Beta Blues

I need a weapon,

As you may have guessed, I am not the biggest fan of Halo. While a good, well-made game, I believe it gets far too much love from the gaming community. The hype behind the Xbox's flagship franchise is unbelievable, matched only by the voraciousness with which the fans consume it. Plenty of worthy games get tragically ignored due to Microsoft's marketing machine.

The series does deserve some credit. For making grenades accessible and important in combat Bungie will forever have my gratitude. While it did not originate vehicles in shooters, it did popularize them. Halo also greatly furthered the cause of bringing FPSes to consoles, a worthy goal started by Goldeneye.

However, this does not excuse its many faults. The story and setting are generic B-movie sci-fi fluff that fails in every attempt to be taken seriously. The characters are boring and even unlikable, especially Master Chief (generic space marine...IN SPACE!) The single-player level design is terribly repetitive and monotonous, which only serves to artificially extend play time. I would go on, but I did not start this post to complain.

This is an admission that I am actually looking forward to Halo 3. I am sure a lot of my issues will not be addressed in this last installment, but I would like to give it a shot. From the beta impressions, it seems like the weapons have become more powerful/enemies die more easily, which was one of my gripes with the other games. The control scheme seems to have been revamped to allow easier gun/grenade switching and reloading. Little icons appear whenever you do something cool (post-death grenade kill, melee kill, multiple foe kill, sticking, laser kill etc) which will hopefully be recorded for a more robust ranking/stat tracking system.

So yeah. I'm not won over yet, but I have a feeling there is some Halo in my future.

He never gets me anything,
Cortana