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That game everybody has heard of…

September 24th, 2007 by Anuj

Halo. I mean, you gotta be living under some kind of rock to not have heard of Halo. I mean, it really means something special when you as something of a hardcore gamer get messages from friends you haven’t spoken to in ages speaking random cryptic messages about a game that has yet to be released, yet to be played by more than a small finite percentage of the target audience. It’s really something when a game can impact our community in this way while still being positive, creating excitement and hype and happiness in something to look forward to, something of a global phenomena.
[pwning your mom’s face]

I personally enjoy Halo. I think it is a good game, it is fun, and it’s a game that provides a decent story, decent universe, decent characters, and really an amazing sandbox in which to enjoy an FPS. To say it is anything more is in my opinion something of a fallacy. As a game, I feel it is inferior to many that don’t get nearly the praise that it gets, and the praise that it gets is sometimes far greater than it deserves. However, when it comes to Halo, you can’t ignore the meta-game. I mean, there is no other game that really has and will have the player volume that Halo will have… and I don’t just mean good competition, I mean bad competition too. Players of all skill levels and of varying interests, hardcore players, casual players, friends, hell, family.

I can’t help but give props to the incredible marketing campaign that has followed Halo since nearly the beginning and honestly I love people of all creative backgrounds being able to get into something that I’m interested in, just as much as me. I’m not one of the ‘haters’ of ‘posers’ or anything of the like. It’s all just a whole lot of negativity that I’m not interested in anymore. I look forward to Halo very much at the moment. Perhaps I may not enjoy it as much as most people out there but I think I will have plenty of fun with it. I saw this video online and it’s simply amazing.

As a single-player/co-op game I don’t have high expectations (though I intend to play it co-op and not at all single-player like all of the other Halos) because the story and characters are just something I didn’t get into too much. I enjoy some of the rather static aspects of the characters and can appreciate some of the design for things that may not have been intended or were created in a juvenile mindset to still create something somewhat unique. I’ve heard that the games, when combined with a whole helluva lot of reading yields into quite an interesting story, and so I hope one day to have the interest in reading it, but in the meanwhile, I find then that it’s just such a shame that the games do such a poor job of it. But hey, it’s a game anyway right? Most people don’t even care about the story… it’ll be the ending that matters to anyone.

As a multi-player game, I have the same expectations I’ve always had with Halo. New weapons, new toys, new modes, new blah blah blah, and it’ll be a blast for me and my cohorts I play with for a good solid month probably. Then it’ll be fun off and on here and there for a while, and then I’ll stop and be done playing it for the most part. The dynamic environment of the game will be interesting though, much like Halo 2. When I played Halo 2 around launch-time, I found myself seriously just kicking ass. I would actually own fights and win left and right. About a year later when I played again, oh man, I just got my ass handed to me. There were still times when the game was fun, but no matter where I went really, it was just self-inflicted chaos really. Was it fun at that point… well I was playing with a friend and we were doing random stuff so I was having fun, but on the same note, being just easy prey wasn’t really fun either. But the point is that a game that can give and create an environment in which you can experience something like that in addition to a normal level of content can’t be ignored.

Anyhoo, as I said, I look forward to Halo 3 and I think I will enjoy it. When all is said and done it will probably leave a taste of being just slightly below satisfying I’m betting, because of major flaws here and there, but I think most of those will be caused by losing focus of the bigger scope of the game and really how difficult it is to do some of the things that Halo does so well not wasting time on some of the less significant points of the game that somewhat have become so important when considering the surface-value of the game. Anyway, more thoughts when the game is out and I actually play it. Also, I think the pricing plan of the “game(s)” is bullshit.

Entry Filed under: Gaming, Life