The McGinn Perspective - The Halo Series

Halo is a name that few Xbox owners wont know, as it has quickly become one of the most popular and well-known gaming franchises Microsoft has ever had in its pocket. Growing up i remember there being two major exclusive titles that Xbox owners would worship, first being Gears of War and the second being Halo.

Halo is a long standing first person shooter series, taking place in a science fiction universe, the key premise being that you have to fight aliens or some such bollocks.

Firstly i look at my key concern with the title as a series, which is its gameplay. I was drawn to the Halo series as everyone talked about it like it was the answer to some massively important question, but when i started playing i didn't see anything special. Sure some of the scenery and environments in the game looked pretty visually dynamic, to the point where i could even say that it was adventurous for its time. But the gameplay itself offered very little variety, this was excusable with "Halo Combat Evolved" but as the games progressed through the generations they seemed to remain fixed, never moving forward with the times. I would play a more recent installment into the series like "Halo Reach" and notice that the gameplay never differs from the standard point, shoot, reload, shoot. When considering how other shooters of this generation have been able to provide more variety, like for example a secondary fire on each weapon in the game, it feels almost unacceptable that Halo is unable to develop as well. My key argument with gameplay being that it is uninteresting now, and needs to be spruced up. I would any day chose a more modern shooter like "Resistance" for the PS3 over Halo, simply because its gameplay would have far more to offer me as a player.

The next feature that i found fault with was the story element, which with some of the more hardcore Halo fans is considered the best part. What i could say about the overall story is that it is simply bland, almost as if the writers themselves aren't interested. Part of the reason that the story element fails so badly is that the games do nothing to help explain it to the player, the first game simply dropped you into this fictional universe and expects you to understand all the goings on. Other games have done this but been able to quickly give the player an initial understanding of the storyline, and allow it to progress from there. But with every Halo game i play, the storyline seems to develop further, becoming more complex as it does, and then still do nothing to help the player get a full grasp of the basics. You know that this is a problem when a player can play through one of the games, entirely focused and paying full attention, and still have questions to ask that should have been answered during the course of the game. But generally i find that understanding the storyline is probably worse, as you cannot compare Halo to a true Si-Fi. Try as i might to take the story seriously it is rendered impossible by bad writing, extremely poor art design and twists in the story that aren't even noticeable.

So who do we thank for this gift to the world of gaming? Well we have Bungie Studios to thank for the initial creation of this franchise. So when noticing all the faults that i have highlighted is it fair to direct blame at them, i wouldn't say so. I would say that it is 343 Industries that have stunted the growth of this franchise. While it is easy for me to sit here and type away, bitching about this series like it has caused me deep emotional pain, it is important to remember that Bungie are legitimate game developers. As far as i am concerned "Halo Combat Evolved" was a good game, as with any it had its little problems, but it was with the times and was challenging enough to keep the gameplay interesting, so surely this isn't a black mark on Bungie's reputation?
I would say that 343 are to blame for Halo's obvious problems, but Halo has become one of Microsoft's most profitable enterprises so what the hell do i know.

Overall, i hold very little hope for the Halo franchise, mainly because most of its appeal is in its multiplayer, and i simply cannot respect a game that is held up primarily on multiplayer rather than its single player.
The key point is that of recent years Halo has become increasingly less popular, even with the recent installment of "Halo 4". So the developers need to get their act together and realize that Halo has been left behind by the very genre it belongs to.

Find me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/McGinnBen

Check out my Youtube channel to directly view my content: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRuHF6kkh8VhlBOLLGftjRw?feature=mhee