#3 – Halo 3
Again this count-up is not being done in any fixed order. Some of these titles are certainly more recommended than others, but the point here is to highlight what I enjoyed about them.
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I’ll admit, I was part of the Halo hate squad without even giving the games a chance, having never owned an original Xbox. I purchased the third game on New Year’s Eve of last year, with much of the reason being a conceit to my friends so we could 
have something to play together on my then new 360. And while the first few single-player missions didn’t impress, the game became more engaging the more I played and revealed it’s methodology.
Eventually I got on Live, finished the single-player both on my own and in co-op and then continued to play some more. I’m now a Lieutenant (Grade 3!) with perhaps the only positive kill:death ratio in any FPS I’ve ever played. Jeremy Parish was right in that the game seems the most impressive in single-player on Heroic. Only then do you really start to see the AI, level design, and gunplay come together. I’d recommend anyone new to the franchise to give some of Heroic a shot before completely blowing off the franchise.
After months of playing on Live, I’m really starting to understand what is magical about the multi. Sure there was a snowball effect when the first game came out that helped it reach monstrous sales numbers, and the original title did fill in a major FPS gap on consoles, but let’s give it more credit than that. First-off the controls, esp. in the 3rd title are incredibly intuitive and easy to pick-up and play. Each shoulder side roughly represents an arm (shoulder=arm haha), and all the face buttons have one purpose matched to each. Any game’s controls are going to take some time to get used to, but Halo’s controls are able to make a case for why FPS on consoles can still be a lot of fun. The most important reason for the game’s popularity is its realization of what I’d call a “soldier’s playground”. There’s always grenades flying, vehicles rolling around, magazines falling to the ground, and extremely colorful avatars to boot. The player characters are more than capable of flexibility in their fighting so you choose what you want to do. If you want to jump up, spray the enemy in front of you with a few bullets, and then finish the kill with the incredibly powerful downward melee attack, well don’t be surprised if he wants to do the same. Or you can just splatter him with a Warthog as well.
There’s definitely a place for nail-biting shooters like CoD where you can be killed simply because you stepped out from behind that rock and didn’t run. But Halo shows that shooters that have a one-man army as its players are extremely appropriate today as well.
