The Nerd Next Door

So now we are at the end of the line, all the mainline Halo games have played and now the wait begins for Infinite and the MCC port on PC. A wait that honestly is taking longer than expected, but I can wait, I'm a patient lil sausage. But there is a path here, one I've seen over my journey through Halo , one that in my opinion can perfectly explain what the hell happened here and we can find out jsut what the hell happened to cause the rise and fall of Halo. In my opinion and in terms of single player, what made Halo stand out from games like DOOM, Quake, and Duke Nukem was it's ability to flawlessly switch from hallway style linear shooting to big outdoor arenas with lots of vehicles and weapons, all of which encouraged experimentation and approaching things how you want to. It also had a sense of humor about itself, the stakes were big, epic, and serious, but the tone of at least the human characters indicated that they were having a bit of fun with the wh...

We're not exactly done yet, if you haven't noticed I didn't talk about Halo's mobile spinoffs, remasters, ports, and fan games. Well I was saving this for an all in one encompassing look at all the other ways to play Halo beyond the games that defined the series' legacy. The mobile games, fan works, ports, and remasters that tend to follow a series as storied as Halo , let's have a chat about it. Ports First up is Halo 1 on PC, released two years after Halo 1 on Xbox and oh boy this one is special. On one hand the game's visuals are butchered with various effects that helped pretty up the game missing, leading to a worse experience overall compared to the Xbox version. On the other hand this version has online multiplayer and mod support along with having all of the engine tools released for Halo 1 . This has in turn inspired some magical works we'll mention later. So if I were to recommend this game, it would probably be for the mod support ...

Remember when I said Halo Wars fails as a Halo campaign due to it's terrible story and characters? Well in that same year the opposite happened when Bungie released, of all things, an expansion pack for Halo 3 , Halo 3: ODST . Taking the conflict to a smaller scale and focusing on a less powerful protagonist, Halo 3: ODST takes the series in a different direction than usual. But is it a good one, and is it still worth making it through to see the dawn? ODST takes place at the same time as Halo 2 's first three missions and focuses on a squad of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, an elite special forces unit that strap themselves into pods and are shot at the surface. Th focus is namely on a squad of ODST's who are part of a mission to aid the Master Chief during the events of 2 . You've got Buck, the wiseass leader who just wants to get his troops through the next mission alive; Dutch, the heavy weapons specialist best described as a simple man making his way through ...