Why do so many gamers dislike Halo?

[Commando]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I necissarilly HATE Halo. I guess one could assert that I do have a bias against it. Here's why

When Halo came out I was still enraptured in my Counter Strike sessions. Counter Strike was a killer app mod of Half-Life that was an answer to all my multiplayer FPS wishes. In turn I basically preffered Counter Strike over One-player FPSs all together. With Counter-Strike bieng a free download and having Half Life, and availability to download any free update/mod for it I just saw no reason to buy another FPS. Hands down. Also especially considering the level of realism reached by Counterstrike, kinda soured Turok and Goldeneye for me and I felt there was no way I wanted to go back into the realm of bury 40 rounds of ammo or launch heatseeking mini nukes at people or whatever unreal design that was part of a game. Fantasy FPS was over (at that point in my life and I only wanted realism). I was enchanted by Red Faction, I love Total Recall (the movie), and thought the story and promised interactivity with environment would be sweet. Unfortunatly after play RF1 and 2 at friends I enjoyed it but only for a little bit then found myself just thinking Counterstrike.

Why others hate it? Why I kinda hated it for a while. One word: Fanboys. Ever since fanboyism rocked the States, it has decided the fate of a lot of gamers opinions for a franchise one way or the other on a personal level. People will just ignore the greatness or shittyness of a game based on what side of they fence theyve found themselves on. The fanboy arguments will the further reinforce said decision or effect others into a choice even if they didn't initially care. When Halo and XBOX came out, it was like a whole new breed of fanboy had arrived with them a whole new breed of stupidity. When a new Halo fan started raving about it, most times it was clear that they didn't knoe absolute F*** about what they were talking about. In my personal run-ins when these fanboys I personally thought to myself (no attempt to flame here, this is the past anyway). My god these are worse than the PS cazer fanboys who thought Final Fantasy started at 7 and don't know what an SNES looks like. I recieved so many blank stares from these fanboys when talking about any other shooter, be it Turok, Red Faction, Quake, and they would say things like " I don't know, when is it coming out?". I even had someone ask if Goldeneye was out on XBOX yet. I tried not to judge the game based on the people but it really is hard not too at least let it effect your psychi.
Lastly and of course not least, it was made by Microsoft. Many people in the IT industry (like myself) and who are Gamers (big time myself) already hated Microsoft before they even became a game company (same can be said about Sony for me, I've always hated them as a company). So that resentment did impact my feeling and I'm sure others towards Halo.

All in all I still admit I haven't warmed up to Halo yet. Since I havent played Counterstrike in at least 3 years I think I can aproach FPS again. I have to say I WANT Bioshock, some of yu have probably noticed that. Perhaps in time I will pick up Halo for like 9 bucks out of a sin bin (Hockey term for penalty box, that I sometimes use for bargain bin, simply cause I like the name), and play it for my Xbox (yes I did get one, because EB ran a weekend sale one time where I got 4 SEGA games free with the SEGA GT JSR Future and extra cS-controller all for $200). I still hated the controller, Microcon is okay. I got Fable 2nd week it was out, felt ripped off. Maybe, MAYBE logged in 35 hours total on the box, I dunno it just didn't do it for me. but now Im digressing to much. OK thats pretty much it.