The death of Halo?

The term “Halo Killer” gets thrown around regularly when a new shooter (especially one with a major multiplayer focus) is announced.

The list of these supposed ’Halo Killers’ is long, or let me rather say the list of wanna be ‘Halo Killers’ is long! It started with titles like ‘Killzone’ being PlayStation’s answer to Master Chief’s dominance over the *console shooter. But although ‘Killzone’ and it’s sequel were great, they didn’t come any where near to ‘Killing Halo’.

Since then challengers have come, and challengers have gone but Halo has survived, even prospered (Being named number 1 in the all-time Top 50 Videogame Series list compiled by Guinness World Records). The most recent game to be challenging the thrown is ‘Crysis 2′, with EA Games label president Frank Gibeau actually saying: “We were trying to craft a Halo-killer, you know a product that would squarely go after what Bungie built with our partners at Crytek. So the Crysis 2 product is spectacular, very high-end, and is going to be a multi-year franchise,” (check out more of this here).

Honestly I’m not worried about ‘Crysis’, their aim is to offer a technologically superior product with a story that borders on poetry. Yes this does sound appealing, but any (objective) Halo Fan will tell you that it’s not graphics or story that makes ‘Halo’ the King of the Console Shooter.Yes it has those things, but they are not the best examples of graphics or story the industry has to offer. What sells ‘Halo’ is fun…

Despite all it’s flaws, ‘Halo’ is super fun! Regardless of who the critic is, given enough time driving around in a ‘warthog’ you will have a convert!

Developers would rather choose to make a game focused on graphics, or large environments. But those games never become classics! The few that focus on fun become console sellers (think ‘LittleBigPlanet’), and will define gaming history. Just look at what ‘fun gaming’ did for the Wii!!

Don’t worry this isn’t Halo-Fanboy propaganda, This post actually does have a point…
And that point is that there is a dark cloud on Halo’s horizon, and it could be the end of Halo’s reign!

That dark cloud takes the form of two recent announcements in gaming news :

1. Bungie signs 10 year deal with Activision -

I’m happy for the guys at Bungie, but what this DEAL means is that after ‘Halo – Reach’ there will be no more Bungie made ‘Halo’… This forms part of the dark cloud because if there is no more ‘Halo’ being made the franchise is going to lose some of it’s competitive edge! Although ‘Halo’ has managed to retain a lot of it’s fans over the years (look at the fan support for ‘Halo 2′) I don’t know how long it will be able to fend off challengers if there is no hope for any new content…

2. Cliff Bleszinski -

Although ‘Gears of War’ and ‘Halo’ don’t compete directly, I always thought that ‘Gears’ was quite possibly the biggest threat to ‘Halo’ (looking at it’s online stats and following you’ll understand why). ‘Halo’s’ salvation came with, like I said, their lack of direct competition…

Until now…

Remember when ‘Cliffy B’ announced that he had BIG news? We all figured that he was talking about ‘Gears 3‘ right? Then shortly after that announcement he went on to announce ‘Bulletstorm’…

Like the announcement of ‘Crysis 2′, I wasn’t very worried about ‘Halo’s’ position until ‘Cliffy B’ gave an interview with msnbc. Although interviews about upcoming titles aren’t rare, it’s what was said in this interview that shook me :

“It puts the fun back into the first-person shooter. And that doesn’t mean “Halo” or “Call of Duty” aren’t fun, because they are amazingly fun; I was playing the “Halo Reach” beta last night. But at the same time they are very serious, right?

This game is like “you know what, let’s give the people what they want, let’s give them something fun.” For a man’s boot to … actually be able to kick a 180-pound gang member into the air and across the room really isn’t that logical, and probably wouldn’t happen, but you know what? It’s fun.”

He acknowledges ‘Halo’ and ‘Call of Duty’ as being fun, and (in my opinion) names them as his competition. AS WELL AS coming straight out and saying that he is aiming to make a FUN game! And that scares me!!

If nothing else ‘Cliffy B’ makes great games (‘Gears’ is a perfect example), and now he is trying to make a game that’s fun? This could only mean that ‘Bulletstorm’ is going to be pure epic (excuse the pun).

And that’s why I’ll be the first to say that ‘Bulletstorm’ just might be the fabled ‘Halo Killer’ (or they could stuff it up royally…)

(*console shooter – because I’m not factoring PC games and their fans into the equation)