Forget about Bungie. I can't forgive them for launching Destiny without a story. Didn't feel like paying $80 to find out what the game was about.



But at this point I can't blame anyone for being upset at 343. Across all 3 of their games, they've found a way to disappoint everyone. Not all at the same time, but I think we've all felt the pain of some of 343's lackluster endeavors. Let's take a look, shall we?



- Halo 4 did no favors to the competitive community. The game was very casual oriented.

- Halo 5 has solid mechanics and gameplay that has allowed the Competitive scene to make a comeback. But the game now lacks casual content

- Halo 4's Campaign showed a lot of promise for the future for Chief's journey, but...

- Halo 5 lacked time with Chief, and seemed to be very distant from a lot of Halo 4's plot points. And Cortana's "death" was made rather trivial.

- Halo 5 launched with a lot of content missing that people expect from a Halo game. Namely, Infection, Grifball, and a PvE mode besides Campaign. Halo 4 had Spartan OPs at least to fill the void of firefight.

- Halo 5 still has no dedicated File Browser system. Something present in both Halo 4 and Reach.

- Halo 5 lacks more in depth armor customization like Halo 4 and Reach.

- No dev made BTB maps. They launched the playlist with maps made in less than a day by community members using an incomplete version of forge. Ouch.

- 343 sometimes says things they don't deliver on. They said we'd have black undersuits right? Nope.

- I don't think I need to explain why MCC was disappointing.



Don't get me wrong. 343 has done their fair share of good. But I've spent so much time defending them, and sometimes I feel kind of betrayed. Or at the very least, a bit disillusioned with Halo these days. Halo is part of what defines me as a gamer. I couldn't imagine playing other games without coming back to Halo every now and then. It hurts to see that 343 has fallen short with Halo in so many ways. At least the population is doing well enough. I noticed that Halo 5 was back in the top ten most played games on Xbox live a couple weeks ago. So Halo definitely isn't dying.