Inuhanyou
Veteran
Titanfall walked so call of duty infinite warfare could stumble and trip over its own shoelaces. (I loved that campaign though)I’d say titanfall 2 is the peak of fps single player. But that’s just me
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Keep in mind that Bungie's mainline Halo games (Halo 1-3) basically sold as much or more than their COD counterparts. For example, 2007's COD4: Modern Warfare (arguably the game that really launched COD's popularity) sold in similar numbers to Halo 3 despite COD4: MW being multiplatform and Halo 3 being only available on Xbox. It also sold better than COD in 2007 in NA, again despite being only on X360. By 2012 Halo 3 had sold 14.5 million copies while COD4: MW had sold 15.7 million copies by 2013.
Neither COD 2 nor 3 came close to Halo in sales. COD4: MW was the point where COD started to become the juggernaut that it is today.
ODST and Reach each had reasons for not selling as well. ODST was short and basically a DLC turned into a stand alone game. Reach was an interesting situation that despite it being a great entry in the series it also featured a story where people already knew how it would end. Plus, neither featured MC or Cortana.
Halo 4 shows that there was initially still huge interest in Halo with it achieving launch year records for the series on the back of pre-orders by people expecting another great Halo featuring MC and Cortana. Of course, sales subsequently fell off a cliff in the following years as word spread about how bad the game was. That of course, directly led to the tepid, disappointing but earned low sales for Halo 5.
People didn't lose interest in Halo. People lost interest in how the franchise was being treated.
Regards,
SB
Well. I did love the sound. Thought that was nailed.
This has to be a typo. COD single player experience? That should be a joke up there with "I'm from the government. I'm here to help." I bought Modern Warfare and was so excited. They actually have proper modern sights! WooHoo! First COD game. It was complete and total shit. What. 4 hours of monster closets? You couldn't even clear a room, they just kept coming. Felt like I was set back 10 years. Picked up COD:BO or BO2, I cannot remember which, and it was damn near unplayable. I have never purchased one since and have no intention of ever doing so. The single player campaigns are some of the worst and just downright most disappointing I have ever played.
Halo came out at the right time with the right tech. Artistically, it is a hit and a miss though. The art style was never great, imho. But at the time, the great campaigns, and excellent multiplayer -local or online- options made up for it. Plus the semi open world, the campaign tricks and speed runs, etc, the tech allowed for some really cool things, typical of games of old.
The story was imho also bad, I never got it, sometimes I was completing missions for reasons I didn't get to understand, it wasn't like a Age of Empires 1 or 2 campaign scenario where you do what you gotta do and the instructions are clear.
I liked Halo 4 while not being a huge Halo fan, but I also liked Halo 2 more than Halo 3. But after Halo 4 the story, while a bit bad, started to get to an over dramatic point. Also people missed Cortana.
ODST and Halo Reach are very good games -completed both-. Halo 4 was enjoyable enough for me to complete it. After that, I never played Halo 5 and got like 4 hours into Halo Infinite but I didn't like the game enough to complete it because of the save points issues.
how underrated that games was. Was one if my most fun FPS exleriences everI’d say titanfall 2 is the peak of fps single player. But that’s just me
I would soft disagree with this. No so much as to say you are wrong, as I do think that many individuals feel that Halo changed and they lost interest in the changes. But I think the industry shifted at that point (COD4 as you mentioned) to the modern military shooter and away from scifi. Even the more scifi CODs are the worst selling in the series. I do think a fair amount of the public grew up with Halo but became CODbro adults, and I do think the industry grew in that period and the new gamers leaned toward COD more than Halo.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I understand where you're coming from with that although I may not necessarily agree with it. Hence why I pointed out the record launch year sales for Halo 4. Lots of people still wanted a good Sci-Fi Halo game. Halo 4 was not a good game period, IMO.
Two of the most popular shooters currently are Sci-Fi (Apex Legends) and not a military shooter (Fortnite). Microsoft's most popular shooter that continues to sell well is a Sci-Fi shooter (Gears of War).
If we look at some of the bad performing Sci-Fi shooters, did they perform badly because they were Sci-Fi or because they were bad games and/or too different from what the existing fanbase expected? BF2042 was just a bad game period. Call of Duty: IW was too different from what COD players wanted. COD: AW introduced new movement mechanics that the existing player base wasn't fond of.
Titanfall 2 wasn't a bad game, but it was also following an initial entry that was multiplayer only. IE - it was a new entry into an IP that had a small player/fan base to begin with. Sequels are already difficult to pull off. So it isn't that surprising that Titanfall 2 didn't sell as well as it could have. Of course, the follow-up to Titanfall 2 was Apex Legends which got a boost to the initial player base that TF2 built up as well as it's reputation as a good game and thus help facilitate Apex Legends rise in popularity.
Regards,
SB
cheapchips
Veteran
I am one of the few that did not like the GoW reboot. The mechanics in the first games are pretty great and it would have been awesome taking that to an even grander scale. Now you have to find resources to craft stones to put on Kratos arm covers. Not fun.
I think I expressed myself wrongly. What I meant is cod in sp is very cinematic, Hollywood style experience. Basically everything we saw in good war movies was done in cod with some spectacular effects. Granted gameplay wise it is very scripted and feel directed. But still the settings, atmosphere, scale is very impressive.
Also yes I forgot about TF2 the greatest fps game ever made. Nothing come close to it. And I am dead serious.
Thanks. Seems like i was wrong. Good post.
Doom reinvented its gameplay by getting much faster, adding a rhythm to the combat by having to use those glory kills, the flame thrower and the chainsaw to generate health, ammo and armour. On top of that it added platforming. There are some people that will say, this isn't doom, it's not horror anymore. I would say f those people, they are few and far between. Doom can't continue without changing, and it worked. Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal are great games, specifically because they intentionally betrayed the formula. Halo adds sprint and the fanbase loses its mind, because it's a betrayal to the series. Unfortunately for Halo, the people who get upset about stuff like that is seemingly a large portion of the audience. People just want to play Halo 2 and Halo 3 over again. Those games are ancient. The audience for that is middle aged men, many of whom have stopped gaming. It's not going to bring in anyone new.
liked both modern Doom games, specially Doom 2016 (Doom Eternal went too far with platforming, imho). However, I had memorised the original maps of Doom 1, like in no other game. Those were memorable maps, and the simple mechanics of using keys to open doors was imho, almost perfect.
If a 3D game could be made like that nowadays, with memorable -thus prone to easy memorization- maps, with the classic mechanics, it would also be a great game. Heck, tbh, I never got to learn my base on Doom Eternal,
that's kinda telling, despite of all the indicators of the world telling you where to go.
yes, evolution isn't always good. Innovation innovation innovation, yes put a quadrupe jump in Halo (innovation! That has to be good. No it isn't). You gotta be very smart or create another Resident Evil 4, which changed RE but the base essence was there.
Doom 3 is a good example of evolution that didn't work. It sold a lot because it was Doom, but lost the hordes of enemies, the good ol' barrels of fun, the more open maps -I liked the soul cube for another playthrough though-... It managed to keep Doom's prestige intact, so it is a smart game in that sense but the imps and other enemies lost their identity somehow.
Post-Bungie Halo games are very good games technically wise. But they lack that extra something, that thing you can't describe but make certain games timeless.
@Cyan There's always a point where people eventually tire of a formula, or that formula becomes a niche. There are lots of boomer shooter indie games that replicate that Doom/Doom2/Duke Nukem 3D era. Trying to make a modern Halo game that plays like Halo 2/3 would be a huge mistake. Someone could probably make that game for that audience, but it couldn't be a AAA huge budget game. Halo 4/5 changed out of necessity. Unfortunately they did a mediocre job. I would say they didn't change nearly enough. They changed only a little. Halo Infinite was an attempt to just go back to basics, and it's an incredibly uninspiring game that didn't resonate. That's why I'd rather see 343 make something totally different. They fell behind on tech, which they can maybe solve with the UE switch, but ultimately they lacked the creativity and the ... bravery? ... to reinvent Halo. Just too afraid to upset their vocal middle-aged fans, and too limited in vision for the game. I think unsaddling themselves from expectations would lead to much better games.
Thing is - Halo is a specific thing. It is distinguished by a certain feel in the mechanics, and a certain flow in the gameplay or competitive matches.
They aren't just 'too afraid' to upset the hardcore Halo fanbase, they know full well that straying too far will lose them. Which could be ok only if they are able to find an entirely new, large-enough audience. And that's extremely challenging and of course risky. They should be afraid of doing such a thing because they could easily find themselves much worse off if they dont strike gold.
I think this is why most people would rather see them do something different altogether. Give Halo a rest. Maybe whatever they do could still be Halo-inspired, but give it a new name, give it a fresh setting. Give themselves the freedom to do something new without the attachment and expectations of what a 'Halo' game needs to be.
Something I want to add, but I’m not sure how big of a factor it is, the audience for Halo skews older, much older. MS continues to try to make Halo skew younger, they want it to be more family friendly.
Technically the game is fine, but the story and the art, all skews young. I think Halo 4,5,infinite would have been fine if the art and lighting were gritty, dark, brutal; and the story as well. It is something adults were expecting halo to go as the game progressed.
PlayStation embraced that, they just said,‘let’s go, all adult games’. MS has not quite figured that out yet, they don’t seem too interested or keen on doing that, they want to be in between Nintendo and Sony.
Technically the game is fine, but the story and the art, all skews young. I think Halo 4,5,infinite would have been fine if the art and lighting were gritty, dark, brutal; and the story as well. It is something adults were expecting halo to go as the game progressed.
PlayStation embraced that, they just said,‘let’s go, all adult games’. MS has not quite figured that out yet, they don’t seem too interested or keen on doing that, they want to be in between Nintendo and Sony.
And that's why we can't get a new Sly Cooper.
If people really don’t want the core mechanics to change and to feel consistent then there’s no point in ever making a new Halo. People still play Counter Strike 1.6 and CS GO is huge. Just play Halo Infinite MP forever, or the master chief collection or whatever. At some point they’re just going to be making games for whining fifty-year-olds.
Subtlesnake
Regular
Infinite is already a big departure from prior games with the open world setting, grappling hook and other equipment and an arsenal where half of the weapons are all-new. The multiplayer doesn't feel super fresh because its core modes are basically 16 years old at this point. But when Battle Royale comes, hopefully that will change. And the single player is held back by a lack of level design variety and setpiece moments, which can be fixed by new content.
I assume that what Seanspeed meant is not that *nothing* should change, but that change should maintain the trinity of guns, grenades and melee, in the context of the "30 seconds of fun" formula.
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