The Popularity of Halo

As anyone who has ever even touched a console will know, Halo is one of the best selling games franchises of all time; with its newest incarnation, ‘Halo 3’, breaking all kinds of records in first day sales. But exactly why Halo has reached these levels of popularity?

Before I start though, I think I should get something out of the way. Yes, I did buy a copy of Halo 3 and yes, the day I bought Halo 3 was the same day that I bought my Xbox 360, which would make it look like I bought my 360 just so that I could play Halo, which is somewhat true and quite hypocritical considering what I am about to say, but I don’t care and neither should you.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had all their friends playing Halo 3 straight after its release which is one thing that I find very strange. A lot of my friends have different taste in games, which is why I was surprised at how literally all of them bought the same one. This brings me onto how Halo has become a name that must be bought. Lets be honest, Halo 3 wasn’t really all that special. If you look at the actual game in gameplay elements then there isn’t anything that either hasn’t been stolen off another game and hasn’t been done better. This makes it not only incredible how people would buy so many copies of such a game, but also how websites and magazines gave it such high scores. If Halo 3 had been called something like 'Rings of Death 3' then it would have no doubt been abused by many people for being just a copy of so many other games and for not having any originality.

I have also noticed that audience of the series has slowly been changed throughout its course. I mean, Halo 3 looks like it has been made so ‘consumer friendly’ that Microsoft have ended up making a game that is solely made for people will be laughing constantly while saying “gun go boom”. There are no objectives that aren’t either ‘kill everyone’ or ‘go to there’ ,the story is so cliché that anyone with more than two brain cells can pretty much predict what’s going to happen from the word go and the game itself is so easy that anyone with two functioning thumbs will be able to complete it. This side of the game can also be seen in the online section as most of the people online will trash talk when they aren’t arguing with each other and will reply to any intelligent comment with “so’s your mum”, which means that eventually you end up with everyone else in a match muted because they were all fighting over what the best colour is. The Americans seem to be the main culprit for this, as usual. No offence to any intelligent Americans (I laugh at the thought), but when will there stop being anyone but arrogant frat boys from your country on Xbox live.

Another thing I would like to point out is how this game is so American that Bungie may as well have replaced Master Chief with Uncle Sam. The army you fight with is somehow called the “United Nations Space Command”, even though it may as well be called “Fuck the United Nations” seeing everyone in it has American accents, they all woop their way into battle and they don’t seem to have an issue with shooting their own men. It’s almost as if Microsoft, an American company, has forgotten that the rest of the world exists, just like almost every other game made in that country. This is even the case in pretty much every World War 2 game, where it may as well just be America vs Germany, and all the other countries like England, France and Russia are just left out, as if they didn’t lose millions of soldiers and get invaded. Anyway, it’s still surprising how even thought it says ‘United Nations’, it really only means one out of the one hundred and ninety two countries. But, then again even thought all this just annoys normal people, to Americans I guess this would really sell the game. After all, who doesn’t like being reminded of their country’s supposed superiority? Especially when they are shown as having a big green giant in their ranks.

While I’m sticking it to the American’s I also think I should mention how a reason for Halo being so popular is probably how it actually shows America fighting an enemy who isn’t a developing country. The only time when they have fought an enemy that posed a threat is the Second World War, and that has already been milked to death. This is why I think that in this case a developer has taken the responsibility upon itself to create a fictional war against an actual enemy, even if they have gone a bit over board in ensuring this by making the enemies aliens rather than foreigners.

To bring this to an end, Microsoft seem to have picked up on the fact that Halo with make them so many millions of dollars, even if it is a bit crap; which is why I think that Microsoft’s claim of people ‘finishing the fight’ with Halo 3 is a big load of bollocks. If Halo 4 isn’t released then I will eat my hat; they left him in a cryogenic freezer for God’s sake, when doesn’t that get a sequel?