I've been mainly posting to my own blog, but wanted to share this with some people who might also understand the context.

Yesterday someone asked me why I was enjoying a new game. Their question wasn’t why is the game good but why is this one better than the old ones? It was in reference to Halo 5: Guardians, I didn’t plan on reviewing Halo 5, but I thought talking about it as a landmark in how modern shooters have evolved might be useful as I think it’s the best first person shooter to this point. Not the all time best, but the best so far.

That statement might seem outrageous, and it kind of is, so here come the qualifiers. I don’t know if the maps in multiplayer are super balanced or if the weapons are super balanced. I’m not talking about the story, or the graphics. I’m exclusively looking to discuss the advancements Halo 5 has made in the genre. What separates it from the shooters before it.

The original halo did a few pretty cool things for console shooters, this subject is documented exhaustively elsewhere but, Halo Combat Evolved slowed down the fast paced PC shooter and gave console players the control they needed to fight it out, it used auto aim to make aim approximations “sticky” overcoming some of the shortfalls of controllers as an input. Split screen and system link play allowed players to compete in a way only pc gamers had experienced.

Halo 2 then took plenty of these and bought the game online, becoming the most popular Xbox live game until the release of gears of war some years later. There were of course incremental changes and shooters became over the shoulder for a while after gears, but in 2007, 6 years after the initial release of Halo, The “Halo Killer” finally arrived.

Call of duty 4:Modern Warfare made the console shooters that came before it seem like they were for babies. The contrast was a graduation from Wussy Primary school to a Juvenile Detention High school, things moved harder Faster, you had kids playing more and everything had that edge energy drinks and extreme sports are always trying to chase. The game moves, mobility was the emphasise introducing running and very tight controls. Characters were more fragile and the gameplay loop was speedup. Spawn, to shooting, to respawn was much quicker, like the players were running in fast forward. Most importantly it was a marriage of two genres.

Infinity ward, at the time Headed by Jason West and Vince Zampella , Added an RPG Levelling element to the Multiplayer. Although even at Level one players were competitively balanced against players that had Prestige (reached the level cap), they had created a Macro-game that rewarded players for playing a game that was already a lot of fun. They both Expanded and tightened the gameplay loop, Expanded in the sense that players had broader goals beyond winning and losing individual Matches, They created smaller objectives, like getting more headshots in a match, more Melee kills whilst simultaneously rewarding players mid match at the end of match and dangling a reward for consecutive matches. Mid match rewards were the introduction of killstreaks, experience points for multiple kills in a short space of time and rewards for stylish kills. The End of match rewards were for score, victories and match completion.

Playing consecutive matches enabled multiplayer levelling, unlocking new weapons and new gadgets. This broader gameplay also rewarded less skilled players creating an addictive loop that rewarded different levels of skill.

Halo 5 has found the next step in the shooter evolution. After call of Duty 4 the gameplay for Halo felt slow it felt dated and many of the things that had made the game famous now felt like they were holding it back. Halo 5 allows players to “aim down the sights” on every weapon, while this change is mainly cosmetic , having a minimal impact on the gameplay of halo, the more dramatic changes are the increased mobility similar to 2014’s TitanFall (again a West and Zampella game), which also added objectives to multiplayer beyond shooting other players. The inclusion of ai controlled soldiers in titanfall’s multiplayer matches granted players match points for easier kills and gave less skilled players objectives that could support their team mates even when they weren’t as good as other players. Players could still perform quite well without having to directly duel humans. Halo 5 takes these ideas and inserts MOBA elements into their matches.

The warzone mode in Halo 5 starts players with a standard loadout, a pistol and assault rifle, but after the initial objective is completed players are then able to begin customizing the way they play in match. Completing objectives rewards players with experience that can then be used on power items like vehicles, weapons, and Armor bonuses. This customization allows players not only the freedom to play their own way, but the ability to chase different objectives within a match. These additions are combined with a tightened loop that empowers players giving the same sense of achievement from levelling outside a match in a smaller time frame. It’s the best parts of a MOBA with the mechanics of a shooter.

This is obviously an oversimplification of how shooters have improved over the years and what makes halo 5 amazing. Ultimately to this point the evolution has been about the addition of features or tweaking gameplay elements. While the revolutions in the genre may have been games other than halo since the original, it’s good to know a series can continue to occasionally “Evolve Combat”.

I saw the poisonvill title and instantly thought  http://www.screened.com/yojimbo/16-178392/ then thought   http://www.screened.com/a-fistful-of-dollars/16-181166/.  I love Dashiell Hammet   his work has inspired some text book definition cool, Bogart's Portral of Sam Spade,  http://www.screened.com/the-maltese-falcon/16-167505/.  In fact a lot of the dark gritty  leanings of modern cinema can be considered a throwback to plenty of noir films.  
 
What does this have to do with  http://www.giantbomb.com/playboy/62-1318/ or Poisonvill? Well Dashiell Hammet penned a novel called, Red Harvest,  that was then adapted to make Yojimbo and then that was remade with A fist full of Dollars. The setting for the original novel, was Poisonvill. I understand this is a MASSIVE leap of logic and plenty of misplaced trust thinking that playboy might produce something halfway decent especially if it's licensed, but wouldn't it be great? 
 
Dark novels can make decent games Dark corners of the Earth was a pretty good example, the Sherlock Holmes production line keeps turning out titles, and the characters and plot of this novel practically translate them selves. If you've seen the films you can easily put together a few ideas of how a game based on that story, in any town or setting, could be something compelling or atleaest hold enough water to hang some shooting mechanics and driving onto.  
 
This won't happen from Playboy, but maybe, if someone else sees the potential behind the idea they'll plant the seeds for a game, if it's nurtured with talent and respect fr the source material, well maybe there's hope.