Halo Evolved: Am I a Fan?

Holy shit… I might be a Halo fan.

For years now Nerd Appropriate Matt and myself have argued about the Halo franchise.   While he thought Halo was an incredible console shooting experience, I never really “got it.”  Now to clarify, I’ve played and beaten almost every Halo title ever made and had fun doing so, but I always felt as though Halo was missing that special shooter magic it needed to keep me coming back for more.   Here is where things get interesting…

When 343 took over for Bungie to produce Halo 4, the skeptic in me instantly thought the franchise was doomed to fail.  I’m a pretty optimistic guy, but c’mon!?  Halo without Bungie is like Mass Effect without Bioware… Gross right? 

Halo 4 is by far my favorite title in the series and manages to do so many things that previous Halo games could never quite pull off.  The weapons feel incredible and sound better than ever before.  As rounds spit from some of the new automatic weapons, you’ll swear you can feel the heat from the muzzle (so dramatic).  The character of Chief has a bit more weight when he moves and no longer feels like a floating disembodied head on the battlefield.  The environments and vistas are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen on the 360 and I found myself stopping to look at the scenery on more than one occasion (it’s pretty)!  While the plots of past Halo games were convoluted and hard to follow, Halo 4 does a great job of making the character of Chief likable with a story that easy to understand.  In Halo 4 Chief has a very personal mission to help out the only friend he really has, and he’s willing to kill anything and everything in his path in order to pull it off.  While the old Halo games felt a bit like Independence Day, Halo 4 feels a bit like Die Hard… and that’s a really good thing.

So here I sit with my dirty old foot lodged in my mouth.  I think I’ve become a Halo Fan…