Why Every Halo Killer Failed

sometimes a game will come along that is so pioneering domineering and Industry steering that it creates a genre of its own when Doom came out it blew up thousands of Doom clones popped up overnight Doom clones became a genre of their own which would eventually become first-person shooters a genre of its own it started out by copying Doom's simple but fun design philosophy and building upon it companies rushed to have their own piece of the Doom pie and many fortunes were made in this time the metroidvania genre is named after the Metroid in Castlevania series who both have this kind of shared founding of this genre of maps that slowly unfold as you get new powers it's still popping out successful games like Hollow Knight Soul's like is another Super obvious recent example these are the games that are like Dark Souls the Dark Souls Series has spawned a wave of imitators many of which are decent or even good even in the modern day we have the so-called Puma shooters that are trying to imitate how Shooters used to be Indie Shooters recreating the level design and mechanics and style of shooter games from the 90s Halo for a Time dominated the entire FPS genre and to nobody's surprise affected the games everybody else was making this was the era of Halo Killers the term they chose to use was interesting with doom everybody just wanted to copy it they made tons of games that were almost reskins they were clones saying something is like dark souls or metroid is simply saying that it has some features in common it's Souls like but with Halo people wanted to kill it like it was their enemy and it's telling what people thought about it at the time it feels as though people just watched Halo gameplay and were told to copy it many of the Halo killers at the time almost feel like a parody of Halo and its mechanics Halo was quite possibly the biggest revolution in fps since Doom Half-Life was huge but Halo changed the fundamental mechanics with features such as two weapon limits regenerating Health mixed vehicle and on-foot gameplay meleeing grenades being tied to their own key rather than being separate weapons to see how different it was just look at something like unreal the closest Tudor to Halo before Halo they really don't have that much in common the Retro shooter as we know it the Doom clone and Quake clone was already kind of dead by the time of Halo look at the biggest first person shooters of 2000 the year before Halo console FPS like time Splitters and Perfect Dark tactical FPS like Counter-Strike ID software was fizzling out die Katana flopped you can see how Halo came along and kicked everyone's ass at the time you can see why some people hated it at the time a studio seemed to come from the outside not producing any FPS games since the days they are exclusive to Mac then appeared out of nowhere and took over the FPS genre with their a radically different direction it was like an intrusion Halo was a bit of a sleeper hit so it took a few months for people to realize how big it was the term Halo killer has kind of come to describe the types of games that tried to ape Halo at the time in part or in whole the shooters that were noticeably influenced by it started to appear around 2003 for example Chrome from 2003 made by poles was one such example of a game that seemed to have some degree of Halo influence it somehow seems fitting that the first of the Halo killer genre was some eurojank developed inside some Shack in the middle of a potato farm the one word title that doesn't necessarily seem to be related to shooting or violence AI companions that accompany you and have a lot of voice lines a sexy female companion who looks to be straight out of a Britney Spears music video and huge open levels with a mixed on foot and vehicle gameplay the thing is there is a lot of empty and unused space in these levels and the vehicles don't feel very good they kind of stick to the floor you don't gather much air time when you go for jumps and you don't feel the suspension when you land like you do in Halo they tried to implement some inventory mechanics like Deus Ex but it doesn't really work you can only hold two weapons at a time anyway and it seems like they can't tell the difference between Halo and like a tactical shooter you have low Health which regenerates slowly when you use Health packs you fight dudes with hit scan weapons one of the reasons you never really fight humans in Halo is because fighting human enemies kinda sucks and they just use hit scan weapons that you can't Dodge it's harder to create cool and unique animations behaviors and character Silhouettes it's harder to create interesting weapons that are fun to fight against or unique sound and audio lines basically you sacrifice a ton of creative and design Freedom when you could instead just be fighting demons or aliens the movement also feels like a parody of Halo most other Developers us at the time just looked at hail and thought slow at least these guys understood that momentum had something to do with it but they didn't really understand it that well basically feels like you're ice skating it takes forever to build up speed it was developed by Tech land the same people who would make Dying Light I'm surprised how many big developers started out making Halo killer slop I gave up on this game pretty quickly because well yeah the best thing about this game was the bearded dinosaur in the installation screen I love this little fellow like you wouldn't believe Warhammer 40K fire warrior also released in 2003. this one posed itself as the direct answer to Halo you know this because it was a PlayStation exclusive in its marketing it proudly tatted the tagline who needs Halo yeah this one was quite poorly reviewed I think if anything having this as a PlayStation exclusive highlighted the rift between the PS2 and the Xbox although I'll be honest the game was better than I thought it would be better than a lot of the games I played for this video don't get me wrong it still isn't good but at least it doesn't give the enemies all hit scan weapons you can dodge them and they have unique personalities and unique character Silhouettes they are very stupid and weak though dying easily and not showing any especially complex Behavior the weapons have slow projectiles including yours they are also very inaccurate which becomes frustrating to play with the game is extremely linear being mostly set in hallways or trenches with no flanking Roots as much as Halo Combat Evolved reused level geometry said level geometry was at least fun to fight in it had verticality it had branching paths and distinct cover and sight lines this doesn't have that one thing you'll notice about the movement in this is that you stick to the floor in Halo you kind of slide or bounce against geometry gravity doesn't immediately pull you back to the ground it seems like there are more Collision calculations happening inhale in this and a lot of these games I cover gravity just kind of pulls you straight down a lot of the movement in these shooters feels like they just took the simplistic style of movement from classic PC Shooters and just slowed that down rather than try to understand or recreate the finely tuned momentum-based movement of Halo rather than consider why it's slower Beyond just the fact that it's a console game the melee weapon is a separate weapon in this game and like most games of that category it's kind of useless this is how classic Shooters handled melee weapons on-demand powerful melee that's directly tied to a button incentivizes up close engagements in Halo it has Halo Combat Evolved Shield system basically verbatim regenerating shield with health packs but this game doesn't have the whole damage type system and it didn't seem like the enemies had Shield certainly not for the first few levels so the shield system doesn't really add any depth to the gameplay they don't understand the point of the two weapon limit there's no reason to pick up a bunch of the weapons that are found on the ground they're usually a downgrade and they almost always have less ammo there isn't much reason to scavenge and swap out weapons so you never really experiment at all and you have to carry a tower weapon with you the whole time for a bunch of levels there isn't even anything to swap it out with in cases like this the two weapon limit absolutely limits creativity and diversity of the experiences you can have the game should be actively pushing you to pick up new weapons and change your Loadout this one also has the Halo Switcheroo halfway through the game where you fight a brand new enemy type you start fighting chaos instead of the Space Marines like you do at the start the issue is that they're basically the same enemies with just more Health when the flood were revealed they were actually a brand new enemy type that fought completely differently they didn't use tactics and have shields they swarmed you and surrounded you with sheer numbers I mean I just played the game until I got boltorn for the Space Marine then I just kind of gave up overall probably not worth playing but you can get a lot worse than this and things are going to get a lot worse in this video Chaser developed by cauldron and published by Joe wood is another Halo clone cauldron would do a few of these sci-fi Halo clone FPS and they were rarely very good in fact this one is hilariously bad for the first level there is one weapon where you fight one enemy it's just a random hit scan gun and the enemies are just random dudes and you need to peek around corners because they'll take you out really quickly some of the designs go kinda hard but this game is just so poorly made the level design is nonsensical the enemies are horrifically dumb the guns have no impact and a really poorly tune it'll be unfair to compare this game to the Jeff the Killer Cube game let alone Halo I wanted to try Gene Troopers by these guys as well but apparently has some Russian ERM that breaks your computer if you don't install it correctly and I know it might be hard to believe but I don't want to play Gene Troopers bad enough that I'd risk destroying my PC it's also kind of hilarious that these guys would end up becoming Bohemia who would make the Armor Series Killzone was released in 2004 fire warrior didn't work so Sony needed another exclusive sci-fi shooter to go up against Halo this one was again billed as a Halo killer it was not by any stretch of the imagination I mean it was up against Halo 2. I mean that was the coughing baby versus Interstellar nuclear Matt Cannon battle of 2004. we talk about eurojank a lot but I think that only applies to anything from Germany Eastwood Western Europe produces the exact opposite of eurojank extremely polished games with absolutely no soul or substance like Ubisoft is French for example another Studio that perfectly encompasses this is Guerrilla games the makers of Killzone and the Horizon Series so there you go kill zone one was basically a mobile shooter before there was even a thing it has some of the dumbest AI I've ever seen extremely scripted and linear all hit scan human enemies I mean you've got a damn sci-fi game you could do anything and you choose the most boring enemies to fight the three weapon limit could be cool but there's just little reason to pick up a lot of the weapons given they're kind of redundant ooh which basically identical assault rifle do I use in Halo the counterpart weapons at least had some unique function a different utility different ammo system the game also sacrifices a lot for the visuals the animations are really distracting and obstructive to be fair some of the visuals are pretty good I kind of loved the imposing brutalist atmosphere people criticized it at the time because every game looked dark and gritty but in retrospect I think there was some really good art here Kill Zone 2 and 3 moved more towards the Cod clone formula the game improved but I don't think it ever achieved greatness they had completely free online multiplayer for the sequels which is the memory of I think most people probably have of this series Star Wars Republic Commando was released in 2005. it wasn't billed as a Halo killer but it was clearly very Halo influenced it was developed by LucasArts and directed by Tim Longo it was like the Star Wars answer to Halo and it was good because they didn't just try to clone Halo they took Halo style mechanics but made their own thing they didn't try to go up against it going up against Halo at the time would be like one of those old people spending 14 hours a day at the casino slumped over thinking they're somehow going to win every possible card is stacked against you it was centered around Squad mechanics like an arcadey streamlined version of tactical Shooters like swap if you don't worry about Squad placement you get ganked quickly and whenever you die ten dollars is subtracted from your bank account and sent straight to Jordan Lucas they have halo-like melee but with no lunge I notice basically none of these games implemented a melee lunge the melee rarely felt as strong as in Halo which sucks because the powerful melee can let you get up close to enemy engagements the good thing about this game is the variety of enemies some rush you some flank you these little bugs just fly right up to and melee you some stay in a galaxy far far away and naturally being Star Wars the enemies have very unique Silhouettes and Designs the game did not use Halo's two weapon limit honestly I actually think this is the kind of game that a two weapon limit could work in if you had a wide range of weapons that you could scavenge off the floor and were made to decide which ones you pick up for your own use and which ones you make your team equip that would be interesting Republic Commander was good because they came up with their own gameplay Loop they are inspired by Halo but didn't directly try to ape it and from a good game to again a terrible one Area 51 it came out in 2005 and yes it was hilariously bad it feels like one of those basic unity asset flip games actually no FPS Creator they had David Duchovny from the X-Files and Marilyn Manson voice act in it it would have been better if they spent that money on more game designers you trudge through basic corridors fighting generic zombie dudes the movements literally just like Half-Life movement that's very drastically slowed down you even have the faster diagonal movement speed I tried to play the game until I found a new enemy type I got bored before I found anything besides zombies there are some generic army dudes apparently that you fight later on for the rest of the game but you'd think that given it's a game about Area 51 with an alien on the cover there'd be more aliens but you barely fight them it'd be more fun to fight aliens you spend the majority of this game fighting generic enemies apparently this game was distributed for free by the US armed forces in in what I can only assume was an act of psychological warfare maybe it was a part of MK Ultra they didn't understand basic game design let alone Halo Pariah was also released in 2005 by digital extremes the Warframe guys this one is about as generic as can be the movement and physics feel like Morrowind movements sped up to be a shooter is this what people thought Halo felt like Studios at the time were still clearly struggling to figure out what Halo was it feels like they only listened to the critics of Halo oh it's a cover shooter oh it's slow these games were Halo made by people who hate Halo they made the guns super inaccurate and lacking any impact this one was just kind of boring why do they always have these brain dead human enemies did they not see how the enemies in Halo move every enemy they show off a unique character they try out a huge range of tactics sometimes they'll push you up close for a melee which you can dodge because enemy melees carry their momentum the enemies in this game barely seem to want to move at all this one tried something new with the health system which could be cool if the game didn't make you fall asleep after 30 minutes I will concede that I like the destruction in this game it's nothing huge and doesn't it really affect gameplay but it is visually satisfying to see these structures crumble like this and some of the environment art is actually decent as well Sony tried yet again to get an exclusive alien fighting FPS of their very own with resistance full of man this is actually a good game though because like Republic Commando it was influenced by Halo while not directly trying to ape it it did certainly have that distinct 7th gen Bloom though overall it did its own thing it has some of the tropes like aliens invading Earth and AI companions that fight alongside you it has an interesting Health System kind of like Pariah actually except this time it's actually in a good game so just like Halo when you're not getting shot at your health will generate but in this game it will only be within this chunk the only way to get those chunks of Health back is through Health packs it has some interesting weapons with unique functionalities that aren't just stolen from Halo like the alien rifle that shoots a tag that subsequent bullets will Arc towards you can also Dodge the enemy projectiles given they aren't hit scan the movement is good it's kinda like that early 2000s Halo style movement no Sprint but it isn't painfully slow or janky however your jump is kind of small and not super useful in fact I don't feel like there was much verticality in this game a lot of the battlefields are kind of flat it isn't bad but I feel that more verticality would have benefited the game a lot you get the Halo instant access grenades and melee the melee isn't terrible but again it feels like it lacks utility in a lot of situations the grenades are really cool there are a ton of different types I still haven't seen a game match Halo's grenades though the fact that they cause a chain reaction blowing up all the other grenades makes you feel smart like you used your options well like you'd made a good purchase like you just did something that felt right like you just subscribed to Shredder nerd I haven't seen any other game recreate this kind of Controlled Chaos that Halo has there is no two weapon limit so we don't get to see the potential benefits or shortcomings of it in this you're a World War II Army dude who can carry a whole arsenal I guess you just keep them keasted like a prison shank the enemy AI are decent perhaps not as many distinct behaviors as Halo enemies but they show some degree of tactical awareness no Switcheroo halfway through though you fight the same dudes for most of the game of course they introduce new enemy types but nothing that transforms the fight there are vehicle sections as well what you'll typically notice is that a lot of the vehicle sections in many FPS games are very linear they force you into a vehicle which only appears on this one level at the very beginning of the level and it's often impractical or even impossible possible to beat certain encounters without the vehicle the vehicles aren't Dynamic you don't fight against enemies with the same Vehicles you can't just decide to steal an enemy vehicle unless it's scripted to quote Yahtzee from zero punctuation there's quite organic with big open levels that are all like Just Gonna Leave This vehicle here maybe using it to drive around the level would be freaking sweet but if that's not your bag you know what they say about rocks their Nature's bouncy castle other games seem to struggle with this resistance certainly isn't the game to topple Halo it was just a great little campaign with a ton of potential for future improvements Halo 3 of course released in 2007 and it was the biggest Halo game it was quite possibly the best as well this is probably Halo's Peak it really did take over Shooters as a whole Call of Duty 4 released in the same year and this is when Call of Duty really came into its own Infinity Ward planned their own halo killer at the same time that's actually what they call the internally it was their Halo killer game that's our overpowering halo was at the time they did actually decide to cancel it though and moved those resources onto Call of Duty 4 which was all in all far more effective in the fight against Halo than any other game its major Innovation was the loadout building leveling and weapon unlocking that was super addictive it built upon what was established from Halo 3's ranking system and that is that people love grinding XP time shift was somewhat Halo influenced it had the armored guy on the front cover with the Sci-Fi setting but it also seemed to have somewhat of an identity crisis it was just as if not more so fear influenced Halo and fear are both good games but they are different and don't really work together this is just another tactical game where you fight hit scan dudes I think the movement was the worst part of this game when subsequent jumps it would slow you down it really makes you feel very immobile the time shift ability is a kind of cool but overall the game is just yeah yeah crisis also released in the same year it kind of went up against Halo as well the Sci-Fi setting where you play as a super powered armor dude this one was set in the distant future year of 2020. the most unrealistic part of it was obviously the fact that people are allowed to leave their house hey at least the main character wears a mask it had wide open levels it had the alien invasion of Earth it had mixed vehicle and on-foot gameplay not to mention it also does the switcheroo halfway through where you fight brand new enemies crisis was good because it also had a shared lineage and Far Cry it was basically Halo flavored Far Cry and playing it reminds me that Far Cry could legitimately be a 10 out of 10 game it isn't Norris crisis but it's a formula that they've absolutely squandered and could do so many awesome things with as it turns out giving the player a lot of freedom is fun when there's an actual challenge to be overcame a lot of the newer Far Cry games just give you so many overpowered tools you are a lot weaker in crisis than in Halo it was more like a tactical stealth shooter I kind of like how weak you are in this modern Far Cry gives you a million tools for trivial outposts I like actually having to make some tactical decisions the vehicle gameplay is fun in crisis as well this is one game that actually did the vehicles well like in Halo they're thrown about the map naturally you can steal them from enemies and use them yourself they're like a natural part of the world crisis was also lauded in its day as the greatest graphical Powerhouse yet the best looking game on the market but honestly I think Halo 3 looks better going back I feel like Halo 3's art Direction and visual identity is still really strong to this day the lighting still holds up incredibly well I mean people played it back then in sub HD at 30 FPS so I think people didn't realize it but I think Halo 3 has aged better it's built on more solid principles of course you could cherry pick things like facial models but overall Halo 3 holds up better Haze this is the one we're waiting for it was yet another Sony exclusive tatted as the final decisive Halo killer this one is Infamous for the fact that well it did not kill Halo instead it killed free radical the studio developing it this is unfortunate because these guys made time Splitters one of the more successful non-halo Shooters of this era in gaming it yet again has that distinctive Bloom this time turned up to a million you can basically get the same experience as this game by rubbing Vaseline in your eyes and walking outside this game is honestly the quintessential Halo killer and sums up this whole genre of game talented devs failing to understand Halo Publishers pushing developers to make something they have no interest in who are the baddies in this dudes with guns it has the switcheroo halfway through you fight more dudes with guns stupid dudes as well which is interesting considering they touted how advanced the AI would be that they'd use some new AI system perhaps the uninteresting level design doesn't actually allow the AI to do anything interesting in fact you go from fighting the rebels alongside your Space Marine dudes to fighting for the rebels both factions fight very similarly low time to kill a lot of redundant AR style hit scan weapons there are some vehicle levels as well I did some basic QA as soon as I got the buggy I tried to drive up a hill to test the physics and I got stuck straight away I think that illustrates better than any words I could use precisely how the vehicle physics are in this game I restarted and went through this level and I was very surprised is this a linear Canyon that I just drive down in a straight line where the vehicle serves no purpose other than Crossing ground wow it really is just like every other game besides of course the game it was trying to compete against Halo the Space Marine dudes are addicted to something called nectar they're basically 4 to consume now I have this whole honey related thing going with the yellow and black and the hive shapes basically they have to suck from honey under thread of a gun blast when you're a Space Marine you have the ability to zoom on every weapon and you have this honey stuff that gives you health and a speed boost when you join the rebels you lose that stuff and you start using ads it doesn't really change the gameplay much here and yeah in this one the Space Marines are the bad guys they are portrayed as being like frat bro douchebags the dude bro stereotype that was often associated with Halo and Call of Duty players at the time and it's trying to do a commentary on Halo Halo was the dude bro game where you're accompanied by wisecracking Marines plus you fight for an imperialistic military force in Haze it seems like a commentary on the UNSC which is also an imperialistic dictatorship in Halo some people criticized Halo as being militaristic propaganda where the humans are uncritically portrayed as Heroes against some foreign religion and seems like Hayes Wanted to jab at Halo by portraying the organization you fight for and your Space Marine Pals as douchebags and bad guys here's the thing though that critique landed with a thud because people like Halo's Marines their wisecracking was entertaining it was relatable and uplifting it was endearing it made them feel human and it was only clowns like movie blob who were criticizing Halo for being imperialist propaganda which is strange considering the kind of sacrifices he would make to be on a Starship right now if you want stories on the dark side of the UNSC there's plenty of that in the Halo novels already basically all of your actions in the games are Justified and it doesn't just demonize some foreign unknown enemy it goes in depth on the Covenant and it's made pretty clear in the story that their beliefs are evil and unjustifiable it's like they went in wanting to think that Halo was just a dumb generic shooter for dude Bros and tried to parody it they missed the whole point and their game fell flat on its face and I think just given the fact that most people didn't even pick up on this shows that it was a pretty weak jab the conduit was also released in 2008 and it's a Wii shooter so it's already crippled from The Starting Line even Nintendo had to have their own halo killer at some point where you fight aliens for what it is though it's actually quite good I think that should be enough of an award in and of itself being a Wii shooter and not completely sucking it's not super in-depth but it has some cool weapon ideas it has a really interesting and underutilized setting for video games being based around these government conspiracy theories particularly of the kind of National Treasure variety decoding the hidden symbolism of the US government stealing the Declaration of Independence this is an awesome setting I mean most Americans don't even know that the founding fathers were all Freemasons of course it's kind of slow moving it's not like the enemy is a brilliant tactical minds but I'm just surprised how competent it is I played the Android version and it does kinda play itself it is a bit dumbed down but it seems to be similar the Turok series was rebooted in 2008 with a very much of its time shooter it was directed by Josh Holmes and I believe this was his first outing making an FPS game I remember this one looking good and being quite decent back in 2008. obviously it does not look good today in terms of gameplay it's fine I guess one thing I will give it credit for it builds up the T-Rex enemy well throughout the course of the game and I like that it has optional stealth and doesn't punish you for going loud it's handling of two weapon limits and dual wielding is decent there is a bit of a lack of cool or outside the box weapons but it's fine it ticks the boxes I think the most disappointing thing about this game is the fact that you spend so much of it fighting hit scan human dudes or near hit scan see when I talk about hit scan all throughout this video I just mean fast firing kinetic human weapons where the bullet basically travels to you instantly now this is a game about fighting dinosaurs I guess it is kind of hard to do that and make it interesting considering they all have to be melee enemies I think the worst aspect of this was that Turok 2008 was a gritty realistic sci-fi reboot of a previously very Fantastical game that features a lot of mysticism I think that naturally limits your options they had to have the whole Space Marine angle with you getting shot down and crash landing on some bizarre Planet because as we know if you want to copy Halo's success you just take the superficial aspects of it without understanding the point of it the movement in this one wasn't horrendous it was still from that time when not every single FPS game had to have sprinting I don't think Turok 2008 was bad but it absolutely attempted to chase Trends I think to its detriment no however was another mobile shooter This One released in 2010 it was in the early explosion of mobile gaming the gold rush and an easy strategy was just to rip off what actual proper games were doing in this case Halo nova is pretty much a straight rip of Halo some of the designs are so ridiculously close to Halo you play as Master Chef in copyright infringement just within the intro you see the warthog the Magnum and Cortana I'm also surprised just how huge this game was how many fans it has Microsoft literally could have released a mobile Halo game instead of Halo 4 and it probably would have been more successful and I mean a first person shooter not Spartan Assault in terms of how it played well it's a mobile shooter linear campaign very strongly inspired by Halo I appreciate that they tried to break up the gameplay with different encounters turrets packing sections because you can't rely on gameplay alone in a mobile shooter the enemies don't show incredible sophisticated Behavior well they can't of course it's a mobile game the mechanics level design and movement are rather simple but given what they had they did well the Halo Killers started to slow down after 2010. the strategy was clearly not working and Halo itself was losing steam Call of Duty was pulling ahead after the release of reach it was hitting its stride with its addictive formula Josh Holmes from two Rock Fame joined a new company and finally got to make a successful Halo killer Halo 4 it was made by 343 Industries from being copied relentlessly having all of its superficial features ripped off by the rest of the industry to copying The Superficial aspects of the new popular shooter game Call of Duty Halo died in unnatural death they probably could have just pumped out the exact same games over and over and people would have still bought it they could have innovated and it might have worked instead they just nabbed features from other popular games at the time Tim Longo of Republic Commando Fame also went to 343 helping create Halo 5's Squad system inspired by Republic Commando and it was absolutely terrible it was the worst Halo campaign it doesn't capture any of the interesting aspects of Republic Commando and it was half-baked no quarterbacked actually no it wasn't even the batter it was unmixed eggs and flour in a bowl I think given how flat Republic Commander was in its geometry it's a lot harder to translate that to very vertical environments like you'd find at Halo you'd have to place jump hints absolutely everywhere and somehow beg the AI to actually use those hints 343's decade-long experiment with Halo is well documented now what frustrates me most about it as a Halo fan is that there is no other game that fills the void no other game gives you the experience you can get out of Halo that's why I still play the old Halos I honest wish somebody came along and supplanted Halo nailed the formula and built upon it and far outstripped any other Halo game I don't want every game to be Halo 3. I want every game to be better than Halo 3. it's just none of them have been back in the day people complained about how oversaturated the market was by Halo I'm hail Haley when I played ODST I wasn't exactly foaming at the mouth for Halo Reach to release some people felt that Halo was like the most basic standard shooter Halo 3 is by no means bad what it is is average boilerplate run of the mill a competent shooter its only remarkable feature being the degree to which it stuck up its own ass everything it does has been done before and better I think personally this could not be further from the truth the main Halo games had about a three-year gap between each of them and literally no game has matched it in terms of feeling in terms of gameplay in terms of what it achieves the people who complained about Halo back then and hated on it remind me a lot of the redditors who complain about fortnite nowadays now fortnite is a good game it took over the industry because it was the best Battle Royale on the market people [ __ ] on it to be contrarian that's the same thing that happened to Halo I think there are some games that nailed some aspects of Halo though for example Battlefield which kind of developed is a series alongside Halo both of their developments were parallel now I feel that Battlefield actually did manage to create the combined on foot and vehicle gameplay that Halo had the dynamic elements the creativity Borderlands is another game and I think it got the shield system right it actually expands upon it there are different health bar types with elemental strengths and weaknesses the damage types even react differently in gameplay an armored enemy is different from a shielded enemy the armored one won't regenerate and that is one of the most interesting aspects of the game more games should do this and emphasize this if similar features do exist even do maternal had plasma weapons do more damage to Shields so why didn't all these devs get Halo maybe Halo is just hard to make I mean Bungie were Geniuses one of the lead programmers Chris butcher completed a computer science degree at 15. not high school a bachelor's degree at University lead designer Jamie griezma was a philosophy student who chose to go into game design instead of astrophysics as he was planning to the developers who made these Halo clones ultimately didn't understand why these design decisions were the way they were the regenerating Shield wasn't just invented to make people hide behind rocks it wasn't meant to make the game easier for console players it made it so that players weren't tied to how the designer wanted them to play and it actually had unique gameplay effects the shields were a different material to flesh so plasma weapons did more Shield damage and could stun in multiplayer you could stun Spartans using plasma weapons it was extra utility the elites had Shields they were basically your equivalent on the battlefield it was useful to pick up a plasma weapon because you could do more Shield damage the two weapon limit also had a variety of gameplay effects it gave the level designers more freedom as they don't have to account for players to be able to use any weapon at any given time and they could basically control what weapons the players have access to at any given moment in Doom every level had to be playtested starting with just a pistol two open limits gave the sandbox designers more freedom as well for the same reason if the weapon isn't being carried all the time you can make it way more powerful the rocket launcher in old games like Quake was more like a micro missile taking just a chunk out of a demon's Health the Halo rocket launcher was a mini nuke by comparison because the designers didn't have to account for players having it at all times two weapon limits also push the player to interact more with the environment go around the battlefield searching for upgrades to a current Arsenal but wait there's more it also adds a tactical layer to combat because whenever you kill an enemy it isn't just getting you closer to your objective it's also dropping a weapon that could give you a tactical Advantage it also pushes you to experiment in Halo because having two weapons you'll inevitably run out of ammo and have to pick up something new and basically there are literally a million reasons that two weapon limits are good and these games rarely capitalize on any of the them a lot of these games barely even give you a reason to switch out your weapons some wouldn't even let you the on-demand meleeing grenades are obvious in older FPS they were relegated to separate weapons they were weak and rarely used often pointless giving a strong melee is super obvious because being up close to enemies is more fun you do more dodging which shows more competence which is more fun for most people none of the Halo kills I played had any melee lunge and some of them was really hard to even hit your enemies many of them just made the melee useless because I guess duh to shoot a game but then you're just occupying a button with a pointless ability the grenades become a constant part of gameplay in Halo rather than a side consideration like all the shooters they are essential to how you play the game and having them on demand at the Press of a button actually gets you to use them plus they actually do something cool they cause chain reactions and can majorly affect the battlefield why do other games rarely do this the movement often sucks as well PC Gamers decried the Advent of Halo and how it slowed down FPS but the Halo Killers did not have Halo's movement in Halo momentum was important how you react to Geometry was important super bouncing became a thing because of how player bipeds would interact with level geometry you could actually use the level itself to help you get around quicker tribes of course did this to a much greater extent but somehow most Halo Killers did not pick this up you do not carry momentum at all you have no moon jump you just stick to the floor and the vehicles crisis did all right with the vehicles but most of the games just had these linear Canyons even games like Half-Life designed Vehicles as a one-time gimmick in very linear levels that would be discarded at the end of the level it's not that Halo never had linear vehicle moments but it also had a lot of freeform large vehicle battles vehicle arenas and they make up just a regular part of gameplay there are often more levels with vehicles than levels without in Halo games in short the vehicles in Halo are not a gimmick in the Halo killers they are the final gameplay pillar that these Halo Killers royally [ __ ] up is the AI seriously for a Sci-Fi game you can do way better than the same enemies you fight in a Cod campaign and give some flanking roots for the AI I guess it's a whole other ballpark to just say program better AI as if that isn't very difficult to do and doesn't require a lot of resources and I guess that's where we go back to the original Point Bungie were the best in the industry they could program the smart AI that are really fun to fight they were the best at what they do and that's just hard to recreate now for the sake of this video I wanted to do thought experiment how might an indie Dev recreate the magic of Halo I was thinking in the vein of those retro Boomer Shooters but instead of Doom Nostalgia it's Halo combo evolved Nostalgia and has a similar gameplay Loop to that this is just the thought experiment I'm not working on anything like this by the way although it would be cool to one day plus it seems like an obvious business move there are millions of Halo fans whose thirst for Cortana feet is going unquenched considering the last 10 years of Halo have just sucked ultimately the point of this is to consider what is essential to Halo's gameplay that literally every other Studio missed for this experiment I asked designer Jamie griezema on Twitter and he gave me this answer about not repeating the same magic trick twice and I get what he means how do you recreate Halo well you can't he also felt that he exhausted Halo creatively by the time Halo 3 was done so there's no new territory to cover at least in his eyes he also said don't make the sniper rifle fire too fast since this is just the thought experiment I'll present how I'd do it on an indie budget my primary focus would be the enemies it wouldn't be enough to just have enemies that charge towards you they have to be able to flank take cover go berserk search hold position push create fronts Retreat basically just look at how Halo's objective system works Halo used Behavior trees to achieve its goals there are other systems that can produce sophisticated Behavior like a star or a asterisk however you're meant to say it and which was used in fear to be honest I think this is just a template for making FPS better as a whole I'm sick of games that have brain dead enemies or if they do have Smart enemies the level design doesn't let them do intelligent things I'd also make sure the weapons are interesting not just hit scan rifles things like alt fire and extra shield damage different ammo and reloading mechanisms projectiles bouncing basically make them fun being functional isn't enough though it is necessary they need to have utility and a variety of utility besides just it does damage like stunning enemies for example as well as that I would make the vehicles actually a useful part of regular gameplay an option that appears often rather than just a gimmick you're forced to use once now a lot of the games I talked about in this video just borrow the superficial aspects of the setting of Halo but if you really wanted to recreate Halo I honestly don't even think it needs to be sci-fi it basically just needs some kind of Crash Landing on an ancient world of Wonder and mystery I also want to ask you guys the audience if you had to boil down Halo to its most simplistic form while still retaining the magic how would it look what do you think is most important to the experience of Halo I want to thank you all for tuning in please like And subscribe and goodbye for this video I would like to thank my patrons lazy the crazy glorious bees Maritime stake 85 Delirious full topkek red and Adam safranco

Channel: ShreddedNerd

Views: 444,137

Keywords: analysis, gaming commentary, video essay, 2 years later, years later, doom review, game review, game history, game design, doom analysis, doom fans, doom music, call of duty, cod, titanfall, apex legends, halo, halo 3, titanfall 2, borderlands, destiny, writing, review, tales, halo review, halo writing, shredded nerd, halo infinite, 343, 343 industries, halo killers, haze, ps3, halo clone, warhammer, 40k, crysis, battlefield, star wars, republic commando

Id: NRM3l68PyJA

Length: 43min 18sec (2598 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023