Because of the hype I borrowed a friends XBox to play Halo and forced myself to play through the entire game. I thought it was a dull repetative mess made dramatically worse by a controller that felt monsterous in your hands; the outdoor environments were fun but the indoor environments were garbage ... Many people (including Penny-Arcade) shared this opinion and were shocked that it was so highly reviewed.
When you examine most of the reviews which praised the game, and look at what the fanboy love was focused on, there was an over emphasis on the fact that you could hook up 4 XBoxes together and have a 16 person lan game; as I've said many times, Barbies Horse Adventures would probably be a riot if you're playing with 15 of your friends.
Now, the reason you see so much "Hate" about games like Halo (and certain other XBox exclusives) is that many people have played these games and had very negative experiences with them and are annoyed that this game (of all games) is so successful; much like how people hate bands like Nickleback, My Chemical Romance and countless other second rate bands that have had massive success. If you're bitter that Halo had such success and yet everyone seemed to ignore a gem like psychonauts it may come across as "Halo Hate"
