This seems spot on. The multi really took off and the story was good but not great. I wonder had i read the novels if i would've connected more. Or if Reach came 1st

Yet i haven't seen a single FPS SP story even come close to the poorest moment of any Halo game that came out so far... And that my friend makes halo a legendary game that has yet to be matched... If you add the MP and forge and the rest it goes from legendary to intergalactic and by a few million parsec.... The poorest of halo still tops the rest so I hardly see your point of reference for criticism. I'd still take the worst of the best over the rest

Loved Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST, Reach and Wars. Even Spartan Assault was a good bit of fun.
For me the decline began with Halo 4... Although to Halo 4's credit, it did look good for a console game at the time.

Halo 3 was the most played game on Xbox for months and months, it took a massively long time for Call of Duty to dethrone it from the most played game.
It was clean, it was fun and it was content rich and the campaign was fun, it broke records at the time.

Halo 5 though, isn't a bad game... That is reserved for titles such as Superman on the Nintendo 64, but it's also not genre-defining like the first Halo game or Goldeneye/Perfect Dark. - But to be fair, I don't think I have ever played a sequel that has been able to shake up and define a genre, so that kind of expectation is unfair in my eyes.

It's an average game.
Graphically it's horrible.
Pop-in abounds, bad quality shadowing, aliasing, poor texture filtering... And characters in the distance seem to be rendered at like 10-15fps.
And I hate the dynamic resolution. Give me 720P or 1080P, not everything in between. (Being a PC gamer I am a little more picky.)
Where it's graphics does hold it's own is... With the geometry, they used the Tessellator to it's full extent and it shows and they should be applauded for that.

The Micro-transactions are a grind, Warzone sucks with it's limited amount of maps which gets stale fast... Forge and Theater and other Halo-staples were only just recently added to the game, long after a chunk of the population had moved onto "greener pastures".

The story was a convoluted mess, relying on the expanded universe that 90% of people have no clue about... And then it ends.
The campaign had so much more potential to give, the camp/quiet area's full of NPC's were a massively missed opportunity to flesh out characters and story and there needed to be more Chief.

With that said. It's not a bad game. But it's not a fantastic one either, it's right in the middle... And I will still probably buy Halo 6 and Halo Wars 2, it's certainly better than the bore-fest that is StarWars: Battlefront. (Although StarWars has better graphics by a mile.)

I hear the game is good. A lot of people on my thread say it amazed them. However, it has fallen from a popularity standpoint. Maybe the Teen rating? I dunno.

I played it a lot the first 8-9 days I had it, then I just kind of put it aside and I really haven't gone back to it. The Gameplay is phenomenal in the game, but the story is very forgettable(I don't want to call it bad because I love Halo). They built up so much with the story In Halo 4 and the expanded universe before Halo 5 and its just like all that build up went nowhere. 343 has a problem with writing interesting characters, mostly just writing in general and hopefully Brian Reed doesn't write Halo 6. I would love for them to get Joseph Staten back on as a writer and give Halo that whole Space Odyssey feel again.

I just don't think Microsoft has the right people in charge at 343, their all very corporate yes men/women and the community isn't even fun to be a part of like it was with Bungie. When there were problems with Halo when Bungie ran it, they would respond to the community and be active. It feels like 343 completely ignores everyone and is trying to make Halo this FPS series that Halo fans don't want. They need to stop worrying about sales so much and bring the magic back that Bungie Halo games had.

Why do you think the decline started with 4? To me Reach brought all the changes that led us to 5. The running I think was necessary. They are Spartans. Should have been running. The ordinance shit and all the Armor Abilities should have stayed at the idea table imo

In my opinion, Halo 5's story sucked really bad.

I agree that the franchise is in decline and only Microsoft can be blamed. The Xbox was supposed to bring PC gaming to consoles and with Halo CE at the helm they were successful. In Halo 2 they upgraded multiplayer but finding new paths for the story to follow became problematic (I wasn't pleased with brutes when they were introduced). Halo 3 came and helped move the 360 (I bought one for this game only) and showed us better graphics but again, deteriorating story and now an unbalanced multiplayer with trinkets. Reach came and we received a "meh" short story and the same multiplayer now with loadouts. It felt like they were catering to Call of Duty fans and MLG fans. 343 came and really pushed that agenda along. That's where I decided to move on. I am somewhat glad I did because I got to cancel my LIVE subscription and get back into Nintendo. Thanks 343 :D

Yes.

But simply being one of the most notable FPS games this gen isnt enough.

Halo 5 is sometimes disappointing, but it still exceeded my expectations because I had literally no faith in 343.

I did not like anything from Halo 4. I tried to get into it multiple times coming back after weapon tuning and DLC because I bought the collector's edition. I had no trouble doing well because I used all the overpowered setups before they were popular: Thruster pack, ammo, mobility. I pretty much was on cycle in that game with constant power weapons so my k/d was actually higher than past games. However, I felt the game required no skill, wasn't Halo, and had COD elements added without tuning and implemented poorly. It's honestly the worst multiplayer I've ever played. It reminded me more of Section 8: Prejudice than a AAA title. All the maps were complete garbage and boring.

I also hated the graphics of Halo 4 and don't get the appeal to it at all. I also found a ridiculous amount of bugs in the game especially related to the AI which made the game on legendary super easy. I beat it blind in 5 hours on my first playthrough on legendary and it wasn't challenging at any point. I thought the story was completely out of place with the series and the soundtrack didn't feel right. They couldn't get theater or fileshare right for months. There were little tiny changes everywhere that all added up to making the experience worse. They went out of their way to change things for no reason such as being able to move when you pause for the scoreboard. Multiply that by a 100 and you get my point. I was on full board with the "Halo is dad" train after Halo 4. Halo 4 was the worst AAA game I ever played. Halo is one of my favorite gaming series and I don't say that simply due to expectations. I just thought it was a bad video game. If it wasn't Halo I wouldn't have bought it.

Then we had MCC which had its own list of issues. So at this point I did not expect much from Halo 5. I bought it mostly just to see if 343 could make a good campaign. Once again I was let down here.

However, after playing a lot of Halo 5 I have mostly positive feelings about the gameplay. Halo 5 is a fun game with decent mechanics that takes more good than bad from Call of Duty and fixes a lot of stupid things Reach and 4 did wrong. I could go a lot more in depth, but basically core gameplay is the best since Halo 3. It doesn't feel like classic Halo, but it feels unique in its own right.

Halo 5 has a lot of problems that are not related to gameplay. No infection, oddball, or king of the hill. There's a lack of good quality maps (still better than Halo 4 maps) and due to one DLC map coming a month it seems like it will be a while before that is fixed. I have a lot of negative things I could say about the REQ system.

I'm not going to nitpick the game to death because right now I enjoy it. 343 redeemed themselves, and I will consider getting Halo 6 at full price. I got Halo 5 for half because of abusing a bing rewards special that was going on a couple weeks prior to release.