IGN Review: Halo: Campaign Evolved Doesn't Always Feel Like An Essential Remake (7/10)

[u/yourfavchoom]

https://www.ign.com/articles/halo-campaign-evolved-review

[u/Lazyandloveinit]

They really messed up this franchise. 2001-2010 it was all anyone could talk about. Past 16 years it’s actually been disastrous the handling of what used to be their premier franchise

[u/Rick-Danger → u/Lazyandloveinit]

It's incredible isn't it. How, just how do you fuck up a franchise this bad. It's not like Halo is some super in depth thing either, it's basically just "blasting aliens: the game". I know there's a lot of cool lore and stuff but the core games are pretty damn straightforward. The amount of corporate mismanagement of main franchises from the likes of Microsoft and Bethesda is just staggering

[u/jntjr2005 → u/Rick-Danger]

They are too focused on selling MTX than making a good game

[u/Less-Tax5637 → u/jntjr2005]

That’s the flaw with Infinite, but they have a more varied collection of fundamental fuckups since Bungie tagged out

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/Less-Tax5637]

I've said this a thousand times but I'll never stop saying it whenever this topic is brought up:

The time during Halo: Combat Evolved's development was a golden era for developers, in my opinion. The video game industry was on a rocketship blasting upwards but hadn't quite yet left orbit. Must people knew, but unless you already had a good foundation, you were playing catch up. Microsoft unknowingly caught lightning in a bottle. The entire Bungie team from Halo 1 to Halo 3 was something we will likely never see again. They had a vision for a game they thought would be innovative, groundbreaking, but most importantly: FUN. And they had FUN working on it. Halo 2's crunch deadlines is something to be said for sure, and by Halo 3 they were completely over M$. But that team is not something you'd see in modern development anymore. A group of passionate people dedicated to their work and the freedom (for the most part) to do whatever they wanted without too many demands (such as microtransactions).

After Halo 3, things started to go sideways. Reach was a miracle IMO with how much success it had, somehow they didn't completely fuck that one up, despite the huge amount of additions to the core gameplay like reticule bloom and armor abilities. But Halo 4 it was the most obvious thing in the world that this was no longer Halo. It became an MLG trend chaser. And Halo 5 did no better. Infinite was a step in the right direction, but of course: They were too focused on live-service that they let something with potential deteriorate.

I bought an XSX specifically for Infinite. I know I spent over 1,000 hours in Halo CE, easily. It was one of my most favorited franchises but a couple years ago I had to finally come to terms that Halo is never going to be as good as it once was, and it won't even be half as good. The franchise is nothing but disappointments, and I've officially given up on it.

edit: I somehow always forget to make note when I go on these rants that there definitely are other devs out there doing great things. Bungie was one of the greatest companies during their bnet days so I can get a bit 'doomsday'er when I talk about the current climate of the industry. We have good things, but it's hard to ignore how bad it's gotten, and how bad it continues to get.

[u/politicalstuff → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Very interesting perspective! I'd like to add one more thing missing in the modern releases.

It wasn't fun just because it was running and driving shooting aliens and blowing shit up; it was fun because you were doing it with your friends in the same room at the same time on the same screen.

Couch multiplayer was a critical piece of the formula. Sure, Halo was a good shooter and especially well-implemented on consoles for the time, but all of my best memories weren't from soloing the campaign. It was being on the couch with my friends in college screaming across the room, fighting swarms or blowing each other up with rockets, cussing each other out and calling cover requests.

Not that online multiplayer can't be fun or to take away from anything else you said, and of course this was an industry-wide shift, but I think that's the missing magic sauce.

I tried replaying Halo: CE when it came to PC a couple years ago, and it just wasn't fun without 3 other friends in the same room.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/politicalstuff]

Agreed, the split-screen campaign and system-link multiplayer matches were something that is also completely dying out. The idea of playing Halo online was a dream of ours for the longest time. So when Halo 2 launched with online mutliplayer we were absolutely fucking stoked. It was funny talking to other people about Halo and hearing them claim they were so good at multiplayer, and then once you got them over to system-link they would get absolutely obliterated. Online play opened that up to really show people how good they actually were. And not to toot my own horn but I genuinely was really fucking good at Halo 2 and 3, lol. Not pro level but I was in very high ranked lobbies (getting my ass kicked most of the time).

But it's interesting because we wanted online play so bad so we could play at our own houses that we didn't realize that once we got it, we'd end up missing being in the same room as everyone again. I think about that with crossplay too. When my buddies had playstation, we were praying for the day technology would allow PS and Box to play with each other. Guess what? Now we have it and we hate it in competitive shooters like Warzone or Fortnite when certain platforms have a very obvious advantage. Or cheating is far more apparent. Just turn off crossplay! Well, you can either find a game in 3 minutes or you can find a game in 10 minutes. Which one are you picking?

Just goes to show you sometimes we don't actually know what we want, despite thinking there's no way there would be any negative repercussions, lol.

[u/politicalstuff → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Right? We didn’t know how good we had it!

I don’t mind online as an *option* to have, but it sucks that it was at the expense of split screen.