Comments on: Video Game Club – “Halo” (Level 3… Not “Halo 3″)

By: SonGoharotto

SonGoharotto — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:14:02 +0000

Story-wise, #2 is very much the Empire Strikes Back of Halo. The addition of the Arbiter and a Covenant perspective to the war definitely made things more interesting.

By: Kula

Kula — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:31:38 +0000

This isn’t the most popular opinion among hardcore Halo fans, but I enjoyed Halo 2 a heck of a lot more than Halo 1.

By: desirecampbell

desirecampbell — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:35:49 +0000

I remember this now. Halo has, well, I don’t want to say ‘problems’ or ‘faults’ because at the time these were all par-for-course for most first-person-shooters, but with several high profile games having done so much better (and the hype about Halo being “the best FPS ever!”) makes it impossible for me to just leave it unsaid.

Low-res textures, badly incorporated non-walk-and-shoot sections, cliched story, and (most frustratingly) poor level design.

By: Logan

Logan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:53:41 +0000

I had that same problem on level two with the ramp. I also had the same problem with finding the third area of soliders on that same level. I kept getting turned around so I thought the area I had to go to was the one I just was at and I wandered and wandered. I think its just halo 1 that suffers from that. I thought though that if you didnt go where you were supposed to after a long enough time a way point would appear to help you but I could be wrong. I also had this problem with Lego Batman. To progress something very easy hadd to be done, but i couldnt figure out what.

By: SonGoharotto

SonGoharotto — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:22:02 +0000

I think it happened to everyone with Halo:CE the first time. It feels more like a found world than a game level, which can be fun in a sandbox kind of way, but not so much if you need to be told where to go.

By comparison, H2 and H3 are larger in real estate, but much more linear in path. This is the labyrinth stage, that is vehicle stage; this is the small sneaking mission, that is the massive battlefield mission; et cetera.

By: Taku128

Taku128 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:37:20 +0000

I occasionally got lost in Halo as well. For the most part they give you those distance markers that tell you where to go and how far it is, but occasionally I can’t figure out where to go when there isn’t one. I didn’t have any problems with the second or third level though.

If you ever get to Halo 3 I’ll play co-op online with you if you want. I haven’t played Halo in a while because I got bored of multiplayer, but co-op is always a great experience.

By: mike

mike — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:01:13 +0000

That’s pretty interesting that you note how level one didn’t suffer from this, because as you can see in the post, I didn’t mention level one at all… which clearly means I didn’t have any problems with it!

Above all else, I don’t want it to sound like I don’t like the well-scripted, linear paths. For someone like me that just wants to experience the game(s) and doesn’t have the time to invest that I may have had a decade ago, it really helps to cruise through the levels and yet still feel like I’m “experiencing” them. I hate to say that there were some “virgin” or “newbie” mistakes in the level design (since there was prior experience with “Marathon” and the like), but that’s certainly how it feels.

I’m a little concerned about the “gameplay-stopping” you mention, because as it should be clearly evident by now, it doesn’t take much for me to drop a game. It feels like I’m always just begging for an excuse to drop a game so I can try out something new .

By: Suberunker

Suberunker — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:18:43 +0000

You’re not alone. A lot of the first Halo game suffers from really old-fashioned FPS level design where not everything along the trail flows very well due to Bungie trying to incorporate a large scale map to make the whole game feel more epic. Often I was also stuck in many of the earlier Halo levels trying to figure out where to go (which was even more frustrating due to the first level being so well-structured). Having a second Master Chief (co-op) around helped because the ground could be better covered and you don’t spend so much time running around looking for switches, but definitely this was a gameplay-stopping issue for me. I didn’t get back into the game and finish it and Halo 2 until a week before Halo 3 was released because this bothered me so much.