The follow contains mostly my personal opinion and can probably be disregarded. 
The game
Halo and I have something of a history. I grew up with shooters in one hand and space flight sims & strategy games in the other. When I was fed up with the politicing of my AI opponents in
Master of Orion and had rescued humanity from the clutches of the Kilrathi in
Wing Commander, I fired up
Wolfenstein 3-D or
Doom. Now, neither of those games had anything approaching a complex narrative - "here are some Nazis/demons, go shoot them in the face" about sums it up - but this was long before motion capture, voice acting and model rendering had gotten to the point that video games could call their experiences "cinematic" with a straight face. When I first played
Halo, I liked it. I liked its control schemes, I liked its portrayal of the conflict between humanity and the Covenant, I liked the mystery behind the Halo itself, and I liked Cortana - spunky AIs always appeal to me. I played multiplayer with a few friends. Even after a couple years, when I found out a place I was working was maintaining its own
Halo server, I jumped in. Unfortunately, my boss never showed up. I played
Halo 2 once, just to try and get the story. And while there were a couple "HOLY SHIT!" moments during the cutscenes, the gameplay felt vastly unchanged. Characters returned but really didn't grow at all. To me it felt like it did what most sequels tend to do. It tried to simply maintain a level of quality that, while high, wasn't really all that fantastic. By this point,
Half-Life 2 had come along and, in my opinion, completely blown
Halo 2 out of the water. Again, it was fun to play split-screen with a couple of friends. But that was about the extent of my experience. I haven't played
Halo 3 so I really can't comment on it. Same for
Halo: ODST. But if they're anything like their predecessors, they'll be shooters that are pretty much baseline in terms of combat balance, diversity of weapons and vehicle sections. I just don't think the
Halo series is anything earth-shakingly revolutionary. There are some who'd disagree, and I will maintain that people are entitled to their opinions. What really irritates me about the
Halo series has less to do with the games themselves and more the atmosphere surrounding them in terms of reception and advertising. Reviewers love these games. Personally I prefer something like
BioShock or
Mass Effect, and when I get the urge to hearken back to the days of simpler shooters,
Painkiller and
Ultimate Doom lurk on my hard drive. But the advertisements for and attitude towards each new installment of
Halo would have you believe that you will not have an experience even remotely resembling what you get out of that game. It sort of reminds me of a wine called Yellow Tail.
Yellow Tail is a mass-produced wine specifically designed to be sold at a reduced cost and be more palatable to most pedestrian drinkers than those who have discovered a particular pinot or cabarnet that they enjoy. I've tried Yellow Tail, and while it's drinkable, it isn't as good as wine from a vineyard. The advertisements for it, on the other hand, would have you believe that Yellow Tail is the sort of wine that tastes delicious, leaves you plenty of money for expensive aperitifs and will probably get you laid. Based on this scheme, Yellow Tail rakes in the cash, much like
Halo does. The original
Halo did its shooting very well, had great vehicle sections that were fun to do with others and even had something resembling a story to tell. I feel that as the series goes on, there's less story happening while the amount of gameplay and features remain largely the same. I could be wrong, but it doesn't stop
Halo in general and a generous portion of its fanbase from bothering me.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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