April 20, 2010

Legendary Halo: A PC Worthy Title?

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9 Comments

What makes Halo so “Spe­cial”?  The other day I asked myself this very ques­tion.  It was brought upon by a friend who was just rav­ing at what an amaz­ing game it is. Halo is undoubt­edly one of the most suc­cess­ful game titles ever to hit the con­sole main­stream in terms of pop­u­lar­ity and sales.   Although Halo and Halo II are both read­ily avail­able for PC, they were not released at the same time frame or enthu­si­asm as they were on Xbox.  

With so many genre evolv­ing titles, includ­ing Half Life, Quake, Counter Strike, Team Fortress, and Medal of Honor, how would Halo compare/compete?  Each one of these titles bring some­thing to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way PC gamers view the FPS genre.   PC gamers have always, and will always be attracted to free user cre­ated con­tent, qual­ity graph­ics, solid game play and cre­ative con­trol schemes, for sin­gle player and multi-player games.  Ded­i­cated servers and qual­ity com­pany sup­port for mul­ti­player games is a MUST.   

No one is dis­put­ing that Halo is one of the most suc­cess­ful games ever cre­ated for con­soles.  But would it dared to lay on the same level as the PC greats?

Halo, while very suc­cess­ful on con­soles, didn’t push the FPS enve­lope.  It did refine a few things but did very lit­tle to push FPS titles to new heights.  This is not to say that Halo is a bad game, because it isn’t, but it isn’t inno­v­a­tive in this sense.  What halo did, how­ever, was to cre­ate a qual­ity sin­gle player cam­paign com­bined with addic­tive mul­ti­player that had yet to be seen on con­soles.  This is what halo did that made it great as a game.  It took some­thing that hadn’t been done before or hadn’t been done well and made it great.  For the first time con­sole gamers got a qual­ity shooter with great multiplayer. 

While Halo is a great game in its own right it could never of suc­ceeded long term as a PC FPS title.  The com­bi­na­tion of no mod sup­port, lack of ded­i­cated servers, and not bring­ing any­thing new to the FPS genre would of it an OK title but noth­ing that would have been talked about for years to come. 

When you ask the ques­tion “Could halo have been a leg­endary PC title?” The answer is most likely no.

9 comments

  1. T8 - April 21, 2010 12:32 am

    I totally agree in the fact that halo was just another mediocre attempt a a first per­son shooter. What halo offered that no one else would at the time, was a game entirely built around the mul­ti­player theme. The game had a great sin­gle player, but the cre­ators thought of the game as a mul­ti­player game, whether cam­paign or ver­sus. that alone built an army of fol­low­ers con­soles have never seen.

    If it was on the PC mar­ket, it would have been just another Sec­tor 8. A game like MW2, some­thing easy to be good at with lit­tle skill, and done a mil­lion times.

    BTW, shields are soooo overrated.

  2. thsoundman - April 21, 2010 8:14 am

    These were my sen­ti­ments exactly. I’ve never thought of halo as a “game chang­ing” game. It’s always just been “anoth­ers shooter” to me. I’ve never felt like it really changed any­thing. It was neat to see con­soles finally get a real shoot but other then that it’s never blown my mind. I guess most of my friends who have raved and boasted about this game never really had any­thing to brag about until it came out. Per­haps thats why they are so into it. Halo was to con­sole gamers what counter-strike was to PC gamers.

  3. T8 - April 21, 2010 9:41 am

    im still say­ing a game with shields that recharge, should be dis­missed from pos­si­ble awards.

  4. AiR - April 21, 2010 10:27 am

    halo is the equiv­a­lent or greater to ulti­mate suckness

  5. T8 - April 21, 2010 12:08 pm

    well its cool for the younger , less expe­ri­enced gamers. But when you get fur­ther into the gam­ing scene, its not about how easy it is to get kills, but how much strat­egy it takes to be the best.

  6. PimpmasterF - April 21, 2010 7:22 pm

    Halo was absolutely a great game but its true I think that all in all it was just another shooter, I think it made its mark by what thsound­man said in that it brought one of the first truly qual­ity shoot­ers to the con­sole and set the bar for con­sole shoot­ers, how­ever it like any­thing else had its time and didnt do much in the way of leav­ing a “lengendary” foot­print. Hav­ing said that I am indeed look­ing foward to Halo: Reach

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  8. Hexdroid - June 25, 2010 3:29 pm

    Haha, this is super late, com­ing from red­dit, but was just going through your lat­est arti­cles and thought I’d just throw in my two cents.

    I only recently played Halo, and that’s after play­ing many other FPS games that have come out since it. I agree with your post, but I think you’re miss­ing some­thing cru­cial: even 9 years later, play­ing that game just felt epic. I played it on co-op with a friend on Leg­endary dif­fi­culty, and every moment felt epic in a way even new games haven’t been able to replicate.

    The story played a big part, but I’d have to say the level design was it’s biggest strength. Fight­ing mon­sters, pray­ing for a check­point, con­serv­ing ammu­ni­tion, hav­ing to actu­ally work together (because while the game was hard, it was cer­tainly doable if you teamed well), I just haven’t felt that in any other FPS.

  9. thsoundman - June 29, 2010 8:19 am

    I would dis­agree i felt this in half life. I was con­stantly run­ning out of ammo, it felt epic and I enjoyed it com­pletely. I do agree that the orig­i­nal Halo did feel epic for what it was and the story was good. I don’t dis­agree with that but I don’t think it really stood out as any­thing spe­cial as a “FPS title”.

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