The Power Review

And the Halo Killer is… Halo?

This is a reaction article for sure, a reaction to me sitting back for the past month and just shaking my head at what “journalists” have been writing.  The Halo franchise for sure is the 800-pound guerilla of this console generation, with the third iteration in the series selling over 11 million copies, these are extremely impressive numbers.  However, as far as first party exclusives, what else really is Microsoft offering to its fanbase…? Lips? (Fine, I’ll give you Forza)

Microsoft began the bad habit of piggybacking off of the brand name of “Halo” to drum up sales, rather than relying on the critical acclaim that games would receive to create sales for themselves.  Instead, by relying simply on brandname and enforcing review embargos, they seem to con customers into buying their products before word can get out about them.  This isn’t just an unjustified claim; here are some of the facts surrounding this.

The issues that I have start with the release of Halo Wars in March.  While this was not a bad game in the least, actually quite enjoyable, take a quick look at the official TV commercial promoting the game: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWphv8lJeG4)  Nowhere in the entire commercial is there any ingame footage, or is there any evidence to show what genre of game this is.  Since ALL off the other Halo branded games released up until that point had been first person shooters, why would this one be any different?  If you weren’t up to date in what was going on in gaming at the time, then the commercial would have just told you that there was a new Halo game coming out, and your own previous experience would have made you think that it was a FPS.  The problem lies in the fact that it’s NOT.  That commercial deceived many people into buying a realtime strategy game while they were expecting anything but that.  Is this really Microsoft and Ensemble Studio’s fault for the advertising, or is it the responsibility of the gamer to research the product and not to be fooled by false uninformative advertising.

The result of this is the game selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide in 6 months despite only having a Metacritic score of 82! That’s what review embargos will buy you, especially when some of the reviews for the game came in as low as 6.5 from accredited sources!

The next point of contention of course is Halo 3: ODST.  This was originally slated to be downloadedable content for the megaseller, Halo 3.  However one could only assume that Microsoft needed another big First-Party exclusive title for this year, so they decided to change it into a fullfledged game.  That’s fine, but in this transition, somehow the content didn’t mirror the change in packaging.  Translation:  The content is still that of a $19.99 download, yet retailers are charging a premium of $59.99.  Despite all of this, the game still managed to move 2.2 million units on the first day of sales.  But who came out on top in all of this?  Don’t get me wrong, ODST is a really fun game and I enjoyed playing through the 5 hour long campaign, however there’s no way that this could be justified as more than a “rent” for me.  Here’s why!

More than likely the majority of the 2.2 million that purchased this title on day one already owned the previous iteration of the franchise.  If you own both titles, then unfortunately, you just repurchased a lot of content that you already owned.  The ONLY differences in online play are the three exclusive maps and the new game mode.  Personally, I don’t understand why Halo fans aren’t up in arms about this.  While ODST is a great package for newcomers to the Halo series, if you are a loyal fan, there’s not reason to purchase this game, mostly because you already have the content.  Yet they did, and by the truckload.

So this really comes down to one thing:  When are people going to wake up and actually demand a full package game rather than just drinking whatever brand of Halo Koolaid that Microsoft tries to market to you next?  Because as the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  Loyal Halo fans just got fooled twice, I don’t think they’ll stand around and take it a third time, otherwise there is going to be a severe backlash against the brandname.  So Bungie, my best advice to you is to bring your A-game AAA game when it comes to Halo Reach coming out in 2010.  I’ve already heard word that it will be the “most expansive” Halo to date.  Let’s see if they can live up to that hype!