Despite complaining about other reviews, I myself am not going to write a review of Halo 3. If you don't already own this game, you must either know someone who does who will allow you to play it, or at least have absorbed (via osmosis) enough information about it from all the yelling in order to get an idea of what it's like. And seeing as I don't write in order to find ways to show how bad-ass I am (although, with all my bad-assness, this must be hard to believe!) I'm not going to write a review that no one will gain any practical benefit from reading; if you want a quick opinion for the purpose of context, I give it an 8.5 for solid gameplay and a neat story line, but this in addition to a few underwhelming features and quirks. I think it's odd, as well as very interesting, that all of the commentary on Halo 3 has been so extreme and passionate in either direction. And the reasons for this, if you think about them, really say something about how people think about games; that is, when gamers happen to be thinking.

Almost inexplicably, yet entirely unsurprisingly, essentially every single review for Halo 3 has been either a 9 to 10 or a scathing denunciation (I think Destructoid has featured the only exception I've seen.) Like Ayn Rand novels, this sort of "love it or hate it" response is a definite sign of something interesting, which Halo undoubtedly is. But before I can come to any conclusion about the issue and why it causes these sort of radically different responces, I'm going to have to look at the mind-set of each response specifically.

The Fan Boys...
My friend Stan, who in addition to being a nice and smart guy is completely irrational when it comes to making practical decisions and currently lives at home while not attending school or work, looked like he was going through multiple simultaneous orgasms when he saw a video preview of forge (Halo 3's map editor.) Don't get me wrong, forge is cool, but it's just a map editor! It is nothing like the map editor in Half-Life, not to mention RTSs like AOE and Starcraft/Warcraft. And Stan doesn't even have a 360, which, if he really expected this game to be great, he should have long since gotten. My friend Daniel, who had the game pre-ordered back when Halo was a vague idea for a MAC RTS, was a bit less weird and just as excited. But even he has a hard time naming many concrete benefits about the shooter, other than it being his second favorite game ever; I am mentioning him because, despite being the most rational Halo 3 uber fan I've come across, he is still no inspiring example of what it means to be one. The quintessential climax of Halo 3 hyperbole, however, may have come several months ago, just before the Beta, when it was revealed that the "revolutionary" X-button option we were all anticipating lets you... use equipment; neat, can't say I'm not happy it's there, but... come on, where's the revolution?!

My last example, which is collectively nearly every review from a major publisher out there, makes it a little hard for me to be concrete. To put it as simply as I can, they all narrow down on how neat and cool something very specific or something very vague is. "Halo 3 is an interesting mix of established protocol and intriguing new stuff. For example, the game play doesn't stray too far from Halo 2, which, in turn, didn't exactly reinvent the original Halo. Don't take that as a negative, because it means that Halo 3 plays extremely well, with the same types of light tactical considerations that have made the series stand apart from other, faster-paced shooters." Terrific, now where's the money shot? There isn't one; all the 9-10 reviews are filled with statements like that. They evade any sort of real explanation of why the game is so epic by dicking around neat, but slightly underwhelming particulars (which themselves you have no reason to criticize; these particulars ARE neat, but merely neat) and then making meaningless statements like "sends the series in exciting new directions." (Both quotes from Gamespot.) So the basic motives of Halo enthusiasts seem to be: wanting passionately to love it, to take all the hype, the attention, the anticipation and to suck it all up in a way that transcends the games itself; an innate fear of being yelled at for this enthusiasm. It's as though they're nervous and intimidated by others who are going to mock them for liking it so much, and therefore are afraid to give their REAL justification, and instead stare at their feet and say clichés. Speaking of which...

Next Issue: The Playa Hatas (Also, Conclusion)