Dre's Top 25 Games: The NOT top 10 Entry 10

Here I go again.

Our field so far:

-Day 1: Metroid: Other M
-Day 2: Batman: Arkham Asylum
-Day 3: inFAMOUS
-Day 4: Street Fighter 4
-Day 5: Rock Band 2
-Day 6: Portal
-Day 7: Bioshock
-Day 8: God of War
-Day 9: Lumines

Now, Day 10

Halo 2
Xbox, November 9, 2004

Many may question how a first person shooter made it on my list, especially one as "mainstream" as one from the Halo series. Honestly, if I had not received this game for free while working for the evil "Stop" that sells games, I would never have bought it. Yes, I had played multi-player Halo in the past, but it was something like an arcade game in my mind. A game you play for a few minutes and walk away from it once you got fed up, much how I treat most online multi-player games in today's age.

Back to the point, I did get it for free so it behooved me to pop it in my Xbox and try it out before I would trade it in towards a different game. Seeing as how at that point I did not have Xbox Live and already hated multiplayer, I started a campaign.

HOLY CRAP, I fell into a hole and fought my way to crawl out. The developers at Bungie had crafted not just a shooter, but an entire UNIVERSE strung together by an epic tale of the Master Chief just being a total BAD ASS and killing covenant alien scum left and right. Epic moment after epic moment just overwhelming you like explosions in a Michael Bay flick. I really liked the twist in this one where you play as one of the alien Elite, The Arbiter. You see the war from the other side and see how the alien Covenant alliance is falling apart after the events of the first Halo game. Of course the game switched back and forth from both of these perspectives leading to the eventual intersection of the stories.

Game play is pretty easy to pick up and play, does not require any prior knowledge of FPS to understand and have fun killing aliens. The best description I have ever heard regarding the addictiveness of Halo came from one of the developers themselves: "you take 30-45 seconds of great gameplay, you repeat it over and over and tie it together with a goal and a story. Thats Halo" So many developers have lost the point of creating "fun" and instead create "work". This game takes you for a ride, a freakin adventure. That is one of the key things I look for when I play a game.

I have run out of ridiculous adjectives to describe the feeling I got working my way through the campaign. I never did play multi-player on this game and I did not need to. In my opinion the game itself stood on its own merit and earned a customer in me where I bought every Bungie-made Halo game after this one.

Tomorrow we turn the dial to 2003 where the first of 3 games from that holiday season gained merit on my list.