Call of Duty 4: The Fall of Halo

There, I said it.

Not that I havent heard other people and game reviewers say it as well. I just never thought that I would be saying it.

I LOVE Halo, Halo 2 was God's own gilded gift to the online Multi-Player community. The party system is great with hardly any interruptions in conversation or being lagged out and have to rejoin (hardly any anyway). It's damn near like being in the same room with your buddies. On that point Halo stands alone. It's still the best party system in the world of consoles.

Halo 3 looked incredible. The Mulit-player is awesome with only a few irritating qwerks. I've already said what I think is great about Halo and if you had read my earlier post on the subject you also know what I don't like about it: the weak ass campaign. Brief summary: Starts off with deep promises and ends with Mario-Kart.

This is were Call of Duty 4 comes in. It has a brilliant campaign component. If you only gamed for the single player campaign you could be kept happy. The Arcade setting after you have beat the game could keep you coming back for more again and again. The achievements in campaign are worth the time to get and worth the effort to keep playing. The environments are photo-realistic once you are emersed and it does offer a sense of total emmersion. THe characters have a life, you actually feel something about them in some parts of the game (sorry, no spoilers). You REALLY want to the antagonists to die. You feel like they deserve it. It's not just another horsehit arcade  boss level either.

The multi-player component is really good. It's tough as hell and there are some REALLY good players online. I am NOT one of them. I have my moments but not near enough. The weapons are realistic enough, the perks are cool as hell and the EXP system is for the most part independent of winning or losing. Even a bad player has insentive to keep playing instead of feeling like they are getting stuck at one rank or another. You may not rank up as fast as some but you WILL rank up.

The bad news: the mulit-player party system is not near as good as it should be. There are glitches that are maddening with the servers. Connection interruptions and being dropped from your party for no apparent reason. If the game wasn't so fun, that would be a killer.

If Call of Duty 4 had Halo 3's near seemless party system and the film clip / screenshot capabilty it would be THE game of 2007 and would bury Bungie in there own self-dug half-assed grave. If Halo 3 had a campaign as strong as Call of Duty 4 I wouldn't have even bothered buying another game. I would happy to play Halo 3 until I lost all connection with reality. My wife is happy that it doesn't.

As it is when you balance out all of the pros and cons of both games and I could only have one game in my collection at any one time I would have to go with Call of Duty 4.

Sorry MasterChief.