Xboxist

Editorial: Halo Doesn't need a "Killer"

We here at Xboxist are big Halo fans, obviously. We've had some of our best gaming experiences during four-player split screen matches with our friends. Online, the competition is a bit more fierce than what we've had with our drunken buddies, but over the years we’ve held our own against an impressive amount of trash-talking 14-year-olds. With all the talk of Killzone 2 coming out for the Playstation 3, you’d think that we would be a little bit nostalgic and – dare we say – depressed. After all, Killzone 2 has been billed by many journalists and fans as a “Halo Killer,” a game that will finally put Bungie’s reign of FPS supremacy on home consoles to rest. Killzone 2 is going to be an amazing game, but calling it a “Halo Killer” doesn’t really do it justice. As far as we are concerned, Halo has been dead for quite some time, pushed out of the way by better and more successful games.

Halo 3 was a pretty cool game and a decent update to the franchise, but it is more than a year old and really starting to show its age. The title carried over many last-gen gameplay conventions that kept it from being as fresh and innovative as other, newer titles. If anything, games like Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 have done more to advance the shooting genre on consoles than Halo 3 did. The cover mechanic used in Gears of War, and copied so effectively in Grand Theft Auto IV, points the way forward to greater realism in shooting games. After all, nobody runs around jumping up and down in a real gunfight unless they want to get themselves killed. Call of Duty 4 arguably has a more vibrant and active multiplayer community on Xbox Live than Halo 3 does. In terms of graphics and strategic complexity, this contemporary battle simulator is years ahead of Halo 3 in terms of design. Take, for example, the way that grenade tosses are controlled in Halo versus Call of Duty 4, and you will understand why we prefer the latter.

If the developers of Killzone 2 and other multiplayer shooters want to achieve the same level of sales and success of the Halo franchise, they are better off setting their sights a little bit higher. They shouldn’t worry about what made Halo so great back in the day, but rather they should strive to innovate and move the genre forward.

Hopefully this is what Sony fans will get with Killzone 2 when it ships on February 27.

Taking cover in Gears of War on the Xbox 360.

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