To say that the first-person-shooter genre of video games has been affected by Halo would be an understatement. Like the title of the original game says, the series evolved not only the FPS genre but console gaming as a whole. During the franchise’s 17-year lifespan, nine major titles have been released. The question is, which one is the best? Which one is the worst?
9. Halo 5
This game is the biggest “what if” in the series. The launch of the game was disappointing to many fans. It seemed to regress from previous installments in terms of the content that was available in-game. Map editing ‘Forge’ mode wasn’t in the game until two months after the game’s release, and many fan-favorite matchmaking game modes just weren’t in the game. Add the lackluster campaign and infuriating micro-transactions that the game came with and it easily is the weakest title in the series.
8. Halo Wars
The real-time-strategy games of the franchise are at a disadvantage because they’re so drastically different from what made Halo popular. Halo Wars certainly isn’t a bad game — the campaign is good and the cut scenes are some of the best in the series. The gameplay is very typical of the RTS genre with resource management and a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ combat system with infantry, vehicle and aircraft units. The knock against it is an RTS game is a tough sell for a console exclusive, so player counts were low, and finding a multiplayer game was a challenge.
7. Halo Wars 2
Halo Wars 2 suffers from the same problems that its predecessor has. It's slightly better because of the new game mode blitz, even though it's dominated by micro-transactions. It's graphically better, and there are more units to play with. It’s a great game for any fan of the RTS genre but because of that, it will never see the player count it needs to be successful.
6. Halo 4
Halo 4 was a flop among fans in terms of the multiplayer. The addition of sprint, custom classes, ordinance, and armor abilities made the game feel more like Call of Duty than it did Halo. The campaign is solid and even a tear-jerker as it explores the humanity of the Master Chief for the first time, but this game ranks below the other installments because it feels so alienated from the rest of the franchise. At least the game was finished at launch.
5. Halo 3 ODST
Lots of people low down at ODST because it was priced as a full $60 game even though it was essentially an add-on to Halo 3. This game had the content to defend that pricing. The campaign is arguably the best in the series and ODST introduced the first and only open-world exploration in the franchise. It introduced Firefight mode, and it came with all the map packs for Halo 3. ODST itself didn’t have multiplayer, which was its one downside.
4. Halo Reach
Many fans consider Reach the start of Halo’s change from what made the series so beloved by fans. Reach introduced armor abilities, sprint, and loadouts, which were very similar to Call of Duty’s gameplay. The quality of the multiplayer maps wasn’t as good as the earlier games. Forge and wave defense mode ‘Firefight’ were flushed out and welcomed as additions to the community, but Halo has always been known for its multiplayer. Reach’s multiplayer doesn’t quite compare to the first three games of the series.
3. Halo 2
The troubled development of this game is widely known, and it had some huge impacts. Bungie basically had to scrap everything they had a year before the game launched and start over. This did hurt the quality of Halo 2 a little. There are numerous cuts Bungie made that they would’ve liked to see for the final game, such as three entire missions that were turned into long cutscenes.
Halo 2 has been criticized for being a more linear game than the first Halo, and anybody who has played the game on the highest difficulty legendary will tell you that the game is simply unfair with how hard it is. Despite the rough development, Halo 2 still has the most iconic multiplayer maps from the franchise that have been remade several times and was the game that kinged Halo in the FPS genre with online gameplay being the best the series has seen.
2. Halo Combat Evolved
This game truly evolved the FPS genre. Many of the features that we see in today’s games were first seen in Halo. It was unlike anything the world had ever seen at the time of its release. Nobody even dreamed of an FPS game that had a large open world to navigate through in 2001 until Halo. The story of the game laid the foundation for everything to come and is truly a sci-fi mystery/horror game that should be played by any FPS fan.
The game was just fun to play. Halo’s enemy artificial intelligence is still better than some games today, and that heavily contributes to each enemy encounter being engaging. Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori’s soundtrack made them legends among video game composers, and the theme is still one of the most iconic in gaming. Xbox Live wasn’t available at the time of Halo’s release, so the multiplayer wasn’t able to be utilized to its fullest potential, but system link and split-screen gave gamers the experience they needed until Halo 2.
1. Halo 3
It’s only right that the game that finished the fight would be the best of the series. Imagine taking the best parts of Halo 2 and the best parts of Halo Combat Evolved and putting it into one game without any of their flaws. That was Halo 3. The story gave the epic conclusion that fans were dying to see after Halo 2’s cliffhanger and the multiplayer expanded off of Halo 2’s success. Halo 3 introduced Forge and the community in-game blossomed because of it. Bungie gave the tools to the gamers to create endless amounts of content with Forge, and the game’s player count extended much further than most games. It was the peak of the series and it stands the test of time graphically to this day.