The Decline of the Halo Series

This year’s E3 will most definitely announce the next game in 343 and Microsoft’s Halo franchise. The “6th” game and finale to the series’ post Bungie trilogy. The weirdest thing about this, nobody is really talking about it. There was a time that Halo was the biggest franchise in the industry, now it’s a languid shadow of its former self.

Back when the original Halo trilogy was in the zeitgeist, it was seen as the definitive game in the genre. The first game received near universal acclaim from all major publications, as did the second and third for the most part. Not only that, the franchise had a major guiding hand in the direction that, not only the FPS genre moved in on console, but had an impact on modern game design sensibilities and the approach to online play in general. It was certainly the first game I was really aware of playing online on console.

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How the Switch Became my Indie Machine

I felt burned by Nintendo. Almost like they’d let me down. While I still played my 3DS, the Wii U was a device I was becoming increasingly resentful of. Support for the console dried up almost immediately after a strong 3rd party developer presence upon release. After only a short few years, It was a device I was buying one, maybe two, games for a year. And even then the games I were buying, I’d only end up playing them for a few hours before they just started gathering dust on my shelf, forgotten.

I became increasingly frustrated with the device and Nintendo, and as a result was very reluctant to pick up the Nintendo Switch when it was released last year. But like the predictable, weak willed consumer that I am, the promise of a new Zelda and Mario titles eventually wore me down enough to pick one of these up when stock eventually became available again. And guess what happened…

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Why I won’t play Mercy anymore

This piece of my half baked opinion. I’m not a pro. I’m no expert. I’m just a person who plays a video game to have fun, as bizarre a concept as that may seem, especially to a lot of the Overwatch fan base. These are my opinions based around playing Overwatch as a source of enjoyment and nothing else. So chill.

I mean, if you ask me real nice. I probably will still play Mercy. On occasion I will also take leave of my senses and just pick her when she feels like the best available pick. I guess I probably should have just called this piece “A breakdown of why Mercy isn’t fun to play for me”, but that doesn’t seem anywhere near as strong clickbait as what I’ve already got. For those of you who don’t know, the less “friendly” section of the Overwatch fanbase will get pretty triggered from reading that title up there. Because how dare the support player refuse to play the only healer worth playing.

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