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[chriscaffee]

See that's what I mean. Rainbow Six is nothing like Halo. If you tried to play Rainbow Six like it was Halo that would be a first class ticket to losing on Xbox Live. Likewise if you tried to play Halo like Rainbow Six you would be equally at a disadvantage.

Doom and Halo? I don't see any simularities at all. Doom is essentially a very linear, very structured environment where you essentially have one path. On this one path monsters with poor intelligence will spawn at specified points (generally behind you) and then you have to turn around and shoot them before they claw you apart or in the case of Imps and Hellknights, dodge to the right when they throw fireballs. The experience of Doom is all about the fantastic graphics, the gloomy atmosphere and vicious looking monsters. The guns all feel about the same with BFG 9000 and the shotgun being about the one ones that differentiate themselves from the pack.

Halo on the other hand is (at least on harder difficulties) all about planning your strategy and inventing new ways to fight the same battle. The great thing about the first Halo is that any battle can be won with any two weapons. Whatever tactic you prefer, if that's a brutal close and personal battle, or a more conservative sit back and pick off enemies one by one approach, either way works. You can go Hollywood or you can go Rainbow Six, it doesn't matter. You can use vehicles if you want or you don't have to. You are just as capable of unleashing death on foot with a Plasma Pistol and a Needler as you are in the Scorpion tank. Halo is all about choices and the replay comes from playing the same levels and defeating them using different methods. Doom is simply not like this. You can't just run through Doom 3 with the pistol and hope to triumph (though you most certainly could in Halo, barring the Keyes level where there sadly is no pistol).

XIII? Well XIII plays very different from Halo simply because Halo gives you a little bit of health that recharges as long as you stay alive. This means that you can play brutally hard and fast as mentioned above, or take your time. With a game like XIII you almost always have to play brutally because you can't take a few hits and then duck behind a corner and wait for a recharge. It won't happen. You have to take guys out as soon as possible and make sure you don't get surrounded to minimize loss of health. Checkpoints are also fewer and further between and again, as with Doom, you have the problem of tiered weapons. The weapons in XIII are not like in Halo where certain weapons are good against certain enemies. Weapons may be situationally good but a magnum and a sniper rifle are essentially the same gun when it comes down to it.

Battles are also less varied since your actions have to be chosen ahead of time. In Halo when you are fighting an Elite if an oppurtunity presents itself you can do a swift assassination or a quick plasma grenade plant, but in XIII if you want to use a melee attack you either have to have a shotgun or RPG equipped, or you have to pick up a shard of glass or a chair ahead of time. If you want to throw a grenade, you have to switch to your grenades (which is cumbersome on an Xbox controller when you have half a dozen weapons to choose from) and then throw one. Then you have to switch back to your gun. In Halo this is all integrated so when you enter battle you are fully prepared to adapt to the enemy quickly and do what needs to be done.

Oh and the multiplayer for XIII is kind of garbage but the story is fun as are some of the gadgets and stuff.

[Double-S-]

I haven't played much Ghost Recon at all, but I would not say Rainbow Six 3 is anything like Halo at all. I'd say it is more like Counterstrike.

If you haven't played Rainbow Six before 2003, then you should probably SHUT IT!

Seriously, Rainbow Six 3 and its 50 different versions are far closer to Halo than they are to one of the real Rainbow Six games. I tried playing one and I threw the controller down in disgust (note: Not frustration).

On the whole "FPS variety" topic, I think there are enough different types of FPSs to keep the genre interesting. Just. Arcade twitchers, "realistic", tactical, etc.

Also, Chris, you basically just proved Light Speed's thing that Halo 2, Doom 3, and XIII being similar with Halo 2 just being much better.

[Light Speed]

Chris I was just referring to multiplayer, I wasn't comparing the Doom 3 campaign to the Halo campaigns. Same with XIII, cause to be honest, single player campaigns for the most part are just fluff when it comes to FPSs. Multiplayer is where they really shine, although I'd say that was an exception with XIII.

Double S, I never actually played any of the RS games before RS3, but RS3, RS3:Black Arrow, and RS#?:Lockdown on the Xbox anyway, did not play anything like Halo. It was all about creeping around corners, looking for people, if you ever spent any amount of time out in the open, you were killed before you were able to move. Maybe you through the controller down in disgust because you kept getting owned for playing the game like Halo?

[chriscaffee]

First and foremost I was talking about the original Halo: CE. Halo 2 unfortunately nerfs some of the weapons and doesn't give you enough heavy weapons in the open levels forcing you to use vehicles even if you don't want to. It's quite different from Halo: CE where you can essentially do whatever you want. It has more freedom than the other shooters I mentioned, but I think something like FarCry Instincts is a bit closer to Halo: CE in terms of freedom than Halo 2 is.

My argument wasn't that Halo is better either. My argument was that those games are played for different experiences. For exciting, action packed battles, Halo is where you go. If you want to mow down hundreds of people and combine it with some stealth than XIII is what you want to play and if you just want to slice something in half with a chainsaw, than Doom 3 is obviously your fix. Now most times I am more interested in the variety available in Halo, but sometimes I really want that chainsaw or BFG 9000. Besides establishing a "better" game is a form of "differentiation," because there has to be something that makes it stick out and be different to be better.

If you're talking about multiplayer though, (and I wouldn't say multiplayer is the "real" game and single player is "fluff" by any means. After all I still play Halo: CE's single player but I have no real desire to play multiplayer, even if I could get a lagless LAN game going on instead of that horrid XBC, but that is a different topic altogether and this post is already a text wall) Rainbow Six 3 and Halo are very, very different games. Halo is all about being aggressive (due to recharging shields and healthpacks), grabbing the right weapon for the situation, positioning yourself in good locations and taking advantage of all sorts of tricks and glitches. Now the original RS3 does have some glitches that are spammed, like a crouching one that I've read about, but on the whole the game is entirely about shot placement. Putting a bullet, just one bullet, in the other guy's head is the most important thing. This requires a minimum of movement on your part and catching the other guy by surprise. RS3 plays more like a deadly game of tag than a crazy Hollywood battle.

Now the computer version may be so different from the Xbox version that RS3 seems like a dumb-downed game akin to Halo, but I'm telling you if you play either game as if they were the other, you are going to lose at both of them. They require very different play styles in multiplayer. You can get away using SOME RS3 tactics in Halo, for example camping with a sniper, or hiding behind a corner with a shotgun, but at the midfield with the pistol or at close range with something like an assault rifle, or with any vehicle battle it is an entirely different game. Beeing sneaky and having good shot placement are advantages in Halo, but they aren't the core of the game like with RS3. A good/lucky player in Halo can quickly turn the tide of an unfavorable battle, whereas in RS3 it is less likely due to having more powerful weapons and the constant threat of a headshot due to no shields.

I can't really speak for Doom 3's multiplayer because the only time I tried to start some up (and I wasn't really excited to try it out either because the single player game didn't give me the impression of a stellar multiplayer) there was one game in session and it seemed to be a guy just chatting with a girl so naturally I was quickly booted. I tried to do some coop and a couple guys joined but they sucked so they quit really quick.

[Double-S-]

Double S, I never actually played any of the RS games before RS3, but RS3, RS3:Black Arrow, and RS#?:Lockdown on the Xbox anyway, did not play anything like Halo. It was all about creeping around corners, looking for people, if you ever spent any amount of time out in the open, you were killed before you were able to move. Maybe you through the controller down in disgust because you kept getting owned for playing the game like Halo?

I said disgust, not frustration. In fact, I specifically noted that.

I don't know what game you were playing, but in both RS3 and then Lockdown (the 2 I played) I could spend a lot of time running and gunning with very little fear of dying as long as I stayed out of open areas. Maybe this was just relative to the old PC games, where your breath froze every time you turned a corner. Also, singleplayer in all of them was an absolute atrocity and insult to the Rainbow Six games with linear levels and scripted events and the complete loss of suspense of dying in one hit. Oh yeah... and no planning stage, one of the top 2 things that defined Rainbow Six singleplayer.

I'm not saying necessarily that it's a bad game. In fact, I know plenty people enjoy it. However, those people are far more likely to be ones who enjoy other console shooters, rather than those who enjoyed the previous games on PC, and for that fact, it probably shouldn't be carrying the Rainbow Six title.

[PBJClock]

thats the first time anyone has explained whats good about Halo, instead "omg this is the best shooter ever u must own it now". In fact your description of it's openended combat ALMOST makes me want to buy the mac version (because it's $50 and from what i've heard runs like ass,). But my prefered shooter is Unreal Tournament 2004, because no one looks the same and replaces king of the hill with onslaught. Also i enjoy the wacky weapons, wacky locations, and i just love the anoucer when he say's "doubble kill" or expecialy "ludacris kill". It's well worth whatever pricew u pay for it, and there's also a whole games' worth of free content on the internet.

ps. Scorpion Buggy > Warthog

[Light Speed]

Yeah, I said disgust too, you were disgusted at how bad you sucked. :) I'm just kidding, and it sounds like we are arguing two different points since you are comparing RS3 to the older RS games that I never played. While I am comparing them to Halo. Also this entire time I have only been talking about multiplayer.

Chris, I agree with you on all the Halo versus Rainbow Six 3 arguments, but I still think, at least to some extent (maybe not as much as I thought before this argument) that most FPS's either fall into the shoot 'em up or the tactical categories.