Halo: Reach. I got it by mistake when my mother mistook it for Black Ops when grabbing me an early Christmas present as a surprise (which baffled the fuck out of me, since they're labeled the same way as DVDs), but I appreciated the effort too much to let her return it and exchange it.
So, I popped it in (which, by the way, meant it was no longer exchangeable) and started on Heroic. Not very fun, since not only had my life been dominated by two-hit-kill games like COD4 for quite a bit, but I was also getting my ass handed to me, so I was thoroughly disappointed. Then, after making the mistake of letting an AI ally take the wheel (at a checkpoint, literally in the middle of a gigantic skirmish where every other enemy was armed with 'Hog-tossing explosives... say it with me now: FUUUUUUUUUUCK), I switched it to Easy out of spite and blew through the campaign, without any feats feeling particularly rewarding. I was underwhelmed. So then I switched to online, got sucked into the universally addicting black hole that is Reach's multiplayer, and after a while, started to become intimately familiar with the game mechanics. It was at this point that I had an epiphany: most of the fun of Halo games come from playing according to the game's natural rhythm, and once you nail it down through repetition, it's a goddamn blast, and in my case, some of the most fun I've had with any game, ever.
Now, combine that with the RIDICULOUS amount of longevity I've squeezed out of it (almost two months of continuous play; I've borrowed some games from a friend that I've been dying to play, and have barely touched them). Because of this, I'm naming Reach as my favorite FPS of all time.
So, I popped it in (which, by the way, meant it was no longer exchangeable) and started on Heroic. Not very fun, since not only had my life been dominated by two-hit-kill games like COD4 for quite a bit, but I was also getting my ass handed to me, so I was thoroughly disappointed. Then, after making the mistake of letting an AI ally take the wheel (at a checkpoint, literally in the middle of a gigantic skirmish where every other enemy was armed with 'Hog-tossing explosives... say it with me now: FUUUUUUUUUUCK), I switched it to Easy out of spite and blew through the campaign, without any feats feeling particularly rewarding. I was underwhelmed. So then I switched to online, got sucked into the universally addicting black hole that is Reach's multiplayer, and after a while, started to become intimately familiar with the game mechanics. It was at this point that I had an epiphany: most of the fun of Halo games come from playing according to the game's natural rhythm, and once you nail it down through repetition, it's a goddamn blast, and in my case, some of the most fun I've had with any game, ever.
Now, combine that with the RIDICULOUS amount of longevity I've squeezed out of it (almost two months of continuous play; I've borrowed some games from a friend that I've been dying to play, and have barely touched them). Because of this, I'm naming Reach as my favorite FPS of all time.
