A Series In Review: Halo

Well, this is the first of (hopefully) a series that will review a series of games; to see what was good, what was bad, and what made people raise their eyebrow in curiousity.

Halo: Combat Evolved was a launch title for Microsoft's XBox, and was a surprise hit. While praised for its multiplayer, many people seem to see it as over-rated. Halo was not the first game to use dual stick's for aiming and moving, but was certainly the first game to master it. The sensitivity controls let everybody have it just as they liked; not to mention the placement of the controls just feels natural. The gameplay itself was decent; the HUD was pretty generic, and was badly placed IMO.

The health bar always seemed to be in a bad place to me, but maybe thats just me. The campaign itself, while having a good story, was lacking. It never told you to go, and you would randomly walk halfway around Halo trying to figure out where to go. The games also didn't explain how Master Chief became a Spartan, which would later be filled in during the books. The lack of online in Halo 1 dissapointed many because of the multiplayer function, but Live had not been launched yet.
People eventually hacked the game to allow online, but until then, people just had to have mass amounts of people at their house. In many cases, people say the multiplayer was the best part of Halo; an opinion I agree with. The multiplayer is fun not because you're 'owning noobs' or 'shooting the shit out of things', but because of the challenge. It was fun because instead of fighting another damned computer, you're fighting someone with a brain (well, usually). Computers will always have the same faults in a game, but a human can learn your strategy. It makes you have to adapt to the situation. You cant really have to adapt that quickly in anything less then Man Vs. Wild style, and I don't feel like going Bear Grylls Right now.

Halo 2 fixed alot of the problems of Halo 1; mostly the HUD.

As you can see, they fixed alot of problems with the grenades, and the placement of the health bar. However, not everything was fixed. Like Halo 1, the campaign still was boring. The story was good, but the wandering around Earth? No thanks. Now with online multiplayer, the game became a huge phenomenon for online gamers. With the ranking system it made it easy to improve, and to still have fun. Multiplayer still isn't perfect, but its quite fun.

So, the overall question is, is Halo over-rated? Of course it is, to a point. Mostly because alot of Microsoft fans like Halo, and try to spread it because they think its fun. This makes the owners of other systems angry because they see it as "My games better then yours", but thats when we say STFUAJPG. M I RITE? Overall; Halo's not overrated by the fans. Halo's overrated by the haters. Think i'm wrong? Wait for the comments for this to come in.