Halo Revisited and How I'm Starting to like Console FPSs
September 21, 2007

To placate Chris and his insatiable Halo love, I have began replaying Halo with my newly acquired 360 controller. On top of playing BioShock through with my new 360 controller I've also been giving Lost Planet and Overlord a try with my new-fangled device... and I have to say that I'm loving it. I think that it boils down to having the ability to control my walking speed with an analog system in addition to having more intuitive "movement" controls. Aiming still gets a bit hairy, but I've only been playing with the controller for a month or so now. Yes Andy, I can do more than spin around in a circle now.

Now, on to the topic that has probably caused Ryoseth to start poking pins into a voodoo-me - Halo. At this point I'm a little bit further in the game then when I had originally played it, and I have to say that the 360 controller makes a huge amount of difference. Without it the game feels sluggish and slow, but when using the controller everything feels fluid and the gameplay is actually fairly fun. One might even say... it's action packed.

With today's brash of thoughtful shooters and no-holds barred controller-throwing fests it's nice to revisit a world where you can charge into a fight without thought or real planning. Everything plays out perfectly and each "section" of the map ends up being an interesting and dynamic battle that's sure to entertain. My favorite parts are charging into a room to find some inattentive guards who suddenly have a sticky-grenade pinned to their backs. Brilliant, I say, that's flavor and excitement.

I'm hesitant to talk about Halo's storyline at this point. I'm only as far as the Silent Cartographer, so I really don't have much to say there... but the storyline thus far isn't that interesting. Basically, ship blows up, you blow shit up, you rescue some doodz, you try to find picture to lead you to more shit to blow up. That's what I've gotten so far. Perhaps there is more to come, and I will keep going since the action is quite a bit more entertaining.

I'll say that the 360 controller definitely brings the PC port up above the suck-fest that it was with the mouse and keyboard. Thus far there's a pretty mediocre storyline, but the actual gameplay is pretty awesome w/ the 360 controller. Contrast that with BioShock's awesome story and mediocre gameplay... hmm... maybe some day we'll get a combination of the two. So, to recap... I'm finding the gameplay to be a lot of fun and the storyline sort of "meh". Chris tells me that this picks up soon, which I'm excited for - but the gameplay w/ the 360 controller is enough to carry the game for me.

Anyway, at this point I'm almost capping my "emergency savings" point and am starting to save for more... interesting purchases. With my newfound love of the 360 controller itself, I'm beginning to get more and more interested in some of the other games that the 360 has to offer. Gears of War definitely ranks up there as well as Crackdown. Trusty Bell has me intrigued from an RPG standpoint and I am a sucker for Geometry Wars. Heck, even Ikaruga and Rez are coming for XBLA soon.

Oh, and multiplayer gaming is something that I haven't tasted outside of a LAN party in... well, we'll just say that it's been too long. Xbox Live definitely presents me with some interest and I'm sure that Chris and Tony would love to bring me to an educational distillery of the Halo variety. Something tells me that Emily would be a hard-sell though...