Clackersmith I like the way you articulate your opinions even though I don't agree with them, and with the exception of 1 of your post I find them to be honest and not hate driven. But I have to disagree with your opinion on how the general appeal of Halo is based on gamers that just haven't played enough games. I have played more then my share of games. I was playing games when the video game crash of 83 hit.
I liked Halo alot, I loved Halo, loathed Halo 2 and found Halo 3 redeeming. As a series I find it to be one of the great game trilogies ever, and that is even with my hatred for Halo 2. (then again Halo 3 somehow fixed Halo 2 story blunders and made them fit and even make sense) I had played Quake, 007 Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Doom, Heretic, Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal Tournament and many other FPS's when the game came out. And yet I still loved the game. Why? Simple.
Execution
The game pulled off what others had only done in portion. Before Halo, I played different games for different reasons, but when Halo came out, it did what all those others did. Maybe not as good, but it had everything I wanted in one place. It executed amazingly. Story, Multiplayer, graphics, control scheme, game response, framerate, sound, dialog, ease of use, and it turned the console into a lan party machine. Do other games have better story? Yes. Do other games have Lan party capability? Yes. Do other games have better sound? Yes. Anything I say about Halo can easily be countered with an "yes, but X game did it first and better". Problem is that X game didn't intergrate all those great features into 1 little title like Halo did, and the few that did, didn't execute correctly. The only thing Halo did do that no one else has, is turn cool guys into geeks. I had friends that never liked video games and all of a sudden they are buying Xboxes. I had friends that where jocks and the only video game they would play is Madden and all of a sudden they wanted an Xbox. BTW, I am 32 and my friends are the same age or older.
Now another issue I have with what you say Clackersmith, and I hate to do this as I really like your comments even though I don't agree with them. (It's the way you express your opinions) You think that experienced gamers should judge what is best. Problem is that experienced gamers and game devs are the worst people to judge games. We know too much, and we have seen too much. We know when something is out of place, when a dev took a shortcut, and even what programing techniques are being used for certain part. We are not good judges. A great example is the 2004 fiasco Blinx. In the 2004 E3 Blinx was the talk of the town. Every dev and reviewer was in love with it's usage of HDD the way it was unconventional platformer and many other things. From a programming stand point the game is pure genius. Problem is we don't play the programming, we play the game. Every gamer hated the game and why not, the game sucked. Sure it did cool things, but the game still sucked even with what it could do.
I currently work in Discovery Channel and whenever we cut a show. We make sure to get focus groups to view the show first. Our groups range in all sorts of ages, sexes, and life situations. From that we get feedback, which is never what we expect. From there we edit the show to work witht he feedback we got and from there we screen the show to a large audiance. Let me tell you. What we like, they don't. Why? Cause we are the editors, and producers. We make the shows we like, the shows we feel will be fresh. And they are, they are new, artistic, compelling, and original, and in the end the audience always goes with cookie cutter.
The main buyer is the cookie cutter person, so in essense it is the cookie cutter that defines the standard. We as the enthuasist and devs are not well suited for the judging of a property. There is a reason Simon Cowell can't sing, yet he is a good judge of all things singing. He is a good judge, cause he can't and won't. Look at how actors and directors always like different movies then the people who vote for The Peoples Choice awards. The people buy the game, the people play the game, and the people give the game the life it has. As such only the people (ignorant as they may be) can truely be the good judges of the property.
On another note, I have also noticed that playing a game when it is being hyped kills the game. I loved Halo but I had not seen much hype on it when I played.
-sigh- DBPro can't program in the 4th dimension
Current Project: untitled 4 years, 5 restarts, 1% chance of ever finishing.
