I haven't played past halo1, the series never stood out to me after my experience there. It's just a traditional whoop-de-do shooter. sure, fps fans can spend hours upon hours playing it, but it doesn't make it good. There are just as many people calling halo shit as people kissing Bungie's ass.
To me it just seems mediocre. Game developers are really losing their edge. Bring back ingenuity. Bring back innovation. I want to play a game that doesn't leave me feeling like I've wasted 2 hours just aiming for people's heads. A game should be more than that.
Let me rant about this for a while! I love ranting about things I like, see. And I've gotten way too little sleep lately...
Anyway. Halo doesn't stand out unless you play it a lot, that's the weird thing. Before its release, I thought it looked boring. Then I tried it, and I just couldn't manage the controls, and it felt really slow (mind you, that's around the time I was playing Counter-Strike). So then I bought it, played it, was amazed and confused at the storyline. A thing that was rare in shooters back in 2002, and something that doesn't come across from reading impressions and looking at gameplay videos. And then me and one of my best friends played co-op... and things would never be the same again. You know, the last time I played Halo 1 co-op was earlier this year. It's just incredible how much fun it becomes once you both start working as a team, and crank up the difficulty slightly higher than any of you can do alone.
And in a really tactical game where every weapon is set up in a rock-paper-scissors fashion and you can only ever carry two, having a teammate suddenly makes it even more strategic. It goes from being a game that you might think you can probably just run around with the assault rifle aiming at heads until you're done, to something much more complex. Now you've got four possible weapons at the same time, but usually where there's a power weapon lying around (rocket launcher or sniper rifle), there's only one. And that makes the two players assume very different roles. If I grab the sniper rifle, you can bet I'll play MUCH more cautiously than I like doing on co-op while my friend runs up with the assault rifle to flush the enemies out. My friend always grabs the rocket launcher, though, because he rules with that thing. So he's the anti-vehicle anti-air dude while I cover him from infantry.
And then there's those awesome sneak sections in Assault on the Control Room which are MUCHLY enhanced because of the slight randomization in Halo. Every cluster of enemies is slightly randomized. Sometimes you'll encounter two elites instead of one, but when there's only one he'll be of a higher rank and possibly more dangerous. And their starting position when you enter a room is also pretty random. So, during that part where there's a ton of sleeping grunts and two patrolling elites, I tend to try to clear the entire room without firing off a round. It's really hard, but it's extremely satisfying. And if that fails, my friend comes rushing with the rocket launcher, I die, he hides, I respawn and we clear the room.
Halo didn't really invent much new stuff in the genre, but it was definitely the first to combine so many different ideas and make them all work near-flawlessly. And it kicked off the rechargable health things in games that every game and it's grandma use now. The two weapon limit and the fact that ALL weapons are useful in certain circumstances gives it an incredible tactical depth. Never in the game is one particular weapon completely useless. And actually, the very first weapon you get is the most useful in the game, which is definitely fresh compared to games where you get the only good weapon on the second to last level. And not only do the weapons themselves have a rock-paper-scissors system, but the enemies kinda do, too. There are primarily two kinds of weapons, plasma and projectile. And there are primarily... well, a whole bunch of enemies. Shielded, unshielded, portable shield and mechanical. Plasma works against shields, projectiles work against flesh. You'll want to finish off an enemy with a portable shield using projectiles, and a mechanical enemy is best fought with plasma weapons. And you can only ever carry two...
Throwing grenades without having to change weapons also felt pretty revolutionizing. I never used grenades in games before Halo. Did I mention the storyline was amazing? Oh, also, you drive vehicles! A car, a hovercraft, a tank and a flying alien machine! Useful non-linear vehicle paths in an FPS! And then there's the multiplayer, but I feel this is enough text for one post. I'm done ranting now. It felt good. I'm just saying, chances are, if you have the ability to not dislike an FPS, you'd probably love Halo if you'd given it a try or three. I can't see why anyone would dislike it unless he can't stand first person games in general.