> I just don't get it. Is it just that the Xbox sucks and there's no other games
> for it?

That's most of it. Same reason Goldeneye was the ultimate on N64, it had no other good games. I mean when it comes down to it, you can't tell a gun on the ground from a proximity mine in that game on that 4 player blurry-as-hell screen. At least Halo is somewhat sharp and you can play full screen multiplayer.

People who own X-Boxes say there are plenty of good games, but they obviously don't own PS2s, which means you can select many more games and you can be much more discerning. You don't always have to take what they give you, like with the X-Box and GameCube. People argue the X-Box has more good games simply because it has more 3rd party support than the Cube, but they don't take into account all of the good Nintendo and 2nd party releases. Most of MS's first party releases suck ass and you never hear of them, but some are good like Halo and Crimson Skies. Those are not in-house talent but bought talent, though. Nintendo tends to work more with 3rd parties than just going around buying talent too. Like they helped with Metal Gear Solid on the Cube. They worked with SEGA to make F-Zero, they worked with Namco to make the new Star Fox, they're working with Capcom on the Zeldas. Anyway, all that to say, the X-Box doesn't have that many good games. No good tactics/RPGs, very few fighting games, practically no shmups, crappy platformers, less Japanese releases in general. It caters to american tastes, that's for sure, and that's fine. But you can only stand so much of the same crap over and over, you need variation. It also has more games that you don't care about. Kakuto Chojin, Bruce Lee Quest of the Dragon, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2: Shitty Version, Shrek, Counter-Strike (it sucks on X-Box), Unreal II, Unreal Championship (all plagued with slowdown), Sega GT, and its cross-platform library is mostly shitty too, BMX XXX, Alter Echo, Driv3r, The Italian Job, Crash Wrath of Cortex, Futurama, Backyard Wrestling, X-Men, I mean for every high profile game there's 5 shitty ones. Oh and it got the best version of Turok Evolution, wooooo hooooooooooooo.

> Is it just that there are no good FPSs for consoles?

Yeah there's that too. Most of them suck! But then again, that's the case for PC too. Only a few are really good and are really worth playing. For consoles and PCs I think, the Medal of Honour series is good, as well as Half Life. Consoles have TimeSplitters and Halo though which are pretty good.

> All i've seem and what i played of the first one on PC just makes me see a run
> of the mill FPS with nothing really going for it, specially gfx wise.

Well not really. The game does bring some cool shit to the genre. I dunno if it's been done in other games as I don't play many FPSes, hate 'em!

Halo, though, has the rechargable shields which means you don't constantly have to go looking for health. Halo 2 is even better, as it does away with health altogether, you only have your shields and then you can take a couple of hits as long as it's not in your head until you die.

Halo was the first game to do co-op really well. Part of that was because you could go around in vehicles. The other part was Legendary difficulty, which relies on you being fucking good, because the AI is actually very good. If you're the type that plays Contra: Shattered Soldier until you get perfect, then you'll love this (providing you love the game). Halo also was one of the first, if not the first FPS, to do vehicles really well, and used it as part of the story.

Halo perfected what Quake 2+ wanted to do, which was the level "hub" design. In Halo, you could go from the end and backtrack to the beginning of the game practically, and all the weapons and clips are right where you left 'em. It adds to the realism and immersion. Other stuff is enemy dropships come by and drop enemies off, which gives you a lot of "oh shit we're gonna die" moments where the enemies overwhelm you but you get through.

Another cool thing about Halo is it's like the survival-horror of video games, especially part 2. Weapons and ammo are limited to what you can get off the enemies, but if you're really efficient it'll be more than enough. The harder the difficulty the worse it is because the enemies take more hits, and on Legendary you'll be calculating every shot and taking everything into account. The more an enemy fires the less ammo you receive from them as well. This also allows Halo to do away with "Find the secret hidden elevator" crap that seems out of place in a lot of FPSes. Like there's really a secret ammo stash in the middle of a canyon.

The other thing is the huge ass levels, like canyons. You can even fly around in them. Another cool part is Halo has a lot of variation. Like X-Wing. Sometimes you have to escort people, you've got wingmen, there are waves of enemies and sometimes you can stay around longer than expected to fry 'em (though you don't always have to). Sometimes your missions involve holding ground, sometimes you have to capture ground. Anyway it's kinda like X-Wing because of the variation. I find in other FPSes there really is a lot of "find the item put the item here," but like Half Life (though I find Halo more fun than Half Life), Halo manages to make stuff part of the story or at least make it interesting for you.

Also in multiplayer, the weapons are really balanced. You don't get pissed off at the snipers because there are trails that come from their bullets, and other guns have zoom (not just the sniper rifle), or you could have a vehicle which makes you really hard to hit, there's a lot of tactics involved. The best part is that this translates over to the single player game. You still can yank enemies off of vehicles, you still have to battle against snipers, other flying enemies, you have to infiltrate bases, there's a certain amount of stealth involved as well.

The enemies also have a lot of personality, there are different ways to sneak up on the different types. I think what helps is Halo does like brawlers (Final Fight, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage) and RPGs. It not only throws at you different types of enemies, but also different ranks and personalities. The yellow ones are stupidest and run off and tell their superiors. The red ones usually have rocket launchers and more heavy artillery and are smarter, etc. Higher difficulties introduce more colours also.

Like anything else, you can get bored of Halo. But it's really good. It's well thought out to make the game as un-boring and well balanced as possible. If you're an expert at the genre maybe you prefer something more technical, but I think Halo is really well rounded and well thought out.