Hey, I’m an avid Halo fan, and even _I_ thought the hype for Halo 3 was over the top. I enjoyed aspects of it, but I also mostly tuned out. I knew I was going to buy it, and I didn’t want to have the story spoiled.
I wouldn’t call playing it on launch night addiction. Otherwise I’m going to call all of the people that stayed up to read Harry Potter ‘addicts’.
Orange Box will be fun, but the game is nothing new. Portal will be fun to play around with, but no longevity in that. Team Fortress 2 will be fun for a few weeks as well, but I don’t see it catching fire in the FPS genre.
The first Halo bored me to tears halfway through, and I couldn’t even finish playing it. From everything I’ve heard the sequels are just more of the same. There’s just something missing for my half of the gaming population that just doesn’t see the series as any big deal.
Maybe it’s because driving a warthog isn’t that cool to me. In Battlefield you can fly planes, helicopters, drive tanks, APCs, AND jeeps (warthog). So the warthog has never seemed like some crazy cool innovation to me. It’s ONE vehicle, that you use over and over again. GTA is another game where you can fly planes and helicopters, and drive motorcycles. So I just don’t understand why one vehicle in Halo is so cool.
But people talk about the vibe of it (space marines – yawn – as if I’ve never seen that before). The one thing I will cop to is that Halo multiplayer has always been solid. But have you played the Call of Duty 4 beta yet? Or TF2? How is it any better than those?
Mainly I’m just grumpy because people are calling the Xmas gaming season over simply because Halo is out. That’s not true at all, no matter how you cut it. There’s a good 10 or so more really cool looking games coming out, and I’m not about to write them all off just because Microsoft’s Golden Boy decided to show up to the party! :)
Part of the Halo fascination for me is the storyline itself – it’s sci-fi and really detailed storyline behind everything. The biggest part of the attraction to Halo for me, though, is the community. I’m part of an excellent clan of honorable gamers, and there’s just this vibrancy to the community that I love being a part of. I look forward to my weekly online get-togethers with my friends to laugh and have fun playing. So, yeah, really it’s matchmaking and custom games that have supported this community for so long.
Jim, fair enough. That makes sense too, in why I never got into it. If I’d spent more time in the community as you describe, I’d probably be a lot more excited about the series.
This season is just too saturated for me to get married to any one game. I will play them all at least one time through, and then go back to my favorites and spend a little more time with them.
What Halo is to everyone else, is probably my GTA4 or Fallout 3. But I’ve got to wait til ’08 for those. :(
Honestly, Eric, I don’t really have time to game all that much, so I’ve chosen to pick one as my primary focus and I toss others in when I have time (which isn’t often). I’m actually not much of an FPS gamer, by and large. Halo caught my attention with its story (which I love) but it’s my friends and the community that keep me here. Heck, I almost gave up on Halo before I joined up with the TTL Gunslingers.
Of course, Halo 3’s file sharing and Forge capabilities certainly help hold my interest now, as well. :)
What about Mass Effect (Nov. 20th)? Call of Duty 4 (Nov. 5th)? Assassin’s Creed (Nov. 15th)? Army of Two (Nov. 13) is looking to be the ultimate co-op game.
Then I have my B-list, which is Blacksite (Nov. 5th), Kane & Lynch (Nov. 13), and TimeShift (Oct. 30).
I’ve probably forgotten a few titles, but that pretty much sums it up. The crazy thing is I know some of those will bleed into next year for me, but there’s plenty of stuff coming out next year too!
Mass Effect looks very promising, as do Assassin’s Creed and Timeshift. I played the Timeshift demo and it seemed ok. Wasn’t really enough of it to get a good flavor for it. Mass Effect looks like it’s going to have an impressive storyline, much like what the Advent Rising series _would_ have been had they produced a clean, bug-free game.
Two games I _do_ want to get my hands on, though, are _Blue Dragon_ and _Eternal Sonata_. I played the demos for both of those and had a lot of fun with them.
Coworker is playing Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata – he loves them.
360 is the first console since the SNES to really absorb me. I guess this is what it must have been like with the PS1 and PS2. This is the first console that could stand up to the power and graphics of a PC. I’m loving it.
I did enjoy a bit of the GameCube and original Xbox, but nowhere near as much as the 360.
Yeah, I love my 360. I actually have very little interest at this point in even getting a PS3. But then again, there aren’t any games for Playstation that grab my interest the way Halo does. The 360 is also networked very nicely.
I maintain interests in a wide variety of areas. I am an avid storyteller, specializing in (dark) speculative fiction and webcomics. I am also a professional code wrangler and dabble in amateur photography.
jim, you’re a psych major.. you should know that’s called ‘addiction’!
Oh, sure, I realize that. Doesn’t stop me from being envious, though. ;)
Can’t wait til Half-Life Orange Box comes out, so people will stop talking about Halo. And I thought the Bioshock overhype was bad…
Hey, I’m an avid Halo fan, and even _I_ thought the hype for Halo 3 was over the top. I enjoyed aspects of it, but I also mostly tuned out. I knew I was going to buy it, and I didn’t want to have the story spoiled.
I was one of the 21 people playing.
I wouldn’t call playing it on launch night addiction. Otherwise I’m going to call all of the people that stayed up to read Harry Potter ‘addicts’.
Orange Box will be fun, but the game is nothing new. Portal will be fun to play around with, but no longevity in that. Team Fortress 2 will be fun for a few weeks as well, but I don’t see it catching fire in the FPS genre.
Halo 3 just rocks the house, and right now it’s the only game I’m interested in. :)
Orange Box is nothing new, but neither is Halo.
The first Halo bored me to tears halfway through, and I couldn’t even finish playing it. From everything I’ve heard the sequels are just more of the same. There’s just something missing for my half of the gaming population that just doesn’t see the series as any big deal.
Maybe it’s because driving a warthog isn’t that cool to me. In Battlefield you can fly planes, helicopters, drive tanks, APCs, AND jeeps (warthog). So the warthog has never seemed like some crazy cool innovation to me. It’s ONE vehicle, that you use over and over again. GTA is another game where you can fly planes and helicopters, and drive motorcycles. So I just don’t understand why one vehicle in Halo is so cool.
But people talk about the vibe of it (space marines – yawn – as if I’ve never seen that before). The one thing I will cop to is that Halo multiplayer has always been solid. But have you played the Call of Duty 4 beta yet? Or TF2? How is it any better than those?
Mainly I’m just grumpy because people are calling the Xmas gaming season over simply because Halo is out. That’s not true at all, no matter how you cut it. There’s a good 10 or so more really cool looking games coming out, and I’m not about to write them all off just because Microsoft’s Golden Boy decided to show up to the party! :)
Part of the Halo fascination for me is the storyline itself – it’s sci-fi and really detailed storyline behind everything. The biggest part of the attraction to Halo for me, though, is the community. I’m part of an excellent clan of honorable gamers, and there’s just this vibrancy to the community that I love being a part of. I look forward to my weekly online get-togethers with my friends to laugh and have fun playing. So, yeah, really it’s matchmaking and custom games that have supported this community for so long.
Jim, fair enough. That makes sense too, in why I never got into it. If I’d spent more time in the community as you describe, I’d probably be a lot more excited about the series.
This season is just too saturated for me to get married to any one game. I will play them all at least one time through, and then go back to my favorites and spend a little more time with them.
What Halo is to everyone else, is probably my GTA4 or Fallout 3. But I’ve got to wait til ’08 for those. :(
Honestly, Eric, I don’t really have time to game all that much, so I’ve chosen to pick one as my primary focus and I toss others in when I have time (which isn’t often). I’m actually not much of an FPS gamer, by and large. Halo caught my attention with its story (which I love) but it’s my friends and the community that keep me here. Heck, I almost gave up on Halo before I joined up with the TTL Gunslingers.
Of course, Halo 3’s file sharing and Forge capabilities certainly help hold my interest now, as well. :)
What about Mass Effect (Nov. 20th)? Call of Duty 4 (Nov. 5th)? Assassin’s Creed (Nov. 15th)? Army of Two (Nov. 13) is looking to be the ultimate co-op game.
Then I have my B-list, which is Blacksite (Nov. 5th), Kane & Lynch (Nov. 13), and TimeShift (Oct. 30).
I’ve probably forgotten a few titles, but that pretty much sums it up. The crazy thing is I know some of those will bleed into next year for me, but there’s plenty of stuff coming out next year too!
Mass Effect looks very promising, as do Assassin’s Creed and Timeshift. I played the Timeshift demo and it seemed ok. Wasn’t really enough of it to get a good flavor for it. Mass Effect looks like it’s going to have an impressive storyline, much like what the Advent Rising series _would_ have been had they produced a clean, bug-free game.
Two games I _do_ want to get my hands on, though, are _Blue Dragon_ and _Eternal Sonata_. I played the demos for both of those and had a lot of fun with them.
Coworker is playing Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata – he loves them.
360 is the first console since the SNES to really absorb me. I guess this is what it must have been like with the PS1 and PS2. This is the first console that could stand up to the power and graphics of a PC. I’m loving it.
I did enjoy a bit of the GameCube and original Xbox, but nowhere near as much as the 360.
Yeah, I love my 360. I actually have very little interest at this point in even getting a PS3. But then again, there aren’t any games for Playstation that grab my interest the way Halo does. The 360 is also networked very nicely.