unforum

[atdt1991]

[HALO] [HALO 2] Halo vs. Halo 2

[thunderclap8]

I've been thinking I should pull Halo 1 back out of the pile.

I have different memories entirely of the two Halos. Halo 1 I played 99% in college, with a bunch of guys together in one room or sometimes a couple rooms.

Halo 2 I've played 99% on Xbox Live, just me in my livng room and you all elsewhere.

Neither is really better than the other, just different like I said. I'd love the opportunity to do a little Halo 2 multiplayer split screen more often, to draw a fair comparison.

[krystyn]

I think I played split-screen slayer ONCE with Halo 1.

Apparently, I've been deprived!

[water10]

I miss some of the maps from Halo1. But I can only think of 1 gameplay aspect I miss, which is how grenades used to be sooo powerful! I still think dual wield brings a lot of options to the game! I miss Hang em' high, but we have Zanzibar with H2! All in all, I think H2 is a nice evolution from the original!

Oh, and last Friday, I had a halo2 night with buddies, just like we used to have with halo1! And we all had a blast! It was as much fun as we used to have.


Now single player is a different story! I still think Halo1 Legendary is one of the best single player experiences I've had. It was sooo cool! Getting past the second part of Truth and Reconciliation was harder than all levels of Ninja Gaiden! At least to me!

[thunderclap8]

man I'd forgotten about grenades in Halo 1. I was such a fiend with those, pissed a lot of people off

I don't particularly miss the Halo 1 maps. I sucked (still do) with the sniper rifle, so something like Hang em High was just an instant death trap for me. I do miss sidewinder a bit, but it looks like one of the new maps will satisfy that craving in H2.

[ROBOGriff]

Halo 1's memories come mostly from lan parties. My favorite memory was giving my wife my credit card just to keep her out of our 1 bedroom apartment while I somehow linked 3 or 4 tvs. We had people sitting the the halls!!
That was an expensive night

But my Halo 2 memories are more from the ILB event in Chi and the friendships with you guys. The game is cool, but I would be bored stiff if it wasn't for this community.

[Anton P. Nym]

With the caveat that I've only played HaloPC and Halo2, I'll wholeheartedly say that I've had vastly more fun in Halo 2 multiplayer. For online play H2 is easily superior to HPC; lag issues and blatant griefing really weakened HPC. (I'll put it this way... I'd rather have the standby problems than what was going on in the PC community.)

Now, the only LAN experience I've had was with Halo 2... and it was a blast. I can't fairly compare the two though.

What do I miss from HPC? The flamethrower. That's about it.

-- Steve also wishes that custom maps were available in H2, but with the limitations of the Xbox there's not much anybody but 133t h4X0rz could do to match the published ones.

[ubersaurus]

It's no contest for me. I enjoyed Halo, but after going back and playing it with my buddies, we swapped back Halo 2 so quickly. Halo just had so much stupid shit in it...let me review....

invincible vehicles
Ghosts that can take a rocket to the nose and still keep going. What's more, the ghost stunned you, so unless you got the first shot in, you were boned.
Pistols that are godly. There was no reason to use any other gun. The only reason no one complained was because you could set it up as the starting gun.
Grenades you can toss cross-level, that can kill with their GIANT blast radius. I've tossed random grenades in HEH before and gotten kills.
Boarding Action and Chiron are both far worse than Colossus could possibly ever hope to be.
Have I mentioned how broken the pistol was? It bears repeating.

Halo's single player campaign was cool, but about all I miss from multiplayer is like, fall damage. And maybe Race. I've done LANs in Halo 2 that put the LANs from Halo 1 to shame in terms of excitement and fun.

[vector]

I think that I found one reason why Halo2 appears to have slightly less of a luster than our memories of Halo1. At least for me I play it WAY more than I ever did Halo1. With XBL I get to play multiplayer with friends just about every day. Halo1 not as much. I recently had a Halo2 night with my buddies (on a 60inch tv which rocked) and my friends who had not played much had the wide eyed wonder and glee that I had when I first picked up Halo2. I also think that some of this will come back soon when the patch is released and with the new maps. From what I hear from an inside source, the game play is improved and more fun.

[CoffeeJedi]

[ubercado]

There was a Halo 1?

(ducks for cover)

[Ranger D]

It seems to me that so far this thread has been discussing little more than half of each game. What about single player?

Comparing single-player to single-player, Halo 1 takes the cake. You accomplish stuff, and while there are levels that sometimes feel like a grind, you are rewarded for your perseverance. Halo 1 is like watching the first Matrix move. It's left somewhat open ended, but you feel rewarded and got your money's worth. Also, the story may not be as in-depth as Marathon's but it was still fun. When I play Halo 2, I feel like I'm sitting around, waiting for something to happen. And it never does. To me, playing Halo 2 is like watching the movie Coyote Ugly. All tease, no action. No reward for grinding through 7 hours (10 hours my ass Bungie) of boring game play.

Let me tell you a story:
I got the chance to play Halo 2 a few days before it was released. A friend of a friend of a blockbuster employee (or similar store) got hold of an actual Halo 2 disc the weekend before it's release. Our rationalization was that we wanted to get on xbl as soon as Halo 2 was out, and didn't want some 12 yr/old fanboi who played the pirated french copy to blow the ending. We started into the single-player at about 1am, switching controllers at death, and played up until you meet Gravemind. It was almost morning by then, so we all went home to get some sleep.
When I woke up later that day, and remembered what happened, I recalled it like it was a bad dream. "Did I really play Halo 2 last night? Was that what Halo 2 is going to be?!?" I secretly hoped I had had a nightmare, because what I remembered was frighteningly bad. And we didn't even get to the ending that night. But alas, on Nov. 9th, I got my Limited Edition copy, popped it in my xbox, and behold, it was reality. And then I watched the ending. <shiver>

Now I can't even bring myself to load the Halo 2 disc in my xbox anymore. When I see the Halo 2 start screen and hear the music, I cry. I cry for all the potential that there was with Halo 2. Like it was an abused pet of an selfish, alcoholic owner. You want to pat it on the head and say, "It's ok, it's not your fault you have a broken leg, are malnourished and have no teeth anymore."

Sorry for beating a dead horse. Multi-player may be great, but don't forget: it's only half the game.

[ubersaurus]

Single player I hand to Halo 2 on the whole as well-there's no levels as outright BAD as the Library, there's very little repetitiveness, which was all over the place in Halo 1, and the AI is improved. The sweetness that was Halo/Silent Cartographer/the outside parts of the control room, just can't make up for having to go through the same room over and over and over.

That said, I've played the hell out of both games' single player.

[ROBOGriff]

Single player Halo 1 can stand on it's own for a little while, but you gotta admit that it as aped pretty hard and has lost some of it's luster. Don't get me wrong, I had a much greater since of satisfaction at the end of Halo 1 than Halo 2. That said, it was the multiplayer that really made Halo stand above the crow of FPS games years later. And that is what has recieved the most attention in Halo 2.

And come on everyone that's bashing single player, you gotta admit that the Regret level was some of the most intense fun, refined into pixels you've played. Now only if the rest of the game was that tight.

[Nova]

I hate H2 single player solely because ILB showed me just how cool the Halo universe could have been if they'd done it right.

Multiplayer's fun though.