Halo Games Tier List

[poppy_]

Order within tier matters. Honestly its splitting hairs with most of em tho, the order can switch on a dime and the only 2 Halo games I've come close to disliking are Spartan Assault and Fireteam Raven. Halo 5's abysmal story presentation is saved by having such an amazing multiplayer and one of the most fun campaigns to co-op in the series. Reach has easily my least fav campaign and multiplayer but its Halo so even the worst Halo is still something I prefer to most other FPS.

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i gotta know, why is reach your least favorite campaign? for me its tied with ODST as my favorite

 

[PhrawzT]

i gotta know, why is reach your least favorite campaign? for me its tied with ODST as my favorite

Reach was the best for multiplayer, but I think that ODST had the best story.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Anything post-Bungie goes in the Z tier in my eyes.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Anything post-Bungie goes in the Z tier in my eyes.

I only have the most casual of interest in halo and I’d still argue this is true. Played halo 3 super briefly but it had a sense ambiance that’ll never be recreated by a soulless multi billionaire dollar company that probably underpays its game devs.

 

[Lena CE]

i gotta know, why is reach your least favorite campaign? for me its tied with ODST as my favorite

Reach is a much slower paced game than what came before it due to the levels being much bigger and stuffed to the brim with pointless cannon fodder. You spend too much time just pointing and clicking against grunts and jackals with your DMR inbetween the big fights and in general it leads to a lot of sections feeling kind of padded out. In general they also just aren't taking as many risks as they seemed to with their previous entries. Sections like flying around with the Falcon or the battle in space are decent, but ultimately feel more underbaked than anything, especially on replay when the initial wow factor has worn off. The story also just feels rushed imo. Despite only having 5 characters to flesh out, all but 2 of them actually feel properly explored/characterized. Jun and Emile are really generic and one note, with Jun just kind of disappearing from the story at one point. All the deaths but Jorge's and Emile's (kinda) feel contrived or rushed in one way or another. As with prior games it tends to do a good job at masking its poor storytelling and plot structure with fantastic atmosphere and rock solid dialogue, but for me the sum of its parts still don't live up to something like CE or 3.

I struggle to think of anything it does best. The only thing I'd say is that it beats Halo 5's story presentation, but that isn't really a high bar and the gameplay doesn't come close to matching H5's highs. Despite some stellar moments and still carrying Halo's signature "30 second loop of fun" it just ends up feeling like the weakest entry to me.

Totally get why it has its diehard fans, but I've always been part of the crowd that considered Reach a disappointment, even in a pre-Halo 4 world. Fwiw I like the campaign of Reach waaaay more than the multiplayer. Its the one game I turn off when playing MCC online unless I'm with friends, since most of my friends tend to consider Reach a fav and I'd never wanna overly complain or be a buzzkill in that sense.

I only have the most casual of interest in halo and I’d still argue this is true. Played halo 3 super briefly but it had a sense ambiance that’ll never be recreated by a soulless multi billionaire dollar company that probably underpays its game devs.

Bungie just kind of had a knack for that in a way that no other studio did. Playing Marathon, Halo or even their work on Destiny it is just impressive how despite the dev lineup changing/growing/evolving over the years, they never lost that distinct Bungie atmosphere/aura that is immediately recognizable but impossible to really describe. Even in their Destiny 2 era when they had almost entirely becomes a soulless company themselves, that immaculate "vibe" still remained in a lot of the content they released. The beta for Marathon was the first time I played something from them that just didn't have it and it isn't hard to speculate as to why that may be.

I give 343 a lot more credit than most Halo fans because I do think Halo 4 manages to recreate a similar-yet-distinct vibe that is similarly magnetizing. It didn't recapture the Bungie vibe in and of itself, but it certainly did a lot to blaze its own trail and I appreciate how bold 343 were at making sure people knew that as much as possible they were making Halo /their/ way while still keeping that core gamefeel and sense of scale that made Halo so special. We'll never know what happened during H5's troubled development to cause it to become such a cut up mismanaged mess, but most of their key staff leaving or being demoted in some form during the production really hurt H5's ability to create that confidence so it just feels like a confused game stuck between conflicting/unfinished visions. By Infinite they had all but given up on trying to be 343 (though by the time Infinite launched virtually no one from H4 was still there anyway) and were just trying to evoke Bungie as much as they could and it results in the game just feels like a cheap copy overall.

Halo CE was the first time I played a game as a kid and was so taken aback that I paid attention to the credits and remembered the names of the developers. It's when I suddenly cared about how games were made and who was making them, it was a childhood dream to work there someday. Always gonna lament what happened to em. I hope someday we can stop speculating on what the hell happened with Destiny 1's initial development to start the downward spiral.

 

[TheSoulWalker TheSoulWalker]

 

[poppy_]

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this is so real, halo reach or bust

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I give 343 a lot more credit than most Halo fans because I do think Halo 4 manages to recreate a similar-yet-distinct vibe that is similarly magnetizing. It didn't recapture the Bungie vibe in and of itself, but it certainly did a lot to blaze its own trail and I appreciate how bold 343 were at making sure people knew that as much as possible they were making Halo /their/ way while still keeping that core gamefeel and sense of scale that made Halo so special. We'll never know what happened during H5's troubled development to cause it to become such a cut up mismanaged mess, but most of their key staff leaving or being demoted in some form during the production really hurt H5's ability to create that confidence so it just feels like a confused game stuck between conflicting/unfinished visions. By Infinite they had all but given up on trying to be 343 (though by the time Infinite launched virtually no one from H4 was still there anyway) and were just trying to evoke Bungie as much as they could and it results in the game just feels like a cheap copy overall.

I think the better way would've been:

Make Halo 4-5-6 a trilogy set in like centuries after the end of 3 with a new antagonistic force and new characters than recycling Master Chief and Cortana.

 

[Lena CE]

I think the better way would've been:

Make Halo 4-5-6 a trilogy set in like centuries after the end of 3 with a new antagonistic force and new characters than recycling Master Chief and Cortana.

Really the best option would have just been to start a new IP entirely. If you give people Halo set in in an even more distant future with a new protag and a new enemy to fight there will just be so little iconography present that few would really care about the branding of Halo. The unfortunate truth for a lot of casual users is that the iconography is what they care about most, everything else is secondary. They want the same characters they grew up on to remain generally untouched. They want the iconic enemies they associate with the brand.

"New" tends to be a bit of a dirty word because people view these as toys that they want to be more or less unchanging in the iconography department. Ironically, looking at Gears of War's continuation after Epic's departure is a great example of going in your direction. It takes place 25 years after Gears 3 and features new characters with a few cameos or supporting roles from a couple old favorites as well as featuring a new offshoot of the Locust called the Swarm.

Game STILL managed to catch a solid amount of flak and despite Gears 5's campaign being the arguable peak in quality, no one cares. The franchise has lost most of its steam and has resorted to its next mainline entry being a prequel that brings back the old cast and the Locust as the primary enemy to fight. It's genuinely best to think of video games as brands more than as creative works because that's obviously how publishers view them and that's how a lot of casual users engage with them.

As a bit of a tangent, I'm personally a fan of franchises ending and I think more of even some of my favs should go away and stay away. Publishers are constantly looking for "forever-IP" that they can just release sequels to forever though, and consumers typically just want their favorite brands to receive routine sequels forever even if the people who made the series what it was don't even work at the company anymore.

All this rambling to say that I think 343i was just fucked no matter what they did. The Coalition maintained most of Gears' art direction, writing style, themes and left the core gameplay largely untouched compared to what 343 did and simply changing the iconography was too much for many to handle.

Nintendo really has it made by having most of their famous IP simply be mascot platformers or franchises like Fire Emblem that are just anthologies. They never gotta worry about timelines or intense continuity or whatever. Just include a few iconic baddies and don't switch the MC's design up whilst iterating on design and structure. Also helps that Nintendo tends to maintain a lot of its staff for decades whilst other companies tend to shuffle core staff or outright switch development studios entirely after a while.