I'm not sure about what to say.
Halo 3 was my first Halo. It was decent, but to me is hard to enjoy shooters with a pad, and I miss the k + m support from UT III. The game was great in terms of music and variety of enemies –even if some ones as the Scared were dull and boring to play against-. But the story was far from great, and the characters weren't as epic as it could be. Latest parts of the campaign were the worst, and technically the game didn't stand as a AAA game that could be. The weapons and the gunplay were good, not the best guns ever but very nice balance between range shots, mele and grenade use.
Crysis on the other hand had a similar problem with the "meh" story, but the gameplay had nice aspects: the game let you to fully customize your weapons, which is a lacking feature in a lot of current games that provides lots of fun, plus large levels that even confined gives the player a lot of room to choose their ways and tactics in order to accomplish the task.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTD9yYyLFfo&feature=grec_index&videos=ewMddv1z6Nw
The assault to the village in the second level, the midnight duel vs special ops in the graveyard at the end of the third one or the attack to the shore port and the tank battles in the 4th and 5th levels were great. Visually, The Core and Paradise Frozen levels were nothing short but amazing, and the game has good balance between use of vehicles, handguns and artillery stations.
In what Halo 3 greatly overcome Crysis was in the multiplayer, so I think that Crysis has better single player and Halo 3 better multiplayer.
But then is the battle of expansions, Halo ODST vs Crysis Warhead. Warhead has better Metacritic scores, and I think that overall was better product, not only due the scores.
In Warhead the pace of the combat was more intense, and the main character more strong and charismatic than in ODST or Crysis. The number of new weapons was good and the alien A.I. was highly improved, making the game harder and more demanding. But the true jewel were the enhancements in the multiplayer: increasing the official maps from 9 to 24, introducing a self-downloading system for any custom map and adding the Team Instant Action mode. I think that ODST lacked in innovations and contents compared to Warhead, which also was cheaper.
About Crysis 2 vs Halo Reach, I think that is evident that Crytek is trying to fish in the Halo waters. The game has more urban environments, as ODST, a more melodramatic story, trying to be more epic, and the pace of the character movement is more close to the Spartan ones (now almost all jumps are in Power mode, which means longer and higher). The game will have also more alien weapons, more variety in alien designs, -including bipedal ones- and a Tactical mode that looks a lot like the ODST HUD, with indications about the enemy forces and sources of information, ammunition, etc.
I think that the key will be in the multiplayer, that in the case of Crysis 2 will be revelaed in the Cologne GameCon next August 18-12. If Crytek UK (former Time Splitters and Haze developers) try the way of arcadey games as in his previous works and in games as Quake, Unreal, F.E.A.R. or Halo then the Crysis 2 multiplayer will fail. If they try a more sim way with global stats, weapon and item unlocks and evolved modes based in the Power Struggle mode from Crysis then the multiplayer could be a success.
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