Life after Halo

One word: Better

Why people have fawned over a mediocre FPS game that brought literally nothing new to the genre is beyond me. Now, I will concede that Halo has some of the best music in an FPS, but pigs will fly before I ever acknowledge that the game is the messiah-ish digital king that people so claim it to be. I think I know why Halo has done so well and it has nothing to do with the actual game itself.

Marketing.

Halo has the largest marketing budget of any game I have ever seen. Hell, even Mario doesn’t see this kind of fluff and he’s Nintendo’s poster boy. However, there isn’t anywhere you can turn without seeing some mock up of Master Chief. Heck, i can’t even drink a mountain dew now without having a Spartan staring at me. Yet, with all of the marketing that goes in to Halo has anything really been said about the game itself? Not really if you think about it. Sure, the beta was cool but underneath the hype it’s still just a polished FPS with an amazing soundtrack.  Halo does the FPS genre right and that is largely why people still want to play it but the fact that the franchise is being touted as the greatest game EVAR bothers me.

Especially since there have been far better games made before and after Halo’s conception. Blasphemy you say? Well, it’s true though. Hell, in many ways Bioshock is leaps and bounds better than Halo and even looks better than Halo 3. However, it’s a cash-cow and Microsoft has thrown everything they had in to it. Herein lies their folly and could possibly be the downfall of the system. Downfall of the 360?! Thats fanboy talk! Now now….hold on just a minute! I have a good reason why I think something like that is going to happen. Allow me to explain:

Halo is the single strongest franchise on the Xbox. In fact, if you asked the majority of gamers who purchased a 360 why they bought the system in the first place they would simply say “Halo”, but with Halo 3 being the final game in the series what are those 360 fans to do? Do they wait for Mass Effect or the ill-fated Too Human? Possible, but how many of the casual gamers on the 360 world actually know those games exist? And better yet…how many of them are going to be able to play the game without saying “Halo was much better”. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft may have laid too much faith upon a single franchise and have effectively cut their legs out from under them. Nintendo and Sony do not suffer from the same problems in this catagory because they do not carry a singular face to drive their products. Sure, Nintendo uses Mario Universe as it’s pilot franchise but it still has Link and Samus to drag more of the casual and hardcores in to their base.

Am I bashing Halo? No, it is a good game. Not a wonderfully innovative and original game but still a good game nonetheless. You can disagree with that statement all you want but find me something in Halo that hasn’t been done before and i’ll concede that Halo has created something fresh. However, i’m confident that you wont find anything.

Why the long rant? Because the Halo buzz is killing me and everything else around it. It’s a monster that which cannot be sated and it’s not only gobbling up the hype surrounding Sony games or Nintendo games….oh no…it’s also stealing hype from it’s own systems games. The games coming days before and weeks after the Halo release will see some of the hardest hits from any purchasing period this year. Why? because people (like the masses they are) love Halo and the hype surrounding Halo has made it seem like there is no other game coming out but Halo.

On Sept. 25th I DO hope that Halo 3 finishes the fight. Why? because then I might be able to traverse the world and the internet without having Master Chief trying to kick me in the face with his awesomeness.