Bungie's Destiny

[Higuy]

I've enjoyed all of their games so far except Reach, it was utter crap in my opinion. ODST was alright, but nothing more then a short expansion and quite lack luster. Halo 2 by far had my favorite multiplayer for Xbox Live, and unlike what alot of others think, one of the best campaigns ( I even thought the ending was pretty damn cool with the cliffhanger). Similar to what Warlord said, Bungie may have not been innovative, bringing the same concepts from previous FPS's, but they made a simple game that was damn well fun to play and wasn't overly complicated. It was entertaining, and still is.

[Ki11a_FTW]

Bungie are great developers. Every single Halo, was a multi-million success, even though some are favored more than others, they are all great games in general. Even with Halo 2's shit campaign, it's still :O. And no wonder why ODST was so good lol. Wasn't to pleased with Halo 2, and 3 after a while (of course i was blown away at first).

[Warsaw]

Am I the only one who has never been that impressed with Bungie? Of course I love H1, but since H1 I can say I've only truly enjoyed one of their games, and that would be H3. I'm curious to see what they do with Destiny, but I've grown to expect disappointment.

You aren't alone. I think they had a one-off smash success and have been coasting on it ever since. The only way Halo 3 got to be made and be good was on the backs of the fan-base (and their money) that Halo 1 generated.

Bungies games are above average, but I don't consider them "great." I reserve that title only for Halo: Combat Evolved since it was the most finely tuned and pitch-perfect experience through and through. The only other shooters that come to mind that can say the same about are Metro 2033 and Half-Life 2.

[DarkHalo003]

Did you ever play the Marathon Sereies? It was so much fun IMO.

[BobtheGreatII]

Did you ever play the Marathon Sereies? It was so much fun IMO.

I've played parts of the first. It was pretty sweet.

[Warsaw]

I will admit that I actually haven't. During its heyday, I wasn't even playing shooters yet unless you want to count Wing Commander as a shooter. Actually, in 1994 I was still mostly playing 3D Space Cadet pinball, Reader Rabbit, and Math Blaster.

[BobtheGreatII]

ONI was awesome too in my opinion. And lets not forget about the Myth series. I think saying that Bungie had a "one-off smash success" is total bullshit. Bungie has worked fairly hard to earn the title and the success that came with Halo.

Metro 2033 had clunky terrible controls and wasn't all that impressive.

Comparing Half-Life 2 to Halo is unfair. Both were amazing for what they were doing at the time. Valve was pushing PC hardware at the time to pull off some amazing effects, while Bungie was doing their absolute best to bring a FPS to a console without it being a mess to play. And may we also say they did this very well? Bungie has earned every bit of praise they have received. Saying otherwise is just being pigheaded and ignorant.

[Warsaw]

Metro 2033 was clunky? You must think that Battlefield is clunky, too, because apart from the gas-mask the controls are nigh identical. It had mechanics that required you to apply some brain-power, but the controls were a simple key-press for everything and the gas-mask button-hold was actually embarrassingly ingenious. The cut-scenes were also so well-scripted that I had to do a double-take every now and then to make sure I hadn't triggered some kind of branching path.

And I did just say that I put Halo 1 in the same category as Half-Life 2. I didn't say it maybe compares, I said it's absolutely on the same tier. It has nothing to do with pushing limits of anything, it has everything to do with delivering a fine-tuned play experience that holds up under every potential circumstance. Halo 2+ do not do this (Legendary anybody?). Bungie nailed it with the first game in every category. It is challenging without being frustrating, is very rewarding to play, and it makes you yearn for more. Just like the other two games I mentioned do for me. I don't think that it was a fluke; they did a very good job and earned that title. The other games? Not so much.

Regarding ONI and Marathon, those didn't create rabid fan-bases that a publisher decided was big enough to milk for 5 more games plus some third-party spin-offs and general enfranchisement. Halo made the Xbox. Marathon couldn't make the Mac. ONI didn't even score well with both critics and players to even begin to tell me that "Bungie has earned every bit of praise they have received." They made one genuinely amazing game and then squandered their good name, as far as I am concerned, with, to use your own language, pig-headed decisions with the Halo games. They didn't keep trying to reintroduce Halo 1 mechanics over the course of the series for nostalgic reasons alone. They knew they had dug themselves into a corner with Halo 2, an evolutionary dead-end. They knew they had to change things, but that people would cry foul at every deviation from Halo 2, so they had to slowly make it more like the first game one step at a time. Every single iteration after Halo 2 went back to the roots a little more. And you want to know why Halo 2 became the standard? Xbox Live; it meant a lot more people could play it together. I would bet a good chunk of money that if Halo 1 had been Live-enabled, Halo 2 would have been crucified for how its multi-player behaved. It was already more or less crucified for its campaign versus its predecessor by the players.


Finally, saying that people are ignorant because, essentially, you are of the opinion that their opinion is ignorant, is assuming that your opinion is not ignorant. This is a moronic thing to do. In this case, it's also an ad hominem attack. Drop the rhetoric while you are ahead.

[PopeAK49]

I found the flood fights in Halo 1 to be much more entertaining and atmospheric. Halo 2 and 3 should have took the flood theme song and strategies from Halo 1. Most people hated fighting the flood, but I found the change in game play strategy to be incredible. You go half the game fighting typical aliens with different strategies to a much more survivalist zombie game type that offers lots of close encounters. I think a lot of people just hated the close encounters.

[Ki11a_FTW]

Halo 1 was going in the right direction with the flood. Halo 2 was ehh, the atmosphere for them though was also in the right direction though. Halo 3... not so much. Didnt want to fight with them. And I think the way the gravemind was executed came out to be a little cheesy/dramatic. It would have been cooler if the gravemind was this ugly king, that didnt speak english.. Kind of some bio-mass creature with a bunch of parts similar to that movie, The Thing. You would fight him in Halo 3, and not see him in Halo 2.