I really hope Halo Reach is the best Halo game since the original. :(

Definately my favorite FPS of all time. Was just playing it earlier.

1. Half-Life 2
2. Halo CE

Yes it IS that easy.

I like your argument:  "It has super balanced weapons, except for that one hideously imbalanced one."

As for the story, I always felt the races were heavily inspired by Starcraft.  Marines, Flood, and Covenant basically equate to Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss.  Toss in a generic "save the world from alien doomsday thingy," a main character with the personality and charisma of a dead hamster, and there you go.

Oh yeah, and did I mention how god awful the campaign level design is?  Why yes, I believe I touched on it earlier.  It only gets worse as you get toward the end as you find yourself running through uninspired random blue corridors fighting whatever random enemy set the game throws at you next.  Finishing that stupid campaign was a chore.

Are we comparing campaigns only? Cause they are pretty close...with maybe the slight advantage to HL2 (and a 3 year later start) However Halo multiplayer should give it the edge in this battle.

hmm I don't know dude. HL2 Deathmatch and Garrys Mod are both very entertaining and because of the ~14 hours campaign of HL2 (without the expansions) I would give HL2 the edge.

However that's a matter of taste and I just wanted to show my opinion in my first post.

Well just because one of the weapons are imbalanced doesn't mean the WHOLE arsenal isn't, as overpowered as the pistol it I have to say that it's not really a great use for close quarters combat especially when you're against multiple opponents like the flood for example because you have a safer bet with the assualt rifle and shotgun than with the pistol when you're dealing with swarmds of The Flood.

Plus, Halo doesn't really burrow from StarCraft as they may have similiar sci-fi cliches like almost every sci-fi video game out there. Not to mention the StarCraft series burrow HEAVILY from the WarHammer universe in both art and story but like Halo it does enough twists and turns to keep it albeit fresh and interesting.

Hey, you don't mess with the Chief because you're messing with yourself. Master Chief is a shell character in the vein of Pointman from F.E.A.R. and Gordan Freeman in the way that you're projecting your own character into this lifeless one. The only difference is that Master Chief talks but rarely and the fact it never shows his face other than his helmet gives you that feeling you're inside the Master Chief's persona.

Yeah I agree the indoor levels are really bad and repetitive, but this is a exaggerated flaw because it doesn't TOTALLY kill the core gameplay just the atmosphere. F.E.A.R. had reptitive leves just as bad as Halo but you know what? The game was still fun to play thanks to it's core combat and intelligent A.I.

Except Half-Life 2's deathmatch is utterly forgettable.

Half-Life dea- what?

I believe it was thrown together at the last second anyway because people were yelling about it. When it comes to Valve and multiplayer, it's better to look at their real multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2.

Pretty much