The Video Game Critic

Well clearly you don't know much about the huge variety in FPS games.  So is Counterstrike run and gun?

Anyways reasons for Halo's greatness:

-Amazing plot.

-Very, very intelligent enemies.

-Great art direction - just look at the different factions of the Covenant and the architecture.

-Split screen co-op play?!?

-Massive environments.

-Awesome, dramatic levels.

-Teammates who you cared about.

-Great voice acting.

-4 player split screen at a steady frame rate.

-The vehicles controlled brilliantly.

-Tons of great innovations like the gun limit, shields system, the invisible elites with swords, etc.

I could go on for hours.  You don't like FPS so you don't get it.  That's cool.  But you wouldn't find me trying to say all sports games were alike.

Me and my mates still play Halo co-op to this day.  We don't touch co-op on Halo 2.

Really? There was nothing special about the original Halo? How about the vehicles (all of which controlled very well), the fact that you only carry 2 guns at a time, having grenades handy without having to scroll through your weapons, and the fact that it controlled better than any other FPS?

Personally, I thought Halo 2 was a huge letdown. The single player was crap next to the first, and I didn't like online play. The first is a different story. Running over weapons and swapping nearly instantly was a great concept. In other FPS you stick with your best weapon, and never swap because it is too difficult to pull up the scroll wheel or find it by scrolling through on the d-pad. In Halo you can swap between 2 weapons with the touch of a button, and you'll never be sticking with your most powerful weapon. This is mainly because there was no most powerful weapon. They were all balanced and worked better for different situations. I like Red Faction too, but Halo is just as good a game.

[QUOTE=IronKnux]
Well when is a first person shooter not repetetive? And what makes Halo stand out, anyway? And don't say online play.[/QUOTE]

But to answer your first question, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.  They were two examples of FPSes mixing things up with a wide variety of weapons, mission objectives, enviornments, and different styles of FPS gameplay (some sections with guns a blazin' and other stealthy, quiet sections).

And about Halo, I won't say online, because I actually never played Halo online. Halo did everything that the aforementioned games did, but what I loved in particular were two things; the AI and the controls.

Halo's AI was so well-designed with its completely unscripted behavior of the enemies.  Even when you play a level for the 50th time, the enemy AI is completely unpredictable and acts intelligently in each situation, making each encounter unique, despite the fact that you're just blasting away.

And then there were those controls. The analog sticks' response to moving and aiming is so natural and precise, and the button layout was perfect and easy to remember, even after a long time of not playing.  And if you somehow didn't find the set-up to your liking, you could customize most every aspect to your specific liking.

That's what makes Halo, as well as Perfect Dark and Goldeneye, good FPSes and because Black lacks those elements, it's a bad one.      

All the intensity in Halo came from the score, not the story. It was probably the best videogame score I've ever heard. I agree that the story really wasn't all that special. I'm not a big fan of scifi anyway, so it was even less so for me, but I thought it was worked in nicely, and none of the cutscenes were overly long.

As far as the weapons go I'd also agree with you that most of them aren't that unique. Games like Timesplitters and Red Faction have far more varied and unique weapons. What Halo did is take all of the standard weapons and perfect them. It has the best sniper rifle out of any game ever; it had  a perfect scope, and sacrificed poor short range with great power. The pistol is also the best I've seen, and melee attacks in Halo are still the best out of any game out there.

[QUOTE=Conn]

Yes, okay, Halo revolutionised FPSes. I get it.[/QUOTE]

I'm not some Halo fanboy or anything. I no longer have an Xbox, or Halo, so I'm clearly not in love with the game. I just think you're underrating it by quite a bit.