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Sullivan
@Sullivan
hayley
@hayley asked:

back at you: best halo singleplayer level, best halo multiplayer map. best piece of halo music (by hatsune miku and Michael Salvatori), and best halo gun

Singleplayer level:

I won’t cheat here and say “Mombasa Streets” from ODST. It’s probably not even my FAVORITE, but it is probably the halo singleplayer location that most sets my brain on fire with excitement.

I have to give the award to THE COVENANT from Halo 3. This mission is nuts. If this mission had Silent Cartographer design, we probably wouldn’t be making video games anymore. People would just still be playing The Covenant from Halo 3. Halo 3 was operating on another level with this one. This game…on a Succession Season 4/Mad Men season 3-4-6 level of prowess. We truly DO NOT make them like this anymore.

Has it all: beach landing with heavy spawns, driving the warthog 1000mph down a mountain, airborn sequence, TANK SEQUENCE, immense visuals, music going nuts, and then it does the absolute hypest shit to ever happen in a halo game, and then the second hypest shit to ever happen in a halo game. I always think the warthog run happens right after this cause it just FEELS like the final Halo 3 mission. Just incredible. Stand up and salute when you play this one.

I have to say a few words about the other nominees though. I have to.

Halo: Combat Evolved

Silent Cartographer -essentially perfect. I played this over and over in the Mac demo before the actual disc showed up in the mail. It goes without saying. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood with this and Halo (mission) in terms of campaign design. Apart from ODST and New Alexandria, Bungie never really returned to this sense of expansiveness in Halo, and if they ever go back there again it could be the best shooter experience ever. Hard to rate this. It’s the Citizen Kane of campaign missions! I think there are better missions in Halo, but none more influential. We owe everything to The Silent Cartographer.

Assault on the Control Room -I think a lot of my favorite missions give you a tank? Minus points for this mission basically being like 5 missions long. Ridiculously huge. Its no wonder you play the rest of the game backwards after this one. They probably killed real people to get this mission finished. In terms of linear missions, Truth and Reconcilliation has more swag- and the best piece of halo music ever recorded.

Halo 2

Outskirts/Metropolis- Tank mission. Going over the bridge….all time gaming momence. H2 doesnt really recover from how fucking incredible this mission is. Delta Halo comes close! And the Heretic Banshee Chase sequence is really fun. But this is the standout H2 mission. The less we say about High Charity, the better (does have an all time iconic gaming moment with Blow Me Away, but that’s not enough to save it…I wasn’t there, but I would have been happy if they delayed long enough to finish the Warthog Run they had planned for it).

Halo 3

The GREATEST Halo Campaign of all time. Enough said. Despite being excessively linear, a bit too short, and full of Marty O’Donnel’s writing trying to copy Serenity of all things, this campaign speaks for its fucking self. Halo 3’s weakest part being its top-of-the-class campaign really says something about it as a game. Anyway.

Tsavo Highway- Beautiful…perfect…

The Ark- They can’t keep getting away with it!

The Covenant- They fucking Got Away With It. You cannot compete with Halo 3.

Halo 3: Recon Halo 3: ODST

Despite everything I said about H3, this is my overall favorite Halo game. All that said, I don’t really go nuts for any individual mission in ODST other than Mombasa Streets- which is to say, the hub-structure framing device that connects the linear missions. All of which are lovely missions! Its funnest linear mission is a bit rough on Heroic, (which is what ODST plays best on IMO) so its hard to hand the gold to any of them. A fucking EXCELLENT game though. Someone please make another game like ODST.

Halo: REACH

I love Reach. Love it! It’s hard for me to rank it as a campaign cause it’s kind of like saying the series finale of a tv show is the best episode- sure, it might be true, but it sort of doesn’t count.

That being said, Long Night of Solace is a masterpiece. No wonder they showed this at E3! My god! Only issue is that it’s competing, once again, with The Covenant. This mission is so fucking incredible though.

New Alexandria- probably my second favorite mission in all of Halo. it probably goes The Covenant> New Alexandria> Silent Cartographer> Long Night of Solace for me. Extraordinary design, amazing music, and is the first ever like…tragic and melancholy vehicle sequence in a vido game? What was Bungie cooking?? Thinking about any Reach mission for too long makes me want to cry… god what an amazing game.

Multiplayer Level:

SANDTRAP- Halo 3. I am a Big Team Battle guy. Sandtrap is, without a doubt, the finest BTB Map ever produced in Halo History. There is so much going on here. The Elephants, the minefield, the sheer range of vehicles and weapons. Bedlam. Makes sense that the greatest map in the best Sandbox Shooter would be, in fact, an actual sandbox.

Once again, Halo 3 is kind of silly with it in this category. So many incredible BTB maps. Valhalla, Standoff, High Ground?? Not to mention the Slayer maps- my favorite of which is probably Ghost Town? But god DAMN is Guardian good.

Honorable Mentions:

HALO CE: Blood Gulch is excellent in Halo CE- but my second favorite Halo map is probably Timberland from the PC edition of the game. Such a shame we only got a remake in Reach in the baleful Post-343-Title-Update Era. Obvious props to Sidewinder and Hang Em High. My Silly Pick from Halo CE PC is Gephyrophobia. Worst map in halo history? Longest or Chiron TL-34. What were they thinking??

HALO 2: Terminal is my favorite Halo 2 map. I love maps with silly shit. I played the least of Halo 2 multi out of all of these, but I know how sacrilegious it is to not say Zanzibar. Listen, Zanzibar is #2 here. Sorry. Coag is a crappy remake that doesn’t adapt for the new sandbox. You simply cannot run the flag across the middle in Halo 2 like you could on Blood Gulch. Luckily Bungie noticed this and fixed it in 3 by making one of the best maps of all time (Valhalla). Headlong, Relic, and Containment all honorable mentions. Lockout is too much of a snake pit for me.

Halo: REACH- Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of standout multi maps here. Highlands a huge btb fave here though! And of course Lifetime Achievement Award for Forge World.

BEST MUSIC (by hatsune miku and Michael Salvatori)

UNDER THE COVER OF NIGHT....one of the greatest pieces of video game music ever recorded. Absolutely Ultimate. When the drums come in…man. The moment this starts playing in Truth and Reconciliation is solid gold, all time, 64 rounds in the sniper rifle, Sergeant Johnson yelling shit by your side, night vision, ALL TIME!!

One of the most stacked categories ever. Winter Contingency, Mjolnir Mix, Luck (love the James Horner Aliens score-isms with the flute in that), Reach Overture (my number 2), and of course Deference for Darkness, sitting very closely at #3.

BEST GUN:

The Halo: Reach DMR (pre-Title Update). This is such a fun gun to shoot. I love Destiny, but the bespoke, crafted rhythm of this gun is something that I really long to return to Bungie shooters. Before the TU fucked everything about the weapon design of that game (eliminating weapon bloom), the DMR was a perfect evolution/expansion of the magnum-BR journey they had been on. MLG Delenda Est.

Honorable mentions:

Halo 2 shotgun- SECOND PLACE- a finer companion i have never had. The Enemy Deleter.

The Halo CE Sniper- this is the only one I was any good with.

Halo 3 Fuel Rod- nothing is more fun than raining holy hell down upon someone after emptying your entire magazine in .5 seconds...and its a heavy weapon. Kind of a ridiculous weapon. Give this thing to a passenger hog full of marines and you will create a fighting force unlike the world has ever seen. Truly scary shit.

The halo 2 dual needlers- thank you bungie for making this disgusting combination possible. Was playing H2A on my PC and the dual needlers made my framerate drop...as it should be.

That got a little out of hand. I love halo


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