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Discussion Halo or Call of Duty or none of the above?

shoot

  • Halo

    Votes: 48 45.7%

  • Call of Duty

    Votes: 10 9.5%

  • ew gross

    Votes: 47 44.8%
  • Total voters
    105
Mekanos said:
I'm not super interested in defending the honor of Halo and its political themes, but Call Of Duty is regularly used as recruitment propaganda for the US military. So I think I gotta hand it to COD there.
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Halo just puts a thin sci-fi sheen on American military propaganda. It's more Starship Troopers the book than the movie. If there's any satire or criticism, it's extra textual. The games project oorah marines mythologizing into space. It's the Star Trek problem of "isn't this Earth alliance really just a stand-in for the US" but militaristic. And don't get me started on the Covenant.

Saying it's worse than COD is hyperbolic, but I think if you scratch the surface, Halo is also military propaganda.
 
Given the current shape XBOX is in, it wouldn’t be unusual to maybe one day get a Halo game on the next generation Nintendo console given the leaks we’ve seen lately about the specs.

I suspect Call of Duty is a go on the next Nintendo console as well.
 
juliotendo said:
Given the current shape XBOX is in, it wouldn’t be unusual to maybe one day get a Halo game on the next generation Nintendo console given the leaks we’ve seen lately about the specs.

I suspect Call of Duty is a go on the next Nintendo console as well.
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I mean there's no need to suspect. Nintendo and Microsoft signed a deal to bring Call of Duty for Nintendo for the next 10 years.
 
PixelKnight said:
They don’t have the same politics at all, unless you boil it all right down to ‘imperialism bad, whether you’re a sci-fi brightly coloured space marine shooting monsters and aliens, or propaganda of real world countries sending soldiers into thinly disguised proxies of real world countries and calling it mandatory heroics’. Sure, far-future sci-fi war stories play on corruption, incompetence, capitalism and imperialism all leading to totalitarian dictatorships all the time. Everything from Halo to Aliens, Starship Troopers to Space: Above and Beyond or Mass Effect all riff on these themes at some point. But there’s a huge difference between fantastical stories set in the far future where geopolitics on earth (if it’s even still around) are very different, and something like CoD’s propaganda used to get American teenagers to not just turn up to shoot at kids in far off countries, but to imply it’s their national duty to do so.
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I'm just not convinced that CoD and its politics laid bare is meaningfully different from Halo, even with its setting serving as an abstraction. I'm also not sure what you mean by "geopolitics," but the scheme remains the same as it does today, aliens and space travel notwithstanding: the imperial core (UEG) relies on the plunder of the periphery (the outer colonies) to sustain its mode of production (capitalism) through the threat of violence (UNSC) and unequal trade (destitution of the outer colonies). Everything else is window dressing as far as I'm concerned. There's no substantive critique of this scheme anywhere in the games or books. Suggesting they don't have the same politics "at all" is pretty outrageous.
 
I've always thought Halo was fairly boring, and I don't like the sci-fi theming.

Call of Duty all day, I still play it pretty often and it's a lot of fun.
 
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ComradeKoopa said:
I'm just not convinced that CoD and its politics laid bare is meaningfully different from Halo, even with its setting serving as an abstraction. I'm also not sure what you mean by "geopolitics," but the scheme remains the same as it does today, aliens and space travel notwithstanding: the imperial core (UEG) relies on the plunder of the periphery (the outer colonies) to sustain its mode of production (capitalism) through the threat of violence (UNSC) and unequal trade (destitution of the outer colonies). Everything else is window dressing as far as I'm concerned. There's no substantive critique of this scheme anywhere in the games or books. Suggesting they don't have the same politics "at all" is pretty outrageous.
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By ‘geopolitics isn’t the same’ I mean that fantastical sci-fi, far-future, united-earth organisations like the UEG or UNSC doing colonialism/corruption etc in the far future aren’t the same as a game that has the politics of literally suggesting to American customers that American soldiers shooting at foreigners in thinly veiled proxies of real countries is their call to ‘Duty’. I don’t see how that’s ‘outrageous’ at all when one is cartoony pulp sci-fi leaning on common sci-fi tropes and the other is literal real-world propaganda for kids and used as a recruiting tool for a real military. The context is very different when one is literally, directly, specifically carrying water for the US military and the other is several steps removed from the organisations and countries involved.
 
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PixelKnight said:
By ‘geopolitics isn’t the same’ I mean that fantastical sci-fi, far-future, united-earth organisations like the UEG or UNSC doing colonialism/corruption etc in the far future aren’t the same as a game that has the politics of literally suggesting to American customers that American soldiers shooting at foreigners in thinly veiled proxies of real countries is their call to ‘Duty’. I don’t see how that’s ‘outrageous’ at all when one is cartoony pulp sci-fi leaning on common sci-fi tropes and the other is literal real-world propaganda for kids and used as a recruiting tool for a real military. The context is very different when one is literally, directly, specifically carrying water for the US military and the other is several steps removed from the organisations and countries involved.
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I don't buy any of this. Halo is propaganda in the same way with some abstractions, I've already outlined how and why that is. Just because CoD is more overtly gross about it and has gotten more media criticism doesn't have any bearing on the essence of the ideology in Halo. Across 20 years I've seen innumerable Halo fanboy jingoists absolutely obsessed with its militarism in the same vein as CoD, albeit perhaps less often. The effect is clear, however.

I don't see this becoming productive so I'm gonna bow out of this one.
 
Call of Duty has a great history on Nintendo consoles. It was one of the most complete online experiences as early as the Wii. It nailed the pointer controls on the Wii and gave you plenty of customisation on top. It was the best online ego shooter experience on a Nintendo console to date.
 
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I haven't really been into FPS games for a while. I was a big Halo and Call of Duty fan for a while, and I appreciate them both. I feel like I enjoyed CoD a bit more because it felt like it required a bit less skill - I was never great at either game, but I could rack up some serious kill streaks in Call of Duty. Halo just takes longer to kill an enemy, so if someone is a lot better than you they can often still take you out.

They're both fun for what they are - I just don't really have a schedule (with two toddlers) to where I can really put in the consistent time to meet up with others and/or "get good" at those games anymore.

There was a brief window where Halo 3/Reach and Modern Warfare 1/2 were my jam, though.
 
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I guess I neglected to think about it not just being the "aesthetic" that puts people off Call of Duty but also the politics. To be honest, I haven't played one since the Xbox 360 era so I'm a bit dulled to it. Thinking about it it's something that does feel even little bit guilty in Halo, but it's something that's sort of compartmentalizable like literal killing is in a heck of a lot of games. The Halo games are kind of almost like in-universe propaganda because they do a good job nailing a clean kind of heroism that doesn't engage with the behind-the-scenes implications at all.
 
Stopdoor said:
I guess I neglected to think about it not just being the "aesthetic" that puts people off Call of Duty but also the politics. To be honest, I haven't played one since the Xbox 360 era so I'm a bit dulled to it. Thinking about it it's something that does feel even little bit guilty in Halo, but it's something that's sort of compartmentalizable like literal killing is in a heck of a lot of games. The Halo games are kind of almost like in-universe propaganda because they do a good job nailing a clean kind of heroism that doesn't engage with the behind-the-scenes implications at all.
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Master Chief: Is literally the product of an insanely immoral supersoldier program that involved kidnapping and replacing children with clones that were designed to die in a few years.

The Halo Games: Do not question this at all.
 
Call of Duty easy. I was never into Halo. Treyarch zombies alone is worth more than every Halo game to me
 
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I admittedly have not played either, but Halo appeals to me infinitely (heh) more than CoD ever has or likely will.

I think the legacy of the IP alone will propel it over CoD for most Nintendo-centric online fans. The original trilogy for Halo was an event. CoD is obviously huge, but I don’t think it’s ever really matched Halo in that lens.
 
Hailinel said:
Master Chief: Is literally the product of an insanely immoral supersoldier program that involved kidnapping and replacing children with clones that were designed to die in a few years.

The Halo Games: Do not question this at all.
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It's not even "do not question this", it's more like it doesn't even know that backstory exists lol
 
Stopdoor said:
It's not even "do not question this", it's more like it doesn't even know that backstory exists lol
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Most of the UNSC backstory is covered in expanded fiction like books and in those, the UNSC is often not portrayed as the good guys. Their questionable ethics and methods are more fleshed out and you get more a broader perspective on how different people feel about them.

In the games, the UNSC is just clearly inspired by Starship Troopers, Alien, and other sci-fi. It's 2001 and it's a game about shooting purple and green aliens. Ripping off those inspirations is just a short cut to get the player into the action. The game doesn't need to spend a lot of time explaining everything because you probably already know how it works. Master Chief is a Spartan super soldier to explain why we can survive longer than the average marine. The marines themselves are mostly the comic relief. The games themselves don't really get much deeper than that.
 
HockeyBird said:
Most of the UNSC backstory is covered in expanded fiction like books and in those, the UNSC is often not portrayed as the good guys. Their questionable ethics and methods are more fleshed out and you get more a broader perspective on how different people feel about them.

In the games, the UNSC is just clearly inspired by Starship Troopers, Alien, and other sci-fi. It's 2001 and it's a game about shooting purple and green aliens. Ripping off those inspirations is just a short cut to get the player into the action. The game doesn't need to spend a lot of time explaining everything because you probably already know how it works. Master Chief is a Spartan super soldier to explain why we can survive longer than the average marine. The marines themselves are mostly the comic relief. The games themselves don't really get much deeper than that.
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Yeah, I know. I just wonder if that sort of blind propaganda is worse than Call of Duty at least kind of acknowledging the horrors of war in at least a superficial way.
 
Stopdoor said:
Yeah, I know. I just wonder if that sort of blind propaganda is worse than Call of Duty at least kind of acknowledging the horrors of war in at least a superficial way.
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I don't view the Halo games (at least the original trilogy) as any more propaganda than Zelda is propaganda for monarchies and religion. The games are fantastical enough that it's hard to connect the actions and abilities of people in the games to things people can do in real life. The main focus of the story is Chief and Cortana with some side characters, some of which just happen to be UNSC soldiers. The UNSC is mostly just window dressing and I don't anyone is joining the military because they see a UNSC marine drive off a cliff in a Warhog. The COD games are set in real world locations in contemporary times using modern weapons (or inspired by them) and in some games, has the playing committing actual war crimes, most of which the story justifies in order to stop the bad guy. It gives a false impression of what being an actual soldier is like.
 
HockeyBird said:
I don't view the Halo games (at least the original trilogy) as any more propaganda than Zelda is propaganda for monarchies and religion. The games are fantastical enough that it's hard to connect the actions and abilities of people in the games to things people can do in real life. The main focus of the story is Chief and Cortana with some side characters, some of which just happen to be UNSC soldiers. The UNSC is mostly just window dressing and I don't anyone is joining the military because they see a UNSC marine drive off a cliff in a Warhog. The COD games are set in real world locations in contemporary times using modern weapons (or inspired by them) and in some games, has the playing committing actual war crimes, most of which the story justifies in order to stop the bad guy. It gives a false impression of what being an actual soldier is like.
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Well, propaganda is more of an exaggeration from my example of it being "in-universe propaganda" - yeah, it doesn't really come off as relevant to real life, to its favour. Though tbh Zelda also has me eyebrow raising constantly with its intense focus on bloodlines 😅
 
Ozeiyo said:
No halo games in the past 10 years have been anything special but when they were good, they were good.
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It's really been closer to 15 years unless we're including Halo 4 for some reason lol. It's genuinely mind boggling to me how mishandled this franchise has been for so long. We had a trilogy of renowned, beloved games serving as the perfect blueprint and foundation for moving forward, and still they have fumbled every single release with moronic changes, exclusions, mistakes, jank, and so on and so forth.

It genuinely angers me. I've been bouncing around the stages of grief for nearly half my life because of this stupid franchise.
 
I voted ew gross, and I actually like first person shooters.

I think overall as a singleplayer gamer I think CoD is the better series. Better gunplay, better campaigns. It's just that you feel like you need to get a shower every time you play a modern warfare game. And so I stopped after MW2 on the x360. I never got the love for Halo, the guns are so bad, it tries to give serious pathos to power ranger rejects and shooting hordes feels like boring filler. Until Halo Infinite that is, it's the first Halo game that clicked with me. Something about the grappling hook and open world landscape made it a game that was about traversal and vantage points as much as shooting, and the former outweighed the mediocrity of the latter.

That said, if both disappeared tomorrow I would be more happy than sad, because the obviously talented devs could work on something meaningful instead. I will play them on Gamepass only.
 
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I haven't cared for FPS much since I was a teenager (Mullet Mad Jack being a recent exception). I used to play Halo 2 religiously so I'll vote Halo. CoD is too pro-military for me. Had friends who loved it and I just couldn't get into it. I voted none of the above since I feel like when I have picked them up at friends places they feel exactly the same.
 
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100% Halo for me. My friends love Warzone so we play a ton of it and play the regular multi to level guns up, on a mechanical level and in terms of gameplay loop, it's a very enjoyable multiplayer game but i have zero love for the COD military hoorah (active dislike even) and don't really enjoy the campaigns at all. Halo on the other side, I really really love the art direction of the series, the weird lore, most of the campaigns I've played through multiple times, firefight, multiplayer. Everything about how Halo moves, I like a lot. Outside of this bubble, I really prefer Doom/Quake esque shooters but between these two, Halo.
 
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