It should be noted that I only played Halo CE two or three years ago, so I may be in the wrong frame of mind. I found it a rather bland and boring game though and it did in no way capture my interest. I have a small list of my beefs with it:
1. The story. It was pretty generic.
2. But that can be excused if the characters are interesting and make me wanna see what happens to them. The story in HL for instance is not excellent but it gets overshadowed by the characters. Halo did not do that. I only remember the name of the Chief. And then there was the AI chick and the black sergeant or whatever rank he held. Can't remember their names. In my book that means that the game has failed if I only remember one person. Compare that to Half-Life, Baldur's Gate or Max Payne where I still remember most of every character in all the games. They captured me in ways that Halo never was able to.
3. Level design. Again, this matters less as my lack of interest in the game already makes me not care. But still, I found the levels incredibly repetitive and bland with the exception of some of the out door environs.
4. I disliked the various plastic alien weapons pretty intensely. They ruined some of the atmosphere for me. I had a hard time coping with shooting purple mosters who look like action figures with a gun that looks like it's bought in Toys'R'us (probably spelled wrong).
5. The little guys with the squeaky voices. Can't recall their names but if the card board characters didn't kill the game for me the bloody ewoks would have. Or the seemingly colour coded big ones. What is this?
American Ninja?
Edit:
6. I completely forgot about the Flood. I hated those things.
/Edit
But still, I don't hate Halo. I just think that to me it's bland and boring. But people who think it's a good game are free to do so. And I'll give it this: it's a lot better than Gears of War.
