By far the biggest joke of the show for me was Bungie's long-awaited Xbox title, Halo. Basically, it's another first-person shooternothing more, nothing less. Halo lead designer, John Howard, did a presentation on the game and failed to say anything to convince the audience otherwise. During his walkthrough of Halo's first level, he couldn't stop talking about different ways to "kick ass." Is that all Bungie could come up with after three years of developmentfinding new ways to kick ass? Howard's presentation was further marred when he praised the game's graphics. Not only did Halo's frame rate grind to a halt when the action got heavy, but Howard had the gall to point out how amazing the lens flare looked when you stare at the game's sun. Wow, lens flarewe haven't seen that before in games have we?
I thought maybe my opinion of Halo would change upon actually playing the game, which I did when took part in a four-on-four round of "capture the flag." However, playing the game only reinforced my negative reaction to this really ordinary experience. Not only is the control scheme awkward, but the split-screen mode looks like a Nintendo 64 game. The frame rate routinely froze during the action, and it sputtered along the rest of the time. I also wondered how the split-screen mode would look on a normal TV. The high-definition, wide-screen set-up used at E3 left a lot of room to divide the screen four ways, but how many gamers out there own a wide-screen TV? A normal TV display will squeeze the partitioned screen layout into the typical, condensed split-screen we've seen in other console first-person shooters. Kick ass? I just don't see it.
The only difference between Halo and other first-person shooters lies in the graphics design and plot. The hype surrounding this game is totally unfounded. Halo left no more of an impression on me than the other boring first-person shooters showcased at E3, like Red Faction and Tribes 2.
