Dear 343 industries, dear gamers (complainers and approvers)!
I only recently started to play Halo. I wasn’t there when they released it on the XBOX system, or when Halo 2 roared & rampaged during late XBOX era. Nope, wasn’t there when Halo 3 became ‘‘The Second Coming’’. And with Halo: Reach? Yup, pretty much did not have XBOX360 to play with. So, you see, I’m a complete rookie in regards of when I started to play Halo. Wouldn’t exactly call it ‘‘jumping on bandwagon’’ either because I was acting on my own, just wanted to play something that could actually glue me to screen after a long time of gaming abstinence and let me forget about minutes and hours.
Before that, I was a hardcore PC gamer: played it all, FPS, RPG, point and click adventures, RTS, you name it (I still have Sam & Max, Diablo II and Half-Life 2 on my hard drive).
Then I decided to ‘‘test drive’’ Halo/Halo 2 on my PC… And damn, was I in love or what. After literally three years of deciding to put things down in my gamer section of life (occasionally I did play Arkham Asylum, Uncharted 2 and Bayonetta, stuff like that, unmissable), Halo struck me as genuinely interesting, with greater-than-life story arc (I’m a SciFi sucka) and with characters like Cortana(Jen Taylor) and Masterchief(Steve Downes). To quote one of my favorite movies of all time: ‘‘I became… Addicted.’’
Interestingly enough, I’ve never been one of those hardcore games, casual definitely; I almost always play on Normal and that’s it. But with HALO 3? Played it on Heroic for the first time, Legendary after that. It’s just… Special for me, the setting is such a vast, approachable, ‘‘real’’ universe. I wasn’t much into multi before Reach, so that gave me a whole new viewpoint of the entire gaming. I know, PC is a given for FPS but I just didn’t give a damn; beyond Reach and WOW, haven’t been much in a multi world anyway.
I like how 343 Industries seems to spending their entire working time making it true to what HALO experience really is: freedom of gameplay, moment of awe in the midst of something incredible and staying firm on who the characters are; new mechanics and technological improvements help them achieve just that (thank James Cameron and Avatar for facial motion capture).
CONSTANT COMPLAINERS, listen up - please, try keeping it positive in regards to HALO 4 and 343 Industries. Plenty of interviews brought out the hardworking, enthusiastic aspect of that newly formed company, I’m sure they will deliver, when the time comes (in 35 days actually).
Frank O’Connor, Josh Holmes, Kenneth Scott, Kiki Wolfkill, Neil Davidge, EVERYONE involved, I’d like to thank you from my heart, Bungie punched me in the face and reminded me how great games are to be found in many different forms and on many different platforms. 343, all of you made me even happier, cause the fight ain’t over yet and it looks gorgeous from all four corners of the galaxy, especially from the surface of Requiem.
I’ll play campaign few times (hopefully Legendary won’t give me too much gray hairs, like saving Cortana did), then switch to multi/spartan ops/forge, see you all on LIVE pretty soon and cheers from Croatia!
Ivan
