MIT Hacks Harvard For Halo, Game Prompts Lots of Sick Days

yonari writes "Early on the morning before the Halo 3 release, John Harvard donned a Mjolnir helmet and a beaver emblem, and carried an assault rifle on his left shoulder, apparently acquired from the UNSC Engineering Division." The Washington Post also points out that a lot of folks took sick days on Tuesday as a consequence of the game's release. "Some local workers won't have to skip out on the office to play the game. At some companies that offer video games as a break room activity, Halo 3 was pre-ordered months ago. The Motley Fool, the Alexandria investment advisory firm, is expecting its copy of the game to arrive from Amazon.com soon. Same for Platinum Solutions, a Reston software consulting firm."

Comments

Somebody please explain the appeal

[DogDude]

Somebody please explain the appeal of Halo. I've played Halo 2, and I thought that it was so bad, that I actually returned it to the store. Terrible graphics, pathetic sound, gameplay physics that make no sense, and the exact same story as Doom. In my opinion, it's actually one of the worst first person shooters ever made, (yes, even compared to Wolf 3D, which was at least entertaining). Could somebody please explain why people like this game? Is it just that the people who like Halo have never played another first person shooter, so they simply don't realize how bad the Halo series really is? What's the deal, here? What am I missing?

Re:Somebody please explain the appeal

[Swift(void)]

Wait, what? Doom's story is exactly this: "A gate to hell opens on Mars and demons appear. Kill them". And Halo's story: "Humans are at war against the Covenant, a conglomeration of several alien races following a religious prophecy that requires them to activate and fire the different halos spread around the galaxy/universe. Firing those halos will kill all sentient life in the galaxy, but they don't know it. The installations were setup by the Forerunners to destroy the Flood, a parasitic alien race that consumes all life forms. You are Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan 117, and you're thrown into the mix."

Doom: Demons are coming, kill them before they fuck up the world
Halo: Aliens are inadvertantly going to fuck up the world, kill them.

Sure, the writers at bungie might have made the story more involved and interesting, but there is no denying that the base plot is still about killing aliens before they can fuck your shit up, which is exactly the same as Doom. iD just had a developer write their story, rather than a team of writers.

hmmm...... Why do you need the day off?

[phildawg]

A friend of mine purchased it at midnight, went home, and beat it at 4:30am, lol.

So obviously this is a really content heavy single player game when it clocks in at 4-5 hours.

And if Halo multiplayer is the best that the 360 has to offer and folks need to take off work because it's so awesome... don't give em a good PC and a few multiplayer games... they will go on vacation permanently! I'm sorry, but Halo has never been the shining example of multiplayer anything. The hype is completely manufactured and only centered in the U.S. where gamers are easily impressioned by a cup with a Halo logo on it, haha. This game has to be bad ass, they got a lunch box for it!