Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
I've read an article(well, really a small section in an AI book) written by one of the designers of Halo, and they said that in a study they did, they found out that by simply increasing the hit points of a monster they could trick people into thinking it was more intelligent than another monster with the same AI but less hitpoints.
Of course, if you are facing an opponent that you can hit twice and they are dead, and you can withstand hundreds of hits you can simply go rampaging. Playing on Heroic as an example, the Covenant Elite can take the same damage you can and the Hunters even less if you know how to take them out(although they can take significantly more then you if you just try to shoot them wherever). The Elite in Halo will take damage until their shields go down, run for cover and wait for them to recharge, and then continue their assault. They will try to find better positioning to take better angles of attack and they will work as a team using the other grunts and Elites to distract you so they can try and flank your position. If they roll over and die easily, then you can just charge them so when they duck for cover you can finish them off, when they are given equal hit points to you tactics become critical. When you play on Legendary then they do have an advantage over you in terms of hit points and does give the feeling that the AI is even tougher, as you are forced to think your tactics through even more. Even on the easiest difficulty settings, if you hang back and observe the AI tactics, you can appreciate how good they are. If you simply rush through, as most people including myself do on the lower levels, the enemies will be dead before you can grasp what they were trying to do.
Bungie did an excellent job making the game balanced and including unique and varried weapons that are all useful and put in place some elements that changed the strategy element of the game considerably(moving the grenade to an always available secondary fire weapon as an example). They included a decent amount of vehicles to pilot put in place the best AI in a FPS to date. The story is one of the better in a FPS to hit, I'd say only trailing the HL and JK games that I can think of off the top of my head, the visuals on the game are solid and the missions for the most part remain interesting and diverse(in terms of how it ties in to the story, unfortunately the level design doesn't display the same level of diversity).
Then there is multiplayer. Unlike most FPSs, it's hard to make a thorough argument that there are 'better' weapons in Halo versus each other, they simply require different tactics. The Needler for instance, can be a weak @ss POS if you can only manage to land a couple shots at a time, and lethal if you can manage to unload a clip accurately and wait for the ensuing explosion. The lowly pistol ends up being my weapon of choice most of the time as it is decent up close and at range. Instead of finding the best weapon and trying to play as well as you can, you need to take whatever weapons are available and adjust your strategy accordingly. You can say that that is the same with other FPSs, but not to the extent that it is in Halo. Halo is the most tactical game by nature I've played, there is no way you can do well in the multiplayer game without decent tactics no matter how good you are at FPSs in general(unless you are playing against people with significantly lower skills).
Halo really only has one weakness, level design/repetitiveness. Even then, it isn't all levels, and I don't think any of them are as bad as Xen(in terms of design).
. I really have NO IDEA why everyone thinks Halo is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Its not really a bad game by any means....but it certainly isnt the "greatest" game either. I think its just an average shooter that is worth playing through once.
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