I'm Not Buying Halo 3

Well that's not completely true. I will probably, at some discount and/or used price buy the game. I'm sure it will get decent if not excellent reviews. I'm also not trying in any way to bash the Halo franchise or insult those who play the game. I am however questioning facets of the game, maybe even first person shooters in general that haven't evolved beyond what they have been for the past say 10 years or so.

First let me say that I like the Halo universe. I like the idea and scope of it. With the Halos, Master Chief, the Arbiter, the Flood, and what have you. I still remember the vista after crash landing in the first game and looking up at the sky and seeing the large looping halo in the air. Gameplay wise the game was good as well, you had a new health system (as far as I know this was one of the first that allowed for a self healing shield system in an FPS) unique weapons (I liked the needler), etc etc.. this was great in 2001. The issues arise when other games and other series' have come and gone with new twists, mechanics and ideas being implemented.

Take for instance Ghost Recon: Advanced War Fighter, Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas and the myriad of games that use a cover element. This to me is highly realistic. I'm going to avoid a realism debate all together, but my point being is that I'm come to expect a cover system, or at least some advanced lean mechanic (Medal of Honor: Airborne does this well). I try and think of movies where guns are used, and rarely do you ever see anyone staring blankly at a wall, only to side strafe and completely expose themselves to gunfire. It just doesn't feel right anymore to do this. I'm sure this isn't implemented in Halo because of the pacing. Same for an Unreal Tournament game. It would just seem out of place to have something like a cover mechanic, sneaking around corridors, while other players are running 15 miles an hour around a map. The same idea with going prone. You hardly ever see games now where you can lie down and take up a position within a game. What ever happened to that?

Another issue I have is with multiplayer modes. Team deathmatch (chose red or blue, and duke it out with either a set number of lives or a frag/time limit), Capture the Flag (each team has a flag, your objective is to nab the other team's flag and bring it back to a predetermined place, and other similar variants). I thought the advent of games like Battlefield 1942 would evolve our multiplayer gaming into something more gradiose and epic. With larger maps and more complex structure. I'm not saying that we should have huge expansive battlefields with tanks and aircraft. I just mean something "more" I suppose.

A game I'm more interested in right now than any other is Half Life 2: The Orange Box. Not because of Half Life 2, or the episodes. I'm also not super-excited about Team Fortress 2. It is about Portal. If you've ever played Narbacular Drop you would know how different this game is going to be.

I mentioned Team Fortress ( Original Team Fortress 2) earlier and it reminds me of when that game was first announced. The game was announced in 1999 and competing games were Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike (the original Half-Life mod) and later Quake 3. Team Fortress 2 was going to offer full integrated voice support with lip synch (the character's lips would move when you spoke) as well as audio was localized; if someone spoke out of earshot, you wouldn't hear them. You could also help feed ammo into machine guns while another player lays waste to enemies, parachute into battle on certain maps, and all sorts of features that are either still not being utilized or are just now coming to fruition in some shape or form (i.e. Medal of Honor: Airborne, which is basing the entire game around the parachuting into battle aspect).

I probably sound like a hypocrite citing games like Battlefield 1942 (which doesn't have a cover system) or Gears of War (which doesn't have anything really ground breaking in the multiplayer department) but it seems to me that game mechanics become more or less fads that come and go. That seems like a real shame. There have been plenty of great ideas in games like I mentioned the cover system, or going prone, more complex multiplayer, and other features that don't seem to push into newer games.

What we get left with is great graphical advancements, and maybe a new mechanic that gets tacked on. The new idea or concept may be used once or twice more, but then it goes away and we lose something, that I consider a freedom of choice (being able to choose whether to hug a wall around a corner, or lay down, etc). It's been said from hands-on reports that Halo 3 is going to be more of the same. Well that's good for Halo fans and people who enjoyed what Halo has to offer. Me? I'm still waiting for the next huge shift in First Person Shooters that evolves the medium. Sure, I'll still play games with the same tried gameplay.. but I don't think I will truely be impressed until something drastic happens.

I'm sure at some point I will play Halo 3. I'm just not going to be in line outside the local EB Games, wallet in hand, ready to shell out 60 dollars.