I like that you brought up the difference between a shooter like Halo and a shooter like Half-Life. Halo does what it does well and Half-Life does what it does well. They are two completely different types of shooters that you really can't measure side-by-side.
I will defend Halo until my dying breath (well, the Bungie ones anyway), but I am fairly sure I could never muster a defence as good as this one. Well done!
I honestly think your complaints against Halo, would be better leveled at Call of Duty. I don't find regenerating health frustrating in Halo, but in CoD it's basically pop your head out for two seconds, recharge health, repeat. Two weapons is fine in Halo because of the limited number of weapons available. In CoD, and many other shooters, there's dozen's upon dozen's to choose from and only being able to hold two at once is ridiculous.
You have a point with the slow movement (though I still think that works well for Halo). And I definitely agree with your complaints on bland enemies. I would certainly play more shooters if they tried ridiculous experiments like the original Half-Life and not try to mimic CoD.
This is true as the only other ones I've considered playing are Monster Hunter 3 and Etrian Odyssey. They're RPGs of sorts, but of a completely different type than Ni no Kuni. Not that I only play RPGs, but I have been getting kind of picky with games lately.
The only ones I've played of these are Bioshock Infinite, Thieves in Time, and Last of Us from your next blog. I enjoyed Infinite, but it did not come close to my expectations. Thieves in Time was a big surprise in that I enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed Sly 2 and 3. I did not expect a new developer to handle to the franchise so well.
Last of Us as well was my GoTY. Though I'm not sure I liked it as much as you, it had amazingly strong characters, story, and gameplay. I even went back and finished it on the highest difficulty,
I also plan on getting Rayman Legends eventually based on how much I enjoyed Origins. I have A Link Between Worlds on my 3DS and I'm really hoping it lives up to my expectations from a Zelda game.
Well, there's a good advantage of digital games: you'll be hard pressed to find this many free disc-based games!
Of these, I only played FFXIV and Ni no Kuni. Both were great, but I would probably give the edge to FFXIV. My GoTY would go to Last of Us.
I would say the story of Halo has been falling apart since the second one (when they introduced the Covenant as a religious group), but at least it always kept this epic, sci-fi feel to it. It's lost that in Halo 4, and now yeah, it feels too much like a soap opera. Needlessly to say, getting new writers will do that to a franchise. I also agree the multiplayer and shooting feels too much like Call of Duty.
I'm just hoping some of that Halo-magic will carry over to Destiny.
I'll just do my impressions on the movies I did see out of these. I'm pretty surprised how many people were disappointed with Iron Man 3 after what I thought was an incredibly boring second movie. IM3 definitely wasn't as good as the first movie, but it was good enough to not make me give up on the franchise like the second movie.
I was floored by the story and effects when I saw Into Darkness in theatres, but on rewatch it didn't hold up. I'm a little conflicted how I feel about this one now.
Man of Steel was one of the worst movies I saw this year. I basically wanted to leave the theatre in the first ten minutes, but I suffered through nearly three more hours of it anyway. The action scenes were way over-the-top action and the story was a complete mess that threw in flashbacks seemingly at random. I'm surprised that a lot of people actually love this movie.
Wolverine was okay. Japan was beautiful, but it never felt genuine to me. Maybe it had something to do with so many people running around with guns in a country where it's basically impossible to get one.
Finally, I saw the Hobbit which was a lot better than I was expected. I agree, that action scene was very impressive. Like the first movie, I felt this was still too long with some unnessessary scenes. Otherwise though, it was surprising gripping. Especially when Smaug came into the picture.
I watched this movie a few months ago. I think my enjoyment of it was hampered by the inclusion of Phil Fish (who I still think is just a huge jerk). I found the other two stories interesting enough though. So I walked away with a similar reaction as you did, it was good but not great. As a video game-documentary, I don't think it comes close to being as good as King of Kong.
That's a good deal on the Vita. I should still try and get one of those original models before they are gone for good!
I think I'm a Playstation guy too. Even though I got 360 first, I barely touch the thing these days.
