- Intrepid Mythic Member
Halo Combat Evolved: A True Masterpiece of it's time.
Pros:
1. Fantastic open world and corridor switching levels with tons of room to move.
2. Interesting asymmetrical, and non-linear level designs.
3. Fun mix of asymmetrical and symmetrical maps.
4. Interesting weapons that all have cool functions and can be used at close to mid-range instead of just close range.
5. A well paced story that was simple, yet packed, and good for it's time.
Cons:
1. Backtracking. A ton of backtracking and some repetition.
2. While the weapons were balance it usually devolved into shotgun, sniper, rocket launcher, and PISTOL. Pistol was very overpowered.
Halo 2: The Bastard Stepchild
Pros:
1. Opened up the story and made the aliens less of a cliche enemy.
2. Nice linear set pieces in some areas.
3. Getting out of the map and looking at the 3D backgrounds in all their glory.
4. New Enemies.
5. Hardest difficulty setting.
6. Least amount of backtracking in the series.
7. Good, basic map design for multiplayer levels.
8. Packed full of new scripted events and "woah" moments.
Cons:
1. Texture pop-in everywhere for Nov. 9 discs on the original xbox.
2. Intended playable areas were small and linear and left little room for movement and approach.
3. Some new enemies like the Brutes were not fleshed out, and only had one weapon, and a red plasma rifle variant.
4. Weird design choices. One hit kill melee for Elites on normal based on range? What is the point of sword Elites then?
6. Cartoony art design. The textures in Halo Combat Evolved, while old, had better art design for metallic armor and walls. Halo 2 was filled with low resolution bump mapping for metallic textures.
7. Gameplay balance during pre-patch was atrocious. 6 hit melee attacks, and piss weak grenades with a long timer. Physics glitches that made throwing grenades while running. Hitbox glitches galore. Invisible turrets etc.
8. Gameplay during post patch was better but still atrocious. Useless, close range dual wielding. Dominant battle rifles that felt like sniper rifles. BXB dominating the game.
9. Network Cheating all over the place.
10. Boosting a system that only allowed so many 40s and 50s.
11. Enemy A.I. was not polished. Constantly running into walls, driving off cliffs, and friendly A.I. should be avoided when holding explosives.
12. Huge difficulty level gap between Normal and Heroic.
13. Dual wielding made weapons 90% close range and useless without dual wielding post patch. Spray and Pray gameplay pre-patch.
14. No elaboration on the Master Chief. Unequal story telling gives Arbiter the edge.
15. Sniper swiping, and auto-aim out the wazoo.
16. The last level was the previous Arbiter level backwards.
17. "Woah" moments and story elements are badly paced in some areas. The bomb ending of the first level and New Mombasa were seriously badly paced in comparison to the E3 demos. It seems the ideas came first, and ended up shoehorned into the final product.
18. Cliff hanger ending. Cliche alien team up story in comparison to other games at the time like Half-Life 2.
19. Some mediocre boss fights.
Halo 3: Good, but not great.
Pros:
1. Fixes a ton of things wrong with Halo 2.
2. Metallic textures look metallic.
3. Good environmental textures.
4. Good arena designs and big enough levels for good movement and multiple approaches towards the target.
5. Tons of hidden weapons, and some choices of vehicles.
6. Huge levels and tons of polygons onscreen.
7. Terminals leave a remarkably rich back story on the forerunners.
8. Tons of new weapons, vehicles and equipment.
9. Better gameplay balance than Halo 2.
10. Less glitches.
11. Tons of Flood onscreen.
12. Some good story moments like Master Chief lost in space, or fighting with the Flood.
Cons:
1. Still a huge gap between normal and heroic.
2. Inconsistent difficulty. One second you're fighting a group of tough aliens on Legendary the next second your waving through the easiest group of flood backtracking through the previous level. A few hours later 4 players are packed into a linear sphincter and forced to fight the horrid Ranged forms, and shotgun flood.
3. Story is filler and fan service. People wanted to fight more on Earth? How about half of the game taking place on Earth for no apparent reason than to walk to the Ark portal.
4. E3 spoiled the Ark. Really Bungie? The biggest woah moment in the game and you spoil it and downsize it's impact from the E3 demonstration.
5. Promises from Bungie that Halo 3 would look like the E3 demonstration when I play it. Not too bad considering the desert was empty in the E3 demonstration, but it stinks Master Chief came out looking like candy fiber glass and the real time reflections disappeared.
6. Poor animations and character models. Poor animations in cutscenes.
7. Shoehorned moments. The E3 demo was perfect for the Ark. Too bad the entire moment felt like a shoehorned change once again. Even the animations are worse in the final version.
8. Some balance problems.
9. Too many invisible walls in campaign.
10. Too much geometry in multiplayer, and some convoluted maps.
11. What happened to the Flood and Brutes? Easy as pie.
12. No scary moments and only a few "woah" moments.
13. One super lame boss fight at the end. Some poor writing: "To war?" Johnson getting killed by lamest boss seemed contrived. No emotional attachment to Miranda.
14. Driving A.I. somehow has gotten worse.
15. Some backtracking again.
[Edited on 11.13.2009 11:09 AM PST]