Halo CE in HD?

I got SC: Conviction at launch. Depending on what your looking for and your opinions on the previous games, it's a love or hate game.

The campaign is my favorite part personally. The story is much more personal. Honestly I forgot the other games even had a storyline, but that's what this one is all about. Sam's personal life and revenge for his daughters murder. The slowness of the past games is gone and you're more like a predator. Riddick meets James Bond. Unfortunately it's impossible to beat the game without killing (some people used to ghost the entire game with a 0% kill ratio except for bosses) and a few of the levels ditch stealth for a more cover-based gears gameplay, but it doesn't last for very long.

Co-op is a lot like Chaos Theory. You have a handful of unique levels and they have their own Storyline that's just as good as the main games storyline. You don't have all of the co-op moves Chaos Theory had, but you still work together to overcome your obstacles.

Multiplayer sadly abandoned the competitive Spy vs. Merc mode, but the multiplayer it does have is still fun. It's more like GOWs horde mode or Halo's Firefight mode, but it feels like there's more of a purpose to it. There's also Dark Ops mode, which is pretty much missions that didn't fit into any storyline. They just present challenges for the player to overcome. They were probably the best part of the MP offering.

Gameplay-wise, like I said. It goes more predator than stealth. You have a large variety of weapons at your disposal. You still use shadows, you still scale walls, etc... This time you can mark enemies. Whenever you get a melee kill, you have the ability to lock on to 3 or 4 enemies from hiding and executing the attack will go into a quick cinematic of Sam taking the enemy down. Kind of like FO3's VATS system, but actually cool looking. This time you're forced to kill instead of knocking enemies out, but not really a big deal to me personally. Like I said before, some of the levels get shooty and abandon the stealthy part, but overall still a really good experience. It and Chaos Theory are definitely my two favorites in the series and I can't wait to see how the next one is.

As for COD:BO:

In all seriousness, Black Ops is good fun. If you liked MW and MW2 (and Nazi Zombies from WaW), you'll find Black Ops to be a "Once more with feeling" kind of game. The single player, while only lasting 5-6 hours, is pretty good fun, though I feel it doesn't hold a candle to MW. The story is definitely better, though (albeit I feel it got a little stupid towards the end).

It's good fun, but doesn't last long. I'm also disappointed that a game called "Black Ops" didn't have more optional stealth. I dare say that MW2 did stealth better. Black Ops has one level that encourages stealth, and it's probably my least favorite level. Treyarch has learned a lot from WaW, but still haven't quite reached the mastery of scripted sequences that Valve and Infinity Ward have made famous.

"Ghillies" was definitely the triumph of stealth levels, but several SAS levels (the early ones in particular) gave the option of stealth. Even MW2's stealth levels gave a nice tone, though they weren't nearly as effective.

Black Ops' sole stealth level (since the other levels don't even give you a choice besides a completely scripted sequence for 1/5 of the island level [and by completely scripted, I mean that they kill you almost instantly if you don't do exactly as they say]) fails in tone and spirit.

What make Ghillies (and Cliffhanger and Old Times to a lesser extent) was that stealth was utilized because you were outgunned and outnumbered by your enemies. This also helped to create tension and was very effective. Black Ops' stealth level, besides going for an achievement, gave me no incentive to sneak around. It was just as easy (if not easier, since that level's AI was inconsistent on whether or not it wanted to detect you) to blow up everybody.

Modern Warfare's campaign was excellent. It's a shame that they haven't been able to top it yet. While Black Ops doesn't come nearly as close, I commend Treyarch for trying to be different (as opposed to MW2, whose philosophy seems to be "Do everything that happened in the first game two or three more times).

It was nice to see Soap back as a poor man's Price (in the same way that MW2 is a poor man's MW).

To each his own, I suppose. With the exception of sequel identification, I didn't find Soap to be that compelling (particularly since he spends most of the game as a Price replacement and the remainder of the game in the role of Price's sidekick that had had in MW1).

Ghost, however, really disappointed me. The prerelease hyped him up as an important character (complete with a comic of his origins). However, with the exception of a cool look, he did no more than Gaz did in MW. Frankly, he could've been replaced by any other member of the 141 in all of his mission appearances and I wouldn't have noticed. You can't say that about Price or Macmillan (or even the US Sergeant Foley).

I was just happy to have one decent American soldier in an IW Call of duty game that I could call a character. That hasn't happened since the first one. It's one of the few problems with Modern Warfare's campaign. It can be excused, since the Americans in MW are, for all intents and purposes, dead meat anyway. It still would've been nice to have some characterization, though, especially for the ones seen in the last missions.

Corporal Dunn was a pretty good character and does have some relevance in Second sun. He does tend to get overshadowed by Keith David's presence, but it's better than the red shirts we get in the American levels of MW (and almost all levels of CoD2).

Plus, unlike Ghost, Infinity Ward didn't tell us that he was going to be important. I suppose all fall victim to hype, though. Remember when Epic hyped up Dizzy and Tai in GoW2? Even Carter-259, despite being Noble Team's leader, was fairly useless in Reach.

On an unrelated note, have you played the new Medal of Honor yet?

If you have any fond memories of Allied Assault, you'd best stick with it. I've played the new one on my friends Xbox (and beat it between meals at thanksgiving to give you a good idea of how long the game is). While it's not as horrible as what people say, it's a MW2 clone. The story, which I was actually looking forward to, doesn't really pick up until the last 3 levels (kind of like Halo 3: ODST, only without the flashback gimmick and the characters).

Overall, it's very unremarkable, and for a MoH game, that's almost as bad as being horrible.

If it's the one that looks like it was ripped straight out of Saving Private Ryan, that would be Allied Assault.

It's a shame that the series that gave us this level gives us a Modern Warfare clone set in Afghanistan that almost refuses to give itself an identity of its own in favor of stealing set pieces from Infinity Ward games.

I don't mind linear gameplay (even the oppressive linearity that we get in Halo 2 and Halo 3) as long as the levels are designed well and the enemy encounters (or setpieces, in the case of CoD/MoH) are well thoughtout.

Hell, I don't even mind minimalistic storytelling (in fact, I love the first Gears and Resistance games because of this) as long as the game is telling me exactly what the hell I'm supposed to be doing.

The problem lies in the fact that games like Halo and Call of Duty are popular. Therefore, other people look at things within the games and put them into their own games without stopping to consider why those features worked for Halo and CoD. Because of this, we get utterly bastardized games like the new Medal of Honor, Resistance 2, and Haze.