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[DeepEnigma]

Was the campaign any good?

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

 

[FireFly]

Try living in Europe and searching for a match on infinite. The writing was on the wall months ago here. 4 months after launch is when I first encountered long waits.

Where are you based and what game modes are you searching for? In the UK matches take 30 seconds for me.

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

brutal

 

[DeepEnigma]

brutal

Sadly, it was. The worst Halo single player experience, IMO.

I adore the original 3. The honeymoon sheen of this one wears off... fast.

 

[the_master]

Was the campaign any good?

It is very good. Excellent. No doubt GOTY of that year.

The problem is that it was marketed as a GAAS and it is simply not. It is a classic premium game you finish it, you can replay it a bit, spend some time in mp, and you are done.

Could the campaign be better? Yes, more epic, larger battles and have split screen coop. But it is top quality, and has unparallelled gameplay. Again GOTY.

 

[Akuji]

Played it on release game for one game and deinstalled. Gameplay is just so far below pc shooters. Just felt really bad and that on a System where ut, Quake, doom, counter strike etc are. Obviously it didnt stand a chance

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Campaign was great, mostly because it was different from the norms of most sp fps games. Multiplayer was fun the first season, but after a while you realize it's the same old shit from the bygone days. Then the seasonal carrot sticks kicked in and naw dawg, I'm out.

 

[BbMajor7th]

You're mistaken. You're too focused on the novelty.

What made Halo: CE so good was the underlying gameplay loop, the enemy AI, the weapons, and the vehicles. People played Halo: CE for many many years long after launch, long after the novelty wore off.

Halo 2 and Halo 3 refined the Halo: CE formula and continued the success of the first game, without any of the novelty that you place on so high a pedestal.

Halo's gameplay and campaign and MP were what made the series top-tier. 343i abandoned everything that worked to make something else.

Can't say that I agree. I still play Dark Souls on the regular, but if FromSoft said they were making another one, I'd probably just groan. To my mind, 343i failed because they never had the confidence (or perhaps the mandate) to create their own vision of what the Halo universe could be. They've spent the last decade playing the tribute act, trying to recapture somebody else's magic rather than weaving their own; fans have followed in lockstep, expecting them to recreate the excitement Bungie gave them twenty years ago - both have been looking over their shoulder rather than to the future.

Because they never dared stray too far from that original ideal, they were doomed to unflattering comparisons with one of the greatest game series ever made. All they could ever hope to do was deliver the fans something that felt inferior, and new players something that felt old hat. If they'd radically redefined things, they might have pissed off the faithful, but so long as it was good, they would have won some of them back, and, with a fresh new look, it might have drawn in a whole new generation of players.

As Henry Ford is alleged to have once said about designing the automobile: "If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they'd have said 'a faster horse'."

 

[pasterpl]

Time for proper reboot of the series.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Competition is fierce on PC. There’s way better games to be playing.

 

[Timberwolf25]

I've played them all and Halo 5 and Halo Infinite are the best playing mp Halo for me.
For me the worst mp was probably Halo 4 and it was my least played.

I liked the campaigns on all of them including Reach and ODST with my least favorite being ODST even though a lot of people loved it.
I don't play COD or BR games, but I can't think of a better mp fps on console right now than Halo Infinite.

 

[Saber]

I really hopes that happens to Sony as well since they are going for this stupid GaaS trend.

 

[cireza]

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

Reads like modern open-world game-design.

 

[VAVA Mk2]

The game that finally killed Halo.

Yes ironically the mythical Halo-killer all these years was a Halo game.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Reads like modern open-world game-design.

At least modern open worlds have more varied biome regions than HI. Alien destinations and being wow'ed at the new locales graphics/design as they got better and better as you went was a staple of the franchise. Not to mention far more to do. This is a empty open world with nothing to do outside of the checkpoint to checkpoint mini outpost loop. The worst AAA open world out there.

This was slapped together with less than previous developer talents.

 

[Setsuna Mudou]

Seems like Halo was the Halo killer.

Shoutout to all the homies still living in 2005/2006

 

[T4keD0wN]

As much as i think theyve completely fumbled the game after launch, couldnt you make a similar article about most games?
Losing 90%+ is pretty normal, although multiplayer and live service often have a better retention than that. This is definitely worse worse than the norm, but keeping 2% with how poor the post launch support was is not surprising.

MCC having more players is hilarious.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I think ultimately, the real "Halo killer" was Halo Infinite.

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

Neogaf's GOTY.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Can't say that I agree. I still play Dark Souls on the regular, but if FromSoft said they were making another one, I'd probably just groan.

I would too, but that's just because, unlike Halo games, souls games are boring and a chore to play after a few hours. Once you're used to the basic combat loop, there isn't really much there to keep you engaged. So it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

FPS games are much more dynamic and much more engaging, and Halo in particular with its historically excellent campaigns with campaign co-op and MP has always offered considerable replay value.... much MUCH more than Souls games.

To my mind, 343i failed because they never had the confidence (or perhaps the mandate) to create their own vision of what the Halo universe could be. They've spent the last decade playing the tribute act, trying to recapture somebody else's magic rather than weaving their own; fans have followed in lockstep, expecting them to recreate the excitement Bungie gave them twenty years ago - both have been looking over their shoulder rather than to the future.

Because they never dared stray too far from that original ideal, they were doomed to unflattering comparisons with one of the greatest game series ever made. All they could ever hope to do was deliver the fans something that felt inferior, and new players something that felt old hat. If they'd radically redefined things, they might have pissed off the faithful, but so long as it was good, they would have won some of them back, and, with a fresh new look, it might have drawn in a whole new generation of players.

As Henry Ford is alleged to have once said about designing the automobile: "If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they'd have said 'a faster horse'."

I disagree that 343i failed because they stayed too close to the formula.

343i failed because they didn't understand the formula in the first place. They didn't get what players loved about the Halo formula, and so fucked up in their attempts to stay close to it, whilst also introducing elements from COD games like ADS and sprinting that radically changed the gameplay loop to make Halo feel like something other than Halo... all the while failing in almost every other area like story, writing, level and game design, MP, co-op, extra game modes, customization and MTXs.

They made cheap imitations of Halo games that played like something other than Halo and simply wasn't interesting or engaging enough on their own to warrant the interest of old or new players.

Whether you're gonna stick to the tried and true formula, or change to something new, it still needed to match the level of quality overall that Halo fans had come to expect. 343i achieved none of that.

 

[Jibran#one]

Gaas without content at launch is always a death sentence
It launched without coop, forge and with 6 mother fucking arena Maps 6.
Make a cod launch without coop, basic features and 6 multiplayer maps and see how it kills the entire franchise

 

[Bry0]

I fucking hate her so much. Her career was about prestige and her own agendas, not the franchise she was tasked to grow and take care of. She completely ruined what was a marquee franchise and the face of XBox. I hope no one in the industry offers her a job again.

Frankie and Kiki too. I don’t have anything against them personally, but if I could, I would tell them they didn’t seem to “get” what the fans wanted. How many of us seriously gave an F about the extended universe and chiefs attachment to Cortana? The overly serious tonal shift felt stupid imo. Bungie straddled that line between camp/fun and some emotional moments perfectly. Lightning in a bottle.

Sadly, it was. The worst Halo single player experience, IMO.

I adore the original 3. The honeymoon sheen of this one wears off... fast.

Worse than 4?? Impossible.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

> Go to checkpoint base on map in one sole biome the series was never known for.

> Fight mini murder monkey boss.

> Big murder monkey threatens to murder you.

> Have issues with Thotana.

But you learn Bootleg Joel's name!!!!

 

[DeepEnigma]

Frankie and Kiki too. I don’t have anything against them personally, but if I could, I would tell them they didn’t seem to “get” what the fans wanted. How many of us seriously have an F about the extended universe and chiefs attachment to Cortana. The overly serious tonal shift felt stupid imo. Bungie ram that line between camp and fun, and some rare emotional moments perfectly. Lightning in a bottle.

Worse than 4?? Impossible.

At least 4 had varied locations in its loop and looked great at the time. The same ole scenery with the same old loop wore out. Not all dame/dame game loops are created equal. Some are more enjoyable than others.

 

[kazuyamishima]

The game supposedly had a budget of $500m. And the full game sales were abysmal, I hope Gamepass made it sustainable, because otherwise.

Here in Australia it was priced $10 a few months ago for a physical copy

 

[FearlessBelgian]

Halo is a dead franchise, live with it... The game did well but its multi has no potential to retain players, wanting to make this license a GAS is one of the worst things Microsoft could have done...

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Let's see what the twitterverse says about this news

 

[DeepEnigma]

Let's see what the twitterverse says about this news

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Not to me, it was like a Ubisoft open world game but with less to do.

Halo made it's name with epic set pieces. Changing into an open world formula was just pathetic.

 

[Freelance Yakuza]

Seems like Halo was the Halo killer.

 

[Corndog]

Nobody is playing Halo Infinite on Steam as player numbers drop to 2% of launch peak​

Not surprising.

 

[Corndog]

It's amazing how badly 343 screwed up this game. They basically got a blank check and the chance to write a brand new engine and screwed up everything. MS let the multiplayer get out there for free but the entire service suite was like it was designed by people who never played a multiplayer game. This has to be one of the worst major first party dev teams ever, but they got a pass for most of their existence because... they were headed by a woman? I don't know.


The engine sucked (that's that 343 engineering for you), but the lack of environment variety is because they had to severely cut back the scope of the game to finish it. The open world was originally meant to be much larger.

I liked halo 4. Didn’t really like 5. Halo 6 was just ok. Didn’t really like the story decisions.

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

The MP is very solid and I still play it sometimes but it’s just another casualty of Xbox’s bad management.

They didn’t really have a roadmap in place for the game at launch because I think the game wasn’t ready to be released at the time.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Lies.

Takes forever to find a match.
Used to be much faster.

Multiplayer plays good but is severely lacking in content.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Lies.

Hey now, Redfall being a GOTY candidate was never in doubt too according to Rikydamus.

 

[Umbasaborne]

Was the campaign any good?

No, a major step down in every way. It wears its development hell on its sleeve with its Frankenstein of a plot and copy/paste enviroments. Halo 5 had more variety, a far cry from the lies microsoft tried to sell with that first trailer

 

[Drizzlehell]

 

[damidu]

Was the campaign any good?

good for 5 hours, after that everything becomes incredibly repetitive in the most pointless and empty open world ever seen in a game.
whole thing screams “fucked up production” and “cut content”

 

[Celcius]

They should have taken the effort they put into buying cod and instead put that into this

 

[EverydayBeast]

Halo use to feel like a sport, it’s upsetting seeing Microsoft, bungie and 343 fuck it up. People forget how spectacular Halo 1-3 were.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

Just had a quick look on Xbox, seems like most game modes take about 30 seconds to get you into a game.

Not sure why we need to be talking about this.

 

[TheShocker]

Let's see what the twitterverse says about this news

That guy is one of the biggest 343i shills on Twitter. Dweeb. Halo infinite will never be anything more that mediocre. 343i has to go and something major needs to happen with the IP.

…and I still play the game frequently, because when it does work, or has a fun game mode, it’s actually a decent playing game.

 

[ZehDon]

Well, they never fixed the network and connectivity issues, and the population is now so low that the match making is, effectively, broken for everyone other than US players. No one can play even they wanted to. They'll do a re-launch with their Battle Royale next year, but if the networking issues aren't resolved, the "Fuck 343i" narrative will just get another chapter as the industry's worst studio continues being the industry's worst studio.

 

[Jigsaah]

Single player is really fun and co-op is in. I played with a buddy on Xbox Gamepass. He was drunk at the time so when I died I kept screaming at him to run away so I can respawn.

He was sayin' shit like "No, that's not my Ninja Way...." and just charged in missing ALL HIS SHOTS, blowing himself up with cannisters. Ahhh good times.

 

[Freelance Yakuza]

Well, they never fixed the network and connectivity issues, and the population is now so low that the match making is, effectively, broken for everyone other than US players. No one can play even they wanted to. They'll do a re-launch with their Battle Royale next year, but if the networking issues aren't resolved, the "Fuck 343i" narrative will just get another chapter as the industry's worst studio continues being the industry's worst studio.

I had to use an online guide to change some settings and only connect to servers in certain regions like USA and Brazil; otherwise, I would get matches with over 300 ping. It was basically unplayable. To make matters worse, the Brazilian player base was never large, so I faced the same issues in MCC, for example.

 

[BbMajor7th]

I would too, but that's just because, unlike Halo games, souls games are boring and a chore to play after a few hours. Once you're used to the basic combat loop, there isn't really much there to keep you engaged. So it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

FPS games are much more dynamic and much more engaging, and Halo in particular with its historically excellent campaigns with campaign co-op and MP has always offered considerable replay value.... much MUCH more than Souls games.

Certainly one of the most bizarre takes I've heard in a while. They're very comparable: highly-influential and well-loved series that are still being played decades after they first dropped, surrounded by poor imitators that never made the grade. Like Bungie, who moved onto Destiny, FromSoft completed their trilogy and moved onto new IPs, like Bloodborne, Sekiro and Elden Ring, which are all equally as beloved. Halo 4, 5 & 6 are the equivalent of Namco Bandai turning Dark Souls over to a new studio and having them make Dark Souls 4, 5 & 6. It never happened and would have been a disaster if it had.

The smoking gun that blows holes in everything you're saying is Bungie itself. The studio did exactly what I'm saying: they knew they'd done all they could with the Halo franchise and moved onto something new, something that built on their legacy and became immensely successful in its own right. Epic Games did the same with Gears of War and after a couple of false starts hit a home run with Fortnite. Both studios were just as influential with these new IPs in the eighth generation as they were with Gears of War and Halo in the seventh.

Meanwhile, Microsoft set up new studios to build more of the same and watched as they grew stale. I'm not saying a radical reinvention would have delivered the same results that God of War and Breath of the Wild did - but it certainly would have had a better chance than sticking to the original formula, which even the original creators knew had already reached its peak. You could see that in Halo: Reach, by that time, Bungie was like Zsa Zsa Gabor's sixth husband: they knew what to do; they just didn't know how to make it interesting anymore.

 

[crackajack]

I really hopes that happens to Sony as well since they are going for this stupid GaaS trend.

I guess even if the majority of those GaaS will turn out good, some will inevitably fail, at least will have a hard time finding a place among or replacing some of the established ones. Unless some new markets are now exploding and we suddenly have many more players that have a specific taste for this and that slight variation, keeping a bunch of games at least alive for some time, and some thriving.
If one makes an impact like the current onces they generate big money, so maybe just 1 or 2 out of the 12 planned ones actually being a thing for more than an initial phase, might be all they plan/hope and those have to finance whatever was invested in the other ones. As much as I don't desire those games, or Destruction Allstars, Starblood Arena, Rigs the not nonfidence inducing former projects, I think with the very hard bet on that, and the usual quite high quality demand for internal games Sony should get one or two hits with that strategy. At worst they might realize after the first failures that the market is just saturated already and they might need to salvage work and turn half finished stuff into regular MP and SP content.

 

[SkylineRKR]

MP was a dud. I had some fun with it but there wasnt much incentive for me to keep playing. Times have changed.

SP was actually terrible. Best gameplay in the series bar none, good opening chapter but once you realize how limited and repetitive the open world is, the game falls apart. The story missions are actually very few. I think if i had made a beeline, i could finish this in one evening.

 

[sigrad]

Was the campaign any good?

Yes, it was.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Certainly one of the most bizarre takes I've heard in a while. They're very comparable: highly-influential and well-loved series that are still being played decades after they first dropped, surrounded by poor imitators that never made the grade. Like Bungie, who moved onto Destiny, FromSoft completed their trilogy and moved onto new IPs, like Bloodborne, Sekiro and Elden Ring, which are all equally as beloved. Halo 4, 5 & 6 are the equivalent of Namco Bandai turning Dark Souls over to a new studio and having them make Dark Souls 4, 5 & 6. It never happened and would have been a disaster if it had.

The smoking gun that blows holes in everything you're saying is Bungie itself. The studio did exactly what I'm saying: they knew they'd done all they could with the Halo franchise and moved onto something new, something that built on their legacy and became immensely successful in its own right. Epic Games did the same with Gears of War and after a couple of false starts hit a home run with Fortnite. Both studios were just as influential with these new IPs in the eighth generation as they were with Gears of War and Halo in the seventh.

Meanwhile, Microsoft set up new studios to build more of the same and watched as they grew stale. I'm not saying a radical reinvention would have delivered the same results that God of War and Breath of the Wild did - but it certainly would have had a better chance than sticking to the original formula, which even the original creators knew had already reached its peak. You could see that in Halo: Reach, by that time, Bungie was like Zsa Zsa Gabor's sixth husband: they knew what to do; they just didn't know how to make it interesting anymore.

Your logic is super weird.

You're arguing that gamers get fatigued on certain series by citing examples of developers that moved on to create a new IP after a few very successful entries in a previous franchise. It's a terrible non sequitur fallacy. Your examples don't evidence at all your claim of gamers getting fatigued on a gaming series. If anything, all they prove is that devs get tired of making the same game over and over. That's not even your argument.

Can you actually cite a single example of a successful FPS game series whose sales went to shit because gamers got tired of the gameplay loop and not because of later series entries being poor quality? I can't think of a single example.

And yeah, all of your arguments about why Dark Souls is the same as Halo are complete bunk and irrelevant extraneous factors. Your arguing that gamers get fatigued playing the same game loop, so in terms of gameplay (which is the only detail relevant to your own argument) Dark Souls and Halo couldn't be more dissimilar. I have no idea why you insist on equating the two. They're nothing alike. One is a purely SP action RPG-lite, and the other is a popular MP FPS. It's embarrassingly obvious to see how gamers would get tired of the gameplay loop of one and not the other.