This fucker's video fame opinions are stuck in the mid-2000s when Halo was the big frat bro game. Hey Bobby, the first Halo was actually pretty groundbreaking as far as cinematic storytelling in FPS games goes. Half-Life was just about the only thing that came close at the time, most of the FPS market was still in the Quake/Doom phase of explaining fuck-all, turning you loose with a shotgun and trusting you can figure out the rest. The recent games are a bit of a mess but there's plenty of shit people remember from the first few games. Fuck, he claims to be such an intellectual, how about that time Halo Reach ended with you marooned with hordes of aliens bearing down on you, and all you can do is momentarily forestall dying alone and unremembered as the horde tramples over your forgotten corpse? That sequence stuck out in my brain more than 1000 genderqueer walking simulators or 'deep and edgy' 16-bit games that might as well flash 'FEEL SAD' on the screen.
And all this from the man whose franchise of choice is literally 'BING BING WAHOO YIPPEE'.
You know, if you put on Halo, it's about (in absolute terms) as sophisticated as Zelda. Almost all game stories are built around the design, moving the player from scene A to scene B and so on. Halo's writing is as good as a tentpole blockbuster, which is his psychological pin par excellence, a machine that asks for trance engagement and programmed (literally in the case of video games) responses.
I think he imagines himself on this 'high road' of thinking: Nintendo games are about design, game-as-game experiences, and the other guys are about spectacle, cinematic experiences, and some false ideal of maturity. To an extent, that's true, but missing out on the fact that Halo revitalized and carried then-and-current most popular genre of games on its back for a decade, the same way Mario did? Not respecting it? Bungie is an inspirational story of people who were good at their jobs, made what they liked, and it completely changed gaming and a corporate behemoth like Microsoft.
Halo like a lot of Nintendo's 'party' games, at its core was about having fun with your friends. It was designed around being more accessible than its competitors and more fun to play repeatedly, even with a limited number of maps and player-player encounter types. Its declining popularity is in part because couch co-op has been neglected as a vital experience, LAN parties aren't in vogue with their influencer demographics, and now Halo is in last place, chasing the intermediated, subscription-type multiplayer model dominated by its competitors, who got there first and made their identities on it.
Bob can't think, won't think, and has fuckin eggs for brains and corn syrup for blood