Cannot wait to sink myself into the campaign, though.

I wonder if having a dynamic difficulty built into the AI or even the creation of artificial luck, might please both those who like a challenge and those who don’t.

I have spent some time wondering about what elusive quality some games have that makes them more addictive or enjoyable. You can never trust a human being to explain their reactions, as they are more likely to rationalise their prejudice than derive their opinions from objective reasoning (We judge games we like as better more than we like better games).

Anyway, now to my point. Finally. When you are weak in a game, you lose the initiative. You spend your time hiding. When the enemy are weak, they spend their time hiding. When both sides are weak (as in most military shooters) both sides spend most of their time hiding, leading to a very static, predicatable game. The game becomes dominated by terrain, reducing variability. The ideal, I believe, is for the player to be weak and the enemy strong. This balances the fact that the player is far smarter than the game, without allowing the AI to cheat. The AI can’t use cover properly anyway so let it roam freely. In this scenario the enemy can display far more varied behaviour, leading to greater replayability (unless you actually like repetition). Halo gives you this, as do many other games, including sports games like Fifa, but only when played on a setting you find hard.

For instance, Dead Space on hard is probably one of the most exhilerating games I’ve ever played, but most people I talk to finished it on normal and came away with an entirely different experience. It’s exactly the same with Halo, I think. It really takes on a new life when played on Heroic difficulty.

First, with respect to the main character (MC) I don’t see it as a strong character. He is deliberately made superficial and bland so as not to obscure your immersion in the storyline. For me the real character of the game is the world he inhabits.

Secondly, I recognise that Halo can be quite bland, but only find this irritates me when I play it on too easy a setting. What I want is to be challenged, to rely on thought and not just reactions. What I don’t like is to be constantly dragged out of my immersion by bad controls, stupid AI etc. Halo is just reasonably good at giving you the former without too much of the latter, but only really works when it is hard (I found a similar quality to the original Ninja Gaiden).

Not that I’ve played it yet. Halo’s one of those series that I’ve always begrudgigly accepted is very good, while always being left slightly cold by it. I loved the original way back when, but I returned to it a couple of years ago and couldn’t stomach the blandness of both the story and level design. I know plenty disagree though, and with good reason.