It is not unreasonable to say that if it wasn’t for Halo, Microsoft’s Xbox manufacturer might not have lived past its first console. Kicking things off with the first Xbox launch title Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001, Bungie efficiently revolutionized the console first-person shooter using a game that featured an intriguing sci-fi narrative and putting, a charismatic hero at the Master Chief, and naturally, fluid controllers and exciting gameplay. Over the years and a half because Halo first arrived to the scene, the franchise is now synonomous with the Xbox brand and has established many sequels and spin-offs of quality.
Even though the franchise isn’t as hot as it once had been, with all Halo Wars 2 outside this past year and Halo 6 somewhere around the horizon, Halo isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Clearly, that means this will be a marginally biased list, however I believe that you’ll discover that I have justified each of my positions. Don’t hesitate to talk about your personal standing of the Halo games in the comments!
I haven’t been able to perform Halo Wars 2 yet, so I have not included it here, but I will be sure to add it once that changes. Additionally, I am not adding Spartan Strike because it’s essentially an inferior variation of Spartan Assault and would rank in the bottom of the record anyway.
9. Halo: Spartan Assault
Set between the events of Halo 3 and Halo 4, Spartan Assault is a top-down twin-stick shooter that was originally published on cellular platforms, but eventually made its way to Xbox One and Xbox 360.Read here halo 2 emulator At our site Unfortunately, the jump to consoles didn’t do much to alter Spartan Assault in the unremarkable, however competent twin-stick shooter it is. This is a genre, after all, that’s given us some incredible matches over the years, such as Geometry Wars, Super Stardust HD, along with Resogun, along with Spartan Assault falls far short of those titles.
Even the game’s internet co-op style and overall presentation are definitely its finest features, but at the conclusion of the day, this really can be much more of a passing curiosity for Halo fans compared to an experience they’ll want to go back to. There are far better twin-stick shooters out there that are actually worth your money and time and aren’t laded with microtransactions.
8. Halo Wars
Adding an honest-to-goodness campaign with a good story set prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, in addition to the customary range of multiplayer modes you’d expect to find in a RTS, Halo Wars excels in availability and can be the ideal game for those put off by more complicated RTS games found on PC. But that accessibility can also be what holds Halo Wars back, as it is overly simplistic to appeal to the hardcore RTS crowd and not persuasive enough to influence most Halo fans away from the series’ more traditional first-person shooter experiences.
Furthermore, while I will concede that Halo Wars does an exceptional job of copying the Halo world to a competently-made RTS, I have never been a massive fan of the genre, and this is part of the reason I’ve rated it low. Still, Halo Wars did well enough to spawn a sequel and by many reports, it’s even better than the first (it probably helps that this is also available on PC this time out).
7. Halo 4
After Bungie left Microsoft from 2007 to partner with Activision to what could eventually become Destiny, the secrets to the Halo franchise were first handed to 343 Industries, a Microsoft-owned studio, even after the launch of Bungie’s closing Halo game, Halo: Reach. To mention that 343 had big shoes to fill would be a vast understatement, since they not only needed to prove with Halo 4 that they could craft a game which could endure to Bungie’s work, but also warrant the recurrence of Master Chief, that had efficiently”finished the struggle” at the decision of Halo 3. To this end, 343 was largely profitable. One area that Bungie never just cried at was crafting matches with pretty graphics, so it came as a tiny surprise to see exactly how much better Halo 4 looked compared to its predecessors (seriously, it is still a miracle how they made it running on the Xbox 360 whatsoever ).
The game’s campaign has been challenging, introducing players to a whole new world and race of enemies in the Forerunners, while additionally diving deeper in the franchises’ mythology. Spartan Ops was yet another fun addition, giving players various cooperative missions to play with buddies that only got better as they went together. Regrettably, some questionable design choices make Halo 4 the worst’conventional’ Halo game. However, the biggest difficulty with Halo 4 has been easily its multiplayer, which attempted to ape Call of Duty’s loadout and perk design too significantly, resulting in an experience that totally missed the point of Halo’s level playing field mindset. Luckily, 343 created strides to enhance those issues with their following kick in the can, but not without introducing a few new problems along the way.
6.
A major reason for this might need to do using 343’s regrettable decision to cut split-screen entirely in favour of attaining better visual fidelity and also a higher frame rate, a decision that pissed off a ton of fans who have been accustomed to Halo being their go-to couch co-op shot (myself included). Once you get past the sting of only being able to play with your buddies online however, Halo 5 actually has a lot to offer you. While its campaign suffers from lots of the exact problems as Halo 4 and ends up on a cliffhanger to boot (you’d think Microsoft could have put a moratorium on cliffhangers following the enormous backlash into Halo 2’s ending), its level design was a bit more powerful (a mission about the Elite — sorry, Sangheili — homeworld is a highlight) and has been designed with co-op play in your mind, for better and worse.
Nevertheless, as significant as Halo campaigns are, the multiplayer is the major draw for most players and it is this component that gives Halo 5 the edge on its predecessor. Thanks to a variety of gameplay tweaks focused on character agility, Halo 5 will be the fastest and most fluid game at the franchise and its aggressive modes made excellent use of these changes by ditching Halo 4’s CoD inspirations in favor of a return to more traditional design. To put it simply, Halo 5 provides one of the most effective aggressive online experiences in gambling right now thanks to how well made it is, however, due to 343’s devotion to consistently supplying free updates. In a age where gamers are usually expected to cover additional avenues, 343 has really taken a different route and made every new upgrade free to every one of its players. In fact, they’ve added a lot to the sport because its late 2015 launch it hardly resembles the match it was launch and in some ways feels like the many fully-realized Halo multiplayer that to date.
Shame about that deficiency of split-screen though.
5.
Beginning life as a piece of growth material to Halo 3 predicted Recon, ODST morphed into something a little more ambitious during evolution and became a separate entry into the franchise, regardless of what the’3′ in its title might indicate. Set on Earth through the events of Halo 2, ODST switches things up by casting players not as the Master Chief but instead as’the Rookie,” a member of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers who has separated from his squad after falling into the devastated city of New Mombasa. With a somber score by prior Halo composer Marty O’Donnell, ODST fell players into a rain-soaked city and put more focus on exploration compared to previous Halo matches, with the Rookie looking the city for evidence of what happened to his lost squadmates. Each bit of evidence triggers a flashback mission that are typically more action-oriented than the Rookie’s, assisting lend some sort to the proceedings.
Even though the Rookie nonetheless controls equally to the Master Chief, he’s no Spartan and is far more vulnerable consequently. This little change has a significant impact on the moment-to-moment gameplay, as players need to have a more measured approach to fight when they did in preceding Halo matches, even on lesser difficulties. ODST also introduced that the horde mode-inspired Firefight to the series, a co-op mode that tasks players with holding out as much as possible from waves of increasingly challenging enemies. Regrettably, ODST loses points for its brevity and lack of competitive multiplayer, but it’s definitely a game that punches above its weight and scores points for attempting (and succeeding) to be a decidedly different type of Halo encounter.
4. Halo 2
Halo 2 is now notorious for the cliffhanger ending, which admittedly remains among the worst in gambling. Another main difficulty that buffs often raise is that the effort spends an excessive amount of time on the Arbiter, who had been introduced as a new playable character in this installment, at the expense of the Master Chief. That having been said, Halo 2 could not have any campaign whatsoever and would still be one of the very best Halo games thanks to the multiplayer, which reflected that the franchise’s first foray into online gaming.
There is a good reason Halo 2 has been the most popular game on Xbox Live in its heyday, since there was simply no additional multiplayer experience just like it consoles. The map collection is arguably the best in the series, with all-time favorites such as Lockout and Zanzibar making their debut here, and the debut of new gameplay programs such as dual-wielding and vehicle hijacking gave gamers a whole lot more options on the battlefield. You can surely find the signs that Halo 2 has been rushed into market — probably the most obvious in its distracting feel pop-in and abrupt end — but it’s also among the most crucial matches in Xbox background and provided an early blueprint for the way to do internet multiplayer directly on Xbox Live.
3. Halo: Combat Evolved
This is the game that launched the Xbox and altered first-person shooter style in a number of other games have done before or since. What is notable about the very first Halo is that it still holds up remarkably well today, over 15 years following its original release. Sureit now looks quite dated and its level layout starts to fall off a cliff around the halfway stage, as Bungie recycles corridor-after-corridor in order to pad out the match length, but that is definitely a situation where the positives far outweigh the drawbacks.
Who can forget the first time that they jumped into the driver’s seat of the Warthog and began driving around Halo, the second level in the match, or storming the beach on The Silent Cartographer? These are gambling moments that stick with you plus they were anchored by an intriguing sci-fi story, amazing weapon design (has there ever been a better weapon at a FPS than Halo’s pistol?) And, oh yeah, a ridiculously addictive multiplayer mode that has been played religiously in many a dorm room in the early 2000s. Later Halo games improved on Combat Evolved’s design in several areas, but it’s hard to think of several other first kicks in the can that turned out this well.
Additionally, there’s no superior title display in all of gaming. That songs…
2. Halo: Attain
Bungie’s closing Halo games was one of its greatest, as Halo: Reach is now a near-perfect sendoff in the storied programmer. Despite the fact that it does not comprise the Master Chief, Reach arguably has the finest overall campaign in the entire series, as all its nine assignments is still a winner and there is no Library level in sight to lug the entire thing down. A prequel entry detailing one of the greatest battles between people and the Covenant, Reach details the fate of Noble Team since they desperately struggle to prevent the Covenant from annihilating the world Reach. Whereas each Halo game that puts you in control of Master Chief is intended to make you feel like an unstoppable super soldier, so Reach chooses the reverse strategy and quickly becomes a sport about failure. Sureyour personality (the blank slate known as Noble Six) is equally as competent in combat as the Chief, however, he and the remainder of his staff are fighting a war they have no expectation of winning. While the game will not end on a hopeful note, Bungie’s choice to throw players into a winning battle which only gets worse as the story progresses is a bold one and few matches, FPS or have attained the same amount of melancholic forfeit as Reach is able to communicate in its own campaign.
If which weren’t enough, Attain also includes one of the better multiplayer adventures in the franchise, even together with the two Firefight and the standard suite of competitive modes present and accounted for. While Reach’s overall map choice is a bit poorer compared to the likes of Halo 2 and Halo 3 and the inclusion of armor skills was cool, but limiting — remember, this was before Running proved to be a permanent skill in Halo — I firmly feel that Sword Base is your greatest Halo map of time along with its inclusion alone elevates Reach to all-time status in my mind.
1. Halo 3
Halo 3 might not be my overall favourite game in the franchise, but I can’t deny it is the very best. Bungie’s trilogy-capper not just addressed virtually every problem people had with Halo 2, but is arguably the most complete Halo game actually made. Beginning with the effort, Microsoft marketed the game as Halo that could”finish the fight” and in this respect, Halo 3 didn’t disappoint. The game finally gave fans the full-scale Earth invasion they’d expected from Halo 2 and while the amounts set on Earth are excellent, the back half of their effort ups the ante with amounts set around the Ark, the installation that generated all of the Halo rings in the first area (that said, the level Cortana will go die forever). Following the polarizing inclusion of this Arbiter in Halo 2, it was fantastic to play through a campaign as Master Chief back, but Halo 3 additionally gave the Arbiter his due with its concerted play, with support for up to four players.
Moving onto multiplayer, Halo 3’s map choice was a slight step back from the leading designs of Halo 2, however, it created for it with its near-perfect balance. It’s just tough to find fault with much of anything in regards to Halo 3 multiplayer, as it seems as though it was created with every fan in your mind. Want to climb the rankings in aggressive play? Done. Want to hang out with friends and play with your friends online, with split-screen guests to boot up? You can do this too. This is also the game that introduced Forge, that has become a mainstay style ever since.
Bungie was able to cap their own Halo trilogy off with the very best match in the series and now I can only hope 343 can follow suit using Halo 6, which will represent the conclusion of their Reclaimer trilogy. Until then, it’s Halo 3’s struggle to lose when it comes to the best complete Halo game.