The thing is, what's left for MC and Cortana to do? The Flood are over and done with, for now. The Covenant is done too, with the Sangheili even becoming allies of the UNSC (to a point). Are they going to base it off of the Forerunner Trilogy of novels?

The problem I see with competitive multiplayer console FPS is that many titles use some sort of auto-aiming to make up for the impreciseness of console controls vs. a mouse and keyboard. That sort of detracts from the skill aspect of competitive gaming, IMHO.

IMHO, the answer is all of the above. The fans snapped up games like Halo and CoD4 precisely because they were so innovative for their day, for better or for worse, and in a unique show of insight, actually recognized it. And then what happened was that Microsoft and Infinity Ward/Activision just got content to rest on their laurels. And for good reason - is there another game franchise or shooter franchise with the potential to drive innovation by giving Halo and CoD stiff competition? I don't think I've seen it, and invariably, any game that does try to compete does so by simply aping them.

Meanwhile some franchises with truly awesome potential have been left to wither on the vine. Where's our long-awaited sequel to XIII? Where's SiN 2, Oni 2, or Shogo: MAD 2? How about giving us a proper sequel to Painkiller, Syndicate, or Myth: TFL/Myth 2? And as anyone who's played Sacrifice will tell you, Sacrifice 2 would be a marvel to behold.

Wait, WHAT?! Halo 2 PC shipped with auto-aim on, which you couldn't turn off?!

If you thought you were disappointed, you can only imagine what Mac gamers must have felt like when the star game of MacWorld 1999, intended to show off the power of OpenGL, made by one of the most well-loved Mac game developers out there, became an exclusive launch title for a Microsoft console, and that was before it came to light just what sort of a game Halo was originally supposed to be.

The console versions were better. Halo 2, auto-aim, REALLY?!

heh. I imagine it was something like the blowup over Rage's launch, times about 100.

This.

Actually, there are people who don't think consoles are "beneath me" and still think Halo was a medicore shooter at best. I never understood the argument that you hate consoles if you don't like Halo.

And the first really good console shooter was Goldeneye, not Halo (Which is even by many die hard PC gamers still considered one of the best shooters of all time). Halo wasn't really that influential in many aspects. It was, however, the first majorly overhyped game, bigger even than FF 7 or MGS when they game out. It brought many console gamers to shooters for the first time. It might have been the first shooter on the new XBox.

And Halo 2 was cut short because of "executive meddling", as in, "be ready for chrismas". And it shows. Bungie hated working on Halo for MS and I'm glad they are finally out of their contract.

I probably should have put NOR do I suffer... etc as I didn't mean everybody who hates Halo is self important just these elitist "console fps iz 4 noobz" muppets.

It's strange because I always found Goldeneye to be a heavily overrated FPS. Halo 2 wasn't just cut short due to release date (which was changed 3? times) the game was also too ambitious graphically for the console and space wise (multi disk releases were very rare back then.)

What would you consider the best PC FPS? I think multiplayer wise Battlefield 2 soaked up the most of my time, followed a close second by Day of Defeat & DoD: Source. Single Player I don't know... Half Life 2 definitely impressed me a hell of a lot, though it was a bit slow paced.

Well, Quake. The one to rule them all. I never liked Half Life 2. I loved the first one, but the second just couldn't deliver (But, I only played it years after its original release, so this might have ).

In my opinion there is no longer a single FPS genre. I consider "scripted shooters" like CoD and "fast paced action shooters" like Hard Reset seperate genres. Or at least seperate niches of the same genre.

In a direct comparison the early MoH games and even the original Half Life were better than Halo. If Halo was your first shooter, it left an impression, but if you played shooters since Wolfenstein and Quake, it really didn't bring anything new to the board. As I said, it wasn't bad, its just not that good. Remember, Deus Ex was already 2 years released when Halo hit the Xbox, showing what shooters could be.

And in regards to the development of Halo 2:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/better-than-halo-the-making-of-halo-2-article

I quote :

"We absolutely could have used another couple of months to polish, but then we would have missed the last Christmas... It really wasn't an option,"

Fair enough. Quake did make online FPS Deathmatches look almost credible (it was damned awful to play on the modems available then.) but it didn't do much other than that but throw in some polygons... I don't think it's aged well at all. I do agree that FPS do have sub genre's though. You probably have the same nostalgic tainted love for Quake that I do for Halo.

Halo was far from my first shooter. Prior to that I had played a large number on my pc including Doom, Quake 2, Half Life, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood 2, Rainbow 6 & a lot of other heavyweights that have probably sunk into forgetfulness. I was still very impressed by it and as for it not bringing anything new to the board... the love/hate regenerating health, 2 weapon limit was pretty new outside of tactical FPS... wide open areas, heavy emphasis on sound design, intuitive controls, very impressive scaling AI (ok Half Life's was pretty damn good too.) good vehicle implementation (I hate vehicle levels in games.. they're usually dull, Halo's were enjoyable.) CO-OP campaign play and more importantly it proved that FPS's could be credible on console. It was also unlike any PC fps at the time. Nowadays it's still good but it doesn't have the impact, you really have to have played it a good deal when it first came out to truly appreciate it.

As for Halo 2 I'm taking my info straight from the developer DVD that came with the collectors edition of Halo 2 (which I own.) if you look at the E3 video of New Mombasa and all the things they had to drop due to the console's limitations, it's quite depressing. There's quite a few good examples on the dvd of things they had to drop or scale down due to the console, especially physics and particle maps. A lot of things were dropped because of deadlines too though.

P.S Deus Ex.... a shooter? That'll get a lot of backs up here LOL.

Yeah Goldeneye...

had an awful control scheme! Halo got the control scheme dead right for a console FPS. Sure the MP was fun but it was restricted to single screen 4 player iirc Halo introduced system link MP and was much more enjoyable because of it.

You ain't kidding. Buddy of mine bought the original Halo for PC and it looked horrible. Washed out graphics, controls were a bit wonky. And he was running it on some very nice equipment for the time but you could tell that the game was not very well ported.

True that.
True that, too.

Yep.
Then Halo 2 came (talkin' about the XBOX version) and people were going crazy with Multiplayer and XBOX live had been introduced two years earlier