I’ve recently been going back and forth between the first and third Halo games, trying to piece together whether the original is truly a better game and, if so, where number three failed. In the end it’s almost like when I tried to play through Final Fantasy I and VIII at the same time, and wound up ditching Squall and his parade of warrior fashion models for a thrilling 8-bit adventure. I tried this again to simultaneously tackle Final Fantasy V and VIII, but once more the older game won out and the Playstation mope-fest remained incomplete.

Yet that is another tangent for another date. In playing between the two games, I’ve come to a few conclusions. One of which I had always known but never figured out the why. Brutes just aren’t as fun of a foe as the Elites are.

It’s not necessarily a fault of the developer, as Bungie sort of backed themselves into a corner with that one. While the Elite Uprising made for a much better story with greater possibilities (that were never truly tapped), it also meant that a replacement was required. To simply have Brutes that now used shields would have been lame and the company would have taken crap for it. Instead, Bungie opted for a more appropriate route and tried to create a new yet equally lethal foe. Unfortunately the strategy only yielded an enemy that is simple enough but manages to become tedious over time.

The Elites proved a rather interesting challenge on Heroic and Legendary difficulties in the first two Halo games. Trying to use a typical battle rifle or machine gun would only see your own shields wiped out much more quickly than theirs, which makes sense as human shields should be inferior to the technologically advanced Covenant model. This is, after all, a war humanity is losing.

To break down their shields requires a greater use of resources and clever thinking. Keeping a plasma pistol handy was always a good idea as a charged shot could eliminate the barrier in one swift blow. The downside that they could always gain cover long enough that the shield regenerates and you’re back to square one. Unloading a full clip of the Needler in order to bypass the shields and blow them sky high was another excellent option, but the agile nemesis may manage to dodge the slow-moving projectiles. In addition, the Needler tends to run out of ammunition faster than any other weapon in the game, not to mention keeps getting nerfed in each new rendition to the franchise for the sake of balanced multiplayer. The plasma grenade can stick on to enemies and bypass the shield completely, but the best chance of planting one is to throw it up close lest you risk missing or the foe dodging the grenade.

As the Elites advanced in ranks, their defenses and health didn’t really change. They were given the power beam sword, but in order to kill you they needed to get close. To keep them a constant challenge they were also much more agile, deftly dodging grenades and Needler rounds better than any of the ranks beneath them. The difficulty came from what seems to be a simple enough foe running at you faster than you could flee, hoping to blast his shields away or stick him with a grenade in time to avoid the one-hit-kill. It was a clever twist to make an already threatening foe even more intimidating.

So in Halo 3 we have to create a proper replacement without making a clone. Since there are no shields, Brutes are instead given health. This isn’t too shabby at first, as the base ranks can still be taken out with grenades, and in fact can even require fewer rounds of ammunition. However, to balance this the Brutes now travel in packs, and the higher the rank you climb the greater health and more powerful weapons you run into.

This is where Brutes begin to approach the level of being a tedious foe. Previously a player merely needed to take out one or two Elites in a group of lesser enemies, but now we’ve got five or six Brutes in a pack. There’s a horde of foes capable of taking your shields out in seconds. Unlike the previous Halo games where you only needed a quick moment to line-up a headshot to take a Grunt or Jackal to reduce the numbers, you now need several seconds to fire off some rounds into an angry monkey’s face. That is, assuming you don’t get an eye full of fuel rod first.

It can be argued that sticking a foe with a grenade or planting Needler rounds is still a viable tactic, but only to a certain extent. Even if you grenade one of them successfully you still have a horde of them left to burn through. The Needler and plasma pistols are likewise less effective, once again in an effort to balance for multiplayer and thus making the weapons near useless in single player.

These tactics become all-out worthless once you have to go toe-to-toe with Chieftains. These guys are always carrying weapons capable of killing you within seconds, yet there is no equal counter-tactic. Sticky grenades and Needler rounds merely bounce off of their armor, negating the skill it takes to generate the explosive effect required to make short work of them. If you happen to have a fuel rod gun available you’ll still have to use multiple rounds just to take one of these gorillas out.

In other words, the strategy that must be applied to Brutes is, in fact, the same sort you had to use back when playing games as Doom. The original Halo was subtitled Combat Evolved because it often rewarded players that were smart on the battlefield and thought outside the box. The best weapon to use against the Hunter, a veritable walking tank, is not something like a rocket launcher. It’s the pistol.

Halo 3 regresses, forcing players to use the most powerful weapons in order to be most effective against the highest ranking foes. Clever fighting is rewarded by becoming ineffective, watching a plasma or spike grenade bounce onto the floor. You’d better pray you have enough ammunition, or else you’re as good as toast.

Not a bad game by any means, the Brutes are a shining example of how Halo 3 completely missed everything that made Combat Evolved great. The Elites were an interesting foe that could be taken out quickly if the player was smart. The Brutes, well, we’ve fought enemies like this back in the 90’s, and it’s a bit tiresome to rely on such a cheap tactic as more health means more difficulty.

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