Legendary Conflict

“Halo Reach is the hardest Halo campaign on the legendary difficulty.”
“Yeah sure, and Mel Gibson isn’t a racist Catholic.”

The challenge is to beat every single Halo game (minus Halo Wars) on the hardest difficulty setting, legendary. Compare them, tell me which one you think (I stress the word “think” because it’s just your stupid opinion) is the hardest to complete. I dislike opinions sometimes because I feel that a lot of people misuse them. Have we really forgotten that an opinion is our own personal view on things and that most of the time we don’t have substantial proof that it’s the correct one? Yet we’ll continue to argue that our opinion is correct and provide thoughtless reasons why we think it is.

“You didn’t like that movie? It had great acting and a compelling storyline; it was most definitely a good show.” Yet despite the reasoning you give, the other person will not agree because it didn’t appeal to him. Perhaps he thought the acting sucked and the storyline was lame, that’s his take on it. Does this make him wrong? Heck no.

Which one is better, the Xbox or the Playstation? Your opinion on the consoles will most likely be separate from each other based on which one you like more. It’s all too typical for a person who likes the Xbox to hate on the Playstation and vice versa, which proves to me that opinions shouldn’t be looked at as factual fronts rather than a person’s own deluded bias. Most people who share either one of these opinions most likely doesn’t own, nor has ever played, the competition. How can you possibly provide an opinion other than, “I like this console better because it’s what I’ve always played.” People who own both or have played both consoles will provide a more valid reason as to why they enjoy which console more, however , it’s still an opinion and that doesn’t make it a solid truth. When you really enjoy something it’s hard to see the positives in the competition, but in order to pass an opinion off as valid and trustworthy, it’s best to see what both arguments have to offer. I’ve found out that more people will respect that opinion regardless if they agree or disagree. To me, statistics don’t even mean much when it comes down to a person’s opinion. All statistics tell me is that more people are positively opinionated on this product rather than that product and within those opinions are multiple people who are neutral on the subject and bought all of the consoles. The only stats that would matter would be one console beating the other in a speed or graphics contest nine times out of ten. Then that would tell me what features it has that perform better than its competition. This explanation has gone on too long, but it’s fun to discuss these matters with people who have an opposite opinion because it opens the door for both parties to learn things they didn’t know, making their overall opinion a well rounded one.

Why the explanation? Well if you’ve read my previous posts you’d know by now that when I go into a tangent about something, it’s usually because it’s a part of what I’m going to say. Let’s get back to the main challenge, Halo, legendary, hardest. I’ve been hearing lately that a lot of people think Halo Reach is the hardest campaign to beat on the legendary difficulty setting out of all the Halo games. It is in my opinion that these comments might be coming from adolescent children or newcomers to Halo who have never played Halo CE or Halo 2. It’s pretty hard to play those old school games when they were released for the older, washed up, console huh? The only Halo games released on the Xbox 360 were Halo 3, Halo ODST, and Halo Reach. We’re not including Halo Wars into this conversation because it’s an RTS, a crappy one at that. Honestly that game should have been made for computers only. A PC allows for a heavy control scheme where games like Halo Wars belong. Being able to use a keyboard gives PC games more complex controls, yet at the same time making games seem easier, such as RTS games. By allowing RTS games to be made on a console it tends to produce crap, like Halo Wars, and it’s acceptable to ignorant people who don’t know any better. Well you didn’t fool me Microsoft. If we were to compare the three Halos that were released on the 360, then I feel that Halo Reach comes out on top as having the toughest campaign. Throw Halo CE and Halo 2 into the mix and you’ve got a different story. Let me break this down to you the same way as a few writers from IGN did.

I wanted to get a little more proof that the internet children were indeed talking smack, and after a whole ten seconds of searching I found an article published by some writer at IGN. In a proverbial dick measuring contest, these members at IGN measured how hard (get it?) the five Halo campaigns were. The crew made their judgments by playing both single player and cooperative play (on legendary of course). In the end they clearly stated that co-op made up a huge portion of their decision. Here is their list from easiest to hardest compared to mine.

IGN

Halo CE
Halo 3
Halo ODST
Halo 2
Halo Reach

Me

Halo ODST
Halo CE
Halo 3
Halo Reach
Halo 2

The authors of the article made some pretty true claims about the difficulty setting in Halo CE being much easier because we’ve had multiple Halos’ to play since its release. I differ in this area because ODST was so short that it almost won the role of Mini Me. On top of how short and insecure it is, legendary was way too simple. Any seasoned Halo veteran can probably run through the whole game in five hours or so, and that’s on the legendary difficulty. I know I did, but that was me, who knows how long it took these dudes to battle it out. Remember, a large portion of their ranking was based on cooperative play. I don’t think it’s a bad way to judge it, but I’ll consider all options as I run through mine.

Let’s jump right into first place. They stated Reach was the toughest campaign on Legendary and I stated that Halo 2 was the toughest. One of their main reasons for Halo Reach being tougher is the fact that the more people you add into the mix the harder and more plentiful the enemies. You can say that about any game though. If I’m playing Halo Reach with the godlike skill that I have and have a buddy, who sucks terribly, playing as my partner, of course it’s going to be a lot harder. Now instead of just killing my share of the extremely tough enemies, I must now help my comrade win his battles as well. This means I’m exhausting more effort and ammo into tougher enemies that a crappy Halo player can’t keep up with. Hell, if you’re going to base your opinion on that, then why don’t we just turn on all the skulls in Halo Reach for an even more difficult setting. Playing on legendary with all skulls on (LASO) would force me to agree with IGN’s decision as Halo Reach being the hardest. But that’s not fair to compare with now is it? Halo Reach has a standard play through setting that is no more or less than that of Halo 2 but has the capabilities of modifying it to make it easier or harder. Halo 2 doesn’t possess these same benefits and the games should be compared on a level playing field. I’ve played through Halo Reach on co-op legendary and can honestly say that was a piece of ice cream cake topped off with some cherries and fudge. My counterparts didn’t suck and we managed to work together as a team.

Unfortunately in Halo games, dating back to Halo CE, there’s a re-spawn system, meaning that if I die, my teammate just has to take cover to bring me back. I can remember my Uncle and I taking turns as the suicide guy who would go balls to the wall into the heat of battle, dying while taking out as many covie bastards as possible on our Halo CE play throughs. This for me makes Reach’s co-op much easier than say, oh I don’t know, Halo 2. Halo 2 doesn’t have that setting when you’re playing on legendary. No sir, no more rushing in one at a time and blasting the way for your teammate because if one of you dies, you both go back to the most recent check point. Wah wah wah. That makes the co-op ten times harder because you both have to rely on each other to stay alive and actually work together as a unit rather than have a one man wrecking crew whose teammate hides in the back in case you die. My uncle and I never got passed the first mission in Halo 2 and until this weekend, it was the ONLY Halo game that I didn’t beat on this difficulty setting. I did finally beat it though and got one hundred percent completion from the game achievement wise, in case you care.

Comparing a single player play through is much of the same. Do you want me to say that the Elites in Halo Reach are much scarier and harder to conquer? Then sure, they are the scariest bastards when considering whether or to confront them at close quarters or distance. The Elites were the only thing that ever really gave me a hard time on Reach, but I never really got caught up in one certain spot too long because it was too tough to overcome. Here is why I think Halo 2 is a much tougher game to conquer on the hardest difficulty.

I went to my hometown this past weekend to see a buddy of mine who was back home temporarily from his deployment, but unfortunately that fell through. No hard feelings, I understand how busy he must have been and family is one hundred times more important. But since I had all this free time, minus doing homework, I decided to play Halo 2 on the PC to get the last achievements that I needed. I’m an achievement whore which I’m sure I’ve noted before and I’ll most likely wind up talking about it in a special edition of “This Gaming Life.” The achievements were to beat the game on the heroic and legendary difficulties, a task that I’ve never done before in Halo 2. In order to get the both of them in one swift swoop, I needed to beat the game on legendary because the achievements stacked (by beating the hardest difficulty, all achievements for difficulty lower than that will automatically unlock). I was actually mildly apprehensive at the thought of going through the game on legendary because shortly after Halo 2 was first released in 2004, my Uncle and I tried that difficulty on co-op and got utterly frustrated with it. We were use to the old fashioned one man hide and the other man kill everything method as I’ve already explained. I never tried it again on that setting, but that could have been the result of the multiplayer, which Halo 2 did best in my opinion.

Cover System

I’ve found cover to be one of the most significant necessities whilst roaming through a Halo campaign, well actually any campaign. Fractions of a second stand between life and death during a legendary play through and that is true to every Halo game, but in Halo 2 I found myself using cover more as a crutch rather than a strategic method. In Reach I relied pretty heavily on hiding behind things and then taking pop shots just like I did in all the games. Halo 2 on the other hand made life extremely difficult to use that method because my sheilds seemed to drain much quicker than in Reach. I do find that rather odd though because if this were to fall in sync with the Halo cannon, Master Chief in Halo 2 would have an easier time against the covenant than the dinky Spartan III’s in Halo Reach, but I digress. Using cover was momentarily worthless in certain cases such as when the Brutes fired their brute shots in the general direction of my hiding spot, bounced off the walls and landed on my face. Same went with the crazy heat sinking needlers that majestically floated over rocks and around corners to sink into my armor before going boom.

I did my best to use guerilla warfare, popping out of a hiding spot and wasting as many enemies as I could in two seconds before fleeing from battle faster than a fat kid escaping fat camp. Rinse and repeat right? Sure, until my long range weapons and grenades expired. Then what? I felt like I had a better chance going against these guys using sticks and harsh language. Sheesh, I’d rather take my chances against Goliath with a sling shot and some rocks.

The game would get extremely complicated at times when the enemy would rush your hiding spot and put two quick shots into your chest plate and causing a restart. One level in particular really tested my patience, and that takes a lot from a guy who is too relentless to allow a game to conquer him. The Oracle was the level and it’s at the last part where the Arbiter is facing off against the Heretic. If you’ve played the game you’ll know what I’m talking about and exactly how challenging of a fight it can be. The Heretic releases two holograms that look exactly like him and if you don’t choose to shoot the right one, then you’re just wasting ammo. I played that part for an hour when it normally would’ve taken ten minutes tops on any other difficulty. My problem was the lack of decent places to hide to allow my shield to recharge. These holograms would spot me almost anywhere I went making life too difficult. I almost quit the game because of how hard it was. It felt impossible and I was not having fun, which is an important thing to have when you’re playing game. The night was wasting away as I attempted the impossible until I decided to quit for the night. I picked up the next day in the same spot I left off with, only now my mind was fresh and alert, all the distaste from the night before had been vanquished. The first thing I see is the Heretic (or one of his holograms) come into view. I tag his face with a sticky grenade and lunge at him with my sword, and to my luck, it was the right bastard.

I base that completely on luck, but the fact that I had to work out so many different strategies to defeat this one person is something I’ve never had to do in any Halo game and it was certainly the longest part I’ve ever been stuck at. The parts people told me would be the hardest in Halo Reach I found extremely easy because I was able to fool the AI controlling my enemies, a feat that is much harder to do in Halo 2. Remember this is in my opinion. Finally one other thing about using cover in Halo 2 compared to that of Reach. I literally killed almost all the enemies I came across in Reach whether or not I used my guerilla strategies. In Halo 2, especially playing as the Arbiter, I found myself using cover to get away from the enemies and just beat the level without even fighting. This was much easier to do as the Arbiter than it was Master Chief because the Arbiter had ad cloaking ability that allowed me to go invisible for three to five seconds. I do believe I skipped about 60 percent of the six levels you play as the Arbiter because of how difficult the missions were. They were a headache. They were life draining mechanisms put into this world by Bungie to ruin a man’s soul. I don’t skip parts. That’s not my style, but in all honestly it came down to the best thing to do in order to move on against impossible odds. I’d put my cloak on and run to the nearest hiding spot. Rinse and repeat that until I get to an area where I must fight in order to go on.

Jackal Snipers

If at any point in the game I wanted to shoot myself, it was when I came up against the sons of bitches. Jackals are enemies that were introduced in Halo CE as small thin reptilian creatures that wielded large round shields that protect their small fragile bodies. They’d fire at you through a hole in their shield that is wide enough for a gun. They maintain the same form in Halo 2 but they take on other roles as well, such as being a sniper. As the sniper they’re unable to wield a shield anymore, but I tell you what, these freaking things are ridiculous on legendary. In most games I’m used to the snipers hitting you once as a warning shot that allows you just enough time to take cover, but not these dudes. I’d step around a corner and have my clock cleaned with one swift headshot that always took me by surprise. The accuracy of the snipers is probably the most ridiculous part of it, they never miss. A jackal sniper could probably snipe the period at the end of this sentence from a mile away. Most of my frustration was a direct result of me meeting my demise to the purple blaze that is released from the death dealing weapon. The parts that were the worst was when I had just gotten done fighting for like ten minutes, only to see my face mask caved in and my body falling limply to the ground. I’d wind up spending minutes to hours fighting and refighting foes and then trying to take refuge where the sniper couldn’t see me. From there it was like a game of chess between a real life human and an alien that doesn’t exist. Typically the result would end in my demise, but after failing a few ten to twenty times I would get it down to a science and eventually come out on top.

The one part in the game that was almost as bad as fighting the Heretic came when I entered through a sniper valley. At first sight it looked as though I would be okay. I came through this waterfall at the top of the cliff and immediately spotted two of the snipers casually walking a beat. I sniped one down and ran back the way I came in the hopes of trigging a checkpoint. It worked and I slowly came out of hiding to snipe the other guy down. From there I spent a few minutes taking down helpless enemies before jumping down into the ravine below me. As soon as I touched down I was ambushed by an Elite and two Jackals. I managed to kill the Elite and ran up a small hill to hide behind a three. “Checkpoint Done” ran across the screen closely followed by a swarm of Drones. These guys where killer. Flying drones swarmed me in a giant flock and literally killed me within seconds. I managed to figure out a way to escape the ambush as soon as the checkpoint reloaded, killed all the drones, two more elites and plenty of Jackals, only to get sniped in the face from only God knows where. It took me nearly an hour of battling and re-battling the same foes again and again before I was able to spot where the tiny creature that blended in extremely well with its surrounding was. The game was made up of these guys and because of them it felt as if I was fighting checkpoint to checkpoint in a similar way I survived basic training by living meal to meal. The barrage of these snipers didn’t end and they were the cause of my delay in multiple sections of the game.

Bad Spawns

Halo 2 is notorious for its spawning system; mainly in the multiplayer portion where if the enemy team was good enough, they could spawn kill you until the game was finished. Twice during my legendary play through I experienced bad spawning. The first started at the beginning of the level “High Charity.” During the cut scene it shows the enemy council convened in a giant meeting area. The Master Chief is teleported right in the middle of the room, surrounded by a group of ugly bastards out on a religious mission to destroy humanity. What’s my starting weapon? A needler and my dirty mouth that couldn’t stop spewing the “F” word. I had to fight off wave after wave of brutes and grunts in a battle the drained all energy I had. Taking nearly as long as fighting the Heretic, I was able to overcome this tragedy of a spawn and crappy weapon selection.

The second came moments later when I was trying to rescue some fellow marines. I’m not entirely sure if the game just randomly saved the checkpoint there or what, but I landed from my elevator ride right behind two brutes, one of which saw me and melted my face in seconds with a nasty shot from his brute shot. That brute shot is extremely overpowered in this game and on top of that it’s a little round ball that explodes when it impacts something. Come to think of it, this guy kept exploding his balls in my face the second I touched down and the thought of it pissed me off enough. I guess I died too fast at that same spot in rapid succession that the game eventually reverted me back to the checkpoint prior to my elevator ride. The next time I went down, both brutes were unaware of my presence long enough for me to escape to safe fighting spot where I spent the next thirty minutes fighting for survival.

In the end I came out on top. I got the last two achievements I needed to get 100% from Halo 2, but I had a borderline miserable experience trying to accomplish it. Perhaps it’s in my own opinion that I think Halo 2 is the hardest legendary play through and all the critics are just hyping up the newest game. I don’t know for sure, all I can say is that for me it was the most time consuming, frustrating, energy wasting, campaign I have ever played and on top of that I feel cheated because I had to skip as much of it as I possibly could because I couldn’t get past many parts. I’d like to blame it on me sucking at Halo, but allow me to be egotistical, I’m damn good at Halo, the name says it all baby. It’s your turn. If you haven’t already, go play the five Halo campaigns on legendary and post in the comments section how you would rate them from easiest to hardest. You can explain your decision if you want, but I’ll tell you right now, I’m dead set on my opinion being the right one.