Never Too Old To Play™

Rus McLaughlin over at IGN’s Xbox 360 site posted a very interesting editorial yesterday that criticized many publications for putting last year’s Halo 3: ODST near the top of their lists of best games of 2009. I agree with Mr. McLaughlin’s sentiments for the most part but point out that most everything he complained about with regards to ODST could be just as easily applied to Halo 3, a game that I have to assume he believes exhibits none of the mentioned “flaws.”

He starts off by saying that “ODST sounded entirely like a retread. A side-story. Unimportant.” I know he was referring to the impression he got from the description of the game before he actually played it, but what he said was actually how I felt as I was playing Halo 3, which was supposed to be “THE EPIC CONCLUSION TO THE EPIC SAGA” but seemed more like a rehash of what I played in the first two Halo games.

Another halo (or in this case a bunch of halos). Another wicked plot by the Covenant to initiate mass destruction. Another mission to stop them. Another encounter with the Flood. Been there, done that.

“Hell, I didn’t even play it until a month post-release, and then mainly because I felt obligated by my games-related vocation.”

That’s kind of eerie because I didn’t play Halo 3 until about a month post-release, got turned off by the disappointing graphics, and then didn’t come back until a month or so later because I felt obligated as a gamer to “finish the fight.” I was entirely convinced, just from the first level of the game, that instead of being the whiz-bang introduction of the revered franchise on the next-generation hardware, Halo 3 was simply a modest retread of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. I unfortunately cannot say that I was pleasantly surprised when playing through the rest of the game like Mr. McLaughlin was in completing ODST.

Halo 3 was by no means anything remotely close to a Game of the Year candidate. As I witnessed reviewer after reviewer buy into the incredible level of hype surrounding Bungie’s meager offering and write that it was a sure-fire Game of the Year candidate if not a shoe-in winner, I was shocked at how easily people put it “on a year-end pedestal it didn’t earn.”

Mr. McLaughlin correctly observes that “the best of the best elevate and innovate. A game that does neither has no place on a best-of list of any kind.” While I can’t say that Halo 3 neither elevated nor innovated, the mostly inconspicuous improvements to the graphics and physics and the new Forge feature, a sideline innovation that really didn’t have much relevance to the core gameplay, were not enough to make the game feel as if it were a truly next generation entry in the series. Halo is Xbox’s flagship franchise and shouldn’t feel as if it could have been accomplished on the original Xbox.

No, Halo 3 more represented “stagnant progress” by failing to surpass almost all expectations gamers deservedly imposed upon Bungie and their product. The studio proved with Halo 2 that they could take an already great game and make it even better by expanding the context of the story, advancing the intriguing plot and improving on both offline and online gameplay. In contrast, Halo 3’s story was a regurgitation of the events from the previous two games, its core gameplay was virtually unchanged from Halo 2 and the graphical improvements were about on par with differences between Halo and Halo 2.

Halo 3 should have been a mind blowing experience – it needed “more than a few cosmetic changes, more than a few new guns to play with and vehicles to drive,” but Bungie failed to deliver. The game certainly left an impression, but it wasn’t one that Bungie intended.

Now, I fully expect Halo and Xbox fanboys to gather up arms against my statements, citing how many reviewers loved it (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences adored No Country for Old Men enough to award it the Best Picture Oscar even though the movie is excruciatingly boring and little more than a cinematographer’s wet dream) and how popular it was (Independence Day grossed $817 million worldwide but is far from a shining example of filmmaking). Better yet, many will probably rattle off about how this is “just your opinion” as if all the good reviews and praise of the game isn’t someone else’s.

I welcome all of this because I wouldn’t dare begrudge someone else their opinion of a game although ultimately all that really matters to me is that Bungie failed to deliver to expectations.

Interestingly enough, I still had high hopes for ODST and for this year’s Halo: Reach. While Mr. McLaughlin was busy lamenting what he thought ODST would be (and ultimately was in his eyes), I was actually excited about a Halo game that didn’t toss me right back into Master Chief’s well worn battle armor so I could rip through Covenant forces like Superman on Kryptonian steroids as I tried to save the galaxy for the third time. Unfortunately, twenty minutes of gameplay reminded me what didn’t impress me in October 2007, although it still was more interesting than the Chief’s last hurrah. Even now, I hold out some hope that the more promising scenario promised in Reach will make the Halo world appealing to me again even while recognizing that I can no longer count on Bungie to deliver on their promises.

Experience this for yourself!

• Halo 3 (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360) (Amazon)