- SEAL Sniper 9
- |
- Fabled Heroic Member
Vengeance only leads to an ongoing cycle of hatred.
I believe all of the Halo games (Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, Halo Wars) are all better then Reach. However, I'm going to focus on Halo 3 and ODST.
The Campaign: ODST had the best campaign out of all the Halo games with Halo 3 as a close second. "But, it was so short!" Quality over quantity. When I look at a poll on the ODST forums that asks which character is my favorite, I have to think. This is good. All of the characters are likable. When I see a poll asking which of Noble Team is your favorite I can easily say, 'none.' Or maybe Jorge, but they killed him off so fast you didn't really get to know him as well as you should have. All of the characters in Reach were honestly not likable at all. Aside from the characters, Reach takes canon by the throat, slaps it around, throws it on the ground, and takes a dump on it.
I honestly don't think I have to go into detail with the canon breaks. Anyway, instead of taking an already great story The Fall of Reach they replace it with this new story. A story, that feels like a crappy side-story, at best. Where was the Global Battle? Everything was small scale. "What about Long Night of Solace?!" That wasn't much of a step up. It's overrated and the Sabre...is it just me or is it exactly like the Banshee, but Human? It had the same controls and everything. All they did was take Banshee mechanics, slap it on a space ship (That was a little kid's ride. We should've piloted a Longsword, at least.) and put the setting in space. Lazy, much?
Bungie boasted how they could now do 40AI, twice as much in Halo 3! Well, you sure did use the 40AI well, Bungie. /sarcasm. In Halo 3 - The Ark mission - You roll in their with your tank and you have to fight off Ghosts, Wraiths, Choppers, Infantry...then BAM, a Scarab comes out of nowhere and you have to take that down too. They did all that with 20AI, could you imagine double that?! It would've been amazing. Also - The Covenant mission - you hop in the Hornet and there's a bunch of Banshees and Dropships you have to fight off while there are anti-air Wraiths shooting at you and infantry on the ground with Shade turrets. After all that, later in the mission, you have to take on two Scarabs while there are Banshees and Ghosts and whatnot fighting all around. The Falcon mission in Reach doesn't even compare to that. All done with 20AI. In Reach, nothing even compares to the epic battles that were so well done in Halo 3 and they had twice the AI.
Going off what I said about global battle, where was the sense of invasion? The largest Covenant fleet had come to invade Reach and glass it, yet...I felt no sense of invasion, at all. I felt more invaded during the highway mission in ODST. When you're driving your Warthog and there were Covenant ships in low orbit glassing. Then, out of nowhere, a Scarab comes walking through. The only time they did an okay job with the invasion bit was in New Alexandria and that still wasn't even close to enough of what we should've felt.
Now, in ODST the story was simply great. They had Sadie's Story as a side option, as well, which enhanced the story even more. The whole relationship between Buck and Dare was very well done. It first started off a bit rough then smoothed itself out by the end of the game. The relationship between the ODST's themselves was, again, well done. They were friends who had to have each others back in time of such peril. Like any friends they got a little pissed off at each other. For example Dutch, "Show some respect Romeo!" ... "I'm just sayin', Dutch." You can feel the tension, but they always get past their differences because that's what friends do. The character development in ODST was overall fantastic. Even in Halo 3, the relationship between Cortana and Chief. In Reach, it was terrible. It didn't capture anything like ODST did. Kat and Carter a tiny, tiny bit, but that's about it.
The Multiplayer - Halo 3, competitive. Halo: Reach, casual. Armor Abilities. One of the worst things to come of Halo. Sprint and Evade are the only ones that are okay. Even then the whole Sprint+Sword(Or melee) combo gets a little old. Don't even get me started on Armor Lock. All these things give the player a crutch right from the start. Where as, in Halo 3, you had to fight for the "power weapons" and Camo/Overshield. Arena is a joke. The highest skill in Halo 3 was so much better. You want to see real competition? Watch 50's go against each other in Halo 3. The credit system is terrible. I cap all five flags, against two Forerunners I may add, to win the game and all I got is a mere 100-200 credits for my performance? The EXP in Halo 3, although frustrating when you lose 50-49, worked well. If your team won, you got the EXP. This is where teamwork comes into play. Your team had to win in order for you to get the EXP. In Reach, you are trying to get credits for yourself.
Multiplayer Maps: Similar to characters, when I look at a Halo 3 poll/thread asking what your favorite multiplayer map is I really have to think because many come to mind. For Reach, I can easily say none. They did the lazy, Call of Duty copy-and-paste-from-campaign maps for Reach. While in Halo 3 they made amazing maps. The Pit, Guardian, Sandtrap, Vahalla, Avalanche, Cold Storage, etc, etc, etc. Plus, Halo 3's maps are great to Forge on. In Reach, I do not see any of them working well with Forge. The only thing you got is Forge World. Also, I might as well tag this on here too...ODST's Firefight maps > Reach's Firefight maps. Lost Platoon, anybody? I love ODST's Firefight maps. Reach's FF maps were just more copy-and-paste-from-campaign.
Firefight - ODST > Reach. Simple. In Reach it's all about the individual. You don't have to work as a team. In ODST, your more vulnerable. The waves get progressively harder and teamwork is highly emphasized. In Reach, you hardly have to take a survival into account. Try to get the achievement Endure. Case and point.
inbefore - tl;dr
inbefore - OP can't inbefore
inbefore - adapt