Originally Posted by
Strongbad
As far as single player is concerned Halo 1 is king. Halo 2 was made well, but the single player didn't seem to have the same epic appeal. It just felt like going through the motions. Halo 3 was a little better than halo 2 single player wise, and then Halo Reach was a little better than Halo 3. The real appeal of Halo 1 was the that you had no idea what was going to happen, but in the other games it was all pretty obvious what was up. ODST was okay, but I would say it was the least fun game overall.
I have played a lot of multiplayer in each of these games, and by a lot I mean a shitload. Halo 1 was great and my memories of it are the most awesome out of all the games, but this is because of the personal connection created by LAN parties. I would have to say Halo 2 has the best multiplayer by far though. It is the easiest of all of them to just pick up in play, but with experience and the use of glitches (the double shot, BxR, etc) it actually got pretty deep. Halo 3 was a good mix of Halo 1 and 2, and better than Halo 1 but not 2. Then Halo Reach came along, and really fucked a lot of stuff up. It is a good game, and I do really enjoy it, but a lot of the multiplayer mechanics don't make sense. The armor abilities really changed the way the game played, but things like spawning with the ability to turn invisible fucked with the balance of the game. The biggest mistake they made was including bloom, it's really annoying to have a one on one battle lost due to bloom and not skill. It made players find other ways to assert control during the game, but they really shouldn't have to worry about losing battles to someone because the other person got luckier.
I probably should have put some better spacing in this.
Halo 1 - 3rd best mulitplayer, but LAN parties were awesome
Halo 2 - best multiplayer - easy to pick up and play, but glitches added more depth to the game
Halo 3 - 2nd best multiplayer, good mix of halo 1 and 2
Halo Reach - worst multiplayer, but still a pretty good game.
I wish I could still Halo 2 on XBL so bad. If by some miracle there would be a way to get 4v4 or 2v2's going on Halo 2 PC I would shit my pants. I play that very occasionally, but it sucks to just join in random games with 16 people only playing snipers on crappy levels.