- Tupolev
- |
- Honorable Member
Posted by: Stevins
I don't understand why people think Halo CE was the best
Then you're probably not going to understand it regardless of how much someone explains it. Halo 1 is a game that either very strongly clicks with people, or it doesn't.
The argument, then, in my opinion, is so incredibly subjective in this case that determining which game is really "better" couldn't go very far beyond asserting that one persons taste is better than anothers, ie the argument is pointless.
But I'll take a stab at a few of the bullet points anyway, because I'm bored.
Gameplay
Unmatched, from campaign to multiplayer. I remember the good ol' days, the way your spartan moved, the sounds he made with his boots, the blast from the BR all added to the experience.
Interesting call on the gun sound design. Actually, that's one of the things that I liked the least about Halo 2. Half the guns in the game, especially the SMG, sound to me like pieces of plastic clicking together. The BANG BANG BANG of Halo 1 wasn't exactly realistic, but it was internally consistant and felt powerful.
Graphics
They may have not been the best graphics, but they were AWESOME. And they still are AWESOME. I don't know why, but Halo 2's visual appeal always got to me.
The "why" is simple really; in an age where you can represent just about anything on screen at some level, artistic use of tools is far more important at a practical level than raw graphical power. By modern standards, Halo 2 has weak graphics, but Bungie did their artistic best within the constraints to make it look good. It's like any other form of visual representation; lacking certain tools doesn't mean an artist is unable to create a beautiful work. The tools help, but not having them isn't always fatal to a goal.
This having been said, I do prefer Halo 1's. Much like my last complaint, almost everything in Halo 2 looks to me as though it were made out of plastic; the surfaces have a plasticky sheen, and some of the animations are strangely jerky as if some characters in the game were some kind of wierd plastic action figures. The awful ragdolling doesn't help things either. It still looks very good, and it's not like other games don't suffer similar problems, but I've always thought Halo 1 looks and feels much more, uhh, organic?
Music
Now if you disagreed with me on the previous two subjects, you have to agree Halo 2's soundtrack was the best. From the subtle background music in battle to the epic scores.
I'll even disagree with you here, actually. Halo 2's OST has some spectacular stuff, but it's not built for gameplay quite as well as Halo 1's, and sometimes it sort of feels too polished, not rough enough. The end result is that Halo 2's soundtrack is useless for creating moments like heading back into the swamp at the end of 343GS, when "The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe" comes in and you get that low roll...
The lightness and smoothness of the music almost got distracting at a few points.
Sure, there was a lack of features like Forge and Theater, but that's what gave the game it's vintage feeling.
Hehe, I never really cared much for either of those modes. Halo 3's Forge is one of the most tragically botched map editors ever. They were a few simple options away from creating something incredibly smooth, simple, and useful.
One of the big issues to note of course with my criticism of Halo 2's aesthetics is that it's all taste, and the aesthetics are certainly internally consistant; it's well-executed, and tweaking little things would throw off the look and feel as a whole.
I consider Halo 2 a great game too, and it's one of the few I keep by my original xbox, but Halo 1 has always struck me more powerfully. Halo 2 has grown on me a little over time, though, and I no longer consider it as much of a dissapointment as I first did.