Hey guys, this is gonna be a big one. Get a snack, make some hot chocolate or something and maybe put on some Halo music to listen to 
So like the title says, this is my view on Halo, from the very beginning to where we are now. Iām going to talk about my experience and time with Halo and what the series means to me and hopefully it will resonate with someone.
When I first played Halo CE, it was glorious. I was 10 years old and blown away. It was at a friends house and I was totally jealous because I didnāt own an Xbox at the time. I was still using a Dreamcast that my brother and I had gotten for Christmas years ago. I lucked out months later and my grandpa decided to buy us a brand new Xbox, much to my parentsā dismayā¦So I played the Campaign and was blown away by the graphics, the vehicles I could drive around, the plasma grenades that stuck to people and the energy shield mechanic. The first thing I noticed about Halo is that it was a badass simulator. Grunts ran away from you and screamed, Marines would gladly give their seat for you and were always talking about how tough Master Chief was. If you wanted to be a badass space cyborg driving a jeep around in a huge world, then there was no way you could not play Halo. Multiplayer was very popular and I frequently visited friendās houses and some local LAN parties (a rare thing to find in a small city in Canada, but all the kids in school were playing it). I never took too much notice to things like weapon balance. I was just having fun.
Naturally, when Halo 2 was announced, we all freaked out. I got the game the day it came out and just tore into it. Halo 2 felt just like CE but better in every possible way. The graphics were awesome, the new guns were so much fun (energy sword!), the story had me invested because it was a sequel and we even got destructible vehicles and actual object physics! I could punch a barrel and watch it roll down a ramp. Nowadays thatās nothing but back then it blew my -Yoinking!- mind! I canāt even tell you how much I played Halo 2 and I never even had Xbox Live. It was strictly LAN and my group of friends would hang out in one of our backyards in a trailer (not a house trailer, a trailer you have to tow lol) with bags of chips and drinks and weād play 2v2 all night.
Those were great times and it was obvious to me why Halo was awesome: You play as Master Chief and he was awesome, the campaigns were so grand and they made you feel badass. Flip tanks, punch stuff til it dies, take whatever weapon you want off of a marine, kick them out of your spot in a vehicle, barely talk to anyone and save the galaxy with a super hot AI sidekick (I was 13 ok!?). Multiplayer was the best yet and I was jealous of anyone who had Xbox Live, which seemed to be only the spoiled kids where I lived.
Then I went through that weird stage of my life where I started becoming a whiny teenager (Hey it was puberty canāt blame me) and when Halo 3 came out, I was mostly against it. āHeh, Halo 3? What a stupid game, I canāt believe anyone plays it.ā To be fair, my attention was already taken by World of Warcraft and Gears of War, my first shooter that I could play online at my own house with my whole TV for myself! No more splitscreen! The floodgates were opened and I was your typical teenager on Xbox Live with a high pitched voice. I was getting called a -Yoink- left and right and having some of the most fun Iāve ever had with a game. Halo 3 just didnāt grab me like 2 did. But, of course, I got it for my birthday like a huge hypocrite and played the hell out of it for a few weeks, but it just wasnāt the same anymore. I still feel this way today. The story wasnāt as interesting, the multiplayer felt like they didnāt even try to change it up and it was just a no-brainer between Gears and Halo, with Gears feeling so new and truly next gen. Not to mention it was made by Epic, a developer I had loved ever since my dad showed me Unreal Tournament. I didnāt need Halo anymore and lots of my friends were on different trains, whether it was Cod 4, Gears or something else entirely.
I also took no interest at all in ODST when I learned that it was just a new campaign where you play as some no-name crew of generic soldiers (Hey, itās my opinion, I just didnāt like it) and no new multiplayer at all. The only exception was Firefight but I had already played Horde mode in Gears 2 and it seemed like a cheap knock off of that (Also just my opinon).
I never picked up Halo again until Reach came out which I impulsively bought after my friend said he was getting it. It looked different, the graphics were all new, the multiplayer was new and we got to play as Spartans again! It was such a random impulse buy that I didnāt even know you created your own Spartan for campaign. Needless to say, I was very pleased with Reach. I didnāt play it nearly as much as Halo 2 but I enjoyed the armor abilities because they spiced up the game a bit. Except for armor lock, that was just terrible. Halo 3 just felt stale to me and Reach really did spice it up a bit. Invasion was so much fun and I was having fun with the game as a whole. Firefight was still very uninteresting although fun to play with friends when I wanted to just relax and not go try-hard mode in matchmaking. Reach reminded me a lot of Halo CE. The Covenant felt like aliens again, Elites were huge and intimidating, grunts sounded weak and silly but not as comical and over the top as it got with Halo 3. The Flood was gone and I wasnāt bothered at all by their absence, the Covenant was always the meat and potatoes of Haloās enemies. Armor customization was the best itās ever been and I was really in love with the new look of Halo. Assassinations were just so cool and to this day I still love them.
I didnāt play Reach for that long though and when Gears 3 came out almost exactly a year later, I jumped ship and never regretted it. Fastforward a year, Gears 3 was coming down from itās gigantic popularity and Iād squeezed everything out of the game that I could. Well what am I supposed to play now? Gears 3 was getting boring to me and I was looking for another series to invest my time into.
Halo 4 was revealed and I was so stoked. A new developer breathing new life into the series I grew up with was so exciting! They practically rebooted the series and gave everything a new look. I was excited to see Master Chiefās story continue after taking a big enough break from the series. When the game came out, I wasnāt as disappointed as most people on here. The campaign was one of my favorites in the whole series and that was enough for me to justify buying the game. The multiplayer was iffy and it wasnāt very surprising to me that it lost its population very quickly, especially with Black Ops 2 on the horizon. I do think Halo 4 is a great game though, it looks great, feels great, it felt new to me. Spartan Ops was a greater disappointment to me personally than the multiplayer was and I enjoyed being able to Sprint (opinions, we all have them). It felt like Halo āgot with the timesā a bit but also made some fatal errors in its multiplayer. The whole campaign and darker tone felt like a proper reboot, like what The Dark Knight did to Batman. I was/am also excited to see the Flood replaced by the Forerunners, which were always a huge part of Haloās story and an equally great enemy for Master Chief to face off against.
