Half-Life vs. Halo

[Scott_Arm]

Uhmm. the most widely played online first person shooter in world, if Im not mistaken, is Counter-Strike with something like 6 billion minutes logged each month.

Being that CS is a free mod for HL, I wouldn't say HL multi-player sucks especially when you consider the other 15 or so other well known mods that offer both versus and co-op play.

Yeah, no idea how Halo multiplayer could even be considered in the same league as HL w/ Team Fortress, CS and DOD.


Half Life wins this competition by a landslide, though I'm judging from the PC version. I rented an Xbox with my bro and played through Halo in coop. That game got REALLY boring REALLY fast. The very last level when you have to drive that car out of the exploding base was really fun though.

 

[NovemberMike]

No half-life revolutionized the FPS industry because it was the first mainstream shooter to

- clearly and explicitly tie a storyline straight into the gameplay Marathon
- feature computer controlled 'NPC' ai's that followed along and assisted the player Marathon
- have in engine/in game scripted cutscenes
- have complex enemy ai routines (scripted or otherwise)

This is an old thread though...

 

[warb]

Reasons why I voted for Halo (singleplayer/co-op):

• Gameplay. Dedicated buttons for the melee attack and grenades, the two-weapon limit, recharging shields, vehicles, AI.
• I prefer the Halo universe and back-story; just.
• Memories of the awesome co-op mode.
• Sound and music.

 

[Daozang]

Trying to compare a game that was released on 1998 and one that was released on 2001 is giving me one hell of a headache...
Instead I’ll try to compare the impression each game left me with when I finished it.

Halo: Excellent game, cannot remember what happened in the end… Loved it when I first set foot on Halo it self, hated it for its repetitiveness on the library levels. I also liked the open environments. Unfortunately no one of my friends is into FPSs and most of them don’t even like games in general, so I cannot commend on the coop.

Half life : From the beginning of the game I was in awe. The first level felt like the first 10 minutes you’d spend playing an adventure game (a while back they were the mainstream in gaming and I was a huge fan) were you would just explore and let the game guide you were it wants. The atmosphere of that level lingered I believe all the way to the end.
From then on, it was a rollercoaster of fun. I can still remember the tension the scripted scenes gave to the game, or that huge thing with the flamethrower hands (I think it was called a Gargantua) that you either should take out with everything you had in your arsenal or use a puzzle mechanism. As for the end, I loved it. Even the alien planet levels felt great back then. And the last encounter with the G-man at the very end of the game, well, lets just say that Valve knew what they were doing when the first character they showed to demonstrate their engine for HL2 was him.

It is fairly obvious that I’m a HL fan, so I’m definitely not very objective when judging the game or comparing it with an other.

One good thing I have to say about Halo (besides the ones I’ve already mentioned) is that, now that I’ve been talking about it, it made want to play it again. Maybe to remember what the hell happened in the end?

 

[RobertR1]

Didn't care for HL1 but had a ton of fun playing through HL2.

Haven't played Halo 1 or 2 but gonna buy them and do some co op with a buddy.

Looking forward to Halo3 and HL2:EP2 just as equally!

 

[cameltoe1009]

Interesting. Halo is winning the poll, but none the Halo-voters are in here to defend it.

Edit: By the way, CaptainHowdy, the game will hit the 4 year old mark in October. Not really any point to my comment. Just FYI.

HL was released in 1998
HL2 in 2003

 

[Skrying]

November 1998: Half-Life
November 2001: Halo

Halo in a lot of regards... was a shitty game. I said it... Lets be honest here, Halo has some horrible level design when it comes to indoor areas. It wasn't just one area (though the Library made me sick it was so repetitive and bland) but instead extended to so many other areas. I can't count how many times I thought "was I just here!?" and I couldn't help but think "Damn are these people stupid in layout design". So there you have it, I consider Half Life to be a master piece and Halo to be a headache.

 

[SugarCoat]

HL for the story and SP. Halo had co-op which made it fun. HL had great online deathmatch too.

since this threads creation though (as it was started FIVE YEARS AGO) i think Sven Coop 3.0 has established itself as a fantastic and totally functional version of HL Coop, certainly superior than any coop Xbox 1 offered for FPS.

 

[warb]

November 1998: Half-Life
November 2001: Halo

Halo in a lot of regards... was a shitty game. I said it... Lets be honest here, Halo has some horrible level design when it comes to indoor areas. It wasn't just one area (though the Library made me sick it was so repetitive and bland) but instead extended to so many other areas. I can't count how many times I thought "was I just here!?" and I couldn't help but think "Damn are these people stupid in layout design". So there you have it, I consider Half Life to be a master piece and Halo to be a headache.

Hey, that's one of my favourite games you're talkin' about.

You didn't like it, which is fair enough but objectively Halo is not a shitty game in any regard. It did get a 96% average review score; that's a whole 1% higher than HL.

 

[AlNom]

Oy... I think I'm reminded why versus threads have been outlawed.

 

[Skrying]

Hey, that's one of my favourite games you're talkin' about.

You didn't like it, which is fair enough but objectively Halo is not a shitty game in any regard. It did get a 96% average review score; that's a whole 1% higher than HL.

Except it has horrible level design that was more then enough to ruin the entire experience. From there the vehicle were sorta neat but got boring fast. It was not a good (and certainly not a great) game in my opinion. I could also honestly care less about reviews when it comes to games...

 

[warb]

Except it has horrible level design that was more then enough to ruin the entire experience. From there the vehicle were sorta neat but got boring fast. It was not a good (and certainly not a great) game in my opinion. I could also honestly care less about reviews when it comes to games...

Fair enough. I disagree completely.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Hey, that's one of my favourite games you're talkin' about.

You didn't like it, which is fair enough but objectively Halo is not a shitty game in any regard. It did get a 96% average review score; that's a whole 1% higher than HL.

There's a lot of PC gamers that think Halo is massively overrated, myself being one of them. Maybe that's where he's coming from. I think as a console game it was one of the better fps game. It definitely pushed the fps genre on the console. Coming from a PC background, I thought it was a really boring game. The only thing I remember about it was sitting with my brother and forcing ourselves to finish it. There isn't anything about the game that really stuck in my mind except for the car bit where you're driving out of the exploding base, or whatever it was.

 

[GreekDNA]

Half life for sure

while halo is great and still is , the repetitive level design and unbalanced weapons put it several notches below half life.

i mean it only takes till the 2nd level of halo to relise you could complete the game using only the pistol and plasma rifle :|

but that being said halo did have some amazing ai and the battles felt epic .

when it comes to half life it was near perfection imho, the atmosphere, level design, sound, etc etc spot on :smile:

 

[DieH@rd]

Half Life wins with a landslide. Great AI, animation sistem, non repetitive levels, and awesome atmosphere... From the opening train ride to the GMans monologue on the end...



Also, HL1 has one of best one-man-mods, Someplace Else, by Adam Foster [creator of the incredible Minerva Metastasis mod for HL2]
TRY THEM NOW!

 

[warb]

There's a lot of PC gamers that think Halo is massively overrated, myself being one of them. Maybe that's where he's coming from. I think as a console game it was one of the better fps game. It definitely pushed the fps genre on the console. Coming from a PC background, I thought it was a really boring game. The only thing I remember about it was sitting with my brother and forcing ourselves to finish it. There isn't anything about the game that really stuck in my mind except for the car bit where you're driving out of the exploding base, or whatever it was.

I'm a PC gamer who played both games at around their respective launches. Halo: CE on Xbox was a great game, IMO.

Did you not try higher difficulty settings? I'm flabbergasted that anyone could find the co-op campaign boring. It's easily one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, and why I rate Halo so highly.

 

[djskribbles]

only played the first halo but never cared much for it. loved HL and i love HL2 (especially CS and CS:S, the only online game i've consistently played for years).

 

[Ben-Nice]

only played the first halo but never cared much for it. loved HL and i love HL2 (especially CS and CS:S, the only online game i've consistently played for years).

I'm the same way. If your ever playing CS:S hit up the FAA Dust 2 server. Maybe I can shoot you in the head

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm a PC gamer who played both games at around their respective launches. Halo: CE on Xbox was a great game, IMO.

Did you not try higher difficulty settings? I'm flabbergasted that anyone could find the co-op campaign boring. It's easily one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, and why I rate Halo so highly.

We rented an xbox and hammered through the game in the few days that we had it. Don't remember what difficulty we played. I generally love co-op play, but we both felt the game was very repetitive and uninteresting.

 

[NovemberMike]

Halo was the first console FPS that didn't simply mimic PC FPS. Look at Goldeneye, and you'll find that it was essentially a PC FPS with poor aiming control. Same with Timesplitters and most of the others. Halo was the first to take advantage of the fact that consoles have more buttons readily available (but less total) and give you more options straight out (ie. the melee and grenades) while taking away the traditional weapon system so you didn't have to run through an entire inventory (where a PC gamer would simply press 1 or something).

Halo also marked one of the first games to use vehicles throughout both the campaign and multiplayer in a meaningful way. A lot of games (Goldeneye again, for one) had small vehicle sequences once or twice, but Halo was the first one where you could use them in just about every level but didn't have to (outside of the banshee in a few levels).