I remember all those years ago lugging around my xbox and a TV to go have a LAN party at a friends house. I remember playing a game that brought pure enjoyment. I remember sitting down for a weekend to watch the pros at MLG compete for the title of Halo Champions. I remember a time when I enjoyed playing the latest and greatest Halo.
Now before you start calling me a hater, believe me, I enjoyed Halo 4…for a few weeks. It was a game that brought some enjoyment, but something about it just feels, off. I can’t quite place it but halo 4 simply doesn’t scream to me “I AM A HALO GAME”. It feels more like an attempt to pick up the pieces of a dying franchise.
In my opinion (I know others will have their own but still) H3 was the pinnacle of halo. It was the most well balanced and competitive game in the series (although I did enjoy going around with the halo 1 pistol 
) Then came reach, not a terrible game by any standard, but it lost its competitive nature. As much as I love Bungie (and I do look forward to destiny) Reach felt like a slap in the face to the competitive community. Lets be honest, there was a reason it was taken off of the MLG circuit. Reach was fun to play for a while but had a cap to its competitive nature and on top of that it simply was not as much fun to watch other people play the game.
After the less than stellar performance of reach Halo 4 felt like an attempt to put the series back together, but there is only so much that tape and glue can do.
Looking at each game in and of itself is necessary to get the full enjoyment out of it, and doing so it can be seen how each game, on its own, can stand (for a while). But when we look at the entire series as a whole one cannot help but wonder “what happened?”.
As I said already, Halo brought a ton of enjoyment for me, from watching it on MLG to LAN parties at a friends place, or simply playing alone in matchmaking or the campaign, I really did enjoy it. But now, after H4, I must honestly say that I miss Halo.
Halo 4 simply doesn’t feel the same to me as the other halos (excluding reach)did. After trying to stick with it I find myself now reaching a 6 months span where I Haven’t touched the game! If you told me all those years ago this would happen I would not believe you.
Some people suggest going back to halo 3 and I tried that, and although I enjoyed the nostalgic value of the game, it still has lost its “haloness” if you know what I mean. After a few games (playing with some of the same people over and over again due to the low population) and each one of them won with a challenge, it didn’t feel the same.
I long for the taste of the epic nature of Halo once again, to be shared with many other like minded gamers to myself. Some say wait until halo 5, that will fix everything. I simply disagree.
The two reasons I do so are as follows:
- By changing the core game play of halo 4, 343i has changed what is defined as “Halo”. Even if they wanted to go back, and made an exact replica of H3 with better graphics and such, it still would not work. The changes they have made to the game are already ingrained in the mind of the players and trying to go back will still not fix the problem because what gamers feel Halo is supposed to be cannot be attained.
Take myself for example, as is plainly obvious I have put H3 on a high pedestal and even going back to that didn’t feel like halo simply because my expectations for the game are so high that they cannot possibly be met, even by the same game itself.
- The Campaign:
The H4 campaign really didn’t interest me as the rest in the series did. In all of the other games I did 1 play through on heroic and then again on legendary. With H4 I finished the first mission on legendary and stopped. Firstly because it was a grind and secondly Is imply did not enjoy it. Going into the future there really is no point for me to play another halo game in terms of campaign. I was satisfied with the ending of H3 and all would be good. With H4 the campaign was pointless to me, the only reason I played was to !!!SPOILERS!!! see Cortana die !!!END SPOILERS!!! At the end of the campaign adding another game (let alone 2) seems pointless to me. There is nothing more they need to do, there was nothing more they needed to do after H3, we “Finished the Fight”!
Halo was a huge part of my social life and my time to relax. It was my thing to do when I was bored, and the thing to do when I needed to cheer up. But it has lost that, Halo has literally meant nothing to me other than memories since 2-3 months since the release of H4.
Am I blaming Bungie or 343i for the current state? no, I am simply stating that the nature of halo has changed, and it has lost its appeal to me.
As much as it saddens me to say it, it is time for me to leave the halo-verse, it has nothing more to offer me. And although peoples opinions may differ and some may harass me for this, I feel it is necessary to say the following, simply for self closure:
We had a good run, and I enjoyed every minute of those years long ago. Goodbye old friend, I will miss you, “but you have my thanks for standing by him to the end. Hard to believe he’s dead”.