Hello Halo, Goodbye Call of Duty

I'm not sure what made me do it, but since 7/7 is officially Bungie day in gamer land, I decided to throw back in Halo 3, drop $10 on the latest Mythic map pack and give it a go. Of course Halo is such a huge difference from Call of Duty's style of game play, but something about the maps that Bungie employees hand picked from the sea of user created maps made it pretty easy to sink back into.

That was 3 days ago.

Today, Halo online is back to where it was, settled from the storm of people trying to beat Bungie employees for the Recon horse armor. That's probably not an accurate comparison, since you can't buy it, but it's still dumb.

I still suck at Halo, but I don't hate it. I'm sure with some extra time invested in the game, I would do my level 22 proud. But for some reason the level of refinement is on a different scale that what Call of Duty is, where I feel like I can have beautifully trained aim on someone from across a map, Halo feels more like I'm wildly swinging the guns around, just praying for a hit. Halo players don't seem to have that problem though. I haven't mastered Halo's jerk-to-aim nature, whereas Call of Duty's aiming is more silky smooth and calm.

If anything, playing Halo does accomplish one thing: not spending time playing Call of Duty. Now I just have to stop comparing the two. ODST is a hot title on my list of upcoming games. September 22nd.

Edit: I would also like to call to attention Halo player's undeniable preference to NOT use the weapons in Halo 3 and instead opt for something a little more deadly: their hands. Of the eight players in my last game, five of them killed more people with a punch than with the 7 or so weapons in the map, not including two different grenades and exploding power cells. I, on the other hand, killed 7 people with guns. First Person Shooter. Not First Person Puncher.