LateMechanic
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User ID: 1841
The single-player/co-op experience was pretty masterful, although I'm with the people who got too bogged down by the downer Flood levels to look forward to replaying it very much. I can't remember the specifics, but for the first playthrough and story-wise, the Flood were definitely a cool part though.
But in-person multiplayer Halo was crazy, just for how many more people it brought into gaming. I was loving broodwar and unreal tournament, and didn't fully get the appeal of PvP Halo 1 (other than the sticky grenades which were peak). But it was pretty awesome how galvanized people were to link up like 15 xboxes between a whole floor of college dorm rooms for it. Or working at a movie theater in the summer, having most of the employees show up at 1am to set up 3 xboxes and projectors to play on the giant screen. This kind of normie / less-smelly console version of LAN parties, where many girls actually found it cool, was a strange brief time (right before xbox live & online console gaming took off).
You're a 6'8" hyper-athlete in power armor who has a benevolent super-intelligence riding shotgun in your head
Yeah I think the strength was being quite well polished and minimal/tight, from long range all the way down to melee rifle-butt/pistol-whip. My main memory is how slick it felt jumping in to drive/ride the warthog around with the animations, 3rd-person camera transition, and acceleration physics (which is basically how it looks to this day in modern call of duty I think).
But around ~2002-2004, there was also just some level of mainstream social proof / accessibility / network-effect that had Halo punching way above its weight for how fun it actually was. The bros at parties would be playing it, similar to how poker next popped off and became huge from being on ESPN in 03-04. But when I'm back at home, I'm not firing up the xbox, I have way better stuff to play on the internet. Maybe if not UT or starcraft, I'm jumping back onto Tribes 2 with base-vs-base strategic capture-the-flag mode, with better variety maps, vehicles, weapons & class load-outs, and super skill-expression 'skiing' movement and spinfusor/mortar projectile shots. Ultimately the 'console peasant' snobbery wasn't wrong for quite some time.
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