Confessions of a recovering Bungie Fanboy

The following was posted on CharlieOscarDelta.com and I thought it was great.  Dark Ronin gave me permission to repost it so all could enjoy.  Might be a new recruit.... :)

I will admit it: I was a Bungie Fanboy. I was all over their site, all over their game, all over their creamy goodness. I played the first Halo to death. Interesting story, good enemy AI, and some nifty looking graphics. Then we discovered multiplayer, and it was on.

Of course, at the time, I realized that the multiplayer was pretty unbalanced. The pistol kills anyone in three shots, and has better range than an assault rifle. In fact, in the first Halo, the only weapon that can hang with a PISTOL is a sniper rifle (yeah, that is as stupid as it sounds.). Oh well, I hear rumors of a new Halo coming out.

And they were true. Halo 2. Oh joy of joys! Multiplayer online? New weapons? The ability to play as an Elite? Sweet! And some nifty support from Bungie's website. Dual wielding! Downloadable maps! This will be something special, right?

So, I waited in line at midnight at my local Walmart, and got myself a shiny new copy of Halo 2 in the limited edition bean-someone-over-the-head metal case. I ditched work for the next day or so and played this marvel of modern game making.

It didn't take long for me to realize that this game had not lived up to the hype. As I played with the Elite skin, I realized that I was getting constantly sniped in the giant Buick-sized head my character was toting around. Wait, you can shoot someone in the gun too? You can blow up a tank with a plasma rifle? The needler STILL sucks?

These little annoying things aside, the thing that got me the most was the fact that this game was absolutely full of people who didn't play by the rules. Modders, cheaters, derankers, all kinds of scum. People who get kicks winning at any cost, and all for the pleasure of saying "Pwned." Gee, that's great that you were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for devices and software that let you cheat at a game for no good reason.

So, I think, Bungie HAS to be all over this, right? I mean, these people are hacking their game pretty good, and they can't be happy! "Swing the banhammer," was a phrase that was trotted out. We're banning cheaters, they claimed. We want to keep the experience pure, they said.

It was soon after that when I realized that they couldn't have cared less. Modders and hackers rose quickly to the top of the leaderboards and stayed there for months. If you played a game over the level of 20, you could expect to play someone who could move at Mach 1, or had a sniper rifle that shot bazooka rounds at SMG speeds. The game quickly became no fun to play at all. When I started thinking about the "banhammer," I got this funny mental image of those plastic toy hammers you give to kids. They look scary, and make lots of noise, but the impact from them is completely laughable. The cheaters would get banned for about 3 days, and be right back to where they were. Some would make new accounts with clever names like "MODDER08" and "IAMAMODDER." They were laughing right in the faces of Bungie and Microsoft.

So, I stopped playing Halo 2. Why bother playing this garbage anymore? If it wasn't cheating, it was "noob-comboing" or "camping" or a million other things that were never addressed. I admit that I am guilty of these things as well, and never claimed otherwise. And the smack talking! Never before has my mother been accused of so much sleeping around with teenage boys who wouldn't know what to do with it if they got it!

And then the hype began: Halo 3. Finish the fight. All this new junk to see and things to do! Buy Mountain Dew Game Fuel, with a giant picture of Master Chief on the label. Go to 7-11 and get a Halo 3 slurpee! Go and get Master Chief underwear from Kohls! Okay, I made the last one up. All I can say is that the marketing department for Bungie must be absolutely incredible to drum up this level of hype.

Unfortunately, I was already burned out at this point and could have cared less. The more ads on TV and the internet, the less I cared. I had already discovered my new home: CharlieOscarDelta.com. I was a HUGE fan of COD 2 and 3 (Sorry, but I think the third one is really fun to play and don't care about other opinions in THIS matter), and when I heard they were taking it to the modern era, it was all I could do not to jump up and down like a school girl at prom. The site was interactive, the updates frequent, and what is this? A BETA?

Wow! I get to pre-play a game that totally rocks, AND I don't have to put another crappy game in my system first? For those who don't know what I am talking about, you had to put in Crackdown to play the Halo 3 beta. What a bunch of garbage. All I ever had to do for COD 4 is download it! And they are giving prizes! Got me a swag pack, yep, that's bragging. So there.

So, here's a game that I am totally stoked about, giving prizes and actually working with their community to make their product something special, and then there's Halo 3. A rehash of a game that wasn't stellar to begin with, with a few more features and a bunch of remodeled levels and weapons from the first two installments. The assault rifle is back and weaker then ever. The melee is still spotty at best. The sword is still whored like crazy. The needler still sucks. And I am still unimpressed.

I have watched others play the game, and the only saving grace would be the 4 player co-op. Of course, this makes the game disgustingly easy even at "Legendary" mode. Don't believe me? Party up, and leave one person back. Infinite respawns!

So, to summarize, Halo 3 brings nothing new to the table, whereas Call of Duty does. Yes, I realize the weapons aren't "new", but compared to the theatre of war from the previous 3, they are. The beta was amazing, and this was an UNFINISHED product! I can't get over how cool it was to see my jets streaking in and dropping napalm canisters! And the helicopter! I love it and hate it (but only when it's against me!).

I will probably play Halo 3 this next month when I don't have internet and nothing else to do. But it's just filler until November 6th.

Viva Las Call of Duty!

By Dark_Ronin [GT: x Dark Ronin x ]