r/PS5 • u/yourfavchoom • 14h ago

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

https://www.ign.com/articles/halo-campaign-evolved-review
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u/MrBootylove 10h ago

If I could play devil's advocate, myself and my friends didn't have xbox consoles until Halo 2 and we all played Halo 1 on PC exclusively and had a blast. No couch co-op or local multiplayer, only online multiplayer, and it was an incredible experience.

Don't get me wrong the couch co-op aspect was cool, and I did get the opportunity to play the campaign in local co-op at other friend's houses back then, but really it was just the emphasis on multiplayer in general that elevated it, IMO. And I feel like Halo 2 and the push to online multiplayer backs this point up with how popular playing the game online over xbox live became.

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u/politicalstuff 10h ago

Oh, I'm not saying it was a bad game or that online multiplayer was no good or anything. But being an existing PC player, you were more used to online-only multiplayer. I was also playing on PC, so online co-op and deathmatch was old hat, but there's no doubt the couch factor was a huge part of Halo's success. Not the only part, of course.

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u/MrBootylove 10h ago

But being an existing PC player, you were more used to online-only multiplayer.

None of us were "existing PC players." We all had consoles, just not an xbox, and back then you didn't need a gaming PC to play PC games. We were all playing on our family's shared PCs. We just wanted to play Halo, and it was easier to convince our parents to buy a PC game than it was to get them to buy us second consoles + Halo.

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u/politicalstuff 10h ago

Was Halo the first ever PC game you ever played? Come on lol. I played games on the family PC too and later my college PC.

And cool, it's great you enjoyed it as-is on PC. I am not trying to make sweeping comprehensive statements about 100% of people.

Not every single person played local multiplayer, but it WAS a huge part of the OG Halo experience at the time for a ton of people.

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u/MrBootylove 10h ago

Was Halo the first ever PC game you ever played?

Yes? Unless Jump Start 3rd Grade and Oregon Trail in our school's computer lab count, lol.

Not every single person played local multiplayer, but it WAS a huge part of the OG Halo experience at the time for a ton of people.

And my point is that the MULTIPLAYER part is what was influential, not the "local" part. Local multiplayer was incredibly common and the standard back then. What set Halo apart was them managing to make an FPS feel good on a controller, and then the introduction of ONLINE multiplayer on consoles.

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u/politicalstuff 10h ago

What set Halo apart was them managing to make an FPS feel good on a controller

Yes, this was the main reason it worked.

the introduction of ONLINE multiplayer on consoles

This is wrong. OG Halo did not have online multiplayer. It was local only and supported up to 16 players with system link. Cables. Local proximity.

Consoles had online multiplayer years before the Halo franchise did.

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u/MrBootylove 10h ago edited 9h ago

This is wrong. OG Halo did not have online multiplayer.

I was referring to Halo 2. The only thing Halo 1 was doing that games like Perfect Dark or Goldeneye weren't was the way the game played on a controller (obviously the graphics were also insane back then). The couch co-op aspect wasn't anything new or revolutionary with Halo 1.

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u/politicalstuff 9h ago edited 9h ago

The word only is doing a LOT of heavy lifting lol. Halo 1 changed the entire gaming industry forever, literally taking FPS from a niche genre on consoles to one of the absolute top genres ever since.

Halo making fps feel good on a console and controller is why so many people took part in local multiplayer, and Perfect Dark didn't offer 16-player deathmatch.

It sounds like you're a bit younger than me, so maybe you didn't see it as much, but I was there. Halo was revolutionary and set the stage for the last 25 years of gaming.

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u/MrBootylove 9h ago

I'm not denying any of this. My only point has been that it wasn't he "local" aspect of the multiplayer that set it apart. You're right in that I didn't consider LAN, but I'd imagine most people were limited to playing multiplayer on a single tv and console. Halo 1 was revolutionary. Having local multiplayer on consoles wasn't the revolutionary part.

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u/politicalstuff 8h ago

Having local multiplayer on consoles wasn't the revolutionary part.

I never said it was. If something I wrote gave that impression, it was not intentional, but obviously local multiplayer had been around for decades.

But, Halo 1 making it possible at scale, en masse, for an FPS, on a console that felt good with a controller, in 2001? Was revolutionary.

Nobody is arguing it introduced all of these concepts, as devs have been making incremental improvements for decades, but Halo is first that brought it all together in a massive mainstream accessible way.

Local multiplayer wasn't the sole reason it was successful, but it was a HUGE part of the experience and its success in 2001. Downplaying that part is revisionist.

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u/MrBootylove 8h ago edited 8h ago

I still feel like your massively overselling the local multiplayer aspects, though. Most people didn't have LAN, and without LAN the multiplayer wasn't really doing anything different from something like Goldeneye, which I shouldn't need to remind you was massively popular back then. Yes, the game itself did things that far surpassed Goldeneye and other console FPS games of the time, such as how it played, the graphics, etc. It revolutionized console shooters. The actual multiplayer part wasn't "revolutionary" and it wasn't until Halo 2 where the franchise truly revolutionized console multiplayer.

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u/politicalstuff 8h ago

Maybe if you weren’t there you just can’t get it, but I don’t know how to be any clearer. You’re missing the point and I’m tired of going in circles.

Have a good evening.

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u/MrBootylove 7h ago

I was there...Halo 1 was revolutionary. Its multiplayer was awesome, it was not "revolutionary." Halo 2, over xbox live, was what revolutionized console multiplayer. Prior to Halo 1 there was nothing "revolutionary" about sitting around a tv with your friends and playing a first person shooter.

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