If there's one thing I could never understand, it was how Halo 3 remained Xbox Live's most played game when the superior (in my opinion) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was available. Then I remembered that people play what is considered "cool," not what is actually (in my opinion) "good." It's not that Halo is a bad game, it's just that CoD4 is (in my opinion) amazing, but it never stood a chance against the mainstream monolith that held the Live service in its mighty armored hand. Until now (not my opinion, that one was a fact).
In an amazing upset victory, CoD4 has actually beaten Halo 3 to become Xbox Live's most played game. The collar popping frat boys that frequent Bungie's lair (and Wardrox) have either crawled into Modern Warfare, or were too busy dateraping some cheerleaders to stop Activision from taking over during the week of January 14th.
Considering how dominating the Halo series has been on Microsoft's servers, it was never really expected that anything could knock it from the top of the mountain, at least until Gears of War 2 arrived. Call of Duty 4's surprise victory may have proven that there's room on the Xbox Live service for more than just games made by Bungie, and that perhaps a well crafted title is enough to beat pure marketing power ... sometimes, at least.
In other news, Metal Slug 3 was a huge XBLA success, along with, shockingly, Boogie Bunnies. Confess, readers -- who among you went and bought that wretched thing!?
Contest:
12:30 PM on 01.22.2008
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P.S. Gears of War eats poopy. Or I guess bullocks or whatever you British folk call it.
I agree!
Halo is too much hype for my tastes! The multiplayer is "ok" and single player is a joke. I never got why this game was loved so much by so many. I also own Halo 1+2 so can't flame me! They never did anything remotely close to try to re-invent them selves. Halo 2 and 3 are just Halo 1 but prettier.
It's made its way onto my top 5 of all time list, I think.
My sentiments exactly. Except for the part about owning Halo 1 and 2. I sold those ages ago.
Seriously, COD4 online is a thousand times better than Halo's not only game wise but because there is significantly less stupid people playing it.
I can best describe Halo as the confusion orb from that spongebob episode. The minute a person turns it on, their brain turns to mush. I seriously don't think I have ever met a nice person playing Halo. Ever
(I feel like a complete loser for using that spongebob analogy)
Stating that "X" is superior than "Y" is a completely subjective opinion and I don't see the author of the article giving any arguments other than "X is more awesome just 'cause it is".
Oh, and COD 4 vs Halo 3, "the mainstream monolith"? What are you smoking? Both of these games are as mainstream as shooters get.
Seriously though, I will be surprised and jubilant if COD4 is still top of the list next week.
Plus COD4 is better than Halo3. and I don't have to qualify my opinion because this, my friends, is the INTERNET!!!!
First, it's nice to be able to kill someone without having to empty two SMGs into them, only to have them come up on you mid-reload and carve you up with an energy blade. Gay. I mean, alternative sexual lifestyle.
Second, I have a geeky love for some of the geeky familiarity with the weapons of COD4. I rock my M4 Carbine w/ grenade launcher attachment to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'Predator'. My dream is to also unlock the .50 Cal so I can pick people off like Tok in 'Fulltime Killer'. Finally, when I reach a high enough ranking, I can be like Bullet Tooth Tony with Mr. Desert Eagle .50.
The familiarity in general is the biggest draw to me. I'm just glad that there isn't a huge monopoly with one game and there is room for both. Agreed, smarter players play COD4, and racist inbreeders play both.
Having said that there is one major factor that Halo has the CoD4 inexplicable does not. Split Screen over Xbox live. The split screen is local and since my wife is a big Halo player, its pretty much imposible to get her into CoD4 since we can't play together.
Until CoD4 adds this feature I guess were sticking with GoW and Halo 3.
I think that depends on how you look at it.
Sure it's nice to get some of the perks, but it really comes down to who can aim and shoot faster. This is one of the few games that I did really well online with and had no troubles killing top exp ppl, BF2 is the total opposite of that statement.
Halo 3 feels like a slightly evolved Goldeneye.
CoD4 feels fucking awesome.
"CoD4 feels fucking awesome."
Took the words right outa my mouth!
If we do, tell me. I want to be cool, too.
I just find it boring. You die to quickly giving you no time to react and do something about it, and it I understand they were trying to go for realism, but I am playing a video game. Sometimes things being unrealistic is great. I understand why people like it, so why cant others understand why some of us enjoy Halo? It just sounds so elitist.
I enjoy Halo because there is variety, where as in CoD, everything feels the same. We played Grif Ball last week on FNF and it did not feel like Halo anymore. It felt like some over the top futuristic game.
Also, CoD matchmaking is horrible in comparison. I have been teamed up with people who blow past my level of playing skill. And when my friends come over we want to play splitscreen online. All they have to do is sign in to the pre-made XBOX Live Guest account. In CoD 4, you cannot do it even if they have their own Gamer Tag.
This is so incredibly contrived. You say this as if "good" and "cool" are mutually exclusive.... Do you really think that the majority of gamers are incapable of recognizing when they're enjoying something?
"The collar popping frat boys that frequent Bungie's lair (and Wardrox) have either crawled into Modern Warfare, or were too busy dateraping some cheerleaders to stop Activision from taking over during the week of January 14th."
That's a lot of pretension and loathing. Too busy "dateraping cheerleaders?" Jesus Christ.
COD4 and Halo 3 are played by almost precisely the same audience. It's not all rapist frat boys on the one side and condescending fat-shit bloggers on the other. Both games draw from the same core group of 360 owners and Live subscribers: people who are enthusiastic enough about of the experience that they pay a not insubstantial amount of money to maintain it.
I've played a great deal of both games and I'm highly ranked in both. I'm not a frat boy and never have been, I'm just a software developer with experience in both games and the challenges of making a multiplayer online FPS. These are comments I sent to a friend when he asked me why I play more Halo than COD:
[i]“Call of Duty 4 is fun, but it has some flaws that can be harmful to online FPS game-play, such as:
1. It emphasizes camping. While that’s a viable strategy, if both teams are camping you get some pretty boring play sessions, and if one team is camping the other team becomes instantly frustrated.
2. The network code isn’t very polished. When you have two games on two boxes you have two different simulations working, and you rely on your network code to reconcile those simulations and keep them in sync. If that code isn’t very “smart” you can get discrepancies in the simulations that frustrate players. Things like profound host advantage or low-latency connections that allow players to “skip” around the screen unscathed. There’s evidence of these if you watch the kill camera after you die. Like shooting at a wall instead of at the guy who killed you…. Even if you put a bunch of shots in his head in your simulation, his simulation was reporting his player in a different location, and he was just able to win the handshake. A lot of Halo’s strength comes from its ability to minimize those occurrences and also protect you from people who standby or DoS other connections. COD4's network code is also exacerbated by the fact that almost all the weapons can kill instantly, and player “fights” typically last less than a second.
3. COD has an incentive system that gives profound advantages to players with more experience, thus creating an unreasonable divide between the have and have-nots in the game. This frustrates all but those that have the time to sit and complete challenges to advance their fitment/perks. This is further confounded by the fact that teams aren’t intrinsically balanced by the system based on historical skill, and hosts can boot whomever the want from the game lobby. This leads to matches like you describe [wildly out of balance teams. 5-10 minutes of being brutalized]
All of this is not to say it can’t wind up being fun to play, I’ve had a lot of fun in COD4, but I find that at my level of skill there’s more fun to be had more frequently in Halo.”[/i]
*Is shot by a rabid Halo fanboy.*
So I wouldn't call it biased journalism, more of a hypocritical kind of thing.
"I enjoy Halo because there is variety"
Have you played like the 1st 2 Halo's, cause I've played them all....and if you played once then you can safely say you've played them all.
Cod4 made/makes players adapt to a certain mind set and how the FPS has been played out. I learned fast that once a guy falls down he might whip out his hand gun to shoot back. If you run and knife matrydom (nade drop, probably spelt wrong) will not get you and lots of servers do not allow that perk.
They just need some more online levels imo.
In other news. I go to my best friends house to play CoD4, cause I'm a cheap bastard. Since you can't play online with two people on a console (my only real complaint), we switch turns every round. My friend always kicks my ass at Halo, cause he's a freak like that, getting 30 out of 50 kills on team slayer and other crazy shit like that. When we play CoD4, he always winds up with like 5-10 kills out of 25, while I am hanging with level 55's in Hardcore as a level 21 (I rarely play) and giving them a hell of a fight. Safe to say he is not happy. CoD4, the great equalizer.
You're right, I shouldn't have called you a name. You definately started this one off on the high ground. Thoughtful and even handed.
What I meant is that you made your fair share of halo advertising.
COD 4 is your typical FPS multiplayer with a few added perks (all of them quite flawed). Battles, including team ones, are way too chaotic. There are way too many ways to exploit the game's mechanics. It's ridiculously unforgiving to anyone who hasn't leveled up enough. And, at least in my experience, there are plenty of "i pwn so much" kids playing it.
I am not saying that Halo 3's offering is that much better or that it advances FPS multiplayer much, but it's a highly polished and extremely varied and rich experience.
And again, while COD 4 is not employing the same ad tactics, both are very mainstream games designed for a as broad of an audience as possible.
By the way, it would really help if you add little phrases like "in my opinion" in your posts. Journalistic integrity might not be worth much on news blogs such as Destructoid, but presenting a balanced view or at least one that leaves ground for educated discussion can help greatly in making you look like less of an ass.
And I guess as a Halo fanfag, I do see the differences between the 3. I think the leap from 1 and 3 should be very apparent. Not just with the graphics, but with the controls.
...I thought it was not allowed for them to speak.
You're right, I shouldn't have called you a name. You definately started this one off on the high ground. Thoughtful and even handed.