I dont think its quite the same this time. I think the key difference is back then people disliked the new games because they were different and well, new. With Infinite, sure theres *some* of that as well, but there was genuine issues with the progression and content available at launch and through the early seasons.
Plus theres also a rather un-talked-about phenomenon thats a plausible explanation for reviews trending upwards over time. People who dont like the game will leave. Leaving more people with positive views of the game remaining over time.
That last part. Reach is “well received” on the multiplayer side because most people quit right away. The ones who stayed promised to defend Halo Reach’s legacy till the day they die!
“Armor lock. No rank. Bloom! The true definition of Halo!!”
Most people had forgotten about Halo by this point.
And it’s funny how insanely obvious it is now a days how vital a healthy ranked community is to a game’s life.
I think reach is amazing., just different. You might be right to some degree but I think a lot of people who hated reach have grown to like it because of its many strong suits.
As someone who mainly plays campaign, Reach is one of my favorites. But it’s probably also one of my least favorite multiplayer Halos. I imagine people who primarily play multiplayer must feel that tenfold.
The campaign, and armour detail.
Amour customization and forge were the only real upgrades I can remember.
Otherwise, a lot of L’s.
Armor abilities were an idea, but should have been a custom game option. Like, halo should focus on getting the core set up, then just pump the forge/custom sandbox with as much random shit they can. Keep matchmaking fair/balanced, let people create wild gametypes.
I agree armor abilities were not the greatest and reach isn’t necessarily a classic halo game but things like halo reach’s credit system and armor shop really did make the game more enjoyable for me personally. Though it’s definitely not a game for everyone!
I felt like the credit system was a step backwards. In 3 armor meant you did something specific. In reach you could get anything just playing. I enjoy cosmetics not for what they actually are but I enjoy them as a trophy case to show others and learn about what others have done and how they play.
Infinite has a fomo version but at the very least someone rocking willow tea means they played early on. Especially in post open mic multiplayer the armor telling a story helps me not feel like I’m playing bots. The progression tank helps some
After Bungie left 343 took control of Reach's remaining life span. They dropped a huge patch that basically was full of quality of life stuff as well as some community asked for things. Like zero bloom. Iirc the update was even called the zbr update or something like that.
This isn't to say Bungie leaving made Reach better, more that the big update that 343 did after Bungie left made Reach feel better for most people.
That patch is the only thing I have ever praised 343 for. I genuinely began to enjoy Halo Reach multiplayer a lot more after that. Unfortunately, it’s been all down hill from there.
I don't know why this is getting down voted. You're right. I understand the notion of hating a series and staying in its community because you *want* for it to succeed. However, a LOT of the negative people in this community just blindly hate 343/modern Halo and either don't want it to improve at all or are *very* bad at constructive criticism.
Like it’s well known at this point that the content should have been at launch but every time 343 brings that content to a season, people need to be negative about it.
Some people just can’t help themselves to say “Little bit too late 343”, “Should have been available at launch”, or like “wow you guys are giving them props for adding content that was in other halos??”
Some of us are well aware of the state of halo infinite but we’re going to take the W because 343 hasn’t given up on it.
My thing is that despite the valid criticism this is still a free to play game.
I know we shouldn’t give it an automatic pass. When you have an investment of zero dollars I think the low risk of it all should yield a little more tolerance no?
On the same note, it’s a free to play game not sure why people can’t just pop in and check out the state of the game for themselves. Instead, they cling to the initial narrative that everybody was just regurgitating.
Well yeah, exactly! Its like as one of those clowns, why the fuck are you bothering? Everyone knows this. If you weren't insufferable, you'd appreciate the content we have now and understand that while it is not ideal, it's a W we're all willing to take.
It just comes down to gamers having a laughably poor understanding of nuance and even more laughably high expectations.
To be fair, they said they were being insanely overworked in those months to get everything out that fast. I don't know what their situation is now though. I obviously wouldn't want them doing 60-80 hour weeks to keep that up all the time, unless they're willing to. I do agree though, Halo 5 had a lot more by now, especially with weapons.
Weapons, mods, maps, playlists, but yeah, I can see the problem on work times, but that's, on my opinion, is more of a problem with the engines. There is a reason why, since the market right now is on the live service model, a lot are quitting with their engines for the ue5
My favorite is when they follow up by saying they deleted the game in the first two months after launch...so, you're STILL commenting on a game you haven't played in almost two years??? Time to move on man, time to move on.
The amount of negativity, hostility, and obsessive need to complain about everything--including new features like AI in forge--relatively few of these Halo fans ever truly "grew up". I've seen people on this sub get upvoted for calling 343i fans subhuman.
At some point this community needs to act like adults and just leave, or be constructive where its needed, and happy where its deserved. Otherwise, seriously, get over yourselves.
I grew up with Halo and I’ve been sticking with Infinite since it launched. The beginning was fucking *rough* but the gameplay loop is so good I can’t bring myself to go back to any of the older titles.
I grew up OG halo and infinite is the best halo we've ever had. You might enjoy being a part of a new game community where you don't have a heavy bias against anything new instead of being negative here.
Hey guess what I grew up with CE from 2005-09 \[PC version\] never got to play halo 2 in it's prime and jumped to 3s, never got the hype, compared to CE the maps are 3x smaller, vehicles weren't all that useful outside the CE remakes because they didn't have as much room, or it was flipped and vehicles made it impossible because you spawned with zero cover, not much of an in-between for tanks. It's why I don't understand complaints about vehicles being weak in Infinite when all the problems existed in "the god tier halo 3" Despite the fact Reach is 80% forge maps, what was given for vehicles is still more balanced than 3s original maps.
And shit like that is what makes me never take 343s complaints seriously, that and the fact that *when they did cater to the hate and gave an option to play 4 like it's reach, y'all pretended it didn't exist*. So why cater to the personification of that kid from spongebob throwing out the pistachio ice cream.
Because it wasn’t fantastic at launch. Does that mean it can’t be a great game now?
If your response is going to be along the lines of “too little too late”, just leave man. There’s no reason for you to stay here. The game is in great condition right now and is going to be many times better tomorrow when the new forge AI toolkit drops.
I'm not saying infinite doesn't have it's problems, it does and indeed lack of content and a real feeling of progression is one of them, and it being a game intended to be expanded after launch leaves a bad taste but overall its worse because the core of the game is fantastic
>because the core of the game is fantastic
I keep seeing people say this, but I don't really understand what they are referring to. Especially when the netcode is still dogshite.
Because a lot of people here seem to forget that Halo is a singleplayer experience too. I swear almost 95% of the posts here are about its multiplayer, what does the netcode have to do in a singleplayer campaign? The core mechanics of the game are a blast imo
The single player is very underwhelming, takes place in the same locations for its entire run, doesn't benefit much from being open world. A majority of players couldn't recount a single mission from Inifinite because the entire campaign blurs together. No memorable set pieces, everything important happens off screen, it's just one missed opportunity after another.
I mean, I do have a lot of good memories about it, my climb on top of one of its mountain peaks, and the music kicking in while admiring the views, Chief's many heartfelt conversations with the Pilot and the Weapon, the vehicle run to save the Pilot with Halo's theme at full blast. I do admit that it has a lot of problems, the story in itself is not my favorite of the entire franchise, the Banished is a reskinned Covenant and the Endless are very underdeveloped, but all in all, I had a very good time in Zeta Halo, combat and exploring with the grappling hook was a lot of fun for me! I do get that they were trying one of the most exciting things (for me) on a Halo story: a mystery. CE is my fav Halo game, and it's all built around a mystery: what is the Halo?. Halo 4 did it too: what is Requiem? and now they did it here: what the hell happened in the last 6 months? It's not as superbly done as in CE, but my nostalgia craves were satisfied!
Hey I'm glad you had fun, I had moments of it too. As a kid playing Halo 1, I always wanted to be able to freely explore a Halo ring. Unfortunately, they missed the mark. I love me some grappling hook action and dig the art style having more of the classic flair, but these don't prop up an entire game. Hell, for the longest time we couldn't even replay missions without restaring the entire game over. What a mess.
People who act like the criticisms of this game are only because "it's new and different" are just avoiding addressing anything truly wrong with it.
the campaign is really fun to play, but extremely cut and paste same everything everywhere. the story is empty and lackluster. more questions raised than answered. it's also way too easy, by far the easiest one I've legendaried. even without the tank gun.
I've beat it twice and don't have plans to do it again. not a lot of replay value. in my opinion (when the game even decides to try to work properly) it's the worst MP of any halo ever, and by a very lot. I have never not liked a halo MP yet. even halo 4 was good. 5 was the peak of recent-ish Halo, especially with all the variants and pve modes.
infinite could've been great. I just don't ever see it happening unfortunately.
This isn’t even exclusive to Halo. It’s just the gaming cycle in general. Look at Call of Duty. Ghosts was one of the most hated entries at the time and people are now saying “It was treated too harshly. It wasn’t that bad.” When Black Ops Cold War came out, a good portion of the community said it was a downgrade in comparison to MW19. Now, with MWIII around the corner, people are complaining about the newest release and are saying we should go back to how good Black Ops Cold War was.
It’s not a Halo cycle. It’s just a gaming cycle.
As an outsider looking in the COD cycle looks like mental illness.
Those games literally get cranked out every year and the major difference every year is that there’s been a minimap change and movement is now faster or slower and TTK has been tweaked.
Yet folks cough up $70 even though packet loss is basically built in the franchise at this stage.
It really does. I am not a huge CoD fan now, but loved the original and some of the older ones in college. But then they basically made the same game over and over with minor tweaks.
But with MWIII's release everyone wants to talk about how it's basically the same game all over again. Like, yeah, that's been CoD's model for at least 10 years now.
And because that's quite literally what it is though. it wasn't even meant to be a full release It was meant to just be a little expansion there was not supposed to be a call of duty this year if everyone remembers. but Activision just can't help themselves.I will say the beta was fun for the most part
The beta was fun, gameplay wise. And it's nice that progress for weapons carries over.
The performance and graphics felt off, though.
And yes. This was supposed to be an expansion. But the combo of fastest to a billion dollars and record player drops changed that.
I don't fall in either of these categories and loved it. To be fair though it has a lot to criticize, and a lot to like. Extinction sucked, but the twist on infected was awesome; The weapon sounds were god awful, but the actual feel of most ofl the weapons was great, etc.
I tried to like that and infinite warfare, and I just could not for the life of me enjoy them. It's honestly about the point I hung up COD as a whole. Personally, I think the battlefield style is more of what I'm looking for. Though, I gotta say being passed by 20 medics who don't even attempt to revive you is an instant reminder of why I can't stand that either
It’s true, though I think the issue isn’t rose-tinted glasses, it’s that a lot of online discourse is designed to amplify outrage, so I actually think we undervalue current games, and our hindsight recollection is more objective and fair.
H4 is some of the worst MP in the series, but one of my favorite college memories ever was an H4 LAN party. Just because a game isn’t an all-timer, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a ton of fun with it.
There was a popular fan song "requiem of a pistol" when H2 launched because so many people were pissed off about not having the overpowered Pistol again. People were mad about playing an Elite too. But Halo 3 was recieved mostly well, of course you found fans unhappy and I personally preferred H2s multiplayer since still can't stand the random spread of the br. But it's a bit out of proportion to say Halo 3 was recieved badly.
I believe another big reason was the campaign tone and timing were really different and in my opinion, dumbed down (even though I love Halo 3s campaign!) compared to Halo 2.
My friends and I were literally split down the middle after H2 came out. Half of us wanted to keep our basement LAN's on H1 and the other half wanted H2. The MP gameplay differences between the two is honestly pretty massive.
All of us were very upset at the campaign cliffhanger though. I think it's really interesting how much praise H2's campaign gets today (when you can just instantly continue the story after beating H2) considering it's cliffhanger basically lit the gaming world on fire back in the day
The halo cycle isn’t real. People complained about 3 and Reach, but they both held in the top ten most populated for half a decade after release.
Right now halo has no relevance. People have moved on. Yes it’s more positive among the few that still play…
I agree. The Halo cycle has always been a huge fanboy cope. Yes, Halo 2 and Halo 3 did receive criticism back in the day, but this wasn't accompanied by deminishing returns or the huge population drops that 343's games have had.
I think we should just be honest about Halo's decline. It's the only way things can get better.
You’re right about the cope. We’ve always complained (Halo 2 akimbo for example), but even then these games were cultural BEHEMOTHS. The fact halo 3 managed to stay in the top ten most played games for seven(?) Years is testament to that..
It peaked in Reach and fell off a cliff sometime after with 4. Luckily for 343 the population numbers have been hidden since then (convenient).
Every game from four onwards has been absolutely mismanaged with Infinite being (sadly) the most. I’ve never seen a game delay on features integral to the franchise for this long. Again this game released *700* days ago now. You can say Season 5 is the best season so far, but again… Who’s still playing? My friends moved on. I moved on. Everyone on steam has seemed to.
This franchise is busted Aslong as 343 still exists
We don't develop the game, we don't even fund the games development. We as customers and players have zero impact on how well a Halo game is going to do.
If Halo games were made that people wanted to play, then people will play it.
The blame for Halo's decline rests solely with Microsoft and 343.
We can stay in denial about it or we can be sober and acknowledge it, but how we perceive reality isn't going to change anything, the only thing that will change it is material effort put forth by the developers and publisher.
Nobody ever wants to admit that the drop off started with reach. Reach was popular within the Halo community, but it was the first Halo game that didn’t have the mass, casual appeal that eventually went to COD.
>almost no one denied halo five had a good multiplayer
That's not true at all. This subreddit didn't let a day go by without absolutely shitting on every aspect of the multiplayer.
From weapon pads, announcer voice, maps, weapons, modes, sprint, ads, etc. Everything was made out to be bad.
I’ll take the liberty of saying I hated absolutely everything with Halo 5. I literally could not bring myself to continue playing it. I beat the campaign once, on Legendary, just to know the story and get the achievements. Multiplayer I simply could not get behind.
Just wasn’t for me, and that’s ok.
I've always said Halo 5 was a fantastic video game, but a terrible Halo game. Can't deny it was well made. Functioned smoothly. Had lots to do (eventually). Just stands out so much against other Halo titles.
IIRC, the narrative was “good game, bad Halo game”. Most comments I saw acknowledged that it’s arena mp was tight and competitive, they just didn’t think it felt like “Halo”.
Pretty sure "this game is just a titanfall clone it sucks" isn't a compliment, no when that launched this sub reddit was livid they didn't gut movement mechanics and added more
The amount of retroactive love H5 gets blows me away. When the game came out, the campaign was universally panned, and the multiplayer, as polished as it was, was by every definition of the word, divisive. There's a multitude of reasons why that H5 didn't do well, and the divisive multiplayer was one of those reasons. Most fans of it will conveniently leave that detail out when claiming it's multiplayer is "the best".
There's nothing wrong with enjoying the game, I'm just saying that there is a very noticeable bias when H5 gets discussed on this forum, and with good healthy dose of historical revision piled on it.
I still to this day do not like and never liked Halo 5's multiplayer.
The cycle might exist for some users but not me. I love Halo 1-3 when they all came out and didn't have a negative thing to say. It wasn't until Reach came out the cynicism of the direction Halo was gong started for me. Then we got 4, 5, and Infinite and I haven't been a fan of modern halo since.
>Kinda kinda not, almost no one denied halo five had a good multiplayer and fun
That's a damn lie. Have you seen the sprint thread on Waypoint? 2000+ pages of obsessive bitching and broken-record arguments over sprint "ruining" Halo; that's one mechanic getting that much attention.
Ironically this comment is yet another example of the Halo cycle revisionism we see every single time.
that was definitely not the consensus at launch, people's general thoughts were initially far more negative, but over time people have come to appreciate the multiplayer. games still got it's glaring issues though.
I mean personally I’ve always thought the campaign was *fun*, the issue for me was only that the story wasn’t very good. I still had a good time with it back then. I can only speak for myself though, of course.
No I’m in agreement with that as well. When Halo 5 dropped I did a legendary run and had a blast with the mechanics, team dynamics, and SOME story beats but as a whole I felt like we didn’t get what was advertised.
Coming into Halo Infinite I just wish that they committed to their vision and finished the story they wanted to tell instead of having it all happen off screen.
This. Halo 5’s co-op is especially a highlight, the game is fun to play with a friend or a full squad. But god damn is it hard to enjoy to the fullest with that story.
The campaign is such ass. I'm going back and playing all the games in order, and while 4 was a chore, 5 is just ass, I'm only 2 missions in and had to step away. I also looked at my stats for play time in Halo 5s campaign, and I only have 16 hours. That right there is enough to show you how bad it is. I probably had 16 hours of playtime on each level in the first 3 Halo games.
OG player here (2001 - current )
Only Halo 2 had some nitpicks at the time because of less chief/more arbiter and that silly ending. I remember buying all the magazines at the time and most of the scores were 9/10-10/10.
This isnt a cycle, let’s face it, 343 have been garbage for 12 years now, some great ideas mixed in with a hundred horrid ones.
However, now is the time to give it a chance with new leadership. Its really as basic as that.
The Halo cycle is a made up term by people who like the 343i games to give the game cover for the lack of people interested in playing it.
The truth is Halo 2 & 3 held the number #1 on Xbox Live for multiple years against the best Call of Duty's during that time period.
Let me just repeat that. The #1 spot, on Xbox.
Halo 4/5 & Infinite couldn't even compete against sport games. Halo Infinite has the same amount of players as PUBG...on Xbox. A game designed for mouse and keyboard, is keeping up with Halo Infinite.
What you're seeing in the "cycle" is people praising a game they still play, when 99% of the people who played it already left. So you get a positive feedback chamber of only the people still playing the game.
Let's say you have a game that starts off with 100,000 players. 99,000 players leave after a month and you're left with 1,000 players who like the game. The players who stayed don't care as much as the 99,000 did. You have 1,000 players who praise the game because their standards are very low. And that's how you get the "Halo Cycle".
When you throw a shitty party and 99% of the people leave but your one friend stayed and starts praising the party, the party still sucked.
Exactly. Halo 3, had 1 million players at one point. That's CounterStrike numbers. No 343 game even sniffed that amount and for good reason
I'm hyped to see where Infinite goes from here though. It's shaping up nice.
Exactly, it's not like people change their minds about Halo 4,5 and Infinite - you just hear more than the people who enjoy them and are still playing them. Also 5 and Infinite got a tonne of updates and content post release which improves their image in the minds of players who kept with them.
On top of that, even the whole concept of the "Hall Cycle" isn't even a good "Goch ya".
The idea that the bar quality for a franchise gets consistently lower with every release to the point that the previous instalment start to look "good" in retrospective isn't something to brag about.
Also the big thing people who like the Halo cycle will always ignore: _Games get updated over time._
Halo 5 now isn't the same as Halo 5 in 2015.
Halo 4 in 2014 isn't the same as Halo 4 in 2012.
Even Halo 2 in 2007 isn't the same as Halo 2 in 2004.
It turns out when people fix things people hated, there's less hate towards the game.
Tbf the biggest change of Halo 4 from 2012 to 2014 was the title update that changed the BR from a 5 shot to a 4 shot. The DMR still felt great, so it’s not like Reach where it *needed* a TU to feel better.
The far bigger problem at launch was always infinity slayer. Legendary slayer didn’t launch until a year after launch, and even then it was a very mellow mode that clearly didn’t fit the original map designs.
Infinity slayer completely killed the concept of map control. Every map played in a circular fashion and power positions became nonexistent
I think they changed some of the main playlists from 5v5 to 4v4 too.
Imo the updates that removed kill-streak based requisition call-ins had a larger impact on the game feeling more like Halo than anything else.
This 100%
Me and my brothers played Halo 2 and 3 everyday when they released.
Me, I have Infinite uninstalled and in the months post-release I hated the game and made it known.
But now I just don’t care lol. Anything 343i does is just a too little too late attempt at redeeming the game they worked on for 6 years and still failed to make remotely decent. They are still playing catch up 2 years later in terms of content, and the core game is still broken and mediocre.
Anyone praising them is dangerously high on copium
To be fair, Halo 2 came out well before COD was popular and was really the only Xbox live game on the original Xbox. So of course it was the #1 game played.
Halo 3 came out the same year as COD4 MW and was the most anticipated game of all time. It may have held the #1 spot, but it was close.
By the time Halo Reach came out COD had really taken over. Both MW2 and Black Ops were more popular than Reach.
Also, I loved Reach. It is one of my favorite games ever, and I remember that community trashing it at launch. Armor lock, sprinting, the maps all being forge created. People hated on that game at launch, so it’s definitely not a new thing.
In fact, people hated on Halo 2s cliffhanger ending and Halo 3s “last gen” graphics when they came out too. Haters gonna hate.
No shot people ripped on Halo 3’s graphics. They were beautiful for the time. Still hold up honestly. Some of the gaming community may have called the artstyle cartoony compared to other games but that’s it.
People said that Halo 3 looked like a high res Halo 2 at the time. I don’t agree with that and loved the game at launch, but I remember that being said in Gamespot forums to rip on the game.
Here is a forum from 2009 hating on ODST.
[Old Gamespot Forum](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/954261-halo-3-odst/51501658)
Again I didn’t agree, and loved the game. I just remember that people liked to put it down at the time.
>The truth is Halo 2 & 3 held the number #1 on Xbox Live for multiple years against the best Call of Duty's during that time period.
This is emphatically not true. The moment that MW2 came out Halo 3 was knocked clean off the #1 podium. Halo 2 and 3 were as popular as they were because they essentially designed the architecture of console online matchmaking we see today, and they were the fun casual game that everyone played so everyone else also played it. Call of Duty didn't get truly big until MW2; up until that point, Halo was able to exist at the top spot mostly uncontested. Sure there were other games coming out, but none of them had the wide appeal of Halo until the surge of war shooters in the early 2010s, starting in 2009 with MW2. Reach never had the numbers that Halo 3 did, because everyone was playing CoD.
Since then there's been several paradigm shifts in market attention, from hero shooters, to looters, to battle royale. None of them fit with the Halo niche, so Halo doesn't get the attention it once did.
This isn't even a cope anymore. This is just lying. War shooters almost consistently dominated the top 5 xbox live games with the current Call of Duty being second place behind the current Halo from 2005 to 2009. Saying war shooters weren't big until 2010 is one thing, but trying to say Call of Duty wasn't big until MW2 is insane.
Source: Xbox Wire
They were in the top five. But they didn’t dominate market attention until 2009. CoD4 and WAW sold about 15.7 million copies overall. Modern warfare 2 sold almost that many on just the Xbox 360.
Saying that there were war games on the top 5 is one thing. Of course there were. Shooters writ large have always been among the most popular games. But implying that war shooters didn’t have their renaissance until 2009 is just wrong. Modern warfare 2 broke open the floodgates, and it didn’t just beat halo, it captured an entirely new audience and a new generation of gamers that until then had never gamed before. Halo was in a comfortable top spot until that game came out; and without changing anything at all, halo simply lost the race to CoD. Reach never recaptured the heights of halo 3’s population, and halo 3 steadily lost its own.
CoD just kept getting bigger and bigger. CoD dethroned halo long before 343i took over, and it was going to happen regardless of what 343i did.
My brother in christ Call of Duty was *barely* getting off the ground and into online gaming by the time Halo 3 came out, and it still made a massive impact with the original Modern Warfare.
My personal favorite Halo games will always be Halo 3 and Reach, but I genuinely believe that there's little that could've been done to make sure Halo kept being the juggernaut it was as more shooters came by. Bungie's last game went and followed the popular trend of the time by making everything more gritty and giving a darker tone, and even then at the time it was controversial.
Halo was a niche game forced into headlining an entire console, and when it finally got some proper competition, it wouldn't be able to keep up, no matter what either Bungie or 343 could do
The internet is not made up of the same people. This "Halo Cycle" has always been a flawed concept. The people who hated Halo 5 back then are very likely not going to stick around and say the opposite years later.
It isn't. There is no \[game\] cycle.
You know what happened to all the people who hated Halo 5 and said it was shit? They moved on. They are playing Infinite, or they went back to play Halo 2 or 3 or Reach. They didn't like 5, so they stopped playing it and stopped caring.
And the people who loved Halo 5? The ones who thought it was unfairly hated and underappreciated?? They are still here, and they still play it, and they still think it was unfairly hated and underappreciated.
So now if anyone makes a post about Halo 5... It's not the people who haven't thought about the game in 5 years.
The people making posts about Halo 5 in 2023 are the ones who have loved it all along. It's not that deep.
And like the Halo cycle, people started praising Halo 5 for things that mainly happened well *after* launch, such as Firefight, game modes, custom browser, and REQs outside of Warzone. No one is gonna remember Halo 5 having the then lowest amount of game modes, the Campaign not having a score mode, Warzone being an obvious attempt at replacing BTB, and customization being gutted compared to Halo 4.
Basically the Halo cycle depends on the wider community routinely forgetting what made the previous games hated in the first place.
The other part I’ve noted is which part of the game they praise. For Halo 4, some say they like the campaign, but the multiplayer usually gets roasted. For 5 it’s the inverse - campaign is hated, multiplayer less so.
Most of what you said is right, but BTB was available the same time warzone was, so I don't get that, those were the only two MP modes I played when it launched because I will say halo 5s 4v4 is kinda bad the movement options just snap small arenas in half.
BTB was in the _Battle of Shadow and Light_ update in mid-November, 2-3 weeks after Halo 5's launch. There was [a whole thing](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/halo-5-wont-have-big-team-battle-mode-at-launch/1100-6429855/) about Warzone being the "evolution of BTB" and regular BTB wasn't available at launch.
Until then the only modes that weren't 4v4 were Warzone, WZ Assault, and Free for All.
>"more traditional BTB mode post-launch."
"2-3 weeks later" If you have the most basic knoweldge on game development the maps have been in there, but were locked. it wouldn't be any different then how Bungie handles raids, the raids are there at expansion launch, just locked, but we don't fucking say they weren't there at launch.
The actual development isn't what I was talking about. They weren't available to the player, only Warzone was. You said you remember playing them at launch when...you didn't, by the very definition of _"launch"_ and _"post-launch."_
Down to personal opinions but I generally count the first month as launch, because development has been absurd since the 360/ps3 games, otherwise a shit load of games would be considered unstable and barren "at launch"
Even 343 themselves calls it not available at launch, they had a list of playlists they they called their launch schedule.
>otherwise a shit load of games would be considered unstable and barren "at launch"
_Yes._
A lot of people have been saying Halo 5 is their favorite and the peak of multiplayer since well before Infinite. I personally hate 5 but it's not a new thing.
The Halo cycle is just there for people who can't comprehend fanbases are full of many different people with different opinions and only seems real because of confirmation bias.
It’s not the same with 343s games as it was with bungies. Every game is going to have bad reviews. Difference is the majority of 343s reviews are bad because they are a bad developer who has made bad games
I don't really get this.
I still think Halo 4 and Halo 5 are abominations in comparison, and Halo Infinite, despite its initial flaws, is a return to form for the franchise.
I feel like every 3 or 4 months someone posts something along these lines and it's almost exhausting. The cycle isn't real. Infinite disproved it. When Infinite came out the core gameplay was lauded, and most people agreed it was probably the best combat loop of the series. The only complaints were the justified ones that pointed out the atrocious live service aspects of it. Now we're actually getting a decent live service, and low and behold people like it again.
The people that hated Halo 5 still hate Halo 5. There was just always part of the fanbase that thought it was unfairly hated, and now those are the people you're finding. The people that are giving Halo 2 and 3 bad reviews are probably those that didn't play it at the time of release and are only getting into it, so they're used to the more rapid pace of FPS games that are common now.
This is the internet. Believe it or not, you will get responses to comments you make. No one has to get your permission to reply to your comments and it doesn’t matter if you asked.
How old are you? This sounds like something a kid would say.
It's a two part thing. First off, the people who don't like games pretty much age out. End up going to college, getting jobs, kids etc. The people who played the game in their prime are probably still gonna like it today. Gotta remember people pretty much get mascot identity with this shit.
Then there are industry trends that maybe have become slightly more accepted, because everything else is just as bad or worse since the game came out.
Also yes, people don't like change. Fuck, people didn't like the arbiter even though he's literally the best character in the series.
Some people dont like change. Some people have weird expectations. Some people can't accept that the world isn't as they wish it would be. Some people aren't understanding about compromises that need to be made in game development.
Halo has always been a game with 2 fan bases... campaign and multiplayer. I suck at multiplayer, so other than Halo 2, I've not played MP. I'm a campaign guy and I can comment on my observations about campaign.
I was in my 20s in the 2000s. So I remember a lot of things clearly still.
Halo 2... holy fuck. The pitchforks were out for this one.
* Playing as the Arbiter! How dare we be made to do this!
* The cut scenes... so many of them!
* Where is the bit from the promotional video... they lied to us! (I always love "they lied to us")
* The game is SO SHORT
* The game is anticlimactic
Halo 3. I actually don't recall much uproar about this one. It was a Xbox 360 game, so I guess it did a great job using the new hardware.
Personally I felt the game was a step back from Halo 2 in terms of story, plot, game design, settings (location). You spend A LOT OF TIME on Earth. When you get the Ark , it's mostly desert (zzzz), and the typical forest stuff. I was UNDERWHELMED by Forerunnery things. I thought the Gravemind was underutilized. But whatever, the game is fun and some sections lag (the same as any other game)
For the rest of the games I think most of know how those were received. I'm not a person who holds the finished game against trailers, marketing etc... so for me Reach, 4, 5, Infinite's campaign were fine. 5 probably being my least favored, but the game play was very responsive.
My understanding is that the cycle means as times go on people like the games which were received poorly on launch. I still dislike 4 and 5 overall but I feel like the opinion on 4s campaign and 5s multiplayer has generally been the same as time went on.
Also with the horrible launch of infinite I think a lot of people who enjoyed the games pre 4 have likely just given up hope and moved on to other games and players left enjoy the newer ones as they didn’t experience the old ones. People who come into the series at 5/infinite would absolutely not like the game for the way it played like in the older times.
Each game on its release will have its fair share of critics.
And obviously a new generation with fresh eyes will have different experiences and opinions on what games they prefer.
I prefer Super Mario World, but my older brother prefers Mario Bros. 3.
He played his game first and I played World first, and those memories impacted me heavily.
The difference here, is I don’t remember having as much access to watch the companies that made my games as closely as I can now.
We can actively see where 343 is making mistakes and having growing pains.
I enjoyed each Halo game, but only have a few I would consider great games, and that is due to the overall experience.
Infinite, as great as the multiplayer was, did not have a campaign I would write home about, but others later may feel differently.
Halo 2 and 3 were loved on release, finding bad reviews on them is like finding bad reviews for The Godfather or Lord of the Rings or any other excellent media, it existed but its from purists
Halo: Reach is a good example of this where it was actually controversial and by todays retrospect was an impressive game that was slandered by the community too much
Still, fuck Armor Lock
Incorrect, 5 is still dogshit. Multiplayer was palatable and gets praise mainly because it was leagues ahead of 4’s dogshit multiplayer. 5’s campaign is bullshit and everyone knows it. Hell, 5 almost single-handedly end Halo.
Eh, not quite. Every game or franchise will have a "cycle" as fans age and get older, but just because some people come out and start to praise Halo 4/5 doesn't mean those games still didn't negatively impact the franchise as a whole, and it doesn't make them the majority voice either.
Keep in mind that Halo Infinite initially brought in tons of attention in the gaming industry ***because*** they finally went back to how the older Halo games were, in both art and gameplay. Before people realized Halo Infinite was lacking in content it was being highly praised for returning to a proper, modernized Halo game.
Halo 4 initially sold well because it was following the success of H3, and H5 had a lot of cool multiplayer content, but ultimately both games felt so different from traditional Halo that it may as well have been a different game entirely.
It's not that H4 or H5 are inherently bad games, they just didn't feel right for *Halo*.
It's more complicated with Halo as within Halo there are a shit ton of different communities. There were communities in Halo that didn't like shooting and just did forge, or just did custom games. Then you have the community of split screen campaigners, the firefight guys. 343 made a huge mistake not paying attention to every aspect of their community and made decisions that would support an average shooting game. We got halo 4 that sucked, Halo 5 that some people enjoyed (most of the real halo fans know it's sucks just because no split screen) and then we got Infinite which well we all remember the launch and them breaking a flat out promise.
As much as the game has turned around and I'm having fun with it again, I no longer can trust anything 343 say because they flat out promised split screen for infinite and gave up when it was too hard to do on a series S.
The halo cycle is bullshit because it only addresses one part of the community, the vocal minority.
It’s very real with the FarCry series. Everyone shits in the current FarCry until the next one comes out. Then, everyone comes out of the woodwork to praise the previous title and shit on the new one. It’s weird.
It’s only been real with 343 because they legit keep releasing half finished games. I remembered when H5 dropped everyone other than the hardcore ultra nerd fans said they thought Halo 5’s mechanics and gameplay were fun but that the campaign was eh, the game lacked content (which happened with infinite) and the req system was dogshit
Bad reception doesn't even compare to the fallout this game received. It will not stand the test of time
Also as much as people complained about previous games, they stuck around to play it. They were really populated. Compared to Infinite, which died shortly after launch.
This is just FM5. And no mount of time will make me like Forza Motorsport 5 and 7. Those games will forever be bad.
The halo cycle ended with halo reach.
Everyone collectively thinks Halo 4 and Halo 5 were low points of the franchise. Not even nostalgia can save those games
This is revisionism. If you really want to demarcate a difference in community attitude between "before/after", it was between 3 and Reach. Reach was far more controversial than a lot of people are willing to admit or care to remember.
Oh yeah, I remember. Reach was the most feature complete Halo ever released, with the strongest custom game scene on top of that, but gameplay wise it was very lacking with loadouts, full bloom and the introduction of sprint throwing everything Halo traditionally had for a loop. In retrospect though, I've given Reach a pass given it's technically not a mainline Halo title, and it was clearly a test bed for Destiny's mechanics.
I don't feel like it's fair to say it's not a mainline Halo title. It had all the bells and whistles of a mainline Halo title - Campaign, Online Multiplayer, Custom Games, as well as the next full evolution of Forge and Theatre Mode.
ODST, on the other hand, you could argue is not a mainline game since it had just a shortened campaign and PVE multiplayer mode.
Also, I think we have to be honest that the campaign was very divisive. Long-time Halo fans who actually game a damn about the universe and story felt incredibly betrayed by the casual disregard for the established franchise lore. Lots of people were upset that MC was not the main character. Some folks of course were wooed by the "you already know how it ends" theme of the story, but I honestly feel like that crowd has only grown as the game has aged more. At the time of release? The campaign was bitterly fought over in terms of lore, quality, and so forth. Hell, I even remember strong arguments being made that it removed the iconic "choose your path" flexibility of Halo 1-3's sandbox, especially considering how flexible you could approach be with most combat scenarios in Halo 3 specifically.
You think it’s real? Haha it’s been a thing since halo 2. Halo CE is the ONLY halo that was universally loved at launch. I remember seeing hate for 2,3 & reach during their respective life cycles and everyone changes their tune the second a new game comes out.
Same story, different games. I remember when people use to whine about Battlefield 1 for not being "historically accurate". Same thing for Battlefield V (which I can understand). And now both games are being praised to high heavens. Edit: the lesson here is: enjoy what you like, fuck the haters.
# THE HALO CYCLE IS NOT REAL
People who hated H5 still hate it, people who loved H5 still love it. The praise that H5 received was about the amount of content it had compared to Infinite, not its gameplay or art direction.
The amount of criticism Halo 2 and Halo 3 received was vastly inferior compared to H4 and H5's.
I'm tired of reading this disinformation shit made by the toxic part of the community every month.
It could be true for others but I will never ever look fondly at 4, even with the changes away from loudouts it’s just not a good game. Halo 5 always had a decent multiplayer, I feel like that the main gripe was the campaign which was not very good.
I’m also one of the crazier people who didn’t really like Reach in launch and it’s still my least favorite of the OGs (aside from the campaign which is great).
Halo 5 was only ever hated for having a shitty story and all the monetization they tried to pull off. Apart from that the multiplayer was highly praised.
Exactly. I loved Halo 4’s campaign and grew more and more spiteful of its multiplayer the longer I played it. Halo 5’s campaign I absolutely hated to the point that I only ever beat it once, and that was in co-op basically being dragged through it with my high school friends, and even then at the end of it, I was confused about the story. The multiplayer for Halo 5 was pretty awesome mechanics wise, but there were obviously aspects of it that I disliked.
Infinite I abandoned like after 2 months of playing it, but I am tempted to retry it, in part because I want to see how it’s Forge works and other stuff.
I always loved halo 5 and was really upset knowing that all the bitching from the fan base meant we wouldn't get another halo with thruster packs built into our armor in mp.
I really felt like halo 5 was the direction towards halo being in a comp spotlight it was so fun.
This thread is hilarious. Dude confirms the cycle is real. A bunch of people come in and say "yeah it's real but this time it's different".
I think this is the penultimate stage of the cycle. 3-4 months from now we'll hit the people liking Infinite phase.
It's kind of funny, because on a recent replay I found myself really enjoying the actual campaign itself, too. It's just that the narrative surrounding that campaign (on top of some really annoying boss design jesus christ i hate warden eternal) drags the actual gameplay down an absurd amount.
Sangheilios is still a standout example of aesthetics for the franchise, but holy shit, that story does NOT do it any favors.
Yeah Infinite is great. Software is high frequency these days. Better to have had it out early and playable than wait another 2 years to release what they have today. 343 is killing it!!!
I don't think so, a lot of people still dislike halo4, and most people's idea on halo 5 is still that it has an awful campaign and pretty good multiplayer, we didn't really go a 180 and start loving those games
I don’t think so. Most people haven’t changed their minds about H5, it’s just that time has taken away the sting of disappointment, and you’re able to appreciate the things that it did do well (warzone and arena). Also it’s not a terrible game overall, so you’re going to have some people who have always liked it, but finally feel safe to say so without getting blasted.
It’s not the just the Halo cycle. This is true for almost every “fandom” out there. The first few entries get widely praised. Then the core audience gets older. A new entry comes out that is not exactly what the OG fans wanted it to be. Partly because new developers, partly because of new technology, and also because of nostalgia bias. So fans say Old good, New bad. Repeat repeat repeat for each new entry. The thing is that obviously a lot of franchises actually do fall off at some point. But not when people say they do the first time. And not necessarily forever. Plenty of franchises have come back from being seemingly dead. Usually thanks to new developers and new ideas. Which ironically is what people think is the problem in the first place.
People are just restating the same H5 takes that have been put out since launch. Multiplayer is good, loot boxes and campaign are bad. Same with H4 having a good story and weak multiplayer. I really don’t think people are revising their opinions and looking back on these games in a drastically different way. Reach however did have a big change in perception later on its life, but a lot of people still hate it.
Just so you know halo 2 was a huge scam technically.
It was an amazing game but it wasn’t what was promised or shown in the “no smoke and mirrors bullshit” gameplay trailer.
The only reason halo survived halo 2 was because it was a great game that made up for the lies and tricks
From a ranked position standpoint; [DISREGARD HALO 2 modding/stand-by problems, and the de-rankers/betrayers that plagued matchmaking thanks to blockbuster dishing out free 2 month trials lol] halo 2 had the greatest matchmaking-vs-your-actual-skill-level, and the content & maps were superb (which paved the way for Halo 3 which I rank #2 multiplayer fps), and the level system actually worked better than h3's inconsistent progression system where you win 6games straight then lose one and drop a level which blew my mind at the time.
The game modes like neutral bomb and 1bomb sucked and 1flag variants weren't the greatest, but overall it was always competitive and a good time/experience despite losing games, and the modders/standby/bridgers and derank griefers lol
It's a perpetual cycle for sure. This sums up the community response to each game based on the previous title's features.
Halo 2 - Melee broken at launch, Magnum sucks, vehicles are no longer invincible, being forced to play as an Elite for half the game is stupid, CE has a classic feel that Halo 2 can't replicate.
Halo 3 - Bullet spread over Hitscan, no Invisibility for Elites in Campaign, story not as good, Core gameplay was better in Halo 2, Halo 3 is nowhere near as good as Halo 2.
Halo: Reach - Core gameplay loop feels slower with Armor Abilities, Sprint is bad, Sniper Rifle too strong, armor too dirty-looking, Firefight is too easy, Loadouts are too much like Call of Duty Classes, Halo 3 was the better game.
Halo 4 - Too Call of Duty, Power Ranger Armor instead of grungy Armor of a super soldier, Sprint still bad, Hammer was cooler in Reach, Prometheans are not as fun as Covenant, redesigns are bad plz go back to Reach aesthetic, story kind of confusing for people who didn't read any of the books, Spartan Ops is Firefight but boring and bad, Reach was underrated.
Halo 5 - Loadouts were better than the REQ Stations, story was better in Halo 4, Spartan Abilites make it not Halo, we miss Spartan Ops, no dev-made BTB Maps, Halo 4 was underrated.
Halo Infinite - REQ Weapons were better, gameplay was super competitive and fun in Halo 5 and this feels more like Halo 3, we miss Warzone, Halo 5 had better vehicles and modes, post-launch support was better for Halo 5, Halo 5 was underrated.
The previous title gets looked back on fondly and its issues and blemishes are largely ignored as everyone finds something to hate about the newest game. While there were some genuine criticisms for each title, most of it was just people being negative for validation or attention. The passage of time and increased familiarity with each title allows us all to look back at our favourite bits without focusing too much on the negative aspects as rose-tinted glasses sit firmly on our collective noses. As a long-time fan who didn't play a ton of Halo 5, I've found that it is the only game in the series I don't have nostalgia goggles for. I miss the vehicle variety and REQ Weapons but nothing else. I vastly prefer Infinite's gameplay.
For me the key difference is outside of Halo 4-Infinite's quality and new introductions. It's how they launch games now.
Halo 4 was a great launch overall. But MCC, Halo 5, and Halo Infinite have all released as buggy to the point of unplayable and/or unfinished and barren of content at launch. Give each of these games 1-2 years and they're complete as they should have been at launch. 1-2 more years and there's plenty of dlc to further flesh the game out. Besides the "new = bad" mentality, this is valid criticism that 343's release model is shitty and new Halo deserves a bad rep for this structure in general imo.
That said, solely judging the games by quality:
-I loved 4's campaign, and the multiplayer felt like Halo but severely unbalanced and with a shitty, mock-COd format. But it was still fun in that balance shitstorm.
-I loathed 5's campaign and the multiplayer felt too competitive-driven for my taste. It's the Halo I take most issue with. Warzone was fantastic though, especially Warzone Firefight, but the pay-to-win aspect hurt it severely.
-MCC is the best remaster I've ever played. Especially considering the newly added content, it's going the extra mile.
-Halo Infinite has some of the best multiplayer in terms of core gameplay, since Reach imo, but the sandbox still feels fairly barren and the map and game mode variety is rough. I really liked the campaign overall, but it could've been better.
All in all, I don't hate what 343 makes. I hate what they do.
All of the 343 games sucked, 4 being the worst multi-player wise while 5 had the worst campaign. It bothers me to see a company take such a massive shit on this property I love and then they just to get praised for these half baked turds a few years later.
The backlash to Halo 3 was nowhere close to the shitstorm Reach got. We only start praising the previous game because the new ones always end up being worse
I would say every game gets people to have mixed opinions, and it's honestly great. A game that appeals to everyone, appeals to none.
But, and this is also important: When a new game goes south, people tend to be nostalgic about the previous crap.
Yes I believe the cycle is real but no for the reasoning you give. Halos since 3 have been declining in at least one aspect and with each decline the previous title it’s then seen to be great. Halo 5 was criticised for not having some mp features at launch but halo infinite has practically none. Halo 5 had a full campaign (albeit decisive) while infinite has a 3rd of one.
The halo cycle is not a thing… people seem to forget that people who are mad as fuck are also loud as fuck. People who had anything good to say about the current game get drowned out.
Halo 5 did have alot of good aspects to it but it also had arguably more bad aspects.
For example the gunplay in halo 5, including weapon balance was way better than HR/H4 and in my opinion Infinite.
The animations in H5 are better than infinite, it had assassinations, it had ranked (which H4 did not and reach’s was ass), in had PVPVE which in itself was a great idea that was ruined via micro transactions.
Breakout was a badass mode in H5 that I’m really surprised isn’t in infinite.
Even some parts of halo 5’s campaign were good, like cutscene quality and the action sequences (other than chief vs Locke.. that was bad). The main part of the campaign that pissed people off was it’s marketing was so far off from the story that was actually told. Anyone else remember hunt the truth?! I had friends of mine that weren’t halo players that got hyped for halo 5 bcuz of that podcast.
There are definitely very good things about halo 5, things I actually like more than infinite but that doesn’t mean halo 5 didn’t shit the bed. The same will be said about infinite, but not because of hindsight because once the rage settles down with time people who like the positive things in the game will actually be able to say it without a death threat coming their way lmao
I dont think its quite the same this time. I think the key difference is back then people disliked the new games because they were different and well, new. With Infinite, sure theres *some* of that as well, but there was genuine issues with the progression and content available at launch and through the early seasons. Plus theres also a rather un-talked-about phenomenon thats a plausible explanation for reviews trending upwards over time. People who dont like the game will leave. Leaving more people with positive views of the game remaining over time.
That last part. Reach is “well received” on the multiplayer side because most people quit right away. The ones who stayed promised to defend Halo Reach’s legacy till the day they die! “Armor lock. No rank. Bloom! The true definition of Halo!!” Most people had forgotten about Halo by this point. And it’s funny how insanely obvious it is now a days how vital a healthy ranked community is to a game’s life.
I think reach is amazing., just different. You might be right to some degree but I think a lot of people who hated reach have grown to like it because of its many strong suits.
As someone who mainly plays campaign, Reach is one of my favorites. But it’s probably also one of my least favorite multiplayer Halos. I imagine people who primarily play multiplayer must feel that tenfold.
The campaign, and armour detail. Amour customization and forge were the only real upgrades I can remember. Otherwise, a lot of L’s. Armor abilities were an idea, but should have been a custom game option. Like, halo should focus on getting the core set up, then just pump the forge/custom sandbox with as much random shit they can. Keep matchmaking fair/balanced, let people create wild gametypes.
I agree armor abilities were not the greatest and reach isn’t necessarily a classic halo game but things like halo reach’s credit system and armor shop really did make the game more enjoyable for me personally. Though it’s definitely not a game for everyone!
I felt like the credit system was a step backwards. In 3 armor meant you did something specific. In reach you could get anything just playing. I enjoy cosmetics not for what they actually are but I enjoy them as a trophy case to show others and learn about what others have done and how they play. Infinite has a fomo version but at the very least someone rocking willow tea means they played early on. Especially in post open mic multiplayer the armor telling a story helps me not feel like I’m playing bots. The progression tank helps some
The jet pack was the best thing to have ever happened to halo.
My clan hated reach so much when it came out. We barely made it month before going back to 3
Tbf Reach got better eventually after Bungie stepped away.
Do explain…
After Bungie left 343 took control of Reach's remaining life span. They dropped a huge patch that basically was full of quality of life stuff as well as some community asked for things. Like zero bloom. Iirc the update was even called the zbr update or something like that. This isn't to say Bungie leaving made Reach better, more that the big update that 343 did after Bungie left made Reach feel better for most people.
That patch is the only thing I have ever praised 343 for. I genuinely began to enjoy Halo Reach multiplayer a lot more after that. Unfortunately, it’s been all down hill from there.
I liked 4 and 5 despite their flaws. But infinite is genuinely irredeemable for me. What little I like doesn't begin to make up for everything else.
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I don't know why this is getting down voted. You're right. I understand the notion of hating a series and staying in its community because you *want* for it to succeed. However, a LOT of the negative people in this community just blindly hate 343/modern Halo and either don't want it to improve at all or are *very* bad at constructive criticism.
Like it’s well known at this point that the content should have been at launch but every time 343 brings that content to a season, people need to be negative about it. Some people just can’t help themselves to say “Little bit too late 343”, “Should have been available at launch”, or like “wow you guys are giving them props for adding content that was in other halos??” Some of us are well aware of the state of halo infinite but we’re going to take the W because 343 hasn’t given up on it.
My thing is that despite the valid criticism this is still a free to play game. I know we shouldn’t give it an automatic pass. When you have an investment of zero dollars I think the low risk of it all should yield a little more tolerance no? On the same note, it’s a free to play game not sure why people can’t just pop in and check out the state of the game for themselves. Instead, they cling to the initial narrative that everybody was just regurgitating.
Well yeah, exactly! Its like as one of those clowns, why the fuck are you bothering? Everyone knows this. If you weren't insufferable, you'd appreciate the content we have now and understand that while it is not ideal, it's a W we're all willing to take. It just comes down to gamers having a laughably poor understanding of nuance and even more laughably high expectations.
343 isn't even the same company anymore. They have to realize that the team we have right now is the best one we've ever had.
If we talk about content is on par, but still behind, to what the h5 team did in the same time frame
To be fair, they said they were being insanely overworked in those months to get everything out that fast. I don't know what their situation is now though. I obviously wouldn't want them doing 60-80 hour weeks to keep that up all the time, unless they're willing to. I do agree though, Halo 5 had a lot more by now, especially with weapons.
Weapons, mods, maps, playlists, but yeah, I can see the problem on work times, but that's, on my opinion, is more of a problem with the engines. There is a reason why, since the market right now is on the live service model, a lot are quitting with their engines for the ue5
My favorite is when they follow up by saying they deleted the game in the first two months after launch...so, you're STILL commenting on a game you haven't played in almost two years??? Time to move on man, time to move on.
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The amount of negativity, hostility, and obsessive need to complain about everything--including new features like AI in forge--relatively few of these Halo fans ever truly "grew up". I've seen people on this sub get upvoted for calling 343i fans subhuman. At some point this community needs to act like adults and just leave, or be constructive where its needed, and happy where its deserved. Otherwise, seriously, get over yourselves.
I grew up with Halo and I’ve been sticking with Infinite since it launched. The beginning was fucking *rough* but the gameplay loop is so good I can’t bring myself to go back to any of the older titles.
I grew up OG halo and infinite is the best halo we've ever had. You might enjoy being a part of a new game community where you don't have a heavy bias against anything new instead of being negative here.
Halo 5's wild-ass armor would like a word with you about appearance only. Halo 5 was the biggest departure from anything resembling Halo.
Maybe he means the appearance of the word "Halo", which definitely looks like the same "Halo" I'm used to.
Hey guess what I grew up with CE from 2005-09 \[PC version\] never got to play halo 2 in it's prime and jumped to 3s, never got the hype, compared to CE the maps are 3x smaller, vehicles weren't all that useful outside the CE remakes because they didn't have as much room, or it was flipped and vehicles made it impossible because you spawned with zero cover, not much of an in-between for tanks. It's why I don't understand complaints about vehicles being weak in Infinite when all the problems existed in "the god tier halo 3" Despite the fact Reach is 80% forge maps, what was given for vehicles is still more balanced than 3s original maps. And shit like that is what makes me never take 343s complaints seriously, that and the fact that *when they did cater to the hate and gave an option to play 4 like it's reach, y'all pretended it didn't exist*. So why cater to the personification of that kid from spongebob throwing out the pistachio ice cream.
Just leave please The game is fantastic right now, stop bringing everybody down. I grew up with Halo too
If it were fantastic, why does it have the same player count as Xbox pubg?
Because it wasn’t fantastic at launch. Does that mean it can’t be a great game now? If your response is going to be along the lines of “too little too late”, just leave man. There’s no reason for you to stay here. The game is in great condition right now and is going to be many times better tomorrow when the new forge AI toolkit drops.
Edit: Sorry, replied to the wrong comment
I'm not saying infinite doesn't have it's problems, it does and indeed lack of content and a real feeling of progression is one of them, and it being a game intended to be expanded after launch leaves a bad taste but overall its worse because the core of the game is fantastic
>because the core of the game is fantastic I keep seeing people say this, but I don't really understand what they are referring to. Especially when the netcode is still dogshite.
Because a lot of people here seem to forget that Halo is a singleplayer experience too. I swear almost 95% of the posts here are about its multiplayer, what does the netcode have to do in a singleplayer campaign? The core mechanics of the game are a blast imo
The single player is very underwhelming, takes place in the same locations for its entire run, doesn't benefit much from being open world. A majority of players couldn't recount a single mission from Inifinite because the entire campaign blurs together. No memorable set pieces, everything important happens off screen, it's just one missed opportunity after another.
I mean, I do have a lot of good memories about it, my climb on top of one of its mountain peaks, and the music kicking in while admiring the views, Chief's many heartfelt conversations with the Pilot and the Weapon, the vehicle run to save the Pilot with Halo's theme at full blast. I do admit that it has a lot of problems, the story in itself is not my favorite of the entire franchise, the Banished is a reskinned Covenant and the Endless are very underdeveloped, but all in all, I had a very good time in Zeta Halo, combat and exploring with the grappling hook was a lot of fun for me! I do get that they were trying one of the most exciting things (for me) on a Halo story: a mystery. CE is my fav Halo game, and it's all built around a mystery: what is the Halo?. Halo 4 did it too: what is Requiem? and now they did it here: what the hell happened in the last 6 months? It's not as superbly done as in CE, but my nostalgia craves were satisfied!
Hey I'm glad you had fun, I had moments of it too. As a kid playing Halo 1, I always wanted to be able to freely explore a Halo ring. Unfortunately, they missed the mark. I love me some grappling hook action and dig the art style having more of the classic flair, but these don't prop up an entire game. Hell, for the longest time we couldn't even replay missions without restaring the entire game over. What a mess. People who act like the criticisms of this game are only because "it's new and different" are just avoiding addressing anything truly wrong with it.
the campaign is really fun to play, but extremely cut and paste same everything everywhere. the story is empty and lackluster. more questions raised than answered. it's also way too easy, by far the easiest one I've legendaried. even without the tank gun. I've beat it twice and don't have plans to do it again. not a lot of replay value. in my opinion (when the game even decides to try to work properly) it's the worst MP of any halo ever, and by a very lot. I have never not liked a halo MP yet. even halo 4 was good. 5 was the peak of recent-ish Halo, especially with all the variants and pve modes. infinite could've been great. I just don't ever see it happening unfortunately.
This isn’t even exclusive to Halo. It’s just the gaming cycle in general. Look at Call of Duty. Ghosts was one of the most hated entries at the time and people are now saying “It was treated too harshly. It wasn’t that bad.” When Black Ops Cold War came out, a good portion of the community said it was a downgrade in comparison to MW19. Now, with MWIII around the corner, people are complaining about the newest release and are saying we should go back to how good Black Ops Cold War was. It’s not a Halo cycle. It’s just a gaming cycle.
As an outsider looking in the COD cycle looks like mental illness. Those games literally get cranked out every year and the major difference every year is that there’s been a minimap change and movement is now faster or slower and TTK has been tweaked. Yet folks cough up $70 even though packet loss is basically built in the franchise at this stage.
It really does. I am not a huge CoD fan now, but loved the original and some of the older ones in college. But then they basically made the same game over and over with minor tweaks. But with MWIII's release everyone wants to talk about how it's basically the same game all over again. Like, yeah, that's been CoD's model for at least 10 years now.
And because that's quite literally what it is though. it wasn't even meant to be a full release It was meant to just be a little expansion there was not supposed to be a call of duty this year if everyone remembers. but Activision just can't help themselves.I will say the beta was fun for the most part
The beta was fun, gameplay wise. And it's nice that progress for weapons carries over. The performance and graphics felt off, though. And yes. This was supposed to be an expansion. But the combo of fastest to a billion dollars and record player drops changed that.
I always liked cold war and I will always despise ghosts. I am a man of my word
Finally. I thought I was alone In my hate for ghosts
There’s at least 3 of us
Anybody who actually likes ghosts was below the age of like 12 when it released and/or it was their first COD
I don't fall in either of these categories and loved it. To be fair though it has a lot to criticize, and a lot to like. Extinction sucked, but the twist on infected was awesome; The weapon sounds were god awful, but the actual feel of most ofl the weapons was great, etc.
I tried to like that and infinite warfare, and I just could not for the life of me enjoy them. It's honestly about the point I hung up COD as a whole. Personally, I think the battlefield style is more of what I'm looking for. Though, I gotta say being passed by 20 medics who don't even attempt to revive you is an instant reminder of why I can't stand that either
I have and always will prefer 3arc out of everyone.
It’s true, though I think the issue isn’t rose-tinted glasses, it’s that a lot of online discourse is designed to amplify outrage, so I actually think we undervalue current games, and our hindsight recollection is more objective and fair. H4 is some of the worst MP in the series, but one of my favorite college memories ever was an H4 LAN party. Just because a game isn’t an all-timer, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a ton of fun with it.
There was a popular fan song "requiem of a pistol" when H2 launched because so many people were pissed off about not having the overpowered Pistol again. People were mad about playing an Elite too. But Halo 3 was recieved mostly well, of course you found fans unhappy and I personally preferred H2s multiplayer since still can't stand the random spread of the br. But it's a bit out of proportion to say Halo 3 was recieved badly.
I distinctly remember people saying Halo 3 sucked compared to Halo 2 and I’d wager a guess it was because of the gun play.
I believe another big reason was the campaign tone and timing were really different and in my opinion, dumbed down (even though I love Halo 3s campaign!) compared to Halo 2.
My friends and I were literally split down the middle after H2 came out. Half of us wanted to keep our basement LAN's on H1 and the other half wanted H2. The MP gameplay differences between the two is honestly pretty massive. All of us were very upset at the campaign cliffhanger though. I think it's really interesting how much praise H2's campaign gets today (when you can just instantly continue the story after beating H2) considering it's cliffhanger basically lit the gaming world on fire back in the day
2 and Reach were pinnacle Halo
The halo cycle isn’t real. People complained about 3 and Reach, but they both held in the top ten most populated for half a decade after release. Right now halo has no relevance. People have moved on. Yes it’s more positive among the few that still play…
I agree. The Halo cycle has always been a huge fanboy cope. Yes, Halo 2 and Halo 3 did receive criticism back in the day, but this wasn't accompanied by deminishing returns or the huge population drops that 343's games have had. I think we should just be honest about Halo's decline. It's the only way things can get better.
You’re right about the cope. We’ve always complained (Halo 2 akimbo for example), but even then these games were cultural BEHEMOTHS. The fact halo 3 managed to stay in the top ten most played games for seven(?) Years is testament to that.. It peaked in Reach and fell off a cliff sometime after with 4. Luckily for 343 the population numbers have been hidden since then (convenient). Every game from four onwards has been absolutely mismanaged with Infinite being (sadly) the most. I’ve never seen a game delay on features integral to the franchise for this long. Again this game released *700* days ago now. You can say Season 5 is the best season so far, but again… Who’s still playing? My friends moved on. I moved on. Everyone on steam has seemed to. This franchise is busted Aslong as 343 still exists
We don't develop the game, we don't even fund the games development. We as customers and players have zero impact on how well a Halo game is going to do. If Halo games were made that people wanted to play, then people will play it. The blame for Halo's decline rests solely with Microsoft and 343. We can stay in denial about it or we can be sober and acknowledge it, but how we perceive reality isn't going to change anything, the only thing that will change it is material effort put forth by the developers and publisher.
Halo 3 being in the top 10 in 2013 was wild.
Nobody ever wants to admit that the drop off started with reach. Reach was popular within the Halo community, but it was the first Halo game that didn’t have the mass, casual appeal that eventually went to COD.
Kinda kinda not, almost no one denied halo five had a good multiplayer and fun Warzone but 90% of everyone still agrees the campaign sucks.
>almost no one denied halo five had a good multiplayer That's not true at all. This subreddit didn't let a day go by without absolutely shitting on every aspect of the multiplayer. From weapon pads, announcer voice, maps, weapons, modes, sprint, ads, etc. Everything was made out to be bad.
I’ll take the liberty of saying I hated absolutely everything with Halo 5. I literally could not bring myself to continue playing it. I beat the campaign once, on Legendary, just to know the story and get the achievements. Multiplayer I simply could not get behind. Just wasn’t for me, and that’s ok.
Same here. I thought warzone was especially egregious, it was only fun if you grinded or shilled out for unique weapons
I've always said Halo 5 was a fantastic video game, but a terrible Halo game. Can't deny it was well made. Functioned smoothly. Had lots to do (eventually). Just stands out so much against other Halo titles.
Reddit is not one person
IIRC, the narrative was “good game, bad Halo game”. Most comments I saw acknowledged that it’s arena mp was tight and competitive, they just didn’t think it felt like “Halo”.
Pretty sure "this game is just a titanfall clone it sucks" isn't a compliment, no when that launched this sub reddit was livid they didn't gut movement mechanics and added more
The amount of retroactive love H5 gets blows me away. When the game came out, the campaign was universally panned, and the multiplayer, as polished as it was, was by every definition of the word, divisive. There's a multitude of reasons why that H5 didn't do well, and the divisive multiplayer was one of those reasons. Most fans of it will conveniently leave that detail out when claiming it's multiplayer is "the best". There's nothing wrong with enjoying the game, I'm just saying that there is a very noticeable bias when H5 gets discussed on this forum, and with good healthy dose of historical revision piled on it.
I still to this day do not like and never liked Halo 5's multiplayer. The cycle might exist for some users but not me. I love Halo 1-3 when they all came out and didn't have a negative thing to say. It wasn't until Reach came out the cynicism of the direction Halo was gong started for me. Then we got 4, 5, and Infinite and I haven't been a fan of modern halo since.
>Kinda kinda not, almost no one denied halo five had a good multiplayer and fun That's a damn lie. Have you seen the sprint thread on Waypoint? 2000+ pages of obsessive bitching and broken-record arguments over sprint "ruining" Halo; that's one mechanic getting that much attention. Ironically this comment is yet another example of the Halo cycle revisionism we see every single time.
Yeah Im definitely someone who denied then (and maintains) that H5's multiplayer was awful
Lmao what? This is a recent phenomenon. Hating Halo 5 was all the rage back in the day.
Dude everyone despised 5's multiplayer until years after release *when the Halo Cycle got ahold of it*.
that was definitely not the consensus at launch, people's general thoughts were initially far more negative, but over time people have come to appreciate the multiplayer. games still got it's glaring issues though.
And terrible visual design, the spartans in MP look like plastic figurines
I deny that Halo 5 had a good multiplayer. I’ve never understood why people loved it so much.
I've already started to see people praising the campaign
Oh no
I mean personally I’ve always thought the campaign was *fun*, the issue for me was only that the story wasn’t very good. I still had a good time with it back then. I can only speak for myself though, of course.
No I’m in agreement with that as well. When Halo 5 dropped I did a legendary run and had a blast with the mechanics, team dynamics, and SOME story beats but as a whole I felt like we didn’t get what was advertised. Coming into Halo Infinite I just wish that they committed to their vision and finished the story they wanted to tell instead of having it all happen off screen.
Same here, gameplay was great, the story was just lacking and felt random as hell.
This. Halo 5’s co-op is especially a highlight, the game is fun to play with a friend or a full squad. But god damn is it hard to enjoy to the fullest with that story.
People are allowed to have opinions, believe it or not we are not a hivemind.
Where? Post links
The campaign is such ass. I'm going back and playing all the games in order, and while 4 was a chore, 5 is just ass, I'm only 2 missions in and had to step away. I also looked at my stats for play time in Halo 5s campaign, and I only have 16 hours. That right there is enough to show you how bad it is. I probably had 16 hours of playtime on each level in the first 3 Halo games.
OG player here (2001 - current ) Only Halo 2 had some nitpicks at the time because of less chief/more arbiter and that silly ending. I remember buying all the magazines at the time and most of the scores were 9/10-10/10. This isnt a cycle, let’s face it, 343 have been garbage for 12 years now, some great ideas mixed in with a hundred horrid ones. However, now is the time to give it a chance with new leadership. Its really as basic as that.
Sorry bruh as much as Warzone is awesome, I love Infinite's gameplay feel more.
The Halo cycle is a made up term by people who like the 343i games to give the game cover for the lack of people interested in playing it. The truth is Halo 2 & 3 held the number #1 on Xbox Live for multiple years against the best Call of Duty's during that time period. Let me just repeat that. The #1 spot, on Xbox. Halo 4/5 & Infinite couldn't even compete against sport games. Halo Infinite has the same amount of players as PUBG...on Xbox. A game designed for mouse and keyboard, is keeping up with Halo Infinite. What you're seeing in the "cycle" is people praising a game they still play, when 99% of the people who played it already left. So you get a positive feedback chamber of only the people still playing the game. Let's say you have a game that starts off with 100,000 players. 99,000 players leave after a month and you're left with 1,000 players who like the game. The players who stayed don't care as much as the 99,000 did. You have 1,000 players who praise the game because their standards are very low. And that's how you get the "Halo Cycle". When you throw a shitty party and 99% of the people leave but your one friend stayed and starts praising the party, the party still sucked.
Exactly. Halo 3, had 1 million players at one point. That's CounterStrike numbers. No 343 game even sniffed that amount and for good reason I'm hyped to see where Infinite goes from here though. It's shaping up nice.
Exactly, it's not like people change their minds about Halo 4,5 and Infinite - you just hear more than the people who enjoy them and are still playing them. Also 5 and Infinite got a tonne of updates and content post release which improves their image in the minds of players who kept with them.
On top of that, even the whole concept of the "Hall Cycle" isn't even a good "Goch ya". The idea that the bar quality for a franchise gets consistently lower with every release to the point that the previous instalment start to look "good" in retrospective isn't something to brag about.
Also the big thing people who like the Halo cycle will always ignore: _Games get updated over time._ Halo 5 now isn't the same as Halo 5 in 2015. Halo 4 in 2014 isn't the same as Halo 4 in 2012. Even Halo 2 in 2007 isn't the same as Halo 2 in 2004. It turns out when people fix things people hated, there's less hate towards the game.
Tbf the biggest change of Halo 4 from 2012 to 2014 was the title update that changed the BR from a 5 shot to a 4 shot. The DMR still felt great, so it’s not like Reach where it *needed* a TU to feel better.
The far bigger problem at launch was always infinity slayer. Legendary slayer didn’t launch until a year after launch, and even then it was a very mellow mode that clearly didn’t fit the original map designs. Infinity slayer completely killed the concept of map control. Every map played in a circular fashion and power positions became nonexistent
I think they changed some of the main playlists from 5v5 to 4v4 too. Imo the updates that removed kill-streak based requisition call-ins had a larger impact on the game feeling more like Halo than anything else.
This 100% Me and my brothers played Halo 2 and 3 everyday when they released. Me, I have Infinite uninstalled and in the months post-release I hated the game and made it known. But now I just don’t care lol. Anything 343i does is just a too little too late attempt at redeeming the game they worked on for 6 years and still failed to make remotely decent. They are still playing catch up 2 years later in terms of content, and the core game is still broken and mediocre. Anyone praising them is dangerously high on copium
Pretty sure the term "Halo cycle" is from Reach
People talked about the Halo cycle with Halo Reach already though.
There’s also all the backlash Halo 2 got because back then a lot of people saw it as a departure from what made CE so good
To be fair, Halo 2 came out well before COD was popular and was really the only Xbox live game on the original Xbox. So of course it was the #1 game played. Halo 3 came out the same year as COD4 MW and was the most anticipated game of all time. It may have held the #1 spot, but it was close. By the time Halo Reach came out COD had really taken over. Both MW2 and Black Ops were more popular than Reach. Also, I loved Reach. It is one of my favorite games ever, and I remember that community trashing it at launch. Armor lock, sprinting, the maps all being forge created. People hated on that game at launch, so it’s definitely not a new thing. In fact, people hated on Halo 2s cliffhanger ending and Halo 3s “last gen” graphics when they came out too. Haters gonna hate.
No shot people ripped on Halo 3’s graphics. They were beautiful for the time. Still hold up honestly. Some of the gaming community may have called the artstyle cartoony compared to other games but that’s it.
Most of Halo 3 is beautiful, but the faces were really bad even for the time.
People said that Halo 3 looked like a high res Halo 2 at the time. I don’t agree with that and loved the game at launch, but I remember that being said in Gamespot forums to rip on the game. Here is a forum from 2009 hating on ODST. [Old Gamespot Forum](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/954261-halo-3-odst/51501658) Again I didn’t agree, and loved the game. I just remember that people liked to put it down at the time.
H3’s lighting looked good, but everything else was well below what I was expecting. Gears of War set the bar too high.
>The truth is Halo 2 & 3 held the number #1 on Xbox Live for multiple years against the best Call of Duty's during that time period. This is emphatically not true. The moment that MW2 came out Halo 3 was knocked clean off the #1 podium. Halo 2 and 3 were as popular as they were because they essentially designed the architecture of console online matchmaking we see today, and they were the fun casual game that everyone played so everyone else also played it. Call of Duty didn't get truly big until MW2; up until that point, Halo was able to exist at the top spot mostly uncontested. Sure there were other games coming out, but none of them had the wide appeal of Halo until the surge of war shooters in the early 2010s, starting in 2009 with MW2. Reach never had the numbers that Halo 3 did, because everyone was playing CoD. Since then there's been several paradigm shifts in market attention, from hero shooters, to looters, to battle royale. None of them fit with the Halo niche, so Halo doesn't get the attention it once did.
This isn't even a cope anymore. This is just lying. War shooters almost consistently dominated the top 5 xbox live games with the current Call of Duty being second place behind the current Halo from 2005 to 2009. Saying war shooters weren't big until 2010 is one thing, but trying to say Call of Duty wasn't big until MW2 is insane. Source: Xbox Wire
They were in the top five. But they didn’t dominate market attention until 2009. CoD4 and WAW sold about 15.7 million copies overall. Modern warfare 2 sold almost that many on just the Xbox 360. Saying that there were war games on the top 5 is one thing. Of course there were. Shooters writ large have always been among the most popular games. But implying that war shooters didn’t have their renaissance until 2009 is just wrong. Modern warfare 2 broke open the floodgates, and it didn’t just beat halo, it captured an entirely new audience and a new generation of gamers that until then had never gamed before. Halo was in a comfortable top spot until that game came out; and without changing anything at all, halo simply lost the race to CoD. Reach never recaptured the heights of halo 3’s population, and halo 3 steadily lost its own. CoD just kept getting bigger and bigger. CoD dethroned halo long before 343i took over, and it was going to happen regardless of what 343i did.
My brother in christ Call of Duty was *barely* getting off the ground and into online gaming by the time Halo 3 came out, and it still made a massive impact with the original Modern Warfare. My personal favorite Halo games will always be Halo 3 and Reach, but I genuinely believe that there's little that could've been done to make sure Halo kept being the juggernaut it was as more shooters came by. Bungie's last game went and followed the popular trend of the time by making everything more gritty and giving a darker tone, and even then at the time it was controversial. Halo was a niche game forced into headlining an entire console, and when it finally got some proper competition, it wouldn't be able to keep up, no matter what either Bungie or 343 could do
The internet is not made up of the same people. This "Halo Cycle" has always been a flawed concept. The people who hated Halo 5 back then are very likely not going to stick around and say the opposite years later.
It isn't. There is no \[game\] cycle. You know what happened to all the people who hated Halo 5 and said it was shit? They moved on. They are playing Infinite, or they went back to play Halo 2 or 3 or Reach. They didn't like 5, so they stopped playing it and stopped caring. And the people who loved Halo 5? The ones who thought it was unfairly hated and underappreciated?? They are still here, and they still play it, and they still think it was unfairly hated and underappreciated. So now if anyone makes a post about Halo 5... It's not the people who haven't thought about the game in 5 years. The people making posts about Halo 5 in 2023 are the ones who have loved it all along. It's not that deep.
And like the Halo cycle, people started praising Halo 5 for things that mainly happened well *after* launch, such as Firefight, game modes, custom browser, and REQs outside of Warzone. No one is gonna remember Halo 5 having the then lowest amount of game modes, the Campaign not having a score mode, Warzone being an obvious attempt at replacing BTB, and customization being gutted compared to Halo 4. Basically the Halo cycle depends on the wider community routinely forgetting what made the previous games hated in the first place.
The other part I’ve noted is which part of the game they praise. For Halo 4, some say they like the campaign, but the multiplayer usually gets roasted. For 5 it’s the inverse - campaign is hated, multiplayer less so.
Most of what you said is right, but BTB was available the same time warzone was, so I don't get that, those were the only two MP modes I played when it launched because I will say halo 5s 4v4 is kinda bad the movement options just snap small arenas in half.
BTB was in the _Battle of Shadow and Light_ update in mid-November, 2-3 weeks after Halo 5's launch. There was [a whole thing](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/halo-5-wont-have-big-team-battle-mode-at-launch/1100-6429855/) about Warzone being the "evolution of BTB" and regular BTB wasn't available at launch. Until then the only modes that weren't 4v4 were Warzone, WZ Assault, and Free for All.
Yep, plus we only ever got remakes made in forge :(
Plus they were forge maps made by content creators advertised as free dlc maps thanks to our req pack purchases.
>"more traditional BTB mode post-launch." "2-3 weeks later" If you have the most basic knoweldge on game development the maps have been in there, but were locked. it wouldn't be any different then how Bungie handles raids, the raids are there at expansion launch, just locked, but we don't fucking say they weren't there at launch.
The actual development isn't what I was talking about. They weren't available to the player, only Warzone was. You said you remember playing them at launch when...you didn't, by the very definition of _"launch"_ and _"post-launch."_
Down to personal opinions but I generally count the first month as launch, because development has been absurd since the 360/ps3 games, otherwise a shit load of games would be considered unstable and barren "at launch"
Even 343 themselves calls it not available at launch, they had a list of playlists they they called their launch schedule. >otherwise a shit load of games would be considered unstable and barren "at launch" _Yes._
Nah Halo 5 was still bad. Sure, 343 tried new things but it was still not a good halo game.
A lot of people have been saying Halo 5 is their favorite and the peak of multiplayer since well before Infinite. I personally hate 5 but it's not a new thing. The Halo cycle is just there for people who can't comprehend fanbases are full of many different people with different opinions and only seems real because of confirmation bias.
It’s not the same with 343s games as it was with bungies. Every game is going to have bad reviews. Difference is the majority of 343s reviews are bad because they are a bad developer who has made bad games
Halo five is freaking terrible. Come at me!
I don't really get this. I still think Halo 4 and Halo 5 are abominations in comparison, and Halo Infinite, despite its initial flaws, is a return to form for the franchise.
I feel like every 3 or 4 months someone posts something along these lines and it's almost exhausting. The cycle isn't real. Infinite disproved it. When Infinite came out the core gameplay was lauded, and most people agreed it was probably the best combat loop of the series. The only complaints were the justified ones that pointed out the atrocious live service aspects of it. Now we're actually getting a decent live service, and low and behold people like it again. The people that hated Halo 5 still hate Halo 5. There was just always part of the fanbase that thought it was unfairly hated, and now those are the people you're finding. The people that are giving Halo 2 and 3 bad reviews are probably those that didn't play it at the time of release and are only getting into it, so they're used to the more rapid pace of FPS games that are common now.
I don't know a single person who is praising Halo 5 or hated Halo 3.
Most people on this sub these days praise Halo 5
A vocal monitory who aren't representative of the views of the wider Halo community
I said on this sub, which has the exact demographic you’re describing
Did I ask? Why the hell did you bother replying to my comment anyway?
This is the internet. Believe it or not, you will get responses to comments you make. No one has to get your permission to reply to your comments and it doesn’t matter if you asked. How old are you? This sounds like something a kid would say.
It's a two part thing. First off, the people who don't like games pretty much age out. End up going to college, getting jobs, kids etc. The people who played the game in their prime are probably still gonna like it today. Gotta remember people pretty much get mascot identity with this shit. Then there are industry trends that maybe have become slightly more accepted, because everything else is just as bad or worse since the game came out. Also yes, people don't like change. Fuck, people didn't like the arbiter even though he's literally the best character in the series.
Some people dont like change. Some people have weird expectations. Some people can't accept that the world isn't as they wish it would be. Some people aren't understanding about compromises that need to be made in game development. Halo has always been a game with 2 fan bases... campaign and multiplayer. I suck at multiplayer, so other than Halo 2, I've not played MP. I'm a campaign guy and I can comment on my observations about campaign. I was in my 20s in the 2000s. So I remember a lot of things clearly still. Halo 2... holy fuck. The pitchforks were out for this one. * Playing as the Arbiter! How dare we be made to do this! * The cut scenes... so many of them! * Where is the bit from the promotional video... they lied to us! (I always love "they lied to us") * The game is SO SHORT * The game is anticlimactic Halo 3. I actually don't recall much uproar about this one. It was a Xbox 360 game, so I guess it did a great job using the new hardware. Personally I felt the game was a step back from Halo 2 in terms of story, plot, game design, settings (location). You spend A LOT OF TIME on Earth. When you get the Ark , it's mostly desert (zzzz), and the typical forest stuff. I was UNDERWHELMED by Forerunnery things. I thought the Gravemind was underutilized. But whatever, the game is fun and some sections lag (the same as any other game) For the rest of the games I think most of know how those were received. I'm not a person who holds the finished game against trailers, marketing etc... so for me Reach, 4, 5, Infinite's campaign were fine. 5 probably being my least favored, but the game play was very responsive.
My understanding is that the cycle means as times go on people like the games which were received poorly on launch. I still dislike 4 and 5 overall but I feel like the opinion on 4s campaign and 5s multiplayer has generally been the same as time went on. Also with the horrible launch of infinite I think a lot of people who enjoyed the games pre 4 have likely just given up hope and moved on to other games and players left enjoy the newer ones as they didn’t experience the old ones. People who come into the series at 5/infinite would absolutely not like the game for the way it played like in the older times.
Each game on its release will have its fair share of critics. And obviously a new generation with fresh eyes will have different experiences and opinions on what games they prefer. I prefer Super Mario World, but my older brother prefers Mario Bros. 3. He played his game first and I played World first, and those memories impacted me heavily. The difference here, is I don’t remember having as much access to watch the companies that made my games as closely as I can now. We can actively see where 343 is making mistakes and having growing pains. I enjoyed each Halo game, but only have a few I would consider great games, and that is due to the overall experience. Infinite, as great as the multiplayer was, did not have a campaign I would write home about, but others later may feel differently.
Halo 2 and 3 were loved on release, finding bad reviews on them is like finding bad reviews for The Godfather or Lord of the Rings or any other excellent media, it existed but its from purists Halo: Reach is a good example of this where it was actually controversial and by todays retrospect was an impressive game that was slandered by the community too much Still, fuck Armor Lock
Incorrect, 5 is still dogshit. Multiplayer was palatable and gets praise mainly because it was leagues ahead of 4’s dogshit multiplayer. 5’s campaign is bullshit and everyone knows it. Hell, 5 almost single-handedly end Halo.
Eh, not quite. Every game or franchise will have a "cycle" as fans age and get older, but just because some people come out and start to praise Halo 4/5 doesn't mean those games still didn't negatively impact the franchise as a whole, and it doesn't make them the majority voice either. Keep in mind that Halo Infinite initially brought in tons of attention in the gaming industry ***because*** they finally went back to how the older Halo games were, in both art and gameplay. Before people realized Halo Infinite was lacking in content it was being highly praised for returning to a proper, modernized Halo game. Halo 4 initially sold well because it was following the success of H3, and H5 had a lot of cool multiplayer content, but ultimately both games felt so different from traditional Halo that it may as well have been a different game entirely. It's not that H4 or H5 are inherently bad games, they just didn't feel right for *Halo*.
It's more complicated with Halo as within Halo there are a shit ton of different communities. There were communities in Halo that didn't like shooting and just did forge, or just did custom games. Then you have the community of split screen campaigners, the firefight guys. 343 made a huge mistake not paying attention to every aspect of their community and made decisions that would support an average shooting game. We got halo 4 that sucked, Halo 5 that some people enjoyed (most of the real halo fans know it's sucks just because no split screen) and then we got Infinite which well we all remember the launch and them breaking a flat out promise. As much as the game has turned around and I'm having fun with it again, I no longer can trust anything 343 say because they flat out promised split screen for infinite and gave up when it was too hard to do on a series S. The halo cycle is bullshit because it only addresses one part of the community, the vocal minority.
It’s very real with the FarCry series. Everyone shits in the current FarCry until the next one comes out. Then, everyone comes out of the woodwork to praise the previous title and shit on the new one. It’s weird.
It’s only been real with 343 because they legit keep releasing half finished games. I remembered when H5 dropped everyone other than the hardcore ultra nerd fans said they thought Halo 5’s mechanics and gameplay were fun but that the campaign was eh, the game lacked content (which happened with infinite) and the req system was dogshit
Bad reception doesn't even compare to the fallout this game received. It will not stand the test of time Also as much as people complained about previous games, they stuck around to play it. They were really populated. Compared to Infinite, which died shortly after launch. This is just FM5. And no mount of time will make me like Forza Motorsport 5 and 7. Those games will forever be bad.
Halo 2 in particular was slammed because of its cliffhanger ending. A lot of people were pissed.
The halo cycle ended with halo reach. Everyone collectively thinks Halo 4 and Halo 5 were low points of the franchise. Not even nostalgia can save those games
This is revisionism. If you really want to demarcate a difference in community attitude between "before/after", it was between 3 and Reach. Reach was far more controversial than a lot of people are willing to admit or care to remember.
Oh yeah, I remember. Reach was the most feature complete Halo ever released, with the strongest custom game scene on top of that, but gameplay wise it was very lacking with loadouts, full bloom and the introduction of sprint throwing everything Halo traditionally had for a loop. In retrospect though, I've given Reach a pass given it's technically not a mainline Halo title, and it was clearly a test bed for Destiny's mechanics.
I don't feel like it's fair to say it's not a mainline Halo title. It had all the bells and whistles of a mainline Halo title - Campaign, Online Multiplayer, Custom Games, as well as the next full evolution of Forge and Theatre Mode. ODST, on the other hand, you could argue is not a mainline game since it had just a shortened campaign and PVE multiplayer mode. Also, I think we have to be honest that the campaign was very divisive. Long-time Halo fans who actually game a damn about the universe and story felt incredibly betrayed by the casual disregard for the established franchise lore. Lots of people were upset that MC was not the main character. Some folks of course were wooed by the "you already know how it ends" theme of the story, but I honestly feel like that crowd has only grown as the game has aged more. At the time of release? The campaign was bitterly fought over in terms of lore, quality, and so forth. Hell, I even remember strong arguments being made that it removed the iconic "choose your path" flexibility of Halo 1-3's sandbox, especially considering how flexible you could approach be with most combat scenarios in Halo 3 specifically.
You think it’s real? Haha it’s been a thing since halo 2. Halo CE is the ONLY halo that was universally loved at launch. I remember seeing hate for 2,3 & reach during their respective life cycles and everyone changes their tune the second a new game comes out.
Same story, different games. I remember when people use to whine about Battlefield 1 for not being "historically accurate". Same thing for Battlefield V (which I can understand). And now both games are being praised to high heavens. Edit: the lesson here is: enjoy what you like, fuck the haters.
# THE HALO CYCLE IS NOT REAL People who hated H5 still hate it, people who loved H5 still love it. The praise that H5 received was about the amount of content it had compared to Infinite, not its gameplay or art direction. The amount of criticism Halo 2 and Halo 3 received was vastly inferior compared to H4 and H5's. I'm tired of reading this disinformation shit made by the toxic part of the community every month.
It could be true for others but I will never ever look fondly at 4, even with the changes away from loudouts it’s just not a good game. Halo 5 always had a decent multiplayer, I feel like that the main gripe was the campaign which was not very good. I’m also one of the crazier people who didn’t really like Reach in launch and it’s still my least favorite of the OGs (aside from the campaign which is great).
Halo 5 was only ever hated for having a shitty story and all the monetization they tried to pull off. Apart from that the multiplayer was highly praised.
Exactly. I loved Halo 4’s campaign and grew more and more spiteful of its multiplayer the longer I played it. Halo 5’s campaign I absolutely hated to the point that I only ever beat it once, and that was in co-op basically being dragged through it with my high school friends, and even then at the end of it, I was confused about the story. The multiplayer for Halo 5 was pretty awesome mechanics wise, but there were obviously aspects of it that I disliked. Infinite I abandoned like after 2 months of playing it, but I am tempted to retry it, in part because I want to see how it’s Forge works and other stuff.
Man I love these games but the community has always been so toxic
It's not real at all. Most people always liked Halo 5s multiplayer. 95% of Halo fans hate Halo 4 and always will.
[удалено]
The majority of people who disliked 5 still dislike it lol same with 4.
I always loved halo 5 and was really upset knowing that all the bitching from the fan base meant we wouldn't get another halo with thruster packs built into our armor in mp. I really felt like halo 5 was the direction towards halo being in a comp spotlight it was so fun.
This thread is hilarious. Dude confirms the cycle is real. A bunch of people come in and say "yeah it's real but this time it's different". I think this is the penultimate stage of the cycle. 3-4 months from now we'll hit the people liking Infinite phase.
Halo 5s MP was never in question, the story however always will be. That was some actual garbage
It's kind of funny, because on a recent replay I found myself really enjoying the actual campaign itself, too. It's just that the narrative surrounding that campaign (on top of some really annoying boss design jesus christ i hate warden eternal) drags the actual gameplay down an absurd amount. Sangheilios is still a standout example of aesthetics for the franchise, but holy shit, that story does NOT do it any favors.
Yeah Infinite is great. Software is high frequency these days. Better to have had it out early and playable than wait another 2 years to release what they have today. 343 is killing it!!!
I don't think so, a lot of people still dislike halo4, and most people's idea on halo 5 is still that it has an awful campaign and pretty good multiplayer, we didn't really go a 180 and start loving those games
I don’t think so. Most people haven’t changed their minds about H5, it’s just that time has taken away the sting of disappointment, and you’re able to appreciate the things that it did do well (warzone and arena). Also it’s not a terrible game overall, so you’re going to have some people who have always liked it, but finally feel safe to say so without getting blasted.
It’s not the just the Halo cycle. This is true for almost every “fandom” out there. The first few entries get widely praised. Then the core audience gets older. A new entry comes out that is not exactly what the OG fans wanted it to be. Partly because new developers, partly because of new technology, and also because of nostalgia bias. So fans say Old good, New bad. Repeat repeat repeat for each new entry. The thing is that obviously a lot of franchises actually do fall off at some point. But not when people say they do the first time. And not necessarily forever. Plenty of franchises have come back from being seemingly dead. Usually thanks to new developers and new ideas. Which ironically is what people think is the problem in the first place.
People are just restating the same H5 takes that have been put out since launch. Multiplayer is good, loot boxes and campaign are bad. Same with H4 having a good story and weak multiplayer. I really don’t think people are revising their opinions and looking back on these games in a drastically different way. Reach however did have a big change in perception later on its life, but a lot of people still hate it.
Just so you know halo 2 was a huge scam technically. It was an amazing game but it wasn’t what was promised or shown in the “no smoke and mirrors bullshit” gameplay trailer. The only reason halo survived halo 2 was because it was a great game that made up for the lies and tricks
Halo 2 and 3 are actual Halo games. "Halo 5" is a Halo themed space game. Selective amnesia on game releases/reviews is rampant these days.
All Halos have issues, even the trilogy and even very bad ones. It's just that they are overall very good games, so their flaws get overlooked.
Halo cycle is real bc new Halo games have pretty consistently been worse than the last one
I've always praised Halo 5. Not everyone has decided to start praising it recently.
Every time something worse comes out you can see what wasn’t so bad before.
From a ranked position standpoint; [DISREGARD HALO 2 modding/stand-by problems, and the de-rankers/betrayers that plagued matchmaking thanks to blockbuster dishing out free 2 month trials lol] halo 2 had the greatest matchmaking-vs-your-actual-skill-level, and the content & maps were superb (which paved the way for Halo 3 which I rank #2 multiplayer fps), and the level system actually worked better than h3's inconsistent progression system where you win 6games straight then lose one and drop a level which blew my mind at the time. The game modes like neutral bomb and 1bomb sucked and 1flag variants weren't the greatest, but overall it was always competitive and a good time/experience despite losing games, and the modders/standby/bridgers and derank griefers lol
Halo 5 is saved because of Halo Infinite. Infinite while being a better game, made the perception of the two prequel games different as well.
It's a perpetual cycle for sure. This sums up the community response to each game based on the previous title's features. Halo 2 - Melee broken at launch, Magnum sucks, vehicles are no longer invincible, being forced to play as an Elite for half the game is stupid, CE has a classic feel that Halo 2 can't replicate. Halo 3 - Bullet spread over Hitscan, no Invisibility for Elites in Campaign, story not as good, Core gameplay was better in Halo 2, Halo 3 is nowhere near as good as Halo 2. Halo: Reach - Core gameplay loop feels slower with Armor Abilities, Sprint is bad, Sniper Rifle too strong, armor too dirty-looking, Firefight is too easy, Loadouts are too much like Call of Duty Classes, Halo 3 was the better game. Halo 4 - Too Call of Duty, Power Ranger Armor instead of grungy Armor of a super soldier, Sprint still bad, Hammer was cooler in Reach, Prometheans are not as fun as Covenant, redesigns are bad plz go back to Reach aesthetic, story kind of confusing for people who didn't read any of the books, Spartan Ops is Firefight but boring and bad, Reach was underrated. Halo 5 - Loadouts were better than the REQ Stations, story was better in Halo 4, Spartan Abilites make it not Halo, we miss Spartan Ops, no dev-made BTB Maps, Halo 4 was underrated. Halo Infinite - REQ Weapons were better, gameplay was super competitive and fun in Halo 5 and this feels more like Halo 3, we miss Warzone, Halo 5 had better vehicles and modes, post-launch support was better for Halo 5, Halo 5 was underrated. The previous title gets looked back on fondly and its issues and blemishes are largely ignored as everyone finds something to hate about the newest game. While there were some genuine criticisms for each title, most of it was just people being negative for validation or attention. The passage of time and increased familiarity with each title allows us all to look back at our favourite bits without focusing too much on the negative aspects as rose-tinted glasses sit firmly on our collective noses. As a long-time fan who didn't play a ton of Halo 5, I've found that it is the only game in the series I don't have nostalgia goggles for. I miss the vehicle variety and REQ Weapons but nothing else. I vastly prefer Infinite's gameplay.
For me the key difference is outside of Halo 4-Infinite's quality and new introductions. It's how they launch games now. Halo 4 was a great launch overall. But MCC, Halo 5, and Halo Infinite have all released as buggy to the point of unplayable and/or unfinished and barren of content at launch. Give each of these games 1-2 years and they're complete as they should have been at launch. 1-2 more years and there's plenty of dlc to further flesh the game out. Besides the "new = bad" mentality, this is valid criticism that 343's release model is shitty and new Halo deserves a bad rep for this structure in general imo. That said, solely judging the games by quality: -I loved 4's campaign, and the multiplayer felt like Halo but severely unbalanced and with a shitty, mock-COd format. But it was still fun in that balance shitstorm. -I loathed 5's campaign and the multiplayer felt too competitive-driven for my taste. It's the Halo I take most issue with. Warzone was fantastic though, especially Warzone Firefight, but the pay-to-win aspect hurt it severely. -MCC is the best remaster I've ever played. Especially considering the newly added content, it's going the extra mile. -Halo Infinite has some of the best multiplayer in terms of core gameplay, since Reach imo, but the sandbox still feels fairly barren and the map and game mode variety is rough. I really liked the campaign overall, but it could've been better. All in all, I don't hate what 343 makes. I hate what they do.
Not really plenty of people said Halo 5 had a good mutiplayer just it wasnt a good Halo game.
All of the 343 games sucked, 4 being the worst multi-player wise while 5 had the worst campaign. It bothers me to see a company take such a massive shit on this property I love and then they just to get praised for these half baked turds a few years later.
The backlash to Halo 3 was nowhere close to the shitstorm Reach got. We only start praising the previous game because the new ones always end up being worse
Nope, I still think the Bungie halos are leagues ahead of the 343 ones
I would say every game gets people to have mixed opinions, and it's honestly great. A game that appeals to everyone, appeals to none. But, and this is also important: When a new game goes south, people tend to be nostalgic about the previous crap.
Yes I believe the cycle is real but no for the reasoning you give. Halos since 3 have been declining in at least one aspect and with each decline the previous title it’s then seen to be great. Halo 5 was criticised for not having some mp features at launch but halo infinite has practically none. Halo 5 had a full campaign (albeit decisive) while infinite has a 3rd of one.
I'll never defend the halo 5 campaign. It was shit then, and it is shit now.
I still hate halo 5
The halo cycle is not a thing… people seem to forget that people who are mad as fuck are also loud as fuck. People who had anything good to say about the current game get drowned out. Halo 5 did have alot of good aspects to it but it also had arguably more bad aspects. For example the gunplay in halo 5, including weapon balance was way better than HR/H4 and in my opinion Infinite. The animations in H5 are better than infinite, it had assassinations, it had ranked (which H4 did not and reach’s was ass), in had PVPVE which in itself was a great idea that was ruined via micro transactions. Breakout was a badass mode in H5 that I’m really surprised isn’t in infinite. Even some parts of halo 5’s campaign were good, like cutscene quality and the action sequences (other than chief vs Locke.. that was bad). The main part of the campaign that pissed people off was it’s marketing was so far off from the story that was actually told. Anyone else remember hunt the truth?! I had friends of mine that weren’t halo players that got hyped for halo 5 bcuz of that podcast. There are definitely very good things about halo 5, things I actually like more than infinite but that doesn’t mean halo 5 didn’t shit the bed. The same will be said about infinite, but not because of hindsight because once the rage settles down with time people who like the positive things in the game will actually be able to say it without a death threat coming their way lmao