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How I fell for the Halo hype.

So just a couple of weeks after my post declaring my decision not to pre-order Halo 2...

...I pre-ordered Halo 2.

Yeah, I'm a hypocrite.

So what on earth caused me to do that? A couple of things. First, was the review in this month's issue of the Official Xbox Magazine, which is pretty darn good (they gave it a 9.7, I believe). And then there's that great commercial that's hit the airwaves and the web, which looks really very cool.

But really what made me decide to go for it, was the fact that my long-overdue Amazon.com gift certificate from my credit card arrived this evening. I have an Amazon Visa Card, which I use for my travel expenses, and since I travel so much, I get lots and lots of Amazon gift certificates.

While that didn't cover the whole thing, it did bring the price down to slightly less than I was planning on paying for the upcoming Painkiller expansion. And while I still intend to get that at some point, if they're more or less the same price, I think I'll go with the one that offers something new (albeit only slightly). I also think this is a good move value-wise since of the two, chances are that Halo 2 is going to stay at full price for a long time (the original game only just came down in price). PC titles always plummet pretty quickly, and expansion packs even more so.

So I'm getting Halo 2 like a whole lot of other people. And a week later, I'm getting Half-Life 2. The funny thing of course, is that there's a pretty good chance that I'm going to still be playing that unnamable game (see sidebar) well after those games come out, so it'll be a while before I get around to playing them. But when I do, hoo boy, I'm going to have a ton of great stuff to play with.

So yeah, I fell for the hype. Hopefully the game won't disappoint. One game I'm definitely not falling for the hype over is Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which even though I hear is really fun, just isn't anywhere on my radar. And that's not even mentioning the fact that Hideo Kojima has clearly lost his marbles. I don't care how good the reviews for that turn out to be, unless it's declared to be the greatest game ever made (and there are already three or four games out this season reviewers have used that phrase to describe), it'll be a long time before I get around to that one, if I ever do at all.

Posted by jason at November 1, 2004 09:34 PM | TrackBack | Read more: Games