Where's my pitch-fork gone?

Anyway, the original Half-Life was innovative. Quite simply for its time, nothing like it had been done. Bringing together a narrative; sequences that weren't all out action and instead, nicely scripted. People actually spoke to you for prolonged periods. No FPS game before had an introduction sequence that didn't feature shoving you straight into the action. Half-Life built tension by having you enter what was supposed to be another day at work.

Then there was the AI, it came out at a time when most FPS game AI either just shot straight at you or would end up running into walls trying to get you. In HL they actually ran for cover, flanked you and flushed you out with grenades.

To a lesser extent the shooting mechanics hadn't been done before either, at least not with as much polish as in HL. It added an extra layer of realism to FPS. Just compare the shooting mechanics to Sin or Quake II.

First-person perspective storytelling through scripted sequences has already been done before in; System Shock, Unreal, and Trespasser. Half-Life was the first to execute it well, but the story itself was bare bones. Unlike System Shock, where the storyline was actually well written and though provoking. Unreal also offered a scripted introduction shown in a interactive first-person view as well. The A.I. was brilliant, but Unreal also provided impressive A.I. for it's time as well, Half-Life just did it better. The realistic gunplay was already presented in GoldenEye 007 and Trespasser, Half-Life just refined it.

Does this make Half-Life any less of a masterpiece, of course not. Half-Life is even a superior game than any of the game's I've just mentioned, but it wasn't particurly innovative. It's just like Halo, it's a classic FPS that didn't do anything new, but it refined everything that was done before and combined it into a well polished package. Both games also contained one atrocious level. :P

It actually isn't, in fact it's mostly refines ideas that have been done before. Scripted storytelling sequences told entirely through a first-person perspective has been done before in; Unreal, System Shock, and Trespasser. The story wasn't particalurly original or well written, it was basically a bare bones re-telling of Doom's story which has basically a re-telling of the Stephen King novella The Myst. However, they were the story was told was brilliantly and far better executed than the previous first-person shooters I've mentioned. System Shock however, had a far superior storyline.

Halo 2 may have been crap, but you have to admit, those first couple of levels before you play as the Arbiter were fucking EPIC!


OT: Yeah, Halo deserves it's praise because without it, we wouldn't have Xbox.

yes i think halo series deserves every good thing that it had said about it. for me its the best fps series i have ever played, has the best lead character and the controls are damn near perfect, the online is always top notch with every game that is released. also halo wars showed the a console can do a rts if its done by a company that tailored it for the console instead of it being ported to the system, liked the game alot. its the only fps series that i can play all the time without ever getting bored.

Halo ODST should have been buried in 50% scores from critics.
The only other game besides that that doesn't deserve the praise is maybe Halo 2. It's easy to say that now though, since there are so many high quality online multiplayer games on consoles. Then it was different, so I would chalk it up to the times.



Halo 3 greatly deserves it for it's unbeatable multiplayer (does COD MW2 let you build maps? HELL NO.)
And Halo just deserves it because it's fu***** epic.

System Shock is more of an action RPG rather than a pure FPS. Also Trespasser has no scripted events like in Half-Life, it's just that when you get to a certain area, the heroine is talking to herself or having flashbacks.

I know someone would come up with that argument, but it's totally bogus.

CE implimented those prior inventions in a way that was so well done, it popularized it. Just like the Wii didn't invent motion controls, and the DS didn't invent touch screens for gaming, ect, yet those platforms are innovative, because they took that idea and knew that they were winners and they risked their necks on it.

Every word in the greatest book was written in the cheapest dictionary before the book was written. It is the arrangement and boldness of those words that causes the book to become a masterpiece.

Just because someone doesn't come up with a basic idea, implimenting a perfected version of it in a worldchanging way can be considered innovative.

Because of Halo:CE, games that came after it, including Resistance 2 and Killzone 2, changed and became better. That game can thus be considered innovative and influential, imo. By your logic, almost nothing, ever, is innovative. The Wii isn't innovative, the DS isn't innovative, ect.

If other games would change because of gimmicks uncharted 2 popularized, then yes, it too would be considered innovative. However, Uncharted 2 didn't popularize any gimmicks, it just took popular gimmicks that were already there(many popularized by Halo:CE).

Nintendo doesn't have to invent motion controls to be considered innovative by implimenting them.

I feel that the campaign is the biggest weakness in the Halo trilogy but the multiplayer is the best on console shooters since Goldeneye on N64. I haven't played either ODST or Reach so I can' comment on those.
All in all, it does deserve critical acclaim I guess but I think I'm the wrong person to speak since I don't really enjoy playing shooters on consoles much at all.

i just recently played halo 3 for the first time... i had never played a halo before, so i can't talk about halo 1 or 2...l but i was really disappointed. to me it felt like mediocrity at its purest.
i played through the campaign in 3 or 4 nights and i don't really remember anything. nothing about the campaign/level design was really memorable to me.
well, taking down a scarab for the first time maybe, that was kinda cool... the first time!
the other thing i really remember is the horrible second to last level with the gooey rooms with the flood. god, that level is just horrible!

well, outside levels were at least decent fun, the vehicles work really well, but the indoor levels were designed very boring: a room with plenty of bad guys, clear it, checkpoint, next door... rinse and repeat.

graphics were "okish"... not a big complaint, i'm not a graphics whore, just saying i was not really impressed, but thats normal i guess, halo 3 isn't exactly brand new.

i have not played online, i have just played through the single player campaign!

[edit:] maybe i should add that all my shooter experience is from PC titles. i don't own a PS3 and i don't have any other shooter experience on the xbox yet.