AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh man, that's rich. You know what Half-Life really needs, is Gordon Freeman doing more backflips, add some one-liners too, and the Combine soldiers need to turn on their alien overlords at the last minute. Let's make those Alien overlords monkeys with hammers.
If they made a Danielle Steel novel into a game it would have better narrative than Halo. With better plot twists, too.
"Permission to leave the ship, sir."
"Why, Master Chief?"
"To give the Covenant back their bomb."
*pauses to ponder Master Chief's total radness*
"Permission Granted."
Epic. It's Fire Down Below in space.
So why do people love Halo? Three reasons. One, people will consume that which they know is safe. See: Wild Hogs. Two, it's got a rather intuitive and (up until the second game) reasonably balanced competitive multiplayer mode. Three, big, loud and dumb equals awesome in the eyes of the demographic that game companies court. See: Anything Michael Bay has ever done.
You didn't happen to see Halo 2 topping all the "best of the year" lists? It [defecated] all over what made Halo 1 reasonably exciting, then took that [scatological result] and sold it as a sequel. Like any company looking to break bank, Bungie looked at Halo's greatest strength, multiplayer, and thought "what we really need is to make it bigger", without realizing that doing so would water down that which made Halo multiplayer fun in the first place. And that's not even touching on the single player aspect of the game. Saturday morning cartoon shows have more respect for their audience than to have the protagonist and antagonist team up to fight a greater threat. Every time somebody says that Halo or, god forbid, Gears of War has a "compelling story", I'm reminded of why "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" is going to make $10 billion dollars at the box office, despite it being a one-trick "gay lol" submovie. I'm reminded of why Dan Brown is the great American novelist.
Oh, Halo. One day, they'll realize what a polished [poopy] you are.