: 343 has been peddling the multiplayer as "War Games" that actually
: happen, but the first-person view of assassinations highlights the
: lethality of neck-snaps and stabs (and that's not even getting into
: vehicular splatters and explosions)...

: The multiplayer just can't mesh well with the canonical universe (especially
: the try-hard descriptions that we're given about the maps themselves), and
: they reinforce that fact themselves...

Yeah, when they introduced assassinations as a strategy, that was a neat thing. But now assassinations are like a gore theater itself; how many other ways can the character brutally destroy its opponent? Sometimes they seem too extreme to be actually practical and believable from a Spartan, at least one that wants to be efficient and optimize its attack & strategy rather than give in to rage or whatever emotion causes such dramatic feats of annihilation.

I liked'em better when they were more of an attack strategy than a wheel of vicious fortune :P