Author: Rafael Gamboa

   Halo. Everyone is familiar with this gaming phenomenon, and everyone seems to have nothing but praise for this apparently revolutionary shooter. It sells as if it had been forged by a limited supply of solid God and was guaranteed to provide full-body orgasms lasting hours. Master Chief has been carried up the Mount Olympus of gaming by the critical community on a palanquin of perfect 10s to stand alongside other legends like Mario, Link, and Sonic.

Halo, in my infuriated opinion, is the most overrated and undeserving game series of all time.

   Maybe it's because when I heard that Microsoft was going to make a video game console, a significant portion of my soul turned black, never to regain its former luster. Maybe it's because every experience I've had playing Halo was with friends who were better than me only because they owned the game and not because they were gamers (which they inevitably weren't). Maybe it's because the game is more mainstream than greed and boy bands circa 1998, and my elitist games-as-art streak simply can't handle that. Maybe those are the reasons why I just can't seem to bask in the glory that is the Halo wet dream.

   Maybe.

   Or maybe it's because the game is more unbalanced than a cross-eyed toddler, offers no distinguishing features that separate it from the universes and capabilities of any other FPS, has a completely generic and unrewarding single player campaign, and boasts the most annoying and repulsive online community the world has ever seen.

   Let me address some of the backlash I can already hear coming:

   "Yeah, the single player isn't all that, but it's a multiplayer game and the multiplayer is teh awesome! XBOX Live roxors!"

   First off, if it's a multiplayer game, then why they hell did they bother with a single player campaign? Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer game that doesn't glue-stick in some hackneyed generic plot for you to slog through because it felt like it had to obey some arcane genre strictures. TF2 gives you a straight shoot-em-up multiplayer experience that is one of the most intense, well-balanced, and engrossing in a long, long time. There are things that annoy me about TF2, to be sure, but those are more personal preference issues and not issues of poor design on the part of the Valve team. So why didn't Bungie do something similar with Halo, since it obviously cared more about multiplayer than the single player campaign they put half the effort into?

   Secondly, if the single player is mediocre at best, then why the hell is the game getting perfect 10s?!?

   "Wat r u talking about? Halo has lotz of distinguishing featurez!"

   There's nothing innovative in Halo. Absolutely nothing. Anything that Halo feels proud of has been done before, and often better. Dual wielding? Goldeneye 007 did it in special circumstances, and Perfect Dark did it standard. Vehicles in multiplayer? Unreal Tournament, and those vehicles are cooler. Master Chief? The whole taciturn hero thing has been done many times before with more memorable and interesting characters (Gordan Freeman is the obvious example), and the only thing that keeps Master Chief from looking like every other space marine from Starcraft to Warhammer 40,000 is the fact that his power suit boasts a helmet with a cute little brim over the visor. Mixing up elements from previous distinguished games and then failing to improve these elements in any significant fashion does not make a game innovative.

   I mean, really, what about Halo is so new and different? Yes, Halo 3 allows you to record your multiplayer outings for future perusal and YouTube posting--which is quite nice, but it has nothing to do with gameplay. The Covenant weapons, though interesting designs, are never implemented in ways that are as interesting or as useful as the Maian and Skedar weapons in Perfect Dark. Heck, the human weapons don't match up well with that eight-year-old game. Perfect Dark even manages to outclass Halo's infamous sticky grenades, in that all manner of mines (timed, proxy, or remote) can be stuck onto a person for loads of fun.

   Oh, the weapons. This brings me to the problem of game balance, which for me was the fatal flaw in Halo. After having played for a couple of days, I came to realize that I wasn't losing so horrifically because I was a bad tactician or bad at shooters. I was losing for two reasons: 1) Somebody had a sniper rifle, and 2) bad respawns. Good lord, does this series have awful respawns! You don't even get a single measly second of invincibility to compensate for being placed right in death's merry path. I remember playing Halo 2, dying, and then remaining out of the game for the next twenty seconds as I died six times in a row without being able to take more than three steps. Of course, the respawns wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the goddamned sniper rifles.

   If you've ever played Halo, you know how good the sniper rifles are. They're supposed to be ineffective at close range, but we all know that's a fib. If you don't have a sniper rifle and someone else does, you're SOL until you get one for yourself. Unlike any other good FPS, any weapon that isn't a sniper rifle, sticky grenade, or beam sword is about as worthless as a mace made of toothpicks held together with old mayonnaise. Until you get your hands on any one of those three weapons, you might as well be running around furiously blowing bubbles. But at the very least, the sticky grenade and the beam sword have mitigating factors. Both can get guaranteed kills, but you have to get good at throwing to use the sticky grenades and you have to be up close and personal to use the sword.

   The sniper rifle has absolutely no mitigating factors. The fact that it has a four-bullet magazine never makes a difference, because in every other aspect the gun is perfect. In fact, it barely even resembles a sniper rifle. Sniper rifles are supposed to bestow the benefits of long range and precision accuracy in exchange for high recoil, low rates of fire, small magazines, longer reload times, and complete uselessness at short range and in tight spaces. Since most games can't replicate reality, some of these features are often represented abstractly. Sometimes you can't move and shoot at the same time, sometimes turning to look is much slower, etc.

   Halo's sniper rifle can be shot while running, jumping, or falling out of a vehicle from calamitous heights, and in any of those situations can be fired at full zoom without suffering any penalty to accuracy. You could be spinning like a top and the bullets you fire will still go directly to the spot your crosshairs were pointing at the moment you pulled the trigger. Not only that, but the bullets themselves can penetrate at least three helmeted heads and still have the momentum to traverse the entire real estate of the level without ever once changing trajectory. These bullets can also ricochet twice and still have enough killing power for a one-hit kill.

   The extreme deadliness of the sniper rifle is compounded by the extreme vulnerability of your power armor encased head. Halo is the only game I know of where you can get fragged by a flying traffic cone to the noggin. Or, for that matter, by getting bopped in the face by a flying corpse's knee. If Halo's physics engine and damage system had been placed in FIFA, half your team would be lying dead on the field before half-time because they all stupidly thought they could safely hit a ball with their head. Hell, maybe everybody would be dead by then, seeing as they don't even have the dubious benefit of Master Chief's helmet.

   In the course of three games, none of these egregious flaws have ever been addressed. The games are broken, and yet they still garner incredible critical acclaim. What the hell they see in the Halo series, I have no idea. All I know is that I'd much rather be shooting rebars from a crossbow in Half-Life 2, manhandling a Farsight in Perfect Dark, dual-wielding golden guns in GoldenEye 007, and absorbing the recoil from a .50 caliber sniper rifle in Rainbow Six for my one-hit kills, since they actually require skill, tactics, and battlefield awareness. The frat boys can have Halo, for all I care. I don't need overpowered weapons blowing away heads made of cotton candy to make myself feel more manly in a game.

- Rafael Gamboa