- Mava665
- |
- Exalted Legendary Member
Warning-if you like Halo 3 a lot you might not like this thread. In fact, you might hate it. I assure you, I am not a troll. These are my opinions. Take them or leave them.
I've already begun to see it. "I'll miss the BR so much." "Reach just isn't as fun as Halo 3." "Remember all the good times?"
Halo 1 and Halo 2 lovers often suffer from serious cases of nostalgia. While I loved both, and though they were both great, each of them had multiple issues. The fabled TSK Pistol? An error, a mistake. All the Button Glitches? Same deal. Halo 1 (mostly in multiplayer) had some questionable design choices, to say the least, and Halo 2 was probably one of the glitchiest games of the century, not to mention filled to the brim with online cheating that made the ranking system somewhat of a joke or the awful weapon balancing. Both were great (especially CE, which still has a fantastic campaign and multiplayer despite its age), but both had plenty of issues.
Halo 3, IMO, deserves less praise. After 3 years of this game, I could safely say it is the greatest overhype of all time, but alas, MW2. Please, B.net, don't start whining about how much better that Reach Halo 3 is. Because it just isn't. Bungie has done a fantastic job of combating all the issues prevalent in Halo 3 for Reach, and I admit as they would that new ones are bound to pop up.
Let's look at what Halo 3 did wrong.
Campaign:
-Weapon Sandbox not interesting/well designed
-Enemies too easy/just plain boring (Brutes way too easy to kill, and the Flood got so nerfed it's not even funny)
-Mediocre plot (and Halo 1 and 2 weren't masterpieces either, but Halo 3 made them look like it)
Multiplayer:
-Lack of Hitscan. This was just a plain stupid decision. This led to incredible amount of bullet loss, leading your shots became inconsistent due to lag, and it caused a boatload of lag. Probably the single greatest issue with Halo 3.
-BR spread. If you are in favor of a precision weapon having uncontrollable spread, then I really don't know what to say. Because that makes absolutely no sense. SWAT became a mess, people won based on connection, people won match ups based on random spread. Not to mention that BR sweeping allows noobs to get headshots.
-No Carbine spawn as starting weapon. Much better weapon than the BR for competitive play.
-Map spawns. I honestly have had it up to here with Bungie telling the community it doesn't know how to spawn right or that its maps have bad spawns when I'm getting gunned down to death on Standoff by a Warthog because I'm out in the middle of the map and getting assassinated from behind at the beginning of Lone Wolves games.... 2 YEARS AFTER RELEASE.
-Guardian. How this never got fixed we will never know. One team gets a shot at Camo, OS, Sniper, Hammer, and can get Bubble Shield. The other team gets a Shotgun. Yay for balance.
-Map+Gametype/Map+Playlist Combinations. What? Slayer on High Ground? Yes, a symmetrical gametype on a one sided objective map is a great idea. High Ground and Valhalla in Team Slayer? Are you serious? 3v3 is possible on Valhalla? Come on. There's plenty more as well.
-You knew it was coming. AR starts. I've had AR starts on Valhalla. I've had AR starts on Avalanche. I've had AR starts on Standoff. It's ridiculous. And the weapon itself is just as bad. It's a -blam!- club, not a gun. And after three years, they're still here. WOW.
-DLC. This isn't Bungie's fault, but it sure does suck. If anything, I should play on DLC maps the most because I paid for them. But Microsoft's policy -blam!- over everyone. By not making any (after Heroic) map packs free and making
some playlists require the maps, I've been split up with my friends, barely have gotten to play some of my favorite maps (LONGSHORE!!!), all of which is -blam!- up. Don't worry though. Seeing how kids had no problem dishing out the money for the MW2 packs, I'm sure Microsoft will use the same DLC policy while making the map packs cost more. If they do either, I'm not purchasing DLC in Reach.
-The Weapon Sandbox. Half of the guns were derivative of each other, few were fun to use, and most were wastes of space.
-The Laser. Why bother putting it in? I'd rather they had just removed vehicles from the game, would have been the same idea, right? Because I'd rather actually be killed by someone using some kind of skill rather than pointing a insta kill, infi range, scoped invisible death beam from anywhere on the map.
-Trueskill. This, my friends, is the worst ranking system of all time. Boosters? Check. Second Accounts? Check. Easy to get to the highest rank? Check. Matches 1's in one playlist with people who have 50s in others? Check. Dependent on other people instead of you? Check. Trueskill was probably the second biggest issue with Halo 3.
-The Banhammer. Yeah, those achievement boosters, EXP boosters and people with pictures of pikachu in their fileshare are real threats to the game, it's not like Squad Battle, MLG, and Doubles are filled with cheaters, standbiers, and host booters who never get banned. Yep. That guy with the pikachu will think twice before messing with Bungie. Thank god for the Banhammer!
-The Betrayal system. After 3 years of this game I still have no idea how the hell this works. It seems completely random, like Bungie kidnapped a bi-polar clown and makes him monitor every single betrayal that occurs and then decides whether or not to give the option to boot based on his feelings.
-Community Maps in Matchmaking. I've seen so many map that make Snowbound and Isolation look like they were made by 5 years olds that it is ridiculous. Seriously. A giant wealth of community content is right there. But no. Guardian for the billionth time. Sigh.
-Maps. Orbital? Snowbound? Valhalla? Standoff? Epitaph? High Ground? Isolation? There is a theme here. I blame the bad maps on the bad core gameplay though. I think some of them would be a lot better if it was better. But honestly, why are you making so many maps (Snowbound, Epitaph) that have basically no use in the game?
-The netcode/matching/connections/host. Whatever you want to call it, there was so much lag in Halo 3 it was unbelievable. Even worse, it could continually match you up with people from Australia, New Zealand, the other -blam!- side of the world, and also refused to switch host when the game was lagging like crap. There are numerous other issues involved here as well.
-The Melee system. 10 meter super lunge and 2 hits to kill. Case closed.
-Finally, drum-roll please. The Core Gamplay. Whether it's movement speed, the feel of the weapons, equipment, spawns, whatever. Halo 3 just had bad core gameplay. It's made up of a bunch of things, like the bad sandbox, the no hitscan, the AR starts, but it's a culmination of bad design decisions and just bad ideas in general.
Overall, it's important to look back at Halo 3 fondly. You should remember the good things (that are mostly not listed because that is not the purpose of this thread). However, it's also important to understand that it had a ton of issues and that it should not be looked back upon with so much nostalgia that you actually start ignoring its issues. If you think I'm being mad and hateful, maybe I am. Maybe I need this, maybe other people do as well. Maybe I need this one last rant over all the things about this game that has pissed me off over the years so that I can later look back at the game fondly. I understand that you guys may not agree with some of my points, but I think at least most/some will ring true. Thoughts?