Editorial: Halo 3 Has Spoiled Xbox Live Gamers
By Jonathan on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 10:06 AM PST In Bungie, Editorials, Features, Game Companies, Gamer Life, Games, Halo, Microsoft
I see its effects everywhere. I see it in gaming forums. I see it in reviews for other games. And I can’t help but think one thing: man, Halo 3 has spoiled Xbox 360 owners.
Let’s put the sub-par single-player campaign and the disputes over how good the multiplayer is aside for a second and get one thing straight: for an online gamer, Halo 3 has more options than any title before it. Online multiplayer with multiple modes, online co-op, splitscreen co-op, splitscreen multiplayer, theater mode, Forge: the list goes on. That’s a large part of the reason you can find plenty of people to play with at any hour of the day; there’s just that much to do. But now that I’ve been exposed to all these options in one package, I find myself viewing newer games in a much different light.
Let’s take Call of Duty 4, for example: I can’t help playing the game without thinking how awesome it would be to have online split-screen multiplayer, so me and my 360-less friends could work together. Or for that matter how incredibly fun any type of campaign co-op would be. Frankly, the absence of such elements — not to mention my personal preference for a mouse and keyboard — are what pushed me to buy the PC version over the 360 version. But why? Call of Duty 2 lacked those options as well, and I never gave it a second thought. Well, that’s probably because I hadn’t seen them as an option before. The game is spectacular as it is, but I keep thinking how it could be more spectacular.
Another case in point: Assassin’s Creed. I haven’t played it yet, so I haven’t formulated my own opinion about it; but I’m sure most of us have seen the less-than-stellar reviews. And in the midst of some of these reviews, comments on news articles, and forum posts, I’ve seen a number of people complain about the lack of co-op and online multiplayer. Let’s just stop and think for a minute about how ridiculous it would be to have not one, but two Medieval assassins running around killing higher-ups. Or for that matter, if there were a whole bunch of them just running around trying to kill each other. To cite another stealth game, no one complained about a lack of co-op or online play when Metal Gear Solid 2 came out (possibly because they were too busy complaining about Raiden). Or, to cite a more recent title, BioShock didn’t have any of that either; and there were complaints, but not as many. Enter Halo 3, and now everyone expects multiple robust online modes to make a game perpetually replayable.
Maybe Nintendo had the right idea not making an easy online mode for their system. After all, people are enjoying Super Mario Galaxy, and no one seems to be complaining too much about a lack of online features. And they’re adding online multiplayer to Smash Bros. Brawl, which is probably the one Wii game the most people would want that feature for.
I’m not saying I don’t prefer games with online features — far from it — but it doesn’t make or break a game in my opinion. I’ve seen far too many games that tried to tack a multiplayer aspect onto a great single-player game only to hurt the overall experience. More co-op and multiplayer modes would be great, but if it comes with the possibility of a less enjoyable core game, I’d rather go without. Games were fun before the advent of the internet, and there will always be games that are just fun to play on your own.
Stephany,
well stated. People sometimes seem to think that editorials are supposed to be like dissertations or something. I have no idea where they get these ideas from. I also have no clue where people get their rules of writing from. Perhaps they are reading some little handbook to proper writing or something. Personally, I believe that the only rule is that you need to communicate with the reader. I could really care less about writing form or any kind of rules. As long as you are getting the point across, it does not matter.
Some people I guess don’t understand the point of an editorial. I would have to say being that an editorial is an “opinion piece” it’s the writer’s choice how to construct it.
…………*pssst* dude, has anyone told these kids about super mario galaxy yet? oh…..
Okay, let me be totally, 100%, absolutely clear on this then:
skitzo, you are a DOUCHE.
For my research on this comment, I would like to cite the past two essays you left for me. Not the essays themselves (as hilarious as they are), but the fact that you not only left them in the comments section, but also e-mailed them to the entire Gaming Today staff and CC’ed them to your own site. With this in mind, I’d say I’m pretty well-informed, along with everyone else who received them, that you are a douche. The last person I heard of doing something like that was Jack Thompson. If you wanted to seriously give me tips on writing, you would’ve at the very least left me tips without resorting to calling me a 14-year old, girlfriend-less, or whatever stereotypical gamer insults you could come up with. But no, you just wanted to harass me online and be as loud about your opinion on me as a writer as possible, just like every other gamer online.
So here’s my opinion: you, skitzo, the guy whose did all that I mentioned above, are one incredible douche. You are the douche by which all other douches should be compared. I truly feel that no douche, past or present, can match or exceed your douchery. Congrats.
Well, this killed some time at the airport. Thanks for the laughs. Good day, all.
playing on your own is lame… single player games will die out… ALL games will use a MMO sistem in 10 years or so
Honestly, the assassins creed reference was fine, because it is supposed to be that people are complaining that all diff game genres should have some online features, and thats not how the games were intended, and people just want to play together in everything now with a bunch of diff options. That is Johnathans intention that a lot of ppl dont understand
People complain about the dumb things but never mention the obvious and painful things. For example, both XBOX and XBOX360 lack rewind/fast forward capability when it comes to music. Why not gripe about that? I chalk it up to carelessness on the side of the vendors.
Sorry, but Halo 3 put me off ever playing on Xbox live again. If I want my personal space invaded by a horde of screeching, illiterate teenagers with personality disorders, I’ll spend my free time hanging out in Burger King on Saturday mornings. I had more fun in the first twenty minutes of Portal than I’ve ever had in any multiplayer title.
People do know there’s a mute function for most games that go on Live…right?
The one thing that COD4 needs to have it split screen online multiplayer. I cannot emphasize how awesome of a feature that is on Halo 3. That is the one area where COD4 lacks, and it is a huge oversight by Infinity Ward, IMO. I have friends over each weekend and they don’t want to stay home alone, or drag their consoles and TVs over to play.
Listen up Infinity Ward, add split screen online to COD4 as a bonus.
Hey thanks a lot Jonathan that was heart felt, and it appears meant a lot to you.
But hey, I’m “the douche by which all other douches should be compared to”
Thats one “spectacular” response.
One GamesRadar editor said it best “I have a multitude of potential snarky responses, one of which implies that I could buy 1up and EGM with the change under my sofa”
But I leave you with some words, The Ship of Failure Floats on a Sea of Excuses…
Have a safe flight Jonathan……
There’s definitely a douche bag problem on the net. I’d probably estimate that at least 72.8% of web surfers fall into the category of douche bag…some more extreme cases than others. I’ve probably also called someone a douche on every major gaming site at one point in time.
Ok first let me start off by saying I’m not taking any sides on this. I personally have never played Halo 3. However I’d like to express my thoughts on how you have taken an article review and turned it into a personal attach.
Skitzo seems to have different views as a game review then yourself Jonathan. All he was trying to do was express where and how he felt your review was wrong. I think he did justice seeing as he had supporting evidence for his argument.
Jonathan, what you should be doing is showing how you can better defend your argument. You are both game reviews, should you not be use to the fact that some people do not agree with what you have to say about games?
When I read skitzo’s so called “attack on you” I show nowhere did he mention anything about the fact that you didn’t have a life outside of gaming, or the fact that you didn’t have a girlfriend. I saw that he said you write like a 14 year old. This was based on your reasoning for your reviews.
You choose to turn around and turn it into a personal attack on skitzo, making comments about how you unlike other people have a life besides games. How grown up does that come off? You in turn make yourself out to be a bad one. You write article for video games. You of all people should understand that not everyone enjoys the same games. You should be expecting that people are not going to agree with you and what you have to say. You should know that people are going to confront you and your reasoning for what you have to say.
There should be no reason why it should be turned into a personal attack on a reader, who is also a game reviewer. Anyone who knows skitzo, knows how he rolls, that’s just how he do’s it. I’m ashamed that you allowed this to get to you and that you in an open article went as low as to call him a “douche”.
I feel you need to grown up, if you can’t handle what people have to say….maybe you should rethink what you do, or maybe what you say in future articles.
IN CLOSING….I LIED! I’M TOTALLY ON SKITZO’S SIDE! JONATHAN YOU’RE A FAN BOY DOUCHE YOURSELF!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Statistics:
90% of them are just random numbers such as this one.
0.5% people care if some person called someone else a douche bag on the net.
100% of people could careless about this matter, you may go back to your intern work now.
75% of people found _skitzo_’s reply funny and heart warming, the feel good reply of the year
100% of people at the airport tend to kill time. 0% gave a fuck you did as well.
100% of PS3news and ConsoleTech still laughing at “douche bag” response, and how it affected Jonathan’s day
110% of people love CJ!! and PS3news
100% of the PS3 and ConsoleTech staff would like to wish everyone at filefront Happy Thanksgiving.
Jonathan, I am afraid that I really don’t see what point you were trying to make.
“I’m not saying I don’t prefer games with online features — far from it…”
Double negative – bad form. So you do prefer online gaming?
“Maybe Nintendo had the right idea not making an easy online mode for their system.”
So in fact you want to see fewer online games? Wait, no, you said you play both online and offline games, CoD4, or Mario Galaxy when the mood takes you. So in essence you prefer neither over the other.
Forgive me for being a little puzzled, but you’re not really providing any evidence that your headline may hold some truth. Sure, Halo 3 does have a ton of great options and such, but does it mean that any other game you play now is that little bit poorer for it? Surely that isn’t the case as you later state that, in your opinion, online features don’t make or break a game.
What you’ve said is that Halo 3’s online features alone don’t make it any better than any other game, but other games are worse off because of those online features. That doesn’t really make much sense.
And regarding _skitzo_’s comments above, I just love the way a whole bunch of what appears to be Filefront staffers stick their wedge in the moment a reader makes some kind of criticism regarding subject and style of the original article.
So what? _skitzo_ may have made certain remarks which may have suggested that Jonathan had the traits of a stereotypical gamer (e.g. no girlfriend, 14-year-old n00b, etc.) Welcome to the Internet. If you were genuinely upset by such comments then you must have been living in the dark under a rock for the past 15 years.
And double negatives aside, to call a critical reader/commentator of your article a douche, especially in public view below your own article, is unprofessional. At the very worst you could have deleted _skitzo_’s comments. You could also just have ignored them. Even better, you could have taken the “bigger man” approach, so to speak. You could have kept a professional attitude, maintained some form of integrity, and stated firmly yet politely why you think his comments were without grounds.
The fact that you retaliated in such a manner proves only one thing. He got to you, he pissed you off and you lost your cool.
There is nothing special about Halo 3, and games have been doing what Halo 3 are now doing for years its nothing new.
You’re right about adding multiplayer to assassins creed, it would be stupid… as for any/all non-FPS games. They’re just not suited to it.
If I want to play my games with people all over the world who bitch moan and shout like 99.9% of the X box community I’ll buy Halo3, but there is absolutely nothing special about it, nothing that hasn’t been done before and nothing that won’t be reproduced for a better title in the future.
Honestly, I ask again. People do know they can mute people on Live, right?
I used to play WOW-crack and I played a ton of all the halos…
he has a point…When I stopped playing warcraft i didn’t know which game to play next. None of them had the awesome-ness of building a character,ectx10
but now I have Call of Duty and Mass Effect! And I am kicking ass and taking names! I have owned up to the fact that all of the halo story lines are weak, and it no longer bothers me
Co-Op is king tho…It doesn’t have to be split screen tho. Resident Evil 4 had all those mini-games and extra story modes afterwards. I LOVED those mini-games where you had 2 minutes to kill for points, MORE games need that. (Halo’s scoring mode is a great attempt, i am talking min-game style tho)
Jonathan..good luck, your gonna get flamed if you say halo sucks.
….damn, i feel like re-upping my WoW account!
i think that everyone is missing the real point. it’s all about choice at this point of game development. the choice to play online, to play co op, to play single player or if you choose, not play at all. but if you are online (xbox live) and playing you will see that an extremely large amount of people (11 million) enjoy the versatility that comes with it. i play online and really enjoy the challenge that it brings from the games that offer it. games such as cod4 (although an excellent game in it’s own right) should have had co op campaign at least offered so that people who just want to chat and play a casual game with friends have that option. not everyone who plays co op campaign is out to just beat the game on the hardest setting. i can remember when i would just hang out with friends at home playing, but most of my friends are all across the country or the globe. gaming right now is going down a road that for years it never had to, pleasing millions of people who want it all… a tall order to try to please them all for any game developer. halo3 isn’t the greatest game ever, but it did give the largest selection of choices and continues to do so by adding down loadable content. i will gladly pay the 60 dollars for a game, as long as it is offering alot of playing options.