Possibly one of my shorter rants as destroying Halo is like tearing a hole in the proverbial wet paper sack. Anyway, here we go.
Halo, it's a true phenomenon of the day. As with all phenomena, you either love it or you hate it. Guess which one I am.
Got your answer yet?.. Oh sorry I'll give you a bit more time..
I FUCKING HATE IT! I gave Halo a chance, I really did. I love Science Fiction, especially when it follows the age old formula of: Humans go into space and find bi-pedal, aerobic alien species. This species is hostile and we retaliate with a war. However it seems that the only way to win is to use genetically enhanced super-soldiers, so we do. It's fucking great and is the basis of my favorite Science Fiction series: Warhammer 40,000. However, what Warhammer did that Halo didn't is that it expanded on that base, it gave more depth to the basic story, where as Halo was content just sitting at the cliche. The Space Marines is Warhammer weren't explicitly created to defeat the aliens, in fact they were originally created to conquer Earth, or Terra as it's called in Warhammer. This gives a brand new level of possible depth for the characters just in the very framework of the story. These people were made to kill, not a foreign species, but their own species. It's even seen in the books surrounding the Horus Heresy where, during the effort to re-establish contact with and dominance over the vestiges of humanity that had been lost in the stars during a storm in the parallel reality used for long distance space travel, the Space Marines are used to slaughter several planets-worth of military forces. Without even talking about individual characters I can illustrate just how much deeper Warhammer is than Halo.
But Halo's fanbase doesn't care about stories. If they did they wouldn't be playing Halo and defending it so voraciously. Halo's gameplay is fundamentally different from almost every Warhammer game made, so I will have to abandon that comparison... in favor of one that actually fits better. Halo's gameplay is nothing more than a cut and paste Unreal Tournament or Quake engine, for consoles. Hell, I'd even venture to say that Quake 3 for the PS2 is a better game than Halo. Halo has yet to offer anything to the genre except the first decent FPS port to consoles. All it does is take worn out aspects, throw some high res textures on them and stuff them into the game.
Do you know why Halo has the level of success it does now? It's because when Halo was released the FPS genre was one that generally shied away from consoles since at the time their RAM was vastly lower than what was possible with a modern computer, and with the twitch reflexes and quick pay-off of an FPS game quick load times were essential as well as minimizing possible screen tear. Bungie simply took a, at the time, ballsy leap into the genre and was able to crank out a console FPS that did the same thing computer FPS had been doing for years. Most people, at the time, were either console or computer gamers, sure, most owned both, but few actively played video games on them both, so the console gamers were astounded by what they had been missing out on, THAT is why Bungie has such a large fanbase. So Bungie has no need to innovate, they hooked people in, and since moderate gamers, the ones who like FPS the most, have smaller amounts of gaming dollars they like to stick with a series they know, like Halo, so they just lap up every single game Bungie churns out. Bungie doesn't need to bring in more buyers, so they don't try.
THAT is why I hate Halo. It's unoriginal, uninteresting, and all around mediocre. It's not worth my money, and is not worth yours. If you want an FPS that is shallow, focused solely on multiplayer, requires minimal strategy, and offers the same mechanics Halo does, buy Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I don't play it, but at least it's gameplay isn't entirely worn out.
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