This is may sound a little strange but among all the FPS’s I’ve ever played (and they used to account for a majority of my game’n time) the one I enjoyed the most was Halo 2. That’s not to say that it’s the best there’s ever been, there are current gen shooters that are better and Halo 3 was an improvement on everything that was Halo 2.
The reason Halo 2 still holds the title in my mind is that at any given time I could sign on and there would be 5-20 people that I knew personally or who were friends of friends playing it. This meant that custom games were played till the wee hours of the night, no one questioned your sexuality when you killed them, no racial slurs were thrown about, no foul mouthed kids squeaking at you, no mics had to be muted, and no games were ruined by people cheating or sabotaging their team to lose ranks. In other words, none of the problems that come with matchmaking.
I have played through a ton of shooters and I’ve not been able to recapture this glorious FPS situation in the current gen. I’ve also only spent a small amount of time in the MP modes due to the inherit problems that come along with matchmaking and now play FPS’s far less due to those issues and the fact that I don’t have the patience to go through the paces and hope to get lumped in with a team that won’t make me want to kill them instead of the other team.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot more choices now for a top notch console shooters – Halo 3, COD MW& WaW, Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Rainbow 6, etc. but this actually became a double edged sword for me as my former teammates are now split up over different consoles and different shooters and not one of them has united my friends and I like Halo 2 did.
So the question is:
a) Can an FPS in the current or next gen capture everyone’s attention and bring all the players to the same pool with all the competition out there?
b) Will matchmaking options be perfected to the point that the BS that comes with it will be reduced or eliminated?
c) What mix of features would make your perfect shooter?
- Drop me some comments and check out our Podcast this week for our discussion on the current gen console exclusive shooters and if you need an extra sometime look me up on XBL.
