Halo 3 (More like Failo, amirite)

The irony here, of course, is nobody is going to read this. Nobody reads any of my shit, because I don't promote it, and nobody goes on blogger and just drifts around. However, this needs to be documented somewhere on teh intarwebs for future generations.

Halo 3 is the most overrated, absurdly hyped, steaming pile of shit you could put into you XBox 360 without physically lowering your ass onto the disc tray and unleashing a night of Goldschlager and chili dogs on it. It's that simple.

And don't give me UR A HATR HALO IS TEH BAST GAYME EVAR DURR HURR shit, I'm not a "fanboy" of a console, that's for 12 year olds (99% of the Halo 3 playerbase), plus fuck you, I own a 360. I'm not smashing it because I love my PS3 (which again, hi, I don't own) and I slam any promoted 360 exclusive title, I'm simply calling this what it is. A really, really shitty game.

Single player campaign. We won't spend a lot of time here, because that's not what anybody bought it for anyway. It shows. The storyline is embarrasing even for a shooter, a genre that rarely prides itself on the story. Fine. I can live with that, up to a point. But honestly, my reaction when I beat this garbage was "you got to be fucking kidding me". As in, those words came out of my mouth, I remember the moment. This reaction was not because I knew I was coming to the end and found it anticlimactic, that would be praising the end of this game too much. The reaction was because I legitimately could not believe the game was over. To repeat, it wasn't disappointment with the ending, it was complete shock that it WAS the ending. You drive some stupid vehicle while the floor is falling apart around you, and then it ends. Seriously. That's it. Thanks for your money, go buy a new tv because you probably just threw your controller through the one you played this sack of turds on.

Now, the key portion of any shooter released in the high speed internet era, multiplayer! That's got to be good at least, right? No, and you're an idiot. Fuck you. The multiplayer plays like it's a social experiment, like it was created with the sole purpose of pissing you off and seeing how long you would subject yourself to the torture. For me, it was about ten hours, about eight of which spent playing with a friend and making fun of how shitty it was. To its credit, that's about nine and a half hours more than I played Gears Of War multiplayer, which I knew before the second game of it I played ended that I hated to levels I can't even describe.

If a game starts and somebody leaves, that's it. Nobody gets to replace them. You can't join a game late. So, if you're doing a team-oriented type and mommy calls a few of your teammates to dinner (which will happen, again, ALL 12 year olds. Just throw on a headset and tell me I'm wrong), you're fucked. Serves you right, dickhead, you bought this piece of shit.

Any, and I mean ANY combat in multiplayer can be boiled down to this formula:
1. Run straight at opponent as opponent runs straight at you
2. Whoever hits the melee button and smacks the other with their gun first wins
3. There is no 3. That's it. Nothing else has ever happened in a Halo 3 multiplayer game, and nothing ever will.

How exciting. Why use cover, make snipers declare themselves with diversions, have guns best suited for certain situations, have any level of teamwork, or anything other than a series of encounters that you either win or lose, and those you win are immediately followed by getting killed by somebody else? Fuck all that shit. Run at each other. Shoot. Smack with gun. Repeat. I'm having so much fun I just nervously shit myself, this is the best game ever made.

Sadly, you'll see on many fan-vote oriented "best evar" game lists that Halo 3 is almost always in the top 5. Note the rest of the top 10, you'll see Gears of War, GTA IV, and a handful of other games that have come out in the last couple of years that were promoted a lot. And why is that? Anyone? You, over there, raising your hand! Yes, that's right, because it's a bunch of 12 year olds who literally haven't lived long enough to fucking play anything!

That, THAT is why this first person shooter abortion gets its praise. That is the ONLY reason. The people who love Halo 3, a shitty game, also love John Cena, a shitty wrestler. Why? Because people with a shitload of money TELL them that they like it. Hell, give me the marketing budget Halo 3 had, I'll make a game consisting of a black screen reading "you lost faggot" that's called Fuck You Asshole 3D and it'll average a 9.5/10 rating or higher on every website that allows players to vote and write reviews.

Think I'm wrong? Go rent this piece of shit. If you're old enough to drink, hell, if you're old enough that you've grown your first pubic hair, I would be absolutely stunned if you thought this was anything above "below average". They kept Master Chief alive and put him in a fucking freezer or something at the end of 3 so that they can milk this cash cow further, it will be VERY interesting to see what these kids think of 4 when it comes out (and it will at some point, you were warned) and they're old enough to form their own opinion.

Battlefield : Bad Company (EA Sports?)

I borrowed this 360 game from my buddy. He's the type of friend a gamer nerd like myself likes to have, smokes tons of pot, buys shitloads of videogames, generously lends them out without even being asked. I was curious about this one, so when he handed it to me one day, fuck yeah. Lets check it out.

If you don't feel like reading a full review (fuck you, prick), then I can sum this game up for you in one line. Battlefield : Bad Company is a B-Grade version of Call Of Duty. There. Done. For those who desire a more further breakdown, lets start with single player. You know, that thing you used to care about before high speed internet.

The characters are.... by no means unique, but it puts a nice little spin on the military shooter shit. You're a bunch of guys who fucked up in the army and are now sent forth on suicide missions that soldiers who do things by the book aren't wasted on. Whoopie. There is some nice banter between the characters at points, they each have their own traits, but nothing that hasn't been done before.

On top of that, you'll learn quickly your three computer AI controlled partners couldn't pour piss out of a boot if there were instructions on the heel. If I hear "Preston, right behind you" one more time, I'm going to choke a bitch. I seriously never saw one of these fucks ever actually kill something, they would prefer to tell you where the guy kicking your ass is than shoot at him themselves. If you want something dead, you're going to have to shoot it, because your partners will swear and say "ow" while something five feet in front of them shoots them in the fucking head twenty times. Retro gamers will love it, it's a throwback to the useless AI partners from your past.

The enemy AI is equally stupid, but it'll beat you up pretty good. A main contributor to that is most of the time you have no idea what the hell is going on as you go from point A to B over and over. I'm not asking for enemies that carry neon "shoot me" signs, but visibility in this game sucks out loud. Don't bother with strategy, get close, kill something, heal, repeat. That's how this game works.

On the healing, we get back to me calling this a B-Grade Call Of Duty. Call Of Duty you get hurt, you wait a bit, you're fine. Bad Company you have an injector that reloads every twenty seconds or so that heals you. What the hell is the point of it? There isn't one. It's the same damn thing, but you have to press the trigger.

If you die, you go back to the last save point. Nothing, new, right? Wrong, asshole. Everything in front of you that you took out is still dead, you just have to take a long walk or drive back to where you were. So, in other words, just rush the shit out of wherever you're supposed to be going, kill whatever you can, and go back. The penalty for death is...... a walk back to where you died. You're immortal, but your enemies aren't because they suck.

Multiplayer. Meh. Again, B-Grade Call Of Duty. It's okay. If you spawn on your squad a lot, you can rack up deaths at an infuriating rate, and some of it is bullshit, but whatever. It's not great, it's not bad. Look at the bright side, at least you're not playing Halo 3.

Don't read this review and think I'm saying Battlefield : Bad Company sucks, it doesn't. JAS, just another shooter. Single player campaign feels like a chore and isn't that good but it's okay, multiplayer is above average but could be a lot more. If a friend lets you borrow it, it's worth a few hours of your time. Should you buy it? Nope. It's... okay, and that's all it is.

The only difference between Bad Company and Halo 3 or Gears Of War is Bad Company knows what it is, whereas the other two think they're something they aren't. Bad Company is slightly above average and advertises itself as such, Gears and Halo 3 act like they're God's gift to gaming when they're both vanilla generic shooters with nothing special included. Should you be forced to buy one of the three at gunpoint, get Bad Company. Should you have your choice of game, get Call Of Duty, or something completely different. There is nothing here that should make you run like hell from Bad Company, but there isn't anything that should make you run to it either.