Plenty of people hate Halo. I consider myself a PC gamer with an Xbox/Xbox 360 on the side, and I'm one of the few PC gamers I know of that loves the original Halo. Everything about it was great: from the physics engine that, while not realistic at all, was tons of fun, to the great multiplayer set up by the pistol, with added depth in grenading weapons to yourself/teammates, timing weapon and powerup respawns, the fact that every weapon was useable except the needler and to a lesser extent the plasma pistol... I could go on. Wrap it around a solid, not amazing, but solid universe to play it in and you have a great game.
Halo took (stole) a lot of these features from PC games, like the weapon spawns, et cetera, and wrapped it in this nice launch game package for release. It wasn't just like those, though, with the shooting mechanics tailored specifically for a console - it doesn't translate well at all to PC, just like Half-Life and UT haven't made the translation well until now. If anything, I hope UT doesn't get changed to try to play towards both PC's and consoles... but that's a different topic. Bungie did a great job polishing the game, stumbling upon the great balance we had for multiplayer, and it's easy for me to compare it to my favorite PC shooters: Half-life, UT, Tribes, and more.
Then there was Halo 2.
Halo 2 cannot be described as anything but mediocre. Some of the best things about the original (the pistol and the balance it represented, the weapon timing, the dual health bars, the grenading of weapons... you get the idea) were totally stripped out. The storyline didn't hold a candle to the original. Its saving grace was it's multiplayer setup on Xbox Live, which was brilliant and is still one of the better setups for a multiplayer game on Xbox Live, let alone gaming in general. I still prefer dedicated servers and server lists, but considering that wasn't an option for Halo 2, they did a great job.
I wonder if most people who hate the Halo series hate it because of the second. Plenty of people I play games with on a regular basis (mostly Starcraft, occasional CS and Tribes, and Battlefield if the 2-3 BF fanboys get their way) hated Halo... until I showed them Halo 1 and the finer points of it. We got a used xbox console on the cheap to add to mine and a friend's, and Halo has become a staple of our LAN's now as well.
So, if you hate the Halo series, is it because of the abortion that is Halo 2? The fact that most Halo fanboys are way too rabid for their own good? Discuss.
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