Gaming's Great Debate!

Divine Virus wrote:I enjoy Halo's multiplayer way more then COD's.

With Halo Reach being released soon, and the game seeming to have the best of a couple worlds in it, it's going to be good times.

Both Multiplayer AND Single player.

Getting lagquit sucks.

Yeah, Halo is good. I liked Halo Wars in terms of gameplay, it brought some cool ideas to the table with the 'single' type base setup.

No no no Noc, halo wars sucked in almost every possible way. The gameplay was crap, especially pathfinding for the damn AI. THey have better path finding in AoK, a game years older than Halo Wars.

Halo Wars was an abomination in every conceivable way...

That is a matter of opinion...

It's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. (IMO)

For an RTS? Meh, it's not that good.

For a direct to console RTS? It's actually not that bad. Although I do find better RTS's in ports such as CnC3 and RA3, but I still don't think Halo Wars is an "abomination". There's way worse games out there. (IMO)

And While I have seem myself how bad the path finding is (watching partners units etc), I've never actually had a problem with it. Maybe cause I know how to control my units.

Divine Virus wrote:That is a matter of opinion...

It's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. (IMO)

For an RTS? Meh, it's not that good.

For a direct to console RTS? It's actually not that bad. Although I do find better RTS's in ports such as CnC3 and RA3, but I still don't think Halo Wars is an "abomination". There's way worse games out there. (IMO)

And While I have seem myself how bad the path finding is (watching partners units etc), I've never actually had a problem with it. Maybe cause I know how to control my units.

Yeah, the pathfinding wasn't that annoying unless you tried to Pelican drop some Reav--I mean Scorpions behind the enemies base.

But there is one thing I don't like: Exile. It comes up every time you play 3v3. Why not Fort Deen or the DLC packs? What the hell?

Hmm.

Let's look at each game in both respective series I played in chronological order and give my thoughts on each game.

Halo CE remains, in my opinion one of the best console shooters out there, with a very strong story and revolutionary gameplay. It's still fun to this day when I go back and play it, and that is a mark of it's longevity.

Halo 2 I think is a underrated game, as I still think the story is pretty good and added some much needed scope and details to the franchise, as well as having refined and improved gameplay.

Never played the original COD, so on to COD2, which is one of the best WW2 shooters made, with a sense of respect for the actual events it portrayed and really immersing you into these historical events. Still my favourite COD to date.

COD3 was pretty mediocre to be honest, as it didn't really add anything new and it added stupid QTE melee sequences that weren't needed. I do apprecaite that they picked factions that really don't get that much exposure, such as the Canadians, but overall COD2 was still a better game.

Now we come to 2007, where the two franchises finally face off in the same year. Halo 3 was average at best, the story was all that great, and not much had been changed from Halo 2. It did do a okay job at closing the trilogy, but it could have been so much more. COD4, as much as I've made negative comments on, is still a pretty game, with one of the most moving moments in gaming history with the death of your character by a nuke seen through their eyes. After that though it got a little silly, and I never cared for Griggs that much. Multiplayer-wise I greatly prefer Halo 3, as it was a refined Halo 2 multiplayer, and you never felt there was a disadavantage to other players other than their individual skill, while COD4's new perk based system could leave the lower ranks dominated by the higher up, perk and weapon ladled higher ones. It never felt like a fair or fun system.

World at War came next, and my opinion on it has softened over time. I still think Treyarch's attempts for 'Difficulty' were basically spamming grenades and enemies at you, which was pretty fucking cheap, and their multiplayer was a downright copy of COD4. It's okay, but I frankly don't think I'll ever play it again.

Then the Halo double team arrived.

Halo Wars. I've probably clocked the most time in this game out of all the people here and I'll say that it is really time I want back. The campaign is terrible with a bland carbon copy plot taken from Halo CE or Halo 2, with constant contiuity errors and basic errors of common sense. Gameplay wise it's controls are pretty good for a Console RTS, but the pathfinding is a complete clusterfuck and the strategy breaks down to either a quick rush or super unit spam. Truely the worst Halo game created.

ODST saved my growing concern for the franchise, by bringing Halo back to the basics, the return of the health bar was a badly needed addition, and help curb the decrease of difficulty per game. The story was one of the best since Halo CE, and the feeling of isolation walking around the deserted city was a very memorable experience. Firefight was good, but needed multiplayer support.

Now comes the greatest hate on the list. Modern Warfare 2. Honestly, if you haven't heard my hate filled rants about it by now, where have you been the last 12 months? It was one of the worst games of 2009 and it's continuing popularity is beyond me.

So overall, I'd say the Halo series comes out on top, as Halo has kept a pretty good standard, save for one complete bomb and one little wobble, while COD has been spiralling downwards for quite a while now.

We'll have to see what the future holds for these franchises.

COD4 had better guns the higher you went? Since when? I swear that you start out with the M40A3, W1200, M16A4, and the MP5.

Vigil summed it up.

Halo Wars is complete and utter bullshit, the only reason I would go back and play it would be for achievements needed for Reach unlockables.

RTS games do not belong on the console, they may be alright for a console, but their still mediocre half games at best.

Ringleader wrote:Vigil summed it up.

Halo Wars is complete and utter bullshit, the only reason I would go back and play it would be for achievements needed for Reach unlockables.

but bungie said you only needed Halo3 and ODST to get reach stuff... right?

I don't remember, I hope so though because I would hate to go back and beat that shit game on legendary, and spend time unlocking its retarded achievements.

I think you might have to though, something about halo waypoint or whatever.

im sure in a weekly update they said Reach, Halo3 and ODST would unlock armor, just like PC Keys unlock something, it has to be a Bungie game is my guess

Halo Wars is not even that bad.

Matter of opinion I know, But that's mine anyways. I still enjoy playing some multiplayer with Bacon, XNate, Vigil and Felix.

Game is fine. RTS can be done on console, and is just fine on console. For someone like me who doesn't have a PC for games, the console RTS's like RA3/CnC3/HW are perfectly fine.

Divine Virus wrote:Halo Wars is not even that bad.

Matter of opinion I know, But that's mine anyways. I still enjoy playing some multiplayer with Bacon, XNate, Vigil and Felix.

Game is fine. RTS can be done on console, and is just fine on console. For someone like me who doesn't have a PC for games, the console RTS's like RA3/CnC3/HW are perfectly fine.

I agree i mean the only reason people say an rts is better on the pc is...well it was first produced on PC so of course it will be better on the pc but the console ports are just fine and for halowars being the first rts being made for the console it was just fine and hopefuly the next console rts's will be better since its just in the babystage at this point

Gauz wrote:

Civ wrote:*something about perks not changing much in Halo Reach*

O RLY?!

The equipment did sure change tactics, but so did the perks. So much that it made reach enjoyable for me.

Liiike being able to use a jetpack to access a position higher up that was otherwise inaccessable? Or using armor lock to distract your enemy while your teammates take them out? Or how about turning invisible? That definately gives you a LOT of new opportunities that Halo 3's multiplayer didn't have.

Funny, cuz I remember Halo 3 having overshilds, invisibility, grav lifts, bubble shields, and deployable cover... guess I was just day dreaming.

Gauz wrote:And as to why I think Halo 3 is boring.... well.... I don't know, it just is (for me). Then again COD is no better.

So... you just don't like FPS games?

Gauz wrote:Honestly though, I dont know why these two were picked. I haven't played CoD2 or the other good ones, and Halo: CE is the only halo game I really liked.

CoD2 was good? It was pretty much the same as the other ones (minus the big MP unlock system from CoD4). I liked the first few because they were fresh... but after playing the same game six times, I got sick of it. CoD2 isn't better IMO, it was just more original in its time (even though a significant amount of stuff was blatantly stolen from Halo CE).

Ringleader wrote:When it comes to video games, popularity is synonymous with success, which is kind of why I used the two words interchangingly.

Popularity a factor of success, but it's not the only one. Psychonauts is supposedly a great game, but it wasn't very popular. I'd still consider it a successful development, though.

Ringleader wrote:...If it was really that hard to deduce that. Unless of course, you're playing dumb on purpose to peddle this irrelevant point across with chin held high.

I don't play dumb.

Ringleader wrote:Lets not forget that the original argument was that you said ODST is an expansion, not a full, stand alone game. And even though this thread is about which games are good, and even though we both basically share the same stance on ODST (being good)... ...But, you still seem to think ODST is an ekspanshun, even though it is a stand alone game that you do not need another game to play, I'm afraid I cannot parse that level of reasoning.

Expansions are games that use the same setup from its root game to add a few new things (a new campaign and firefight). The root game isn't necessary because the xbox doesn't work like that, genius. You don't install games on an xbox. Normally an expansion draws off of files from the root game, which means there is very little actually in the expansion; that makes it so cheap. Because they have to make it work independently for the xbox, they had to throw in all the old stuff and bump up the price.

It's really not that hard to understand.

Ringleader wrote:I guess making up ridiculous points like "Even if a lot of its popularity came from past success, that doesn't make the current success any less real.", and trying to push them across as some kind of fact of life is more important then that sort of thing.

A fact of life?

You're the one throwing a fit cuz you couldn't understand it. I guess it just never occurred to you that when I use two different words I mean two different things.

Ringleader wrote:I specifically did not disagree with this point because the phrase: "Even if a lot of its popularity came from past success, that doesn't make the current success any less real.", doesn't make the opposite false automatically, the only reason I singled this one phrase out was because it had no direction in terms of supporting your argument. It's not false, it just has no meaning, and shows that you cannot support your opinions properly.

WTF are you talking about? I'm just saying that it's not right to go out of your way to hate things that are popular just because they are popular. In effect, I'm saying that even though past games made it popular, it's still a good game. That's why it continues to be popular.

Ringleader wrote:Another example of this being your anecdotal response to what Angatar was saying about how few people play custom games now, the logical conclusion would be to agree, fewer people would be playing Halo 3 after 3 years and people moved on to different games, right?

Fewer and few are not the same, so please do not treat them as such. Less people play Halo 3 now than did three years ago, but many people still play. There is still an abundance of players.

Ringleader wrote:Also, isn't your rebuttal completely depended on your friend's preferences? You see, I can say that I had a game of COD with 12 of my friends, but that doesn't really mean anything, because for all we know, I could have added them FROM PLAYING COD, and similarly, you could have added those seven from Halo, so don't act like your friends list is representative of all gamers because that's a pretty weak platform to support your point.

....half of the people were friends of my friend's friends. This is not just from my own friends list. Hell, YOU were playing in a game with me two or three days ago!

You know, the real question is, why would Halo vs CoD be gaming's "great" debate. What about Valve vs Blizzard or something?