The original magic and talent behind the Halo series is long gone. All that’s left is a corporate shell with billions of dollars to burn on a soulless cash grab for those looking back at the series with nostalgia.
I think the original trilogy (plus Reach and ODST) work because while there’s a ton of lore, the really convoluted stuff is kind of at the background to the moment to moment feel of the game. The most forward facing content is a pastiche of other easily digestible scifi that’s all mixed together in a fun, interesting way. You’ve got conventional humans who feel like a straight expansion of the colonial marines from Aliens up against a diverse and interesting array of aliens. The Covenant are a refinement from Pathways Into Darkness and then the Marathon games. You’ve got the flood as a space zombie change of pace.
It all mixes together well and the more detailed lore can be built on top of it. There are many intentional gaps and hooks which can suggest things without having to be addressed explicitly, leaving room for some mystery.
After those games, the series kind of imploded under the weight of its own lore since the developers/writers chose to bring all of those mysterious elements to the forefront. It gave less interesting enemies to fight, and less motivation to care. I doubt many people have moments from those games burned into their memories the same way moments from the original trilogy are.
The good: Gunplay was the best of new 343’s Halo games. They made the Prometheans fun to fight. Warzone was the only good thing to come out of 343’s multiplayers. The lootboxes which could be earned was better than infinite’s paid season passes and expensive armor cores. They also had probably the only good iconic anything from the 343 games in the Guardians. On top of that, they had the best villain of the 343 games (evil Cortana).
The bad: They brought back Cortana after a amazing send off. The Didact never appears again despite having a teaser at the end of 4. Half the story is you playing a random Spartan chasing John for being “suspicious”. The team dynamic isn’t great and is leaned into. Warden Eternal SUCKS. And then he sucks again. And again. NO SPLIT SCREEN, AT ALL! No real Firefight, but none of 343’s games have had real Firefight.
Anyways, infinite sucks and I wish it didn’t exist. I’d rather have had a Halo 6 close out the Promethean story and do more with the Guardians.
The MCC Halo had a graphical remaster on the original engine, that’s why you could swap between original and remaster visuals on the fly. The upcoming project is a remake on a new engine with changes to gameplay and design.
Yes, but there are a lot of complaints. The classic visuals were missing effects present in the original xbox release, and the remade visuals lost an enormous amount of personality and detail. I don’t think I would buy halo 1 again (certainly not for more than $10) but it would be nice to have a definitive version
This game (and the box spinoff) amaze me in just how well Russian propaganda machine is tuned into an average American gamer. Show them some ass, give them a definitely anti-woke attitude and they will sing praises defending it forever. Meanwhile under the surface the games are all like “see, Soviet Russia is/was actually kinda cool, amirite?”
I haven’t played it myself, but reddit told me it’s actually anti-soviet as it portrays the dangers of that system or authoritarism. Think of it like 1984. Any truth to that?
honestly this whole “remake” just seems like a way to do the minimal amount of “acceptable” work to release a game on PS5 so they can get PS5 gamers interested in Eday
Gears of War is a fantastic game, and it looks surprisingly good even to this day, if you can get past that specific “Xbox 360 grey and sepia” colour filter that every game seemed to use.
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