I have my doubts about The Conduit's first sales

[theRepublic]

disolitude said:

theRepublic said:

disolitude said:
"The first Halo, let's face it, is very generic and a little mediocre."

No point of reading the rest after reading that foul statement.

Halo 1 for the time when it was released in 2001 is on par with Super mario bros and Street fighter 2 or other iconic game releases when it comes to FPS innovation and importance. Especially if you only look at consoles. There is a lot more in Halo 1 than Local multiplayer that left a mark on the gaming world.

What do you mean by innovation?

Some people will claim another obscure game came up with all these things 6 months before Halo 1, but anyone that knows how long Halo had been in develpment at Bungie knows otherwise.

- Squad based single player campaign experience with coop!

- Open level environments (instead of corridors and hallways)

- Regenerating health

- Vehicle combat where one can drive, be the passinger or be on the turret

- Only 2 weapons at a time allowed

- Complex FPS experience with console specific controls that work

How many games after Halo took these influences and applied it to their games? Almost as many that ripped off the ha-do-ken!

I'm not exactly a video game historian or anything, but I have a few comments:

- I wouldn't really call Halo a squad based shooter considering you spend most of the time alone, you can't command your squad, and your squad is basically unimportant.  Even if you do call it a squad based shooter, it wasn't the first because there was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six in 1998.  As for co-op, the concept existed in other genres long before Halo.  As for shooters, Perfect Dark had a co-op campaign mode and a counter-operative campaign mode where you worked against each other. (Guovssohas pointed out Duke Nukem 64 had co-op campaign even earlier than Perfect Dark)

- Goldeneye and Perfect Dark each had several outdoor levels which were quite open.  They were limited by the technology, but they were there.  Even so, you do spend a good amount of time in corridors and hallways in Halo.  They just usually open up into big rooms.  Now that I think about this more, even Doom II had several levels that were fairly wide open. (JaggedSac pointed out Tribes as a game with large outdoor environments)

- Good point.  Can't think of one before it.

- Good point.  Can't think of one before it.  However, there were plenty of vehicles in games before Halo, you just couldn't operate every part of the vehicle like in Halo. (JaggedSac pointed out Tribes as a game where passengers could shoot)

- Bad thing in my opinion, but can't think of one before it.

- Goldeneye and Perfect Dark ring any bells?

Yes, there have been a lot of Halo imitators.  There is no question as to the influence that this game has had on the video game world.  I was just wondering what you were refering to specificly when you said 'innovation'.  I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head even though I played quite a bit of Halo 1 and 2.  What I remember those games for was not being innovative, but for doing everything very well (and the multiplayer).