This series has WAY too much hype surrounding it. My god, Halo 1 was the coolest thing when it came out. My friend bought it when it came out and we had tons of fun playing through on co-op and then tons more fun in the hours upon hours of multiplayer afterwards.
After that, I started seeing the whole "Halo [series] is better than sliced bread" mentality from people and as a Half-Life/Counter-Strike/Team Fortress Classic player, the 'your game sequel will pale in comparison to Halo because it's not Halo' comments have annoyed me too much. I accept the series as a success based on what it did for the console FPS world and having a great multiplayer, but I don't have much of an interest in the series after the first one.
Something else that destroyed interest in the game was recieving the PC port of Combat Evolved as a gift. It proved to me that it doesn't really stand up to greater PC games. I don't know how the port/enhancements of Halo 2 have fared though because of the whole Vista only thing >.>
