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The Making Of Halo Illuminated
Thanks to Gamesradar for their Edge-reprinted feature on the making of Bungie's seminal Xbox FPS, Halo. According to a Bungie producer, the team "...decided they wanted to go back to the roots of a game like Marathon, combining it with some of the things we learnt from Myth." Other topics include the originally impossible tutorial level ("I actually had several play testers decide they wanted to quit playing the game and go home, rather than go through the opening level"), and the relative disappointment of The Library level ("A lot of the little things like that added up to make the Library a lot less than what we wanted it to be.")
Someone should do an article on how, when Bungie sold out to M$, Alex and Jason were quoted as saying that M$ wouldn't tell them what games to make, or what platforms to make them for.
So, after two years, Halo is the only thing Bungie made, and it was only available for the XBox. That sure is a big choice in platforms, and demonstrates how Bungie could tell M$ what games they were going to make. Sell Out indeed.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Halo wasn't original, it was a 'slightly' modified Larry Niven set with a terrible storyline and repetative, boring, levels. If it's seminal because they stole Niven's (admittedly cool) idea, or because they wrote a graphics engine that delivers lower fps at lower effects levels than more modern games on hardware that didn't even exist back then!
If it had come out 3 years ago I would have been impressed with the graphics, but even then... 'eh'.
Half Life was a better game. More variety, better action. I don't think the bots were as good (they seemed indecisive at times), but overall it was a much more enjoyable experience.
Yes, I was dissapointed with Halo. Maybe that's an appropriate name. You get everything at the edge, NOTHING in the core.
I play both consols and pc games, though I've been playing pc games for much longer and more frequently then the consols. Halo was great. It should have come out on the pc first though as was oringally planned, those bastards.
In any event, I didn't play halo until a few months ago. I loved it, and I don't know why. Level design was so so, graphics weren't that good, most of the time you were going to one end of a level then fighting back out of it, yawn?
But, wow, I loved killing aliens. I would say the best feature of halo was not the vehicles, those bored me, but the grenades. I don't know how much fun I'd have giggling when a plasma grenade stuck to an alien and he ran around screaming "get it off get it off" then would blow up and fly into the air and send his buddies with him. Even better was when it would ignite a pile of grenades laying on the ground near by, I could do that all day.
I love the sound and feel of the pistol and the marine machine gun, they are just so fun to light aliens up with. I also love clubbing them on the head with it, it was just very cool.
And that's where it sold me, It was just very cool. My roomate was playing it the other day on the pc (we were disapoitned with the debacle, no co op, wtf?) but he said "i'm halfway through the game already and I dont even know why I'm playing it, it doesnt look good, I've already played through it 3 times, but I just cant put it down".
To me, that's what makes a good game. I dont care about theme, I dont care about story, I dont care about level design (unless its really bad), hell, I even had a pretty easy time with the xbox controler. I care about the gameplay, and halo's was great, and thats why I couldn't put it down, and that's why it deserves the attention it gets. It's just one of those rare games where everything clicks, and it plays like the developers intended, and is just FUN to be playing.