It’s not unreasonable to state that when it was not for Halo, Microsoft’s Xbox brand might not have survived past its first console. Kicking things off with all the first Xbox launch title Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001, Bungie effectively revolutionized the console first-person shooter using a game that featured an intriguing sci-fi story and putting, a charismatic hero at the Master Chief, and also naturally, fluid controllers and exciting gameplay. Over the years and a half because Halo first arrived to the scene, the franchise is now synonomous with the Xbox brand, and it has established many sequels and also spin-offs of quality.

Even though the franchise is not as hot as it once had been, using Halo Wars 2 out this past year and Halo 6 somewhere around the horizon, Halo is not going anywhere anytime soon. As a longtime Halo enthusiast myself, I thought it’d be interesting to try and rank each game from worst to best (omitting remasters and collections of course). Apparently, this means this will be a somewhat biased list, however I think you’ll find that I have justified all my rankings. Feel free to talk about your own personal position of the Halo games in the comments!

I have not been able to play with Halo Wars 2 yet, therefore I have not included it , but I’ll make certain to incorporate it in once that changes. Additionally, I am not adding Spartan Strike since it’s essentially a poor version of Spartan Assault and would rank at the bottom of the list anyhow.

9.

Unfortunately, the jump to consoles did not do much to change Spartan Assault in the unremarkable, though competent twin-stick shooter that it is.Read about halo 2 roms At website That is a genre, after all, that’s given us some incredible matches over time, including Geometry Wars, Super Stardust HD, and Resogun, along with Spartan Assault falls much short of these names.

The game’s online co-op mode and general presentation are definitely its finest features, but at the conclusion of the day, which is much more of a passing curiosity for Halo fans than an adventure they’ll want to return to. You will find much greater twin-stick shooters out there which are really worth your money and time and are not laded using microtransactions.

8. Halo Wars

Featuring an honest-to-goodness campaign using a good story set prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, as well as the normal assortment of multiplayer modes you would expect to find in a RTS, Halo Wars excels in accessibility and is the perfect game for those put off with much more complex RTS games located on PC. However, that accessibility is also what holds Halo Wars back, as it is too simplistic to appeal to the more hardcore RTS audience rather than persuasive enough to sway most Halo fans from the show’ more conventional first-person shooter experiences.

Additionally, while I’ll concede that Halo Wars does an outstanding job of distributing the Halo universe to a competently-made RTS, I have never been a enormous fan of the genre, and this is part of the reason why I’ve ranked it so low. However, Halo Wars did enough to spawn a sequel by many reports, it is better than the original (it probably helps that this is available on PC now out).

7. Halo 4

After Bungie left Microsoft from 2007 to associate with Activision for what would eventually become excruciating, the keys into the Halo franchise were first given to 343 Industries, a Microsoft-owned studio, following the release of Bungie’s final Halo game, Halo: Attain. To say that 343 had large shoes to fill would be a huge understatement, since they not only needed to prove with Halo 4 they might craft a game which could live up to Bungie’s function, but also warrant the yield of Master Chief, that had effectively”finished the fight” at the conclusion of Halo 3. To this end, 343 was largely successful. 1 place that Bungie never exactly cried at was crafting matches with pretty graphics, therefore it came as a bit of a surprise to see exactly how far better Halo 4 seemed compared to its predecessors (badly, it is still a miracle how they got it running on the Xbox 360 at all).

The game’s effort has been tough, introducing players to a whole new planet and race of enemies in the Forerunners, while also diving deeper into the franchises’ mythology. Spartan Ops was just another enjoyable accession, giving players many different cooperative missions to play with friends that only got better as they went together. Regrettably, some questionable design choices make Halo 4 that the worst’traditional’ Halo match. However, the biggest problem with Halo 4 has been easily its multiplayer, that attempted to ape Call of Duty’s loadout and perk design also significantly, resulting in an experience that completely missed the purpose of Halo’s level playing field mentality. Luckily, 343 created strides to improve those problems with their following kick at the can, but not without presenting a few new issues on the way.

6.

The very first proper Halo game to appear on Xbox One, Halo 5: Guardians doesn’t appear to find enough credit. A significant reason for this might need to do using 343’s regrettable decision to cut split-screen completely in favour of attaining better visual fidelity and a higher frame rate, a decision that pissed off a slew of fans who were accustomed to Halo being their go-to sofa co-op shooter (myself included). When you get past the sting of just being able to play together with your buddies online though, Halo 5 really has a great deal to offer. While its effort suffers from many of the same issues as Halo 4’s and ends up on a cliffhanger to boot (you would think Microsoft could have set a moratorium on cliffhangers following the great backlash to Halo 2’s ending), its flat design was somewhat more powerful (a mission on the Elite — sorry, Sangheili — homeworld is a highlight) and has been created with co-op drama in your mind, to get better and worse.

However, as significant as Halo campaigns are, the multiplayer is the most important draw for most players and it is this element that gives Halo 5 the edge on its predecessor. As a result of a number of gameplay tweaks focused on personality agility, Halo 5 is probably the fastest and most fluid game at the franchise and its aggressive manners made excellent use of these changes by ditching Halo 4’s CoD inspirations in favour of a return to more traditional design. In other words, Halo 5 provides among the most effective competitive online experiences in gaming today thanks to how well designed it is, but because of 343’s commitment to consistently supplying free updates. In a age where players are usually expected to pay for additional maps, 343 has taken another route and made every new upgrade free to all of its players. In fact, they have added so much to the sport because its late 2015 launch that it hardly resembles the sport it was at launch and in some ways feels like the most fully-realized Halo multiplayer that to date.

Shame about that deficiency of split-screen though.

5. Halo 3: ODST

Starting life as a piece of growth content to Halo 3 predicted Recon, ODST turned into something a little more ambitious during development and became a separate entry into the franchise, despite the’3′ in its name might suggest. Place on Earth during the events of Halo 2, ODST switches up things by casting players not as the Master Chief but instead as’the Rookie,” a member of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers who has separated from his squad after falling into the ravaged town of New Mombasa. With a somber score by former Halo composer Marty O’Donnell, ODST fell players right into a rain-soaked town and put more focus on exploration than previous Halo games, with the Rookie searching town for evidence of what happened to his lost squadmates. Each piece of proof triggers a flashback assignment which are generally more action-oriented compared to Rookie’s, assisting lend some variety into the event.

Even though the Rookie nonetheless controls equally to the Master Chief, he is no Spartan and is much more vulnerable consequently. This small change has a major impact on the moment-to-moment gameplay, as players have to have a more measured approach to battle than they did in past Halo matches, even on lesser problems. ODST introduced the horde mode-inspired Firefight into the series, a co-op mode that tasks players with holding out as long as possible against waves of increasingly challenging enemies. Regrettably, ODST loses points for its brevity and lack of aggressive multiplayer, but it’s definitely a game that punches above its weight and scores points for attempting (and succeeding) for a decidedly different kind of Halo experience.

4. Halo Two

Halo 2 is now notorious because of its cliffhanger ending, which admittedly is still one of the worst in gaming. The other primary problem that buffs often raise is the campaign spends an excessive amount of time around the Arbiter, who was introduced as a new playable character in this installment, at the cost of the Master Chief. To be honest, I selected that the Arbiter’s missions overall and thought he was a interesting addition to the cast (it helps he’s voiced by Keith David, who never disappoints). That having been said, Halo 2 could have no effort whatsoever and would still be among the very best Halo games thanks to the multiplayer, which symbolized the franchise’s first foray into online gaming.

There’s a fantastic reason Halo 2 was the hottest game on Xbox Live in its heyday, since there was simply no additional multiplayer experience like it consoles. The map collection is arguably the finest in the series, with all-time favorites such as Lockout and Zanzibar producing their debut here, and also the introduction of new gameplay programs like dual-wielding and vehicle hijacking gave players a whole lot more options on the battle. You can surely find the indications that Halo 2 has been rushed to market — probably most evident in its distracting feel pop-in and surprising end — but it’s also one of the most significant games in Xbox history and offered an early blueprint for how to do online multiplayer right on Xbox Live.

3.

Here is the game which started the Xbox and altered first-person shooter design in a way few other games have achieved before or since. What is remarkable about the first Halo is that it still holds up remarkably well now, over 15 years following its original release. Sure, it now looks quite dated and its level design begins to drop off a cliff around the halfway stage, as Bungie recycles corridor-after-corridor so as to pad the match length, however this is certainly a situation where the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

Who can forget the first time they jumped into the driver’s seat of the Warthog and began driving around Halo, the second level from the match, or storming the shore in The Silent Cartographer? These are gaming moments that stick to you plus they were anchored through an interesting sci-fi story, incredible weapon layout (has there been a better weapon at a FPS compared to Halo’s pistol?) And, oh yeaha ridiculously addictive multiplayer style that has been played religiously in many a dorm room from the early 2000s. Afterwards Halo games improved over Combat Evolved’s design in many areas, but it is difficult to think of several other first kicks at the can that turned out this well.

In addition, there’s not any better name display in all of gambling. That songs…

2. Halo: Attain

Bungie’s closing Halo games was also one of its finest, as Halo: Attain is a near-perfect sendoff in the storied programmer. Though it does not contain the Master Chief, Reach arguably has the finest total campaign in the entire series, as each of its nine missions is a winner and there is no Library level in sight to drag the entire thing down. A prequel entrance detailing a few of the greatest conflicts between people and the Covenant, Reach details the fate of Noble Team as they desperately fight to stop the Covenant from annihilating the planet Reach. Whereas each Halo game that puts you in control of Master Chief is intended to make you feel like an unstoppable super soldier, Reach requires the reverse strategy and immediately becomes a game about failure. Sure, your character (the blank slate known as Noble Six) is equally as competent in battle as the Chief, but he along with the remainder of his team are fighting a war they have no hope of winning. While the game will not end on a hopeful note, Bungie’s decision to throw players into a losing battle that only gets worse as the narrative advances is a daring one and several matches, FPS or have attained the exact same degree of melancholic sacrifice as Reach can convey in its campaign.

If which weren’t enough, Attain also includes a few of the better multiplayer encounters in the franchise, even with equally Firefight and the usual suite of aggressive styles present and accounted for. While Reach’s overall map choice is a little poorer compared to the likes of Halo 2 and Halo 3 and the addition of armor skills was trendy, but restricting — remember, this was before dashing became a permanent ability in Halo — I firmly feel that Sword Base would be the greatest Halo map of time and its addition alone elevates Reach to all time status in my eyes.

1. Halo 3

Halo 3 may be my overall favourite game in the franchise, however I can not deny it is the ideal. The game finally gave fans the full scale Earth invasion they’d anticipated in Halo 2 and whether the levels set on Earth are great, the back half of this effort moves the ante with levels placed around the Arkand also the installation that generated all the Halo rings in the first place (that said, the amount Cortana can go die forever). Following the polarizing inclusion of this Arbiter in Halo 2, it was fantastic to play through a campaign as Master Chief back, however Halo 3 additionally gave the Arbiter his due with its concerted play, with support for up to four players.

Moving onto multiplayer, Halo 3’s map selection proved to be a small step back from the stellar designs of Halo 2, but it made up for it with its near-perfect balance. It is only tough to find fault with a lot of anything in regards to Halo 3 multiplayer, since it feels as though it was created with each enthusiast in your mind. Want to increase the rankings in competitive play? Done. Want to hang with friends and play with your friends on the internet, with split-screen guests to boot up? You can do that also. But Bungie even figured out a way to balance dual-wielding with the rest of the weaponry, to the point where either felt like viable options as opposed to manner Halo 2 privileged dual-wielding at the cost of anything else but the energy weapons. This is also the game which introduced Forge, which has become a mainstay style ever since.

Bungie managed to cap their own Halo trilogy off with the very best game in the series and now I can only expect 343 could follow suit using Halo 6, which will represent the end of their Reclaimer trilogy. Until then, it is Halo 3’s struggle to lose in regards to the best overall Halo game.