- Elite assassin 1
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- Elder Heroic Member
52,000 kills in Halo 2 and more legendary playthroughs in CE than you can imagine. I am truly a God.
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Posted by: ajw34307
Posted by: Elite assassin 1
None, they all have their strong points that make them unique.
Not sure I understand the hate for Reach, it was a wonderful game, the campaign especially.
Bungie did just about everything wrong with Reach, it's the Phantom Menace of the Halo series.
1) Awful, undeveloped and sterile characters which nobody had any reason to care about. They shouldn't have even existed, the game would have done better to focus on Red/Blue Team.
2) Horrid and linear level design. Missions played out like this:
- Fight some bad guys.
- Press a switch to advance to the next area.
- Fight some more bad guys.
- Get in a vehicle and drive somewhere.
- Fight more enemies.
- Press a switch to end the mission.
It was so underwhelming, the locations were very disappointing too. Reach is the main military hub of the UNSC, yet the only military base we see is SWORD Base. The rest is just farmland and New Alexandria, there's no variety at all. Compare this fecal matter to Halo 2:
- Opens up with High Charity, we see the Covenant as characters rather than just aliens we need to kill. We see them as evil, but we soon see that they're very fragile as the story develops.
- A space station, John and the survivors of Installation 04 are awarded. The Covenant arrive at Earth.
- Combination of close quarters and zero-gee fighting as we rid the station of the Covenant and give them back their bomb.
- Skirmishes on Earth in various locations from courtyards, housing districts and wide open plazas.
- Back to Installation 04 where we land on Threshold and fight Heretics. The player sees how fragile the Covenant religion is because you never once kill a human as Thel, only Heretics of the Covenant and the Flood. As John, you are seen to be united with the rest of humanity for a single cause.
- Installation 05, back to the old Halo CE feel as we traverse over dozens of different terrains. The Library, the forests, creeks, temples, flying gondolas, underwater shafts and desolate wastelands. Delta Halo and Sacred Icon have more variety than the whole of Reach's abysmal campaign.
- All story points converge on the Gravemind's lair in the Library. Miranda and Johnson get taken by the Covenant, Thel has to stop the Rings from firing and John is sent to assassinate Truth. We have the golden rule of 3 story points of view at play and it's woven together beautifully.
- High Charity has us sprinting through holy chambers, prison blocks, massive gravity elevators, beautiful gardens and a stunning vista of the Keyship in the background. Reach was just clouds of dust. Yes, it was pretty dust but it wasn't anything as captivating as Halo 2's vistas, the Step of Silence was absolutely amazing.
- Back to Installation 05, the Jiralhanae have betrayed the Sangheili and we see them being slaughtered. Thel rallys the survivors and leads them on a mission to storm the Control Room where eventually he forms an alliance with Johnson and the surviving humans.
- The Flood arrive at High Charity and begin infecting everything. Brutes, Elites, Grunts, Drones, Jackals, Hunters and Flood are waging all-out war; John leaves Cortana behind as Truth leaves for Earth.
- The survivors on Installation 05 guide a Scarab to the Control Room and engage with Tartarus and dozens of Brutes, Halo is put on stand-by mode and we discover that they can all be fired at the Ark which sets up the story for Halo 3 in a very Empire Strikes Back way.
The story is flawlessly built up and structured to the final conclusion where John vows to finish the fight. ESB and Halo 2 share a lot in common, the ending pissed a lot of people off at the start but over time people accept it to be a great thing.
Reach was a convoluted mess of reaching Point A to B in a very dull way. There was nothing at all captivating about the environments, the characters and the story. I never once felt like I cared about Noble Team or anyone in the game. There was a chance to make a really interesting campaign, perhaps introduce new people to the novels if they based the game around the events of TFOR and FS. But no, it was a mandated project which resulted in Bungie's ultimate FU to the fans and Microsoft by implementing an abysmal campaign, poor multiplayer, awful maps, half-arsed Forge and custom games.
It's for this reason that I say that ODST was the last good Halo game. ODST was nothing short of perfection in terms of everything it did, in my opinion ODST should have been the 3 year project where we could have seen much more development of the story leading up to The Storm in Halo 3.
I can sum this whole thing up with just 2 images...
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I disagree, it was much more fun than Halo 3. I think it was one of the strongest by far, you will not change my mind.
Also it has by far some of the most powerful music in any game I've every played.
[Edited on 05.13.2011 5:20 PM PDT]