I have been a Halo fan since Halo: CE. I have to say Halo 5 is the worst one yet. Why? It's a combination of several things.
One, and this is the one that frustrates me the most: shield regeneration is not active while running or using armor abilities, such as the now built-in thruster pack. What?! So as never before seen in Halo, you now have to walk or stop moving altogether if you want your shield to recharge. This took me a while of playing to figure out. I was wondering why I was dying so fast - now I know. I'm naturally a very fast player. I competed in MLG for a short time in Halo 2 and have been a FPS gamer for half my life (I'm 25 at the time of writing this). Halo 1-3 were not super fast-paced games. There was no sprinting, and the movement speed was like a fast walk. But still, the game had enough fast-paced factors that a good player could turn one second into what felt like one minute. The modern games have sprinting, though, so I see why in H4 they added it... That's game evolution I suppose. But if you're going to add sprint, then it should be ok to recharge shields as you're sprinting away from an opponent (as in H4). Dont make us stop moving or have to start walking to recharge our shields. Ugh.
The second issue is the new "powerslam" ability. I get killed by this probably more than I get killed by guns. Classic Halo is all about guns. It *was* one of the few games left that actually took skill and aim. That's why all the CoD people didn't like playing it. Now you can just run around the map and the second you see someone you just slam into them, taking out half their shield, or sometimes even killing them, without them even having a clue what hit them. Now you might be thinking, that's just like a beat down. But, a beat down is about sneaking up behind someone or hitting them in the back during close quarter combat, and usually the term "sneaky beaver" is awarded to the one who accomplished the beat down. Power slamming someone is not the same. It's cheap and stupid. And as if power slamming while running wasn't lame enough, 343 added mid air power slams as well. You can slam someone to death from above... Another new feature that just makes the game worse and less Halo-like.
The next issue is the overpowered weapons. H2 introduced 4shot kill with the BR, and the power players loved it. However, that game could handle 4shot kill because 1) the BR was the only gun in the game that could do that, and 2) the game was much slower in its overall gameplay. With H5 being so incredibly fast gameplay now (which is another thing that I hate), a 4shot kill is too quick. Especially with 2-man team BR... You die in .5 seconds. But that's not all. ALL the weapons now have been balanced to match the power of the 4shot BR, which means all the other guns are way too powerful, the worst of which being the pistol.
And that leads me to my next point. On every playlist except Big Team Battle, you start out with assault rifle (which now has a scope and kills you even faster than it ever has) and pistol. Of course once you get to any decent rank, the pistol is the one that everyone uses since no true power player likes the assault rifle. And good luck getting a BR - there is usually only one by your spawn and it gets picked up almost instantly by another player on your team. So the game is reduced to pretty much just a pistol battle. You can zoom again with the pistol now (like Halo 1), and it is so powerful that you can pretty much cross-map kill anyone in no more than 5 shots. It's like Halo 1 again except in H1, the gameplay was so much slower, so a pistol was ok to use. Now, it's just pistol fire everywhere and people dying before they even know what hit them. And for all the players like me who hate using the pistol and AR, we are just running around looking for a BR, Carbine, or LightRifle, which are now both hard to find apparently. Because of this, Halo 5 is just pure chaos all the time.
This one is huge: the spawns! The spawns are HORRIBLE in H5. Worst out of all the Halos. I constantly spawn about 10 feet from an enemy player. And all the time I have enemies spawn right behind me. And the off chance that I spawn in a neutral zone that doesn't have an enemy near it, the gameplay is so freakin' fast that an enemy is sure to be in that zone before I have even had a chance to realize where I have just spawned. Additionally, sometimes I spawn facing a wall... Really, 343?! I should always spawn facing the battlefield. By the time I have turned around to enter the battle, I get power slammed by someone that wasn't in my radar. The gameplay is too fast, the maps are too small, and the spawns are horrible.
And I could be wrong about this one, but I am pretty sure that the radar scan is no longer as many meters as it used to be. Meaning, I used to be able to know when an enemy was coming a good distance away so that I could turn and prepare for a close quarter battle. Now, my radar is almost always void of red dots until they are right next to me. By then it is of course too late as most likely they have power slammed me to death. Seriously, I remember telling my dad who used to marvel at how good I was at Halo 2 that all I do is look at my radar the whole time and then look at the screen as soon as a red dot appears to prepare for battle. Now I find radar to be pointless as again it only shows enemies when they are right next to you.
Some people may disagree with this one, but I really liked how in H4, the radar showed which level someone was on. No point in preparing for a close quarter battle when someone is two floors above you. But now somehow the Spartan technology seems to have devolved back to Halo 3 era and the radar no longer shows what level you are on. It's just a red dot no matter what. Now I find myself tensing up at every turn (if I'm lucky enough to actually see someone on my radar that isn't already right behind or beside me), only to realize that the player just be above or below me. Classic Halo there I guess, but to bring that back AFTER Halo 4 seems to be a devolution.
And speaking of bringing back old features after H4 set new standards, you now zoom out when shot again, like in all the old Halos. Again, one could say this is a classic Halo feature. Except right when we all get used to Halo 4, where you could snipe zoomed in even when being shot at, they revert Halo 5 back to the old way of being zoomed out when hit. Now because the game is sssoooo fast paced, I'm almost ALWAYS being shot at, so rarely can I actually zoom. Even in my Halo prime, I was never good at zooming in again once I was zoomed out. So, maybe this one is just a personal one that I hate, but maybe others will agree with me.
And yet again, another feature from H4 that's liked was the loadouts. It switches up what otherwise is a mundane game by allowing players to choose their own favorite starting weapons. I could understand if some multiplayer game types don't allow loadouts in H5, but nooooo. H5 has totally gotten rid of H4-style loadouts, and now every game starts with the same two weapons: assault rifle (which should be now called the instant death machine as it just rips people in half with its insane fire rate and power), and the overpowered pistol. Finally 343 released Big Team Battle which allows a BR as a secondary starting weapon, but the maps are so large that really a DMR is needed to kill someone across the map. So once again, fail on 343's part.
Recently, my dad came over to see my new apartment and I showed him Halo 5. Mind you, he used to play Halo 1 and 2 with me back in the day, and actually got really good (but not as good as me, ha!). He immediately asked if we could play 1v1 like in the old days. Nope. Sorry dad, 343 decided that split screen should not be in H5. Why? Apparently because they wanted to make the graphics and framerate really good..... Since when do Halo players care about graphics and framerate? Computer gamers care about graphics, but Halo is one of the most classic console-only games. Console gamers play for the games not the graphics. And really? Take out split screen???! That was a staple of Halo. Now I have to have a friend or family member buy another Xbox One and TV just to play with me 1v1? Wow. Epic fail.
Maybe I'm just keen to Halo 4, but I was also disappointed to see that H5 only came out with 5 multiplayer playlists (6 if you count BTB which was just added this last week). I liked how in H4 there were so many options to choose from. Now I have to wait until the weekends to play my favorite playlists, like Team Doubles (which sometimes gets added for weekends only) or Team Snipers.
By the way, head shots are super easy to get in H5. Snipers pretty much always hit the head. I even intentionally aimed about 6 inches to the right of an enemy player's right shoulder once, so that retical was not even on the player at all. Headshot. Not sure how, but I guess the sniper bullet is now a smart bullet that always hits the head. One guy on my friends list said he aimed at the feet of a Spartan once and got a headshot. The days of actually having to aim and have skill to play Halo are apparently over. I suspect it's because 343 is now targeting a younger audience, since more and more young people are playing video games. Idiot kids are wanting faster pace, because they have less patience, and they are idiots so they want to get headshots but don't know how to aim. So 343 gave them everything they want, just like their bad parents do. And now it's the youth of America that have everything they want, including easy H5 headshots. (Lol, sorry - went off on a little tangent there. We'll save the bad parenting of today's America for another forum.)
Now, I mentioned this briefly before, but the maps are too small in H5! Why? Well, 343 copied a lot of Halo 3 and 4 maps, thinking we would want them again. And we would have! Except, the gameplay is now so ridiculously fast that the legacy maps all feel too small. It was ok on previous Halos to have smaller maps because the Spartans could not run. Even if they could sprint, they could not power slam and thrust like the Spartans all can now by default. We can literally get from one side of an average Halo 3 map to the other in like 5 seconds or less now. And within that time, there will have most likely already been two players fighting to kill you. Back in the day, you would have a safe spawn, grab a good weapon (or start out with one like in H4) and then have a fair chance of getting a kill. Now, you spawn facing a wall, with an enemy already right next to you, with no BR in sight, on a map that feels small, and it's all just pure chaos.
And finally, you all know this one... The campaign. All I can say is, FAIL. Worst Halo campaign I have ever played. Confusing and boring, with the same "boss" appearing over and over. At least in Mario, Bower sometimes had new moves. In H5, the boss is the exact same, over and over. Fifty long cutscenes and identical bosses later, the game ends. And it was the fastest campaign too, being shorter than all the other Halo campaigns.
I didn't even mention that this game has no Forge mode, but that is because it is supposedly getting an update which will add Forge very soon. We will see how that is once they finally add it.
I also didn't mention the terrible Requisitions system, which is pointless since most of them are beneficial only to the new [stupid] Warzone game type which no power player actually cares about.
Overall, H5 is my least favorite Halo. If I could become the CEO of 343, I would remove thruster and powerslam and all that stupid stuff. I'd balance the weapons so that BR can beat AR once again like it should, and I'd make larger maps with better spawns. I'd also add more multiplayer playlists and add loadouts back in to select playlists. Any game type that has vehicles MUST have the option for starting with plasma pistol, or at LEAST put lots of them on the map. Otherwise, it's just vehicles going around without dying for like 5 minutes straight. Zapping a vehicle with a plasma pistol and then boarding it was a staple of Halo 3 and 4. Now it's rarely seen and if you have a vehicle you can pretty much get on a killing streak. That is, unless you're playing against good players that know how to focus their firepower on the vehicle, which now kills the vehicle super quickly if done right. But most BTB games it's just noobs with vehicles killing everyone and going for a long time without dying. Ugh. So many reasons why H5 sucks. The main issue for me is that I used to be able to buy the latest Halo and become good at it within days, quickly ranking up to the highest ranks available. But with H5, the gameplay is so different and the kids that play are so much "better" because of the assault rifle starting weapon and lack of BRs on the maps, it's hard for a good legacy player to actually enjoy the game and rank up. I'm finding myself just wanting to play Halo 3 and 4 again, which is why I just bought Halo: MCC and will pretty much be quitting H5. Hopefully 343 balances the game and fixes a lot of these issues. Doubt it, though.
Also, I didn't even mention the ranking system. It was fine when it was 1-50. Now it's more confusing than ever. Diamond 2, Platinum 3, what is all that?! Anyway, ya'll, here's a temporary solution to a lot of the issues mentioned above:
TEMPORARY SOLUTION
I believe I have found a solution to many of the problems I listed. A random player I teamed up with heard my complaints and agreed, and he suggested that 343 make a game type (or even a whole game, like Halo 6 if we're lucky) that is JUST like Halo 3. So, we went about creating this custom game type.
We increased the distance on the radar to 120%, which now feels MUCH closer to Halo 1, 2, 3 and 4.
We disabled sprint, and decreased default player speed to 90%. 90% was too slow but 100% was still too fast. There was no option for 95% though.
We set starting weapons to BR and AR.
Increased default armor by 10% (meaning, the Spartan can take a bit more damage before dying).
This created a GREAT game. It was much more like Halo 3. Gameplay slowed down quite a bit, but it finally felt NORMAL. Someone's comment earlier was "just get used to the game" -- well, true Halo fans ARE used to the game already. We have been playing since it came out in 2001 (probably before you were born LOL). So, it's hard for us to get used to an ultra-fast-paced game like H5 when it is nothing like any of the other Halos we have been playing for years.
343, if you are reading this, some custom game options that we would have liked to do but could not seem to find were:
Change the default starting power weapons on the map. We wanted to change the stupid Plasma Launcher to a Rocket Launcher. Could not seem to do that.
Do something about the excess of grenades in H5, which is another issue I never even mentioned in my main article. There are way too many grenades in this game, and I think it's because when someone dies, they drop their grenades and their dead body stays there for a while, like how it was with Halo: CE. But, because of the fast pace of the game, there are always grenades in my inventory. I could throw two and then immediately pick up two more. We wanted to change this dynamic, but could not figure out how other than to maybe start with no grenades at all. I suggest adding an option to enable or disable auto-resupply, or make it so that grenades dropped upon death just disappear right away.
Eventually, we would also like to have sprint but limit it more like H4, so that sprint ends after 4 seconds and must "recharge" before being used again.
Additionally, we would like the ability to disable all thruster abilities (with the option to toggle some on while others are off).
Currently, disabling sprint automatically then disables the ability to thrust into an enemy Spartan, which kills two birds with one stone, making the gameplay slower AND getting rid of the stupid Hulk smash ability. So, this is what we will continue doing for now.
We could call a game type like this "Slayer Pro" or "Classic Slayer" or "Slayer MLG" or something like that. Not only do I hope that this becomes a standard custom game template that is built into the game, but I also hope to see a multiplayer game type using these settings. And, like I said, if we're lucky, maybe Halo 6 will be more like a hybrid of Halo 2, 3, and 4. And, as for Halo 5, I just hope a major update "rebalances" the weapons to be more like Halo 3 and at LEAST increases the default radar distance so that we can see people running up to Hulk smash us.
