Halo: Anniversary - The Halo 1 remake (fuck anyone who calls it "halo ce" remake)

[Ki11a_FTW]

As intresting as the aribters aspect of the story is in halo 2 (and its only intresting because you kinda get to see what the covenant is all about), the game wouldve been more of a success if it followed masterchief the entire time. A lot of intresting story/plot sequences couldve been inserted IF we didnt follow the arbiter in Halo 2. The Arbiters story wouldve probably made the game more of a success if it was an add on to the game, like maybe if it was included with Halo 2's first map pack or something. Because without the arbiter on the main game, they couldve put in a lot of kickass shit following the chief, meaning that all the arbiter levels would of course be levels replaced with masterchief's, also making the game feel a lot longer.

However this is just my look on the game, A lot of you might like the arbiters side of the game, i dont know.

[IGMBiti]

Halo 2 was herping and derping all over the place; once you started playing the Arbiter, it started getting progressively worse. The levels themselves were garbage, as were the gunplay mechanics. Then there's the AI hacks, the bullocks that was the lack of an Earth-centric story, and the retarded damage sponge they called "Brutes." Brutes were in no way fun to fight in Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, or Reach. As for the story, the whole Covenant Civil War was paper thin and not executed very well. Prophets getting butthurt that the Elites couldn't stop a super-soldier with nothing to lose causes them to betray their oldest allies? A Gravemind (how the fuck did he not get toasted by thousands of sentinels?). The revelation in Halo 3 that Truth was an innocently ignorant religious sociopath destroys the Covenant as an interesting faction in Halo 2. And the worst atrocity of the entire thing: Elites speaking English. Yay space lizardmen.

I agree about the prophets, and I find it utterly stupid that the only reason they want to destroy all life is because they didn't RTFM.
Storywise, I can't understand the demotions of the elites. In game, however, it makes perfect sense; Regret's guards are dangerous only when you aren't sitting in his chair beating him up and, even then, they are ignorable unless you don't pay attention to where you are going. That is to say that as guards of the prophets, the elites were pathetic.
I actually enjoyed playing as the Arbiter because it meant I had, in place of the broken flashlight, active camouflage. I really enjoyed being able to effectively stealth through most of the levels as the Arbiter with my invisible elite and grunt buddies, which replaced the "lol kill everything or get 1-shot sniped by jackal snipers" gameplay in the levels you play as Master Chief.
I'm not sure what you mean by the brutes being damage sponges. In Halo 2, even on legendary, a few shots with the carbine and the brute goes down. If you don't have the carbine, there's always a plethora of needlers (from grunts) and beam rifles (from crates). If you somehow managed to waste all of those, it isn't too hard to just melee them in the back or even skip them. Brutes are even easier in Halo 3 because they are using power armor, making them headshottable after an overcharge from the plasma pistol (except for the chieftains who, quite honestly, are even more ignorable than grunts). I can't speak for Reach or ODST though, but I imagine that in ODST the point is to try and sneak past them.
Also on the subject of manuals, I believe the Halo 2 manual explains why the elites/prophets/brutes speak English. While the reason is BS, I imagine the game would be somehow worse if you had subtitles during half the game just to explain what the elites said.

In response to an earlier post, I'm not sure why someone would even use ammo to kill grunts. Use it on the bigger enemies and the grunts will temporarily scare, allowing you to come in and melee most of them to death before they rally (or just let your marine/elite buddies to help you out, although in the case of the elites, they'd probably just run up and melee them anyway).

[Siliconmaster]

An Earth-centric story would have been shit(see ODST)

...I loved ODST

I did enjoy the Arbiter's storyline and cutscenes though.

[Warsaw]

@Cagerrin: I defy you to explain just how ODST was bad. It wasn't the best, but it was more enjoyable than Halo 2 was. Also, unless you can explain how an Earth-focused campaign would be shit, you have no argument.

As for the cutscenes, that's not part of what I was ragging about. The cinematography and voice acting were great, but good cutscenes don't make up for mediocre game-play. The best levels of Halo 2 were Cairo Station, Delta Halo, Regret, and Uprising. Only one of those is an Arbiter level. Why? Because all of his levels tend to be the worst-playing ones, especially his debut set. *His* story was cool, but it didn't belong. They also cheated us players out of what we were looking forward to most when we learned we would be playing as an Elite: slaughtering humans wholesale just like Elites do when we're playing as the Chief. I get to be an Elite!? Sweet, now I get to take out my stress on Stacker over ther--wait, I'm fighting more Elites and Grunts? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-


Also, you remember all those complaints everybody makes (and are still making) about Halo 3 and Reach? 90% of those issues were birthed by Halo 2. That includes: DMR spam, two-hit melee, melee lunge, retarded-ass grenades, terrible map layouts, every non-DMR weapon being close to useless, and every remotely useful weapon being relegated to what might as well count for "power weapon" status. Oh, and let's not forget the MLG dick-sucking. I fail to see how people who complain about Halo 3's multiplayer praise Halo 2's multiplayer, which is almost exactly the same save for a few weapon additions and tweaks. Even Reach plays 85% the same as Halo 2, it's just that Armour Abilities and less player agility change it just enough to be different. Everybody whining about cross-hair bloom is complaining because they can't get their three kills per magazine a la Halo 2 BR55 because they can't time their shots properly and they get killed as a result.

So no, the only game deserving a remake is the first one. It has a distinctly unique feel compared to ALL of its successors, and everything about that game was better. Yes, even the multiplayer settings were better.

@IGMBiti: The Brutes are damage sponges UNLESS you place headshots. But that goes back to all subsequent Halo iterations following Nr. 1 requiring you to have a DMR on you unless you want to get absolutely fucked. Needlers were a good substitute, but they chewed through ammo faster than you could blink and I had a hard time finding them on the harder difficulties and on levels not on High Charity. Beam rifles were actually only truly good against Elites and lesser Covenant in Halo 2; it was too precise to thin out a pack of Brutes charging at you down that large indoor ramp. Better to place shots with a carbine as fast as you can, and again that goes back to the DMR requirement. As for Halo 3 and ODST and Reach: they are just retarded enemies who are only able to inflict damage on you because they are in large numbers (quantity over quality, eh?) and because certain members have hacks...invulnerability hacks. Never in a shooter should a regular enemy have invulnerability at any point, especially if it can be activated on point of death to evade said death.

[Ki11a_FTW]

omg cant wait for halo 3 remake

[Warsaw]

omg cant wait for halo 3 remake

[Amit]

An Earth-centric story would have been shit(see ODST). Your views are unforgivable.

You must be a part of the all action, no substance gang. ODST had some of the best moments in Halo with the investigation by the Rookie and some of the flashback sequences like Uplift Reserve, ONI Alpha Site, and Coastal Highway. I found the cutscenes in ODST some of my favourites in the entire series.

[Warsaw]

Atmosphere in Tayari Plaza is damn hard to beat, to say nothing of the Streets segments.

[Cagerrin]

The problem with Earth-based campaigns is that they end up being incredibly generic sci-fi in aesthetic, and the stories simply lack scope. I'm not going to comment on gameplay because I couldn't care less how they play in terms of irritants(EVERYONE seems to blow jackal snipers out of proportion in retrospect).

Characters in ODST are fine, it's just that the environments are boring on the level of Grasswatchers Anonymous.

(also I'm probably the only one, but if H3 had been a full-on Arbiter campaign, I would have bought a 360 for it)

[Warsaw]

A full-on Arbiter game would be cool, actually. Working around Halo 2, start during Halo 1 era and work through to Halo 2. Awesome in the making right there. Then the sequel would pick up post-Halo 2 and follow the Arbiter's escapades in Halo 3, because he wasn't always there. Better yet, make a Halo game with two parallel campaigns. A lot of games used to do this sort of thing (<3 Battlezone), but it's rare these days.

As for ODST, it was not at all generic. Generic would be us getting our asses handed to us by aliens and then turning it around last minute because some badass motherfucker just killed the queen. Hoorah. What ODST has is a mystery, and you are losing the whole way through. Only thing that would have spiced it up even more is if a character or two had died (Mickey dying would have been great for shock-value). Now, Reach tried to do that, but it failed because none of the characters was endearing at all. That, and we knew we were going to lose from the outset, and we knew we were all going to die. Certain death = no shock value.

As for the boringness of the levels, weather would have fixed that. Bungie wanted to do much more dramatic weather, but the engine limitations wouldn't let them. Streets was supposed to have heavy rain and thunder, but instead we have billowing clouds of smoke and a sprinkle here and there. I don't think the human architecture is boring, either. They varied it up nicely. Reach did an even better job with varying human architecture.