CoD, Activision, and Destiny (Gaming)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Sunday, December 01, 2013, 14:57 (4013 days ago) @ Cody Miller

This is the wrong way to look at it. You should be sad CoD reached the level of popularity where it was compared to Halo. CoD would not exist as it is without Halo, given Halo jumpstarted FPS on consoles.

Not sure if 'wrong' is the right word, but I'd say what you say is true as well. Although I actually haven't played a Call of Duty since... 3? They still did WWII back then. :) So it's not that I think CoD is bad, I don't know them anymore, I just get sick of the comparisons, like it's Bungie/Halo/Destiny's goal in life to beat CoD's sales. I have absolutely zero interest in that. Perhaps negative interest!

Part of the problem of course lies with the fact that after Halo 2, Bungie didn't really push things forward, giving other games a chance to catch up. Halo 1 and 2 were peerless, whereas 3, ODST, and Reach were basically typical FPS shooters for the time.

I would say Halo 3's Theater and Forge mode, combined with the increased features on Bungie.Net, were extremely innovative for consoles, though those features are not FPS-specific. When Bungie had the file shares and render abilities, we had community videos from THE night it had happened posted on HBO, and anybody could do it. And Forge launched a whole new section of the fan community. And introduced me to a funny Duck.

And as Halo 3 and ODST are (well, depending on my mood) my favorites, I would agree that there weren't as much innovative to the FPS genre as they were mastering the Halo sandbox. That's why Halo 3 is my go-to game in the series.

Reach would be the game that felt a little lacking, especially after those two, for me. Still a great game when I compare it to the rest of the medium, but in terms of Halo, most of the additions and changes were multiplayer-based and for me, a little too far from 'Halo'. Other than the evolution of equipment into armor abilities, Reach's campaign was just another fun side-story. I'm happy it exists (I spent a year making a comic about it, for starts), but it isn't as... 'necessary' as the rest are to me.