After The Hype

[Yrcrazypa]

Seems to me more like Halo is overly popular because for a very large amount of people, it was the first FPS they had ever played. For me? I played one of the earliest, Wolfenstein 3d, and yes, I know it wasn't the first, Arcticfox beat it by several years, but none had reached the popularity of Wolfenstein 3d, and looking back on it? Wolfenstein 3d isn't all that good, compared to what came out a year later.

Though this is an unfair arguement, since Wolfenstein 3d is far more important to FPS than a game that's only accomplishment is introducing the most annoying feature I've ever seen in a game, regenerating health.

[Kim]

Because I'm sick and tired of reading about Halo every time I come into this thread...

How about Star Ocean 4? I played it on my 360, and it was built up to be a pretty good game. GameTrailers gave it an eight point something out of ten, which isn't a bad score. Plus it was a JRPG from Squeenix so it has to be good. It was pretty fuggin' horrible. Combat was good, but everything else was so awful that the combat hardly made up for it enough to be worth completing. Boss fights were too long, too.

[Regulus Tera]

[troll]I don't like Halo or Goldeneye because I prefer videogames to first-person shooters.[/troll]

Originally Posted by NonCon

Plus it was a JRPG from Squeenix so it has to be good.

This was your mistake. Right fucking here.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Regulus Tera

This was your mistake. Right fucking here.

I didn't actually think that. I was being sarcastic and mocking the mindset that some people seem to have that falls along those lines.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Ok, last post on the Halo subject now, seeing as I have a few things to reply to.

First of all then, I retract the statement about Xbox Live. I thought the online had been around for longer than that, obviously I was mistaken. Considering I've only ever seen people playing Halo online it was a natural assumption to assume that the entire online aspect was pretty much Halos "thing", and had been so since its release.

Jagos; I wasn't trying to dismiss your post, sorry if it sounded that way, I just don't agree with the points you made. For a start, ok maybe FPS' hadn't advanced beyond Goldeneye by that point, but as has been said, Halo didn't revolutionise the genre either, so I don't see what you're getting at there.

The points Kerensky made about dual anologue controls (done by Unreal Tournament a year earlier) and regenerating health (hardly a genre defining innovation, and something which has now permeated all games, much to my and most other peoples annoyance) is also flawed. I'll give you the vehicles though, it did do that. The bit about having 3 weapons you liked just confuses me though. I mean what, there were only 3 good weapons in the game or something?? Don't follow you there man.

Noncon; I get that you can have fun with it, but you can also have fun with any other game. Are you trying to say people wouldn't have more fun on other FPS' that do the exact same thing? Also please don't speak to me like I'm some simple minded child, which your post seemed to imply. I don't appreciate it.


So yeah, what it seems to come down to then is regenerating health and vehicles. Those seem to be the only reasons people can give for why Halo is so mind blowing amazing, what from I'm gathering from peoples responses. Thank you, my question has been answered. I don't agree with the sentiments myself, but there you go.

Now I'm done with the Halo talk, as I know people are getting sick of it and I inadvertantly derailed the thread enough.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Hawk

Noncon; I get that you can have fun with it, but you can also have fun with any other game. Are you trying to say people wouldn't have more fun on other FPS' that do the exact same thing?

Halo is at its best when it is at its simplest. This is why I consider the first one the best. It is extremely basic, easily accessible to anyone, and mindless fun. It does being this extremely well. Before someone counters with "PC does it better", not everyone owned a PC capable of playing the latest BEST PC SHOOTER EVER, and surprise surprise split-screen multiplayer is fun. I'm not saying they can't have more fun than in Halo, even though you seem to be saying they can't have more fun in it. I'm just saying that some people do have more fun in Halo for the reason I gave. There is nothing wrong with wanting to sit down in front of your TV, turn your brain off, and shoot your friends to death from a thousand feet away with a pistol.

Does it deserve the hype? No, but this is an entire thread about how almost no game in the history of ever has deserved its hype. Telling people that they're wrong for enjoying Halo, which your post seemed to imply, and then saying "Are you saying they can't enjoy other games more?" seems a bit ridiculous to me.

"I like Mario." "Mario sucks. You should play Mega Man. You'll like it more." "But I don't..."

Also please don't speak to me like I'm some simple minded child, which your post seemed to imply. I don't appreciate it.

I didn't do it to treat you like a child. I did it to get you to pay attention to the specific wording of that post. I chose the words I did for a reason, and that is not always obvious, since simple text does not read the same to each individual. By reinforcing that the wording was important to that specific post, I was attempting to get you to think about why I would use that wording, thus hopefully avoiding the pitfalls of textual discourse.

[Amake]

Two pages and no mention of Rise of the Robots? The advertising campaign started in 1992, it came out in 1994 and it's still the gold standard of overhyping. It was actually the thing that taught me to not buy into hype.

I mean, damn. I think the first article I read about it was the best day of my life so far. They were talking about strong AI (though we didn't have that phrase back then), fully immersive virtual reality menus, music by Queen, moves designed by a badass martial artist, backgrounds designed by Japan's most famous interior designer and years upon years of ownage. The graphics were unbeliveable.

On reflection, that's not bad even by today's standards. And of course we were fooled, there was no precedent for a game that used different graphics for gameplay and cutscenes, we barely had any concept of cutscenes. Or computer rendering.

And boy did it suck. Those super duper graphics that made the game on SNES cost an extra 10 dollars looked like blurred, badly lit cat poop. It was slow. Someone forgot to tell the martial artist that a fighting game needs moves that a) look good and b) are more than one punch, one kick and a fireball. Brian May, it turned out, was not Queen. There were less characters than in Mortal Kombat 1, and they weren't balanced for two player mode, but unless you were player 2 you had one character to choose from.

I wish I could go on but I don't think there's anything more to say about the game because there was so little of it. Oh yeah, there's four things I forgot: jumping kick, jumping punch, crouching kick and crouching punch.

That's all.

[Corel]

Anything Peter Molyneux was involved with post Bullfrog (And maybe the first Black and White)

I'm looking at you Fable, B&W 2, The Movies, Fable II etc. (Not to say the Fable series isn't enjoyable, but it sure did not live up to the hype it was given.)

I'm still really bitter about Black and White 2 mostly, should've given it to me and I would've made an awesome game!

Molyneux is kind of like what's happened to most Sonic games I guess.

[Jagos]

Fable

It got better.

[Regulus Tera]

Originally Posted by NonCon

I didn't actually think that. I was being sarcastic and mocking the mindset that some people seem to have that falls along those lines.

Anyone who plays Secret of Mana and still thinks Square only makes good JRPGs needs to go to the nutter.