|
User
Reviews 14
Approval 97%
Soundoffs 78
News Articles 11
Band Edits + Tags 447
Album Edits 1,263
Album Ratings 10189
Objectivity 80%
Last Active 12-26-21 8:29 pm
Joined 09-17-07
Review Comments 8,031
| Halo Maps Ranked: 40-31
Let's get ready for Halo 4. By no means are these blurbs in-depth
critical analyses, just quick, cursory overviews. All selections were
made mostly with high level play in mind. I judge on map design
and how that map design relates to the game mechanics of
whichever Halo game it came from; I do not take into
consideration the mechanics on their own merit. PC maps and
forged maps are not present. Feel free to post how much better
your favorite shooter is than Halo. | | 1 | Prisoner
#40: Small / Halo: CE and Halo: Reach (Solitary) / Played organically,
Prisoner is the best 1 vs. 1 map in any Halo game. With that said, it's pretty
bad for everything else. While the tower defense-ingrained design of the
map is a cool idea, it doesn't make for very balanced matches. The map is
more frustrating than anything else, despite having one of the most
exhilarating opening rushes of any Halo map. It is so exhilarating because
the entire match is at stake if you falter on that opening rush. Including
Prisoner in Halo: Reach was a pretty stupid idea as well. Why? Jetpacks.
They completely destroy the layout of the map, and it just becomes a
jetpack race to the top, even with the tunnels they added in an attempt to
balance the layout and make it easier to scale Mt. Prisoner. | | 2 | Longest
#39: Small / Halo: CE / This ranking does not include the Halo 2 remake,
Elongation. In Halo: CE, Longest was a solid map, but that was about it.
Balanced, symmetrical gameplay made for good competitive matches, but it
was definitely the most plain, ugly map to exist in the series. Longest had
no real appeal to anyone but high-level players for its balanced gameplay. | | 3 | Gemini
#38: Small-Medium / Halo 2 / This small-medium map was apparently a
remake of a Marathon map. Sadly, it was another map that lent itself to
that tower defense style of gameplay. Gemini matches became a matter of
which team set up at the back of the map with the sniper rifle first. Still, any
good team could coordinate a push to take it back, so it wasn't necessarily
a design flaw and us such was easy enough to overcome. The battles at
the top of the portals were also quite exhilarating; rife with portal trapping
and mind games. I originally thought this would be lower on the list, but
midway through compiling it I realized how intense and fulfilling this map
could be at times, and that's what Halo is all about. | | 4 | Foundation
#37: Small / Halo 2 / Another Marathon remake, Foundation was a little bit
better than Gemini. The main reason Foundation is so high is because of its
early custom game potential. It was the go-to map for a while if someone
wanted to try out a custom game and have some fun. What was the
greatest thing to come out of Foundation? Zombies. Foundation was the
greatest zombies map in the series (and the one it was invented for).
Players would quarantine themselves in one of the four rooms, fill up the
doorway with boxes, and trigger the zombie onslaught. Foundation also
had a bit of merit as a competitive map, but when games became too
drawn out and monotonous, it lost its appeal. Still, there was a lot of good,
balanced gameplay to be had on Foundation. | | 5 | Derelict
#36: Small / Halo: CE and Halo 2 (Desolation) / Derelict is a darling map
with Halo veterans for its great Free-for-All play. It's kind of alarming to see
it so low on this list, but this is when we start realizing how many great
maps there are in the Halo series. Derelict follows the simple, symmetrical
foundations that constitute a great competitive map. It was a very chaotic
map, however, and players were constantly exposed to danger. A great
arena style map tailored for FFA, but not much more. Capture the Flag was
pretty fun on it, though. The Halo 2 remake, Desolation, was probably
different enough to warrant a separate place. I'll relegate it to a small
mention, though. As a remake, Desolation was terrible, it divested the map
design of everything that made it work, what the remake did do, though,
was create a great casual map. It was much bigger than the original, and
included mancannons and alternate hallways, which gave a little bit of a
safety net for players. Unfortunately, the map was pretty ugly. | | 6 | Narrows
#35: Small-Medium / Halo 3 / Narrows is probably the second-most popular
map to emerge from Halo 3, and it's easy to see why. Visually, it embodies
the architecture of Halo that fans love. It also favors sniping and spawn-
killing, which a good portion of the community loves. I'm just not entirely
fond of it's design as a balanced map. For slayer, Narrows became all about
spawn-trapping, and for CTF, it was very much an uphill battle if you gave
up a capture. Narrows was driven by team momentum. A team could
capture all three flags in swift succession, and that was usually the only
way to do it. If there was no momentum after a flag capture, often games
would go beyond the fifteen-minute mark. I'm just not personally as fond of
this map as a good portion of the community is. It was an early favorite of
mine though, like Hang 'Em High. | | 7 | Burial Mounds
#34: Medium / Halo 2 / Burial Mounds was the mother of all spawn-trap
maps, which gives it some significance alone. If you really fucked up on
offense, you would end up paying for it with two or three minutes of
spawning and dying over and over. This added a 'go big or go home' sense
of urgency to the map, which inspired a lot of heated games. Round-based
objective gametypes on Burial Mounds were some of the most intense that
you could attain from playing Halo. It wasn't a great slayer map, and wasn't
nice to look at, but for objective play it is one of my favorite of all-time. | | 8 | Condemned
#33: Medium / Halo: Reach / While interest in Reach had dwindled before
the release of Condemned, it was a solid map that I'm sure a lot of players
would have appreciated. Most of the map consists of fairly open hallways,
which is where most of the map's traffic occurs. Surprisingly unused is the
anti-gravity room in the center of the map. Again, it's another map that's
great for casual play, but its nuances (such as the anti-gravity chamber)
make it otherwise unplayable at a competitive level. It's also a little bit too
big for balanced team matches. Even though the middle chamber connects
four portions of the map, it's hard to cover ground quick enough. The battle
outside the windows is actually pretty amazing too, but the sounds are
very distracting from the gameplay, especially if you use headphones. | | 9 | Construct
#32: Small / Halo 3 / Like Narrows, Construct is another popular Halo 3 map
that I don't quite see the full appeal of. Yes, it is a very solid map, but
movement options are so incredibly limited on the map given all of the lifts.
I'm not a fan of small maps with multiple layers e.g. Prisoner, but I can
appreciate Construct for what it is. The first two years that Halo 3 was out,
however, I considered Construct my least favorite map in the game due to
how predictable the match flow was. King of the Hill was probably the best
gametype on here; it was balanced and set-up heavy. | | 10 | Powerhouse
#31: Small-Medium / Halo: Reach / Powerhouse is a rare Reach map that
stands up to its predecessors. Had it not been for some of the unnecessary
outskirts of the map (almost everything near the edge of the cliff),
Powerhouse actually would have made a great competitive map. It suffers
from what a lot of Reach maps suffered from, and that was the open,
unfinished feeling. Powerhouse was like a High Ground mini, but with less
emphasis on power weapons and more emphasis on map control. I'm
always a sucker for maps that require team setups, and Powerhouse was
great for demanding that. | |
Anthracks
10.21.12 | get upset | Havey
10.21.12 | damn, construct and narrows already? oh well | Havey
10.21.12 | "PC maps and forged maps are not present."
fuck I was waiting for Ice Fields and Gephyrophobia, loved those as a kid | Emim
10.21.12 | powerhouse is pretty bad | wabbit
10.21.12 | only halo 2 had good maps: and even then it was just Lockout, Midship (the best two by a lot), Beaver Creek, Warlock and sanctuary
construct/ guardian are the only okay H3 maps. But they both suffer from too easy space control.
Reach is awful so I don't know if it has good maps but I image it doesn't. | wabbit
10.21.12 | Ivory tower was alright too. But it just led to really boring games. | SiliconFields
10.21.12 | Yes Damnation and Chill Out/Cold Storage are still alive :D | ZombieParty
10.21.12 | what an absolute waste of life these lists are [2] | Havey
10.21.12 | Reach has like 1 okay map and thats a remake soooo | Symmetry
10.21.12 | Powerhouse is so bad. So bad. Zombies on Foundation, though . . . Good times. | wabbit
10.21.12 | "what an absolute waste of life these lists are"
the dude clearly likes the game and knows what he's talking about. He probably enjoyed putting his thoughts on it the maps down on paper and it's a pretty enjoyable read if you played halo a lot (which a huge amount of people did).
It's in no way different than a review about music. | Anthracks
10.22.12 | i do it for myself. their comments don't bother me | FromDaHood
10.22.12 | I always hated playing on Construct with my friends. It was the same fucking game every time. | chambered49
10.22.12 | sanctuary better b 1 | Anthracks
10.22.12 | okay! | Havey
10.26.12 | time for 30-21??? | NoMeansYes
10.26.12 | Are there really that many maps? | Havey
10.26.12 | There are actually 86 maps... 95 counting the PC exclusives.
Also he is pairing remakes with originals so that makes it around 65 I guess | Recspecs
10.26.12 | Derelict was awesome. | Anthracks
10.26.12 | I pair most remakes unless the difference is radical (Lockout -> Blackout). And I've been really the past few days; this takes a lot of time so I haven't been able to do much. | Anthracks
10.26.12 | busy* | wabbit
10.26.12 | reach has some truly horrid forge world maps. | Recspecs
10.26.12 | Halo Reacharound |
|
