You closed the last one;
nigger.
## Halo 3
So I revisited Halo 3 after what must have been over 10 years.
Oh, my childhood game, how nice it will feel!
Well, I think I'm unable to experience nostalgia.
That, or I have dementia;
which is also a distinct possibility as I remembered very little of the missions.
### Enemies
Elites have been completely dropped for Brutes,
the only ones present are friendly.
Remember how I said Brutes will go berserk?
Yeah, forget that.
They are just large, imposing, dumb apes that refuse to acknowledge
the concept of "stopping power".
They might as well be Sub-Saharan Africans for all it matters.
That said, they are not *bad* enemies, just bland.
The Jackals we are facing are all apparently from the same special needs school.
These guys are not smart enough to know that they must keep their shields
between them and (You) to not get munched.
There are new Flood enemies.
They are fun, or would be anyways, if they weren't so unreasonably spongy.
Speaking of spongy, that describes well how the combat has changed.
With no more Elites and their shields,
with Jackal shields being more of a set piece than a consideration,
and waves of Flood with large health pools,
your main concern is putting out damage while not dying.
### Weapons
I haven't discussed weapons in detail for the previous titles because it was not needed.
They formed a nice, closed eco-system of situationalism.
Now it only remains to the extent of terrain,
but the subtle rock-paper-scissors by enemy composition is lost.
The Needler: 
has aim assist and triggers an explosion if the enemy has enough of damage build up inflicted,
but has a low range and Jackals and Hunters would completely block its projectiles.
Depending on what was in front of you,
it went from OP, to OK, to useless.
Now it has become simply over-all mediocre.
The Plasma-pistol: 
has a charged alternative fire
that could be used to bring down Elite or Jackal shields with a single shot,
or to spasm out at grunts in a panic when caught with your pants down.
But, there are no Elites, the Jackals are no longer problematic
AND it no longer even takes down their shields.
The Plasma-rifle: 
-which is confusingly is still a pistol-
would be excellent at breaking shields and acting as a higher range battle-rifle alternative,
that is severely more limited on ammo.
One of the things I remembered this game having
and then being really upset when Halo 4 did not,
is dual-wielding of short arms.
Honestly, I found myself doing that once or twice tops.
Its not too useful.
Mind you, it could be,
but with the changed utility of side arms,
it falls flat.
To the above,
add your M6 series pocket sniper
and the SMG which already melted anything that wondered directly in front of it.
There also used to be a mechanic,
where the speed of your melee attacks depended on the firearm you carried.
Bye-bye to that too.
You have power ups tho.
Too bad that they are seldom useful
and not all that common.
They add very little.
### Difficulty
I can see how 12 year old me could have beaten this game.
Except for select few sections,
all of which involve ridiculously beefy Flood-ites & low ammo,
the game is not all that hard.
Regarding the exceptions:
the level named Cortana.
There was one room where I've spent atleast 20 minutes with *my winning try*,
where the only thing you can do is jump in though
a door which is an anus and takes a second to open,
fire a mag,
and jump back.
You may die during this maneuver and you VILL run out of ammo multiple times.
This room is the crowd jewel of the trend they started adopting,
where you are shoved into a situation without cover,
retreat,
firepower,
and the enemies are numerous and far away.
### Verdict
Halo 3 is a military shooter with a Halo skin.
Funnily enough, there is the game Halo 3 ODST
-to which I've yet to get to-
which has this exact premise.
Its still *good* tho, just not *great*.
For the most part I had fun.
Its more beginner friendly then the previous 2 entries.
You know, something a kid would have their as their favourite game...
## Halo 4
### Story
I haven't mentioned the story so far,
because all it is appropriate.
Intriguing enough to hold your interest,
has a satisfying arch,
not the focus
and does not take itself too seriously.
Very quick recap:
Humanity and the alliance of alien races called the Covenant are at war.
Master Chief, the legendary cyborg super soldier created by the Spartan-II project
and his AGI ~GF~ companion Cortana serve on board of a battleship which is shot down.
They evacuate to the surface of what is an ancient alien installation called a Halo
and is a holy site to the covenant.
They discover it is a weapon that wipes all life across the galaxy
except for what is safeguarded within,
was built by prehistoric humans,
and have previously been used to exterminate the Flood,
which is now free again.
The Halo is destroyed, the Flood set back, Chief & Cortana escape
and the Elite leader present is court-marshaled for his failure.
The Covenant is lead by the race called the Prophets,
who dictate religion and are lightly used for redditor fedora-tipping.
The Prophets sentence the Elite leader to become an Arbiter,
which used to be a holy warrior-emperor position in Elite culture,
but is now a deliberate humiliation-ritual to send out
those would could endanger the status-quo into suicide missions.
The Covenant accidentally discover the location of Earth,
the Flood spreads,
Chief and Cortana must separate,
a second Halo is about to be activated
to bring about The Great Journey which is the Second Coming event of space-jews,
and the Elites are betrayed and genocided by the Prophets in favour of Brutes.
Finally, the Prophets and the Flood are defeated,
Chief and Cortana reunite,
Humanity and the Elites arrive at piece
and the Arbiter position regains its respect.
Fucking hell, that's quite verbose for a "quick recap".
Now that you know who Cortana is,
I can mention that she is depicted as a blue, naked, hologram woman (with a bob-cut).
Regarding her being naked, it was a nothing burger so far.
With her being rarely on screen and it being a background fact,
she felt more like a roman statue then some sort of coomer bait.
In 4 however,
her model was scaled up and the player has to repeatedly plug her into consoles,
all of which project her ass directly into their face.
I would describe this as transparent and annoying.
Further more,
she is experiencing Rampancy,
which is the humbug old age of AGI,
making her glitch out constantly
and is about to die unless we get back to Earth soon.
But oh no,
an evil Forerunner is awakened by the remnant faction of the Covenant
and is now planning on exterminating the human race out of revenge,
using some bullshit weapon and his robot army.
Regarding the specifics,
I have no fucking clue what is going on.
Everything is beyond confusing and convoluted.
Somehow tho,
Cortana sacrifices herself to kill the Forerunner guy.
This is narratively very dumb.
Think of it from a meta perspective:
* Halo 1: Cortana is our helper
* Halo 2: We part with Cortana with the implication that she might die
* Halo 3: We save Cortana
* Halo 4: She is sick and dies frfr
The amount of time we spent trying to save her
significantly out-weights
the amount of time she was a useful side-kick.
The one thing they handled well about it is Chief's attitude.
He talks little, his spirit never breaks,
but he clearly cares deeply about Cortana.
Its a good depiction of Stoicism,
which is quite rare.
The only satisfying part about the ending is this piece of dialog:
> It was my job to take care of you.
> We were supposed to take care of each other. And we did.
### Gameplay
Forget the Brutes,
we reverted back to Elites.
The Flood is gone and the new faction,
the Forerunners are well designed.
Fighting the Forerunners require target selection,
resource management and epic skillz.
The power-ups are still present,
and they fixed them.
They are no longer one use,
but on a cool down
and more importantly they were given practical effects.
What some maps get wrong is how they play with space.
If you place an army of deadly enemies at a distance,
the player will attempt to take them down from the backline,
because running into them is not worth the risk
-especially with the still janky checkpoint-system.
Again, *this trend* they started in the previous game.
You can also feel the quality decline towards the end.
I assume it had to do with dead lines,
but the map design, difficulty and enemy placement are all over the place,
which is further dragged down by the fact
that the same three types of Forerunner enemies are getting old.
They added a new kind of grenade.
It is orange and inflicts area of effect damage before exploding.
It is also insanely useless,
because all enemies will dodge away before the explosion.
There is exactly 1 (one) instance when its used,
and if you play the game for yourself you will know exactly which part I'm referring to.
### Verdict
Its great.
Its fun.
Most of it feels on pair with Halo 1 and the better parts of Halo 2.
## Halo 5
### Story
Remember how I said "I am confused, I barely know what is going on"?
Yeah, now I'm completely fucking lost.
We are fighting more Forerunners,
there is squad *diversity*
and Cortana is evil now?
I give up.
The only interesting thing here for me
is the Elite civil-war lead by the Arbiter.
Frankly, I would have rather played an entire game of just that.
Cortana -besides being AI-space-Hitler or some shit-
is dressed now.
I am pissed.
It went from naked, to naked and sexualized, to clothed.
Microsoft did the retard-dance both ways,
where they had Clarissa McFucktoy the Z-cupped mud-wrestler,
then they turned her into Johna Sterile the Girlboss.
Just fuckin' amazin'.
### Enemies
I apparently have Wished Upon a Blackstar,
because there is a new type of Forerunner.
Insanely creatively named Soldier,
it is a bullet sponge that teleports behind you.
It has no interesting qualities or behaviours,
except for the afore mentioned teleportation,
which is just plain fucking annoying.
They are -of course- spammed without discrimination.
Generally speaking tho,
every enemy has a larger health pool,
while the damage deviation of guns have been normalized.
As a result, I no longer care what is in my hand
and my trigger finger is developing (an early stage of) Emacs-Pinky syndrome.
The Warden is also introduced,
which is a mini boss.
It has the signature attacks of yellow death ray and homing death black hole,
both of which instantly *down* you.
The battle field is bleak as ever.
If Halo 3 was a military shooter with a Halo skin,
Halo 5 is puppeteering with the corpse of the franchise over webcam
in an attempt to defraud his bank.
### Gameplay
Previously,
you would either have to carefully monitor your health,
or give little of a fuck because it tended to be enough more often than not.
Here, it does not feel like I have a health.
Everything is extremely deadly at close-quarters -except you-
therefor you will be keeping your distance.
You know the trend I've been bringing up?
Its **just** that now,
and it takes twice as long to kill any enemy
and there are twice as many of them.
As a result tho,
you are not taking noticeable damage most of the time.
And then you are dead.
From Halo 2 onwards, there were single kill snipers.
Halo 5 says, "what if we hid them and made their AI infuriating?".
Mind you, all AI is shitty in this game,
but its especially bad when one of these niggers can jump out of cover
and instantly vaporize you.
As I understand it, for a sniper to take a shot,
it is required to target you idly for some amount of time,
which is supposed to be your time buffer to react.
However the shitty code makes it so that they can *sometimes*
do that without a direct line of sight.
And there are the explosives.
The plasma-grenade attacks that were well telegraphed to begin
are less accurate than ever.
However, you will be under constant mortal fire from the other side of the map
by multiple fiends.
How *fun*!
The Warden I mentioned,
he will constantly one shot you from a distance.
### Teammates
You are always playing with Spartan companions.
They will barely fucking hit anything unless you are spamming `designated target`.
There is a downed mechanic.
This means that if I die in my single-player game,
I have to wait for the AI to maybe revive me,
maybe not.
Surprisingly, their path finding is fine:
not once were they unable to find their way to me.
The problem is, that they have no survival instincts
and if they happen to approach you from an angle that is out of cover,
though luck.
You can generally tell when and where they will be able to pick you up,
yet you can not consider this as part of your strategy.
Many of the one-shot attacks will just straight up kill you.
So, you cannot turn off this annoying "feature" and you cannot depend on it.
Amazin'.
If `Load last checkpoint` had been removed,
I would have not finished Halo 5.
The way they move looks like something out of a parody of a video game.
Their decision making is sluggish, they will stand still as they preprocess tasks,
only to start running in a perfectly straight, robotic line.
### Sound design
They talk and they won't stop talking.
There is a relatively large state-machine controlling the chatter of your companions.
For example they can accurately shout out "Crawlers from the right"
or "Taking fire from the balcony".
It is however not complex enough to combine those into
"Crawlers firing from the balcony on the right".
Not that I would like that,
its just painfully obvious how they recorded the most common predicate-subject combinations.
And its even more painful when they did not.
When one of them is injured, the chatter will sound something like this:
> "Vale is down!" (AI dies)
> "Go help Vale!" (player command)
> "You are not out of the fight yet, Vale!" (AI revives AI)
> "Thanks, Spartan!" (AI reacts)
What do you mean Spartan?
What the FUCK do you mean Spartan?
I had to listen to the name of this faggot 3 times in the past 2 seconds,
but you cannot thank your teammate by name???
The chatter expands to other elements too.
Chief talks more than in the previous 4 games combined.
Somebody is constantly talking into your ear, and the most trivial shit ever.
It feels like the game was created for Alphies who must constantly be overstimulated
or they have a breakdown.
Even the fucking enemies talk.
The Soldiers -who I do not even know if they are supposed to be alive or machine-
will yell "Opening fire."/"Target hit."/"I am damaged.".
If that wasn't enough,
every 30 seconds you spend in an area without completing the objective,
someone will *remind* you.
> "We cannot progress unless all the Forerunners are eliminated!"
> "Quickly, locate the reactor, it has to be somewhere around here!"
There are audio logs scattered around the maps.
I have not once found one by intent,
since anything looks like an audio log is not
and any bullshit little pixel might be one,
but you will be picking them up randomly as they are scattered on the battlefield.
Activating one by accident will freeze you in place and certainly kill you,
but I digress.
Point is,
these will be played over whatever is happening
and there is a 100% chance that someone else is actively talking too.
Ugh, STFU already!
Not only is the chatter annoying, it is also the only thing you will hear.
No attacks are predictable though sounds.
May it be a shotgun mowing down your teammates behind your back
or the mortal shot slowly approaching your skull,
you either see it -which you won't- or you die.
### Movement
Halo 4 had a dodge power up,
which would launch you at whichever direction you were walking.
It was fun, but it was also useless,
as the cooldown was too high to rely on it.
Halo 5 added the dodge as part of the base movement.
It feels better.
And it is more useless than ever.
Problem being that there are no attacks that can be consciously dodged,
nor any map design involvement.
You can also `spartan charge` now.
The man who was responsible for naming things should be beheaded.
This is a bonus dodge forward which can be activated after enough sprinting forwards.
They tried to involve this in map design by adding lame,
cardboard-cutout destructible entrances.
Not only are these pathetic,
but they prove that the Sangeili city used extensive copy-pasting.
There is also edge-climbing, sliding and ground-pounding,
all of which are irrelevant.
I would like to note that the above are all nice assets in multiplayer,
but the fact that they had no way to exploit them in single-player,
indicates that they simply tacked on modern bullshit without discrimination.
### Difficulty
You may think based on my description that Halo 5 is hard.
It is not, it is simply annoying.
No skills are required, unless you count the patience to output the *required damage*,
and, just in general your actions have very little to do with the outcome.
After my usual Legendary playthrough,
I went back and played the first mission on Easy.
Turns out the reason everything felt so shit,
is because they applied (atleast?) a times two health to your foes indiscriminately.
This is, exactly what you never, EVER do.
With that, you suddenly eliminated melee, `spartan charge` and ground-pound as tools;
every kill requires an intermittent reload;
even the more powerful guns will feel like shit;
etc.
### Verdict
Halo 5 is liquid shit.