Monday Gaming Diary: Haloooooooooo

Let me just get this out of the way: the ending to Halo 2 was unbelievably awful. Or, should I say non-ending? The non-ending to Final Fantasy XIII-2 was better than that. But all in all, Halo 2 was unbelievably awful. I might have felt differently back when it first released, but eh, it definitely didn’t age well.

So let’s move on to Halo 3, a far superior game in practically every way. What do I love about Halo 3?

• No Cortana yammering in my ear. I don’t like her creepy holographic flashbacks either, but at least she’s not always telling me what to do like a computerized Navi.
• Fighting with the Arbiter and the Covenant Elites is always hilarious. Their comments completely crack me up; although, their hilarity will never top the Covenant Grunts.
• I’ve only run into the Flood once, and I’m in the 7th chapter of 9.
• My Marine teammates stay alive longer than 5 seconds.

That said, I have learned the hard way to never ride with AI drivers for very long. And really, I can’t win in these situations. I tried driving, but then they wouldn’t shoot at what I needed and we died. If I man the turret, they will drive directly toward a Wraith tank and kill us. Or they’ll get the damn Warthog stuck on a rock, thereby forcing me to get out of the Warthog and toss a grenade under the rock so that the vehicle will dislodge itself. Sometimes the Marines hop out of the Warthog. Sometimes they don’t. And then they die. The Scorpion tank is by far the best Marine vehicle in that I can drive AND shoot at the same time. Too bad they don’t give enough tank missions.

So essentially, whenever I’m in a vehicle situation, I man the turret until we take down a Ghost or a Prowler. I then jump out and run screaming toward the enemy vehicle and live ten times longer than any other Marine vehicle. Idiot drivers.

And how am I doing with Witcher 2? I’m never going to complete the first chapter, thanks to all of these sidequests. At least with this game, unlike Reckoning, all of these sidequests feel like they matter in what is going on with the world. I’ll let you know in 60 hours.