LogFAQs > #942417341

Beat them all over the pandemic recently. My ranking based on how I feel rn:
Reach > 1 > 3 > 2 >= 4 > 5 > ODST

Reach: This game has the best balance of story incorporation in the series, imo. The characters are given just enough personality and screen time without getting too annoying or excessive, especially when you get past the beginning areas of the game. And the stakes feel very real, partly because you actually lose (which, believe or not, I didn't know the first time I played). It also introduced the DMR and the Needle Rifle: two of my favorite guns in the series. Good level design, interesting setpieces, good stories, and surprisingly good looking in the MCC graphics wise, even with the post FX glitches. The biggest downside to this game is probably no Flood, but I think its strength make up for it. That, and a few hamfisted moments like when Kat gets sniped.

1: Tbh, I have a bias for first games in a series. I'm not sure why it is, but where people usually prefer sequels, I will usually prefer the first, probably because I played it first. Halo:CE is surprisingly fun to play to this day, with pretty well paced missions, good gunplay, a decent variety of weapons, and a decent variety of vehicles. Then you have the two very different situations of fighting the Covenant vs. fighting the Flood, which helps mix things up. Its biggest blemish is definitely the bad level (you know which one), which feels like it's practically trolling you with how long and samey it is (and I think that feeling was intentional).

3: This might be the first Halo game I played. This game absolutely floored me when it was new: beautiful visuals, a crazy sense of scale with the Scarab fight, cool vehicles (the Brute bike thing was my favorite as a kid), fun levels, etc. The whole "finish the fight" theme rang strong in this one. I think the campaign successfully establishes a "this is the end" sort of vibe with the Gravemind taking over High Charity and taking down the super Halo. Absolutely love the ending as well. That being said, Halo 3's campaign is a bit short compared to the first, despite being more bombastic and grand in scale, and I kind of like the "feel"/"fun factor" more in the first game. In all honestly, all these rankings are pretty closely clustered if I were to give them a score.

2: 2 does have some cool stuff, like the introduction of the Brutes, the introduction of dual wielding, plus it was kinda neat to play as the Arbiter (although I think his missions were notably weaker than MCs). And it brought in one of my favorite guns: the Brute plastma rifle. It's a great campaign, but compared to 1 and 3 it just doesn't click as well. I might be wrong on this, but levels in this game felt smaller/"tighter" than 1 or 3, and I think this hurt the fun factor for me. Plus I don't think I was super interested in the Covenant politics, so that may have hindered my enjoyment of the story.

4: If you can get past the "wtf did they do to Cortana?" vibe, as well as the "you are the culmination of advanced calculations from an ancient race, main character!" story beats, Halo 4 offers a pretty fun campaign that fits reasonably well in the series. The Prometheans as enemies are pretty fun, and all their weapons feel great. Their biggest issue is honestly that they're not the Flood, and those little flying guys are annoying as fuck. But it still delivers on solid setpieces like the Mammoth tank or going around in the Mantis. And while there are some dumb elements to the story, I like that it tried to capture that "mystery" vibe of the first game where MC stumbles upon something ancient and powerful. The personal stakes were a nice addition as well, fleshing out MC/Cortana's relationship. But I personally don't like the rampancy storyline, and wish this aspect didn't involved changing Cortana into basically a totally different character. I also think the Didact was a decent villain; intelligent, malevolent, imposing.

5: This game gets a lot of things wrong. It is the biggest departure in terms of enemy and level design, where the game seems to be about large shootboxes where you mow down enemies before proceeding. There are a lot of missteps in the story, partly because this game in many ways almost feels like it belongs more in the EU than the main game series. Curious to know what Spartan Locke was doing during Halo 5? Read this interesting side book! They should have done a much better job with Chief's story, and probably centered it around the Didact rather than jobbing that guy in a comic book. It's still a decent campaign for a FPS though, but it's certainly the least "Halo" game.

ODST: It's okay, probably like a 6/10. This one really is "wanna know what some random ODSTs were doing in Halo 2? Also a computer brain alien." I think a lot of this comes down to how much you enjoy walking around the city at night and finding clues/audio logs. I personally found it a little boring at times, and while the flashback missions were fun, they were also extremely brief until the end game. I feel like a lot of what this game tried to accomplish (getting you invested in a squad of soldiers that aren't MC, feeling the despair/anxiety associated with a Flood invasion, expand on interesting areas of UNSC lore like ONI) is imply done better in Reach. That's probably part of why this game ranks so low for me: everything I like about it was just outclassed by Reach.

Anyway, those are my "brief" thoughts on each game. Anybody want to talk about Halo campaigns?

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