MIT Hacks Harvard For Halo, Game Prompts Lots of Sick Days

yonari writes "Early on the morning before the Halo 3 release, John Harvard donned a Mjolnir helmet and a beaver emblem, and carried an assault rifle on his left shoulder, apparently acquired from the UNSC Engineering Division." The Washington Post also points out that a lot of folks took sick days on Tuesday as a consequence of the game's release. "Some local workers won't have to skip out on the office to play the game. At some companies that offer video games as a break room activity, Halo 3 was pre-ordered months ago. The Motley Fool, the Alexandria investment advisory firm, is expecting its copy of the game to arrive from Amazon.com soon. Same for Platinum Solutions, a Reston software consulting firm."

Skipping work

[hansamurai]

Couple of my friends at work skipped work yesterday to play all day. Then came in for about six hours today and stood around and talked about it for five of those hours. Too bad there's a horrible support issue I have to deal with right now, I was still at work Monday night when it was released, and I'm still at work now when I'm supposed to be playing at a friend's house. Oh, woe is me and horrible timing.

Just continuing the grand tradition...

[John3]

of hacking at MIT [mit.edu].

Re:Somebody please explain the appeal

[This_Is_My_Happening]

I've seen a few hundred "Can somebody please explain the appeal of blank" posts and usually just dismiss them as flaimbait. In fact, the "worst than Wolf3D" jab basically guarentees you are trolling. But since I am one of the people who picked up Halo3 on launch day I figure I may as well try to explain the appeal of it, for the benefit of anyone else reading if not you.

First, the Halo universe does have some depth to it. If you think Halo 2 had the same story as doom then you probably weren't paying attention. It would take too long to explain the story in depth, but I'm sure it's all on wikipedia anyway. Certainly I don't find the Halo games as engrossing as some of the great PC games (thinking of Halflife, Deux Ex, System Shock, and most recently Bioshock) but I would definately say it's above average. At the very least the story is not a negative point. Halo 3 in particular ties up nicely the plot of the first two games.

Secondly the gameplay: I am definately a keyboard/mouse kinda guy. I think a console controller is far inferior. That said, the Halo games basically set the standard for how FPS's should be played on consoles. In this sense the original Halo stands among games like Mario64 and Goldeneye for having great control schemes (for the time). Certainly a keyboard/mouse would be better, but I don't want to use those while sitting on my couch. For the equipment it has, the Halo games have as good control as you could ask for.

Moreover even after having played just about every fps I can think of on PC, I have never found a game that had vehicles that were as fun to drive as in Halo. Halflife 2 came close, and other games may have more realistic vehicle control, but the vehicles in the Halo series are just FUN. However Bungi accomplished that, they did it damn well.

Third the graphics. I freely conceed that Halo 2 had shitacular graphics compared to computer games of the same time. After all Halflife 2 was released at the same time and was far prettier on a high-end (for the time) PC. However Halo 2 did have some of the best graphics for the xbox at the time, and for that console generation on the whole (off the top of my head I can only think of RE4 on the GC having undeniably superior graphics) For Halo 3 that is much less of an issue - the graphics are great. They aren't as gritty as Gears of War or as atmospheric as Bioshock, but they are not meant to be. They're rich, colorful and detailed, and the draw distance is impressive.

Finally I will end with the main point of Halo - MULTIPLAYER. Completely disregarding the story, the graphics, or the lack of mouse control, you still have one of the funnest multiplayer games around. Sitting in front of a big tv and playing with a few friends is an experience that cannot easily be matched on the PC, and is definately not matched by any other console game. It's like a Counterstrike LAN party but you don't have to lug a computer all over the place. In a word: awesome.