Why Halo?

For probably the hundred-thousandth time, tonight I picked up an Xbox controller, fastened the mic to my cranium, and prepared for the world of plasma grenades, rocket launchers, headshots and teenage-spewed obscenities that is Halo (thank God for muted players).

Under normal circumstances, this would be like any other night I arranged to do the same thing. But this time my intentions were different. I didn’t nestle in the comfort of my parent’s newly finished basement to inflict a steady stream of tea-bagging on unsuspecting victims. My desire was not to verbally abuse my incompetent teammates over their obvious lack of skill. And I was certainly in no state of mind to win. Not tonight. This time I focused all of my mental energy and hand-eye coordination on one thing and one thing only—determining just what it is about the Halo series that makes it the most popular multiplayer series in its genre.

During one of our recent conversations, I had mentioned to Jebus the amount of Halo 3 players currently online amounted to over three hundred thousand. He quickly confessed, “Well, yeah. If I were to pick one ‘first-person shooter’ to play for the rest of my life, Halo would probably be it.” That surprised me coming from Jebus, who I would have expected to favor something more similar to Team Fortress 2. I feel the same way he does. But why? His response caught me off guard and provoked my endeavor to find the truth behind Bungie’s successful games.

As I sat there pondering, unloading what seemed to be an endless clip of assault rifle bullets into my enemy’s chest, then attempting to finish him off with a quick melee, I remembered back to the days when Halo’s success had nothing to do with Xbox Live and lag rarely existed if it existed at all. You see, when that melee connected I heard the unmistakable sound of crunching Master Chief armor. My blow had sounded successful. Instead of the result I had expected, however, my foe instantly vanished from site, several explosions went off, and before I saw my dead body fall to the ground I was transported to the death cam only to watch my opponent escape, apparently unharmed. Comcast strikes again!

Halo’s original success can be strongly attributed to its use of Lan gaming – four players per television/console and four consoles per custom game, for a grand total of sixteen players in the same house (sometimes even the same room) playing the same game. Booya! No one else had ever done anything like it with a console before. Sure, we can’t give all the credit to Bungie, with companies like Rare paving the way with Goldeneye. But even Goldeneye didn’t adhere to the killer instinct of up to sixteen simultaneous players. I think we can all agree that Halo, despite some of the unfortunate online lag issues over Xbox Live, is very multiplayer friendly.

So what else makes Halo so great? To be perfectly honest, I don’t have an exact answer to that question. I doubt anybody does. And it’s probably different for different people. My time of contemplation tonight was filled with inquires like, “Hmm. Should I hop in that Warthog with a gunner and ruthlessly annihilate the opposing team to prevent them from capturing the flag?” And, “Should I wait in the base with an arsenal of plasma grenades, a rocket launcher and the invisibility in case the enemy breaks through our first line of defense?” Or, “Man, we’re getting our junk kicked in right now so maybe I’ll just set down my controller and go make a sandwich.” Yes, dive bombing a group of confused players with a Banshee or successfully splattering enemies with the Ghost are both entertaining accomplishments. But amongst all of my thoughts tonight, the only real epiphany I had is credited to Bungie’s successful use of multiplayer schematics. There’s never a time when I can’t boot up my Xbox, sign into Xbox Live, and within moments, find a team of players in whatever game-type I feel like playing. In my humble opinion, that is Halo’s legacy. That is what keeps Halo popular. And that is why so many gamers choose Halo.