After The Hype

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Originally Posted by Mirai Gen

I've found that, somehow, 2d platformers like Mario Bros 3 or Super Castlevania 4 or Mega Man X or, to a degree, Link to the Past never lose their charm for me.

The SNES holds alot of fond gaming memories for me. Be it hearing the Opera Scene for the first time in FF6Yes goddammit I know It's FF3NA shut the hell up, riding Yoshi for the first time in Super Mario World or even traversing around the many puzzle filled dungeons in LttP or even getting lost in Brinstar in Super Metroid they are all fond memories I cherish.

That is one thing I appreciate with the Wii because it allows me to go back in time and play the games I love. Roms and emulation may be free, but playing a game on the TV feels different, almost nostalgic, when compared to playing on the computer.

[Jagos]

True about the Halo series. Even Bungie admitted that the sequels were about remaking that same 30 seconds of fun come out over and over, so they weren't interested in reinventing the wheel, merely keeping the cogs going on the machine. (F(&^%$ Pistol...)

My guess is they now sacrificing challenging gameplay, story(sometimes) and quality just so the new games look pretty.

I just see it as something to do with the fact that a lot of publishers aren't limited anymore. It's really tough to push the boundaries when the console has so much power. My argument is more or less a belief that the best times for games may be the early ---> PS2 era where you have more experimentation than you have right now.

[Seil]

The Powerglove. It's so bad.

[Jagos]

Ya know, I wonder what happened to that religious game... The one with the blond chick who looked more like a porn star than an angel...?

[MasterOfMagic]

Sounds like my kind of religious game.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Originally Posted by Meister

Something I keep noticing right here on this forum is the more hype there is around a game before its release, the quicker the thread about it fills up once it's out; that in itself isn't surprising but once that thread is full everyone immediately drops the subject and the game is never mentioned again. I dunno if that's just the way it is here but it doesn't say very good things about game lifespans and games' cultural influence on players as a whole.

... As apposed to ALL those other threads we keep getting around here about old games that no one ever knew about that keep cropping up over and over again? Yeahhhh, not really sure where you're going with that one man. Generally if a new game comes out, we discuss it, then the thread closes once it reaches thread limit, maybe open another if there's a lot of interest, then once everything's been disucussed we stop talking. Don't see how that pattern is any different from anything else really.

Originally Posted by Kerensky287

Halo 1 pretty much set the standard for console FPS controls, as well as a lot of universal FPS gameplay elements.

I don't even see how it did that. Seriously now, WHAT exactly did Halo do that made it so great?? I honestly don't know. It never played any differently from any other FPS I ever played, it didn't do anything in regards to telling a great story, having interesting characters or amazing set pieces. Where in the hell did all this hype surrounding the Halo games come from? To this day I still can't find anything about it that makes it so amazingly awesome that I seemingly must bow down to it and hail is as the Second Coming.

It makes me laugh because a freind of mine considers Halo 3 "The Game of the Decade", because some internet site heralded it as such and he won't hear a word against it, yet he still can't give me a reason why it's supposedly the best game ever. Can anyone explain?

[Jagos]

I don't even see how it did that. Seriously now, WHAT exactly did Halo do that made it so great?? I honestly don't know. It never played any differently from any other FPS I ever played, it didn't do anything in regards to telling a great story, having interesting characters or amazing set pieces. Where in the hell did all this hype surrounding the Halo games come from? To this day I still can't find anything about it that makes it so amazingly awesome that I seemingly must bow down to it and hail is as the Second Coming.

Console FPS hadn't really advanced past GoldenEye on the N64 to skew the Perfect Darks and TimeSplitters. There was basically nothing to fill the darkness for the Xbox, nor to allow us to really see what the FPS genre could do. Computer games had Wolfenstein and a few other games. Us consoles... Yeah, deprived.

Enter Halo. I guess you could say it didn't do anything exceptional, but it really did things well. You had at least three weapons you liked (assault rifle, pistol... *(%$&% OP pistol... and sniper rifle), you had aliens, and you were an overpowered badass with no reserves about taking down the enemy.

Also didn't help that it was the first game Xbox owners got.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

See, no, I think out of everything you just said, the last line was probably the only true bit. It was probably the only major game on the Xbox, a console that finally got online multiplayer off the ground. Halo rode on that success, more than anything else. That's literally the only thing it had going for it, for the first time, console players could fight others online, an experiance PC gamers had had for years, thanks to Counterstrike, Unreal, Quake, Half-Life, etc.

Halo didn't actually add anything to that side of gaming, it just happened to be there when it became more popular. Everything that Halo did, as far as I can see, had already been done by all of its predacessors. And let's face it, there were a LOT of predacessors. If any of those games had been realised on the Xbox at that time, with online modes, they would have become the "Game of the Decade" instead. Halo did nothing really.

[Kim]

Hawk, I am going to explain something to you. I want you really to think about the words before responding, the different interpretations thereof, and why I use the words I do, okay? I'm being serious here.

Halo is great because Halo is stupid fun, in much the same way Super Smash Bros is. It is mindless run and gun FPS action, where I can run all over the map like a dummy with my pistol and dead everyone to death. In Halo 2, I can run all over the map like a dummy with my dual needlers or my plasma sword and dead everyone to death. In Halo 3 I can run all over the map like a dummy with my spartan laser and dead everyone to death. It is stupid, mindless fun that lacks any sense of tactics and strategy and it is good for it. I'm not going to claim it's the best FPS ever or anything, but there is much fun to be had by just sitting down and playing a moronic game of guns.

[Kerensky287]

Originally Posted by Hawk

I don't even see how it did that. Seriously now, WHAT exactly did Halo do that made it so great?? I honestly don't know. It never played any differently from any other FPS I ever played, it didn't do anything in regards to telling a great story, having interesting characters or amazing set pieces.

...

...Did you not read the sentence you quoted? Like a lot of the games that people are fondly remembering, Halo set some FPS standards. Before Halo came around, like Jagos said, Goldeneye was still the best one out there.

Then you suddenly had dual-analog movement controls (which appears in damn near EVERY shooter nowadays), you had the health recharging mechanic that made high-risk high-reward tactics useful and fun, you had all of these vehicles that controlled just as intuitively as your player (admittedly dual-analog controls weren't easy to get into at first... but now everyone's used to them and they work excellently) and you had a campaign with all kinds of awesome moments like the nighttime sniping section and the warthog race at the end.

Originally Posted by Hawk

See, no, I think out of everything you just said, the last line was probably the only true bit. It was probably the only major game on the Xbox, a console that finally got online multiplayer off the ground. Halo rode on that success, more than anything else. That's literally the only thing it had going for it, for the first time, console players could fight others online, an experiance PC gamers had had for years, thanks to Counterstrike, Unreal, Quake, Half-Life, etc.

Halo didn't actually add anything to that side of gaming, it just happened to be there when it became more popular.

Halo didn't have online multiplayer. Xbox Live wasn't released until a year after launch. If online multiplayer was "the only thing it had going for it", how could it go online? And if it couldn't go online, why were people so psyched for Halo 2?

And one thing that it DID do exceptionally, by the way - the combination of lots of health, fairly low gravity, and powerful weaponry meant that Halo naturally allowed for a lot of non-scripted, memorable moments that just got people talking. It happened often enough that in a good session of games, you'd have something like 2 or 3 different "badass things" that happened as you were playing.

Oh, and co-op campaign. That was a big factor.


...But yeah, I vote that we change the topic from Halo. People will always like it WAY too much, and other people will always hate it irrationally. It is at the very least an average game, and some people think it's better than that. Deal with it, agree to disagree. Halo 2 and 3 were overhyped, we can all agree on this. But don't bash Halo 1. There was more excitement for the system itself than for Halo.

EDIT: NonCon had great points too. It's a lot of fun because it's a mindless run and gun FPS game, and I'd like to add that it's an ACCESSIBLE mindless run and gun FPS game. You can kill someone without knowing all the ins and outs of every single weapon, and even if someone gets the drop on you you might still have a chance. Compare/contrast with Counterstrike, for example, which includes such fun as being shot in the face with a pistol (dying instantly) because you don't know exactly how much recoil that rifle you bought had, leading to you completely missing your target.