I don't really understand the hype about the Halo series tbh. First I played Halo 3 and I didn't really liked it. The gameplay was repetitive, the story was bad, and mp was only fun for a few hours for me. That's just my opinion of course.

Then I played ODST, which was IMO way better. I especially liked the atmosphere of it, and the gameplay was less repetitive.

One week ago I downloaded Halo:CE via XBL. While I think it was better than Halo 3 (especially the story was better) the gameplay didn't really appeal to me and was also somehow very repetitive for me.

But I decided to buy Halo:Reach. I looks really good and I really hope that I will have much more fun with it.

@OP - Try playing the campaign in coop on Legendary with a friend, then you'll "get it" imo

Are you kidding, its amazing. Maybe your not a fan.

Ill give you that CE is better than killzone 1 but thats simply because it isn't glitchy as hell. Which seems to be the only criteria for console shooting games. Does it run? Yes. Do you shoot things? Yes. 10/10 GOTY. 

One thing to notice in this thread is the fact that every person who has posted "I don't get the hype for Halo" are PS3 fans. 

Halo CE revolutionized the FPS market on consoles thats a fact.  Without Halo there would be no Killzone, Modern Warfare, Bioshock, Resistance, or really any of the big name shooters existing today.  Halo CREATED the modern day vision of FPS on consoles.

Also if you really are playing it, trying to compare a ten year old game to a modern games is just ridiculous.  

I've played FPS games on PC's since Wolfenstein 3D, cannot stand people acting snobbish and elitist regarding console FPS games.  Seriously it was boring in 2001 and it's still boring now. 

FPS never needed to come to consoles, and all those series never needed to exist. Also Bioshock sprung from system shock, not halo. And Modern warfare came from the PC call of duty games. 

Console fps games are fun little diversions, and I play them. But none of them have been truly groundbreaking like so many people insist. 

I replayed through it earlier this week in preparation of Reach.

Basically, yes; it hasn't exactly aged that well when compared with current FPS games. That's from a technical and game design perspective only though.

It was clearly the first in what was intended as a series from inception so there were quite a few things that were likely intentially omitted in the interest of upping the ante in future sequels.

The main type of person who would still find great entertainment value in the game is likely someone emotionally invested in the Halo series/universe. If you're not in that category, it's pretty understandable if you're inclined to wonder what all the fuss is about.

Offhand I'd say that two of the main aspects of the game that were responsible for its success were the epic scale of the setting and universe of Halo (it's easy to underestimate the effect a well conceived back story can have on a game) as well as the local multiplayer, the likes of which hadn't really been seen since Golden Eye.

There was a pretty huge hole in the console market for a well made FPS game (with good local multiplayer) at the time Halo was released. Bungie had significant prior experience as an FPS developer (Marathon Trilogy developed for Mac OS) making them well suited for the task.

Well MILLIONS of fans enjoy all those games and gaming would be much more bland without them.

Actually Ken Levine the CREATOR of Bioshock flat out said that without Halo he would have never created Bioshock, there's a direct quote in GameInformer about it.