: Nothing to do with being rational. I've seen it written on many forums by
: many posters. Casuals, people who like skins, AR, dual wielding, SMG
: starts, loadouts, AA, Sprint and any named feature not accepted by the
: l33t competitive players are often blamed for Halo's supposed fall from
: grace. I strongly identify with those being blamed. Apparently Bungie and
: 343i have incorrectly targeted the wrong fans and so are to blame.

: I can't imagine you haven't seen the discussions lean that way. It's the
: final punch of many such attacks against 343i's Halo.

: Well, I'm not as good as Wu is at handling it. I'm barely able to control my
: responses though I can take heed of examples like Wu.

I'm in your boat as well. Any problems I have with Halo 4 mostly stem from it's design philosophy (I hate unnecessary "clutter" on multiplayer maps). Other than that I genuinely enjoyed the game. It has a much better story than both 3 and Reach, Spartan Ops was cool if a little bit repetitive, and I loved the music.

Lately I've been regularly switching between Reach and 4 multiplayer. If they had Invasion in 4 I would have shelved Reach a long time ago. Whenever I get fed up with all my stupid teammates quitting and getting spawn killed over and over, I go back to 4 with it's wonderful, wonderful join-in-progress system. I enjoy tinkering with my loadouts, picking which weapon, AA, tactical package and support upgrade work best for me. I've never once felt taken advantage of our bested by someone with "better" loadouts than me.

I play COD and other shooters, but Halo is and always has been the reason for me to own an Xbox, it didn't really matter to me if 4 had loadouts or not, I would have bought and likely enjoyed it either way. The fact that I don't play it as much as other Halo games is due to several circumstances. First, I was 17 when Halo 3 came out, fresh out of high school with nothing to do. Racked up over 6,000 multiplayer games in that period. Reach came out when I was 20, working nights with plenty of free time during the day. Now 4 comes along, and I have a full time job, a girlfriend, and many other responsibilities that take away my free time. Plus, I love other video games now, I'm not exclusive to Halo. Considering how many amazing video games there are out there, why would I be?

Is it the best Halo game ever? No, but it's not the inconceivably awful atrocity that everyone makes it out to be either. I attribute this mostly to growing pains. If Bungie hadn't created such an amazing multiplayer, they would have lost me at Halo 3, because I hated the story of that game with a fiery passion, and only in the last few years have gotten over it. Every game is going to shed old fans and gain new ones. Same thing happened with Reach.

I don't actively step up and defend 343I as much as I may have used to because, honestly, arguing on the internet is the dumbest past time possible. I'm sure my post will be deconstructed and I'll be told many tones why I'm so dead wrong, but I don't care. I like what I like and nobody is going to take that from me.