I am absolutely not one of them. I took to Twitter almost immediately saying it wasn't good. I probably shouldn't have done this. I'm sure Halo 4 is good to some people. Clearly, like 20000 who play every day. That's a lot. But, I played it like three times, and I wasn't into it. I didn't like Reach much either. I don't know why. I propose it's less to do with 343 changing the game, which we often want to blame, and more about the fact that it's been ten years and we change, and so too do video games and stuff.

I had an encyclopedic knowledge of Halo's story. I helped with a couple campaign transcriptions, which I would read constantly, and I used to read the HSP and MSP religiously. Then, some shit got weird in the story and I reacted violently. I rather famously posted a bad review of GoO on Subnova, the first Halo thing with really new story stuff, and I've disliked everything that kind of changed from the fundamentals outlined in the first few stories and games. The forerunner books are all right, but the kilo five soap opera is just...terrible.

Except it's not. It's just different. I like Halsey, and I like the idea of just SPARTAN IIs, and so on. The story here is just grating since it's not what I got to first, or what I latched onto when I played Halo in November 2001, or Marathon 2 (I wasn't very good) when I was younger. It's all changing too much and I don't like it. Just like Halo 4. Too many changes. I'm having trouble following them. I can't get myself out of the framework I had when I was younger that caused me to not like Ghosts of Onyx.

I said to someone recently that Halo peaked at the Multiplayer Beta or possibly Halo 2. I must be crazy. Of course Halo didn't peak then. That's ridiculous. I can only assume that in fact that was the last time Halo and my brain were aligned similarly.

I recently reread all of Dispraiser's fanfiction, and it was still good. I also read Round-Thingie (the greatest fan fiction of all time) aloud to my girlfriend. It was still hilarious.

Now, I read Halo FF, and it seems asinine and lame. Halo FF must be shitty now then, right? OF COURSE NOT. USE YOUR HEAD. Everything now is shitty, everything then was awesome? That's stupid. If Halo 3 were really better than Halo 4, people would be playing it online right now. Look at CS 1.6, for example. They're not. Cause it's worse, despite what it seems like in hindsight, and even upon replaying. It's just the way our stupid ass brains work. We re experience shit we used to like, and it's good. New stuff that we should like is bad because it's new.

My nephew came home from his friends' house and said he had played Halo. "Have you ever heard of Halo?" he asked. "Have I ever heard of HALO? Come on, dude." He proceeded to extoll the virtues and almost describe Jaime's 30 seconds of fun while killing aliens. He was playing Halo 4. I play Halo 4, and I don't get the nostalgic feeling of being home like I get in the first two games. The story is arcane, the maps are recondite, and the battle processes and controls are esoteric. I also am not playing with friends very often. I think I don't like Halo 4 because I'm just not that kind of gamer anymore, and I don't have the requisite experiences in Halo 4 to replicate the love I felt for Halo. I haven't had it in a long time. For anything at all. Except for tacos.

So, there's a good chance I don't like Halo 4 simply because I changed. Maybe we should think about my rambling, incoherent and abstruse post here before we pull a Matt Smith and leave Halo fandom for good except a goat joke 6 years after anyone stopped making them. I think he went through what I'm going through with Halo. I might be wrong and projecting, or even misremembering. Except for the goat thing. He totally did that.

Fuck it. A lot of people like Halo 4. The ones who don't? I don't know how much is actually the game, and how much is people using it as a scapegoat.