To get the main bias out of the picture - I have never owned an original X-Box nor 360. I've played halo 2 and 3 multiplayer literally 3 times and that's it. Long things short - I'm not this guy:

So yeah, I'm one of the few who don't give a fuck about multiplayer mode in most games - if it's good, I'll have fun with it, but I'm the single-player gamer to the bone and I base my rating of any given game by it's campaign mode (or whatever it's called). I'm that one strange guy in your group that, instead of giving his prestige rank in CoD or linking replays of his amazing frags, says how amazing the story was (or how it sucked hard).

Where am I going with all this? I've seen a lot of fuss around Halo 10th year anniversary edition and some people out there outrightly said "I'm betting my cojones the campaign won't stand the test of time". Funny thing, I was just making a nostalgia run of Halo 1 and 2 on my PC, cause I haven't played them in about 6-7 years. And funnier thing - first time I played Combat Evolved, I was... less than entertained. Don't get me wrong, the second playthrough was waaaay better, but when Halo first came out, I was still, due to the situation of the country I live in, mainly a core PC gamer (using my PS1 for fighting games and racers on split screen), and to say delicately - regeneration, two weapons max and all those nifty changes to shooters - then probably 99% hardcore PC genre, looked like some kind of blasphemy or outright attack on the PC scene. I was biased towards Halo and idea of a console FPS in general (and I still hold my opinion of "Give me a mouse and keyboard and I'll plow the ground with console players in any FPS", even though I play on my PC much, and I mean MUCH rarer than on a console nowadays).

But when all those changes introduced in Halo started to take off and I my desire to look for medkits died with the premiere of Call of Duty 2 (believe me "hide behind cover to stay alive" in a shooter greatly anticipated by PC community was a shock the whole scene needed), I gave Halo another try. And what a joy it was. It was not looking great graphics-wise when I did the second run through the campaign in 2006, but when I forgot about all those "strange mechanics", because they were not "different" anymore, I fell in love with the universe and story. The campaign hooked me momentarily, and the open structure of levels, the handling of vehicles, great, innovative weapons... Halo had it all. The same with Halo 2 - holy shit, the campaign was even better (no backtracking, no library, the arbiter!), the universe was expanded, I've read the books, I was stunned by advertisments of Halo 3, ODST and Reach and, as the 360 lifespan is slowly coming to an end, I'm thinking about buying one, just to have my own copies of next-gen Halos and for nothing more (or, for fuck's sake, just release them on PC, I'm not asking for a copy on my PS3 people!)

So, incidentally, when the annniversary edition was shown on E3, I was just finishing the Halo campaign once again. And when I saw previously mentioned comments, I thought "What the fuck? That's bullshit". Of course, after so many years of gaming, and after seeing so many other FPS games which took a lot (if not all) of their gameplay elements from Halo, it's not that "innovative" (or whatever adjective you want to use) anymore. But the way the single player expierence is structured is still entertaining as hell. Of course, the Library is tedious, and the last third act is just running back to the start of the game, but it's still EPIC - the whole Silent Cartographer: landing on the beach, Warthog antics, shooting your way deep into the structure? EPIC! Command Center assault in Predator? EPIC. Running through huge waves of Covenant and Flood fighting each other? Oh God, so fucking EPIC. The campaign still delivers, and I'm not saying this beacuase of the nostalgia glasses, I'm not relying on my fading memories, I've just played it and it holds! And as I've finished Halo 2 three hours ago, I'm counting on a remake of it too. 343 industries don't have to change the thing, except for graphics - it will still deliver and kick ass, I tell you. I don't give a shit about multiplayer, just give me the same great experience of well designed single player, and I will be happy. And I bet my cojones, that your cojones will be crushed, as mine were.

To get the main bias out of the picture - I have never owned an original X-Box nor 360. I've played halo 2 and 3 multiplayer literally 3 times and that's it. Long things short - I'm not this guy:

So yeah, I'm one of the few who don't give a fuck about multiplayer mode in most games - if it's good, I'll have fun with it, but I'm the single-player gamer to the bone and I base my rating of any given game by it's campaign mode (or whatever it's called). I'm that one strange guy in your group that, instead of giving his prestige rank in CoD or linking replays of his amazing frags, says how amazing the story was (or how it sucked hard).

Where am I going with all this? I've seen a lot of fuss around Halo 10th year anniversary edition and some people out there outrightly said "I'm betting my cojones the campaign won't stand the test of time". Funny thing, I was just making a nostalgia run of Halo 1 and 2 on my PC, cause I haven't played them in about 6-7 years. And funnier thing - first time I played Combat Evolved, I was... less than entertained. Don't get me wrong, the second playthrough was waaaay better, but when Halo first came out, I was still, due to the situation of the country I live in, mainly a core PC gamer (using my PS1 for fighting games and racers on split screen), and to say delicately - regeneration, two weapons max and all those nifty changes to shooters - then probably 99% hardcore PC genre, looked like some kind of blasphemy or outright attack on the PC scene. I was biased towards Halo and idea of a console FPS in general (and I still hold my opinion of "Give me a mouse and keyboard and I'll plow the ground with console players in any FPS", even though I play on my PC much, and I mean MUCH rarer than on a console nowadays).

But when all those changes introduced in Halo started to take off and I my desire to look for medkits died with the premiere of Call of Duty 2 (believe me "hide behind cover to stay alive" in a shooter greatly anticipated by PC community was a shock the whole scene needed), I gave Halo another try. And what a joy it was. It was not looking great graphics-wise when I did the second run through the campaign in 2006, but when I forgot about all those "strange mechanics", because they were not "different" anymore, I fell in love with the universe and story. The campaign hooked me momentarily, and the open structure of levels, the handling of vehicles, great, innovative weapons... Halo had it all. The same with Halo 2 - holy shit, the campaign was even better (no backtracking, no library, the arbiter!), the universe was expanded, I've read the books, I was stunned by advertisments of Halo 3, ODST and Reach and, as the 360 lifespan is slowly coming to an end, I'm thinking about buying one, just to have my own copies of next-gen Halos and for nothing more (or, for fuck's sake, just release them on PC, I'm not asking for a copy on my PS3 people!)

So, incidentally, when the annniversary edition was shown on E3, I was just finishing the Halo campaign once again. And when I saw previously mentioned comments, I thought "What the fuck? That's bullshit". Of course, after so many years of gaming, and after seeing so many other FPS games which took a lot (if not all) of their gameplay elements from Halo, it's not that "innovative" (or whatever adjective you want to use) anymore. But the way the single player expierence is structured is still entertaining as hell. Of course, the Library is tedious, and the last third act is just running back to the start of the game, but it's still EPIC - the whole Silent Cartographer: landing on the beach, Warthog antics, shooting your way deep into the structure? EPIC! Command Center assault in Predator? EPIC. Running through huge waves of Covenant and Flood fighting each other? Oh God, so fucking EPIC. The campaign still delivers, and I'm not saying this beacuase of the nostalgia glasses, I'm not relying on my fading memories, I've just played it and it holds! And as I've finished Halo 2 three hours ago, I'm counting on a remake of it too. 343 industries don't have to change the thing, except for graphics - it will still deliver and kick ass, I tell you. I don't give a shit about multiplayer, just give me the same great experience of well designed single player, and I will be happy. And I bet my cojones, that your cojones will be crushed, as mine were.