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Halo Series Vs Call of Duty Series
Halo is a better series that the call of duty series because of the story depth, amount of character development, overall appeal to the public and multiplayer experience. This was done because unlike the call of duty series, Halo adds many more elements to the game that make it more fun for the player instead of just strait up mission after mission of killing.
First up is the story, for Halo you are thrown into a future where civilization has left earth and colonize other planets, you assume the role of a bio-engineered super human in green armor after a in a battleship in space called Pillar of Autumn after is has been attacked. You are told to report to the bridge and the story unfolds from there. There was no preset opening where you just sat and watched, you interacted with the game as it told you the story, and the rest is revealed throughout the rest of the game.
In the call of duty series, you are taken through a 10 minute opening scene, which is the same in every game they made, that gives the complete back-story: who you are fighting, why, what they did, and along with some nice rendering tell you who the enemy is. The story is usually related to preset time and takes the events to extreme. In the latest game, for example, one undercover American helps slaughter a Russian airport and is then killed and left on the scene, the Russians get pissed and invade America, and then a rogue special forces group launch a nuke that explodes in outer space over the Washington D.C. area and knocks out all power and aircraft. Even after the story is over though, you still have to go through a tutorial to make sure you understand the basics of how to fire a weapon, so its 20-30 minutes before you are actually fire at anything than a piece of wood.
The character development in Halo is a lot of trial by fire, not so much talking but as you move through the game you get to see what Halo is and how they came to be, you also can interact with the AI (artificial intelligence) that is in your helmet while you are fighting or running to the next part of the map, but it keeps pauses in the game action and story to a minimum. In call of duty, its mission after mission with little to no interaction other than shooting, then 5 minutes of story, rinse and repeat throughout the whole game. The story is pretty repetitive in that here is the bad guy, and why he is bad, or still bad, and why we are now killing these guys. There were very few surprises other than the high resolution graphics and action scenes.
The overall appeal to the public is very vast, the series itself has made $1.7 Billion with 6 games , is a little surprising because of the fact that Halo series is only offered on one platform, the Xbox 360, unlike the Call of Duty series, which has made just over $3 Billion with 17 games, that is available on every platform available. It is surprising because the halo sales helped push the Xbox to the main stream as people had to go buy an Xbox if they wanted to play. In the recent release of both games, Halo: Reach made $200 Million its first day of sales and another $100 Million by the end of the weekend with only one platform available compared to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which was available on 4 platforms made $300 Million on its first day of sales and another $101.6 Million by the end of its opening weekend for a average of $100.4 Million per platform.
Both games boast a huge multiplayer experience that what they also both say are the meat and potatoes of the games. Halo has 13 maps to choose from and claim they have over 14 Million players that play daily while COD:MW2 boast that they have currently 25 million unique players for there game, they do not say that they log on regularly though. In multiplayer players can pit there skills against each other online to see who can shoot each other first. IN Call of Duty it is very series, no hold bars fight to the end, which a lot seem to enjoy, but with Halo they added humorous ways to die such as a plane landing on you or being ran over by a tank. Both games have what they call kill streaks where if you kill a certain number of people you get rewarded. Only call of duty does it actually help, if you kill 25 people without dying, you get a tactical nuke that kills the whole map and you win, unfortunately this is majorly exploited by groups and the games ceases to be fun.
Halo and Call of Duty games are very close in all categories but Halo still has more originality and fun built into the game to make sure that they get a repeat audience to the game instead of the same thing over and over.
Graft, Kris. "Gamasutra - News - Analyst: Halo Reach Sales Bode Well For Core Gamer Market." Gamasutra - The Art & Business of Making Games. Gamasutra.com, 16 Sept. 2010. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. <http://gamasutra.com/view/news/30466/Analyst_Halo_Reach__Sales_Bode_Well_For_Core_Gamer_Market.php>.
www.bungie.net. "Bungie.net : NON FACETE NOBIS CALCITRARE VESTRUM PERINÆUM : 4/29/2010 4:59 AM PDT." Bungie.net : Come for the Stats, Stay for the Lame Jokes. www.bungie.net, 29 Apr. 2010. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. <http://www.bungie.net/news/content.aspx?type=news&cid=25920>.
Ingraham, Tim. "Call Of Duty Series Tops 55 Million Sales | Games Industry | MCV." MCV | News, Interviews and Opinions from the Games Industry. MCV, 27 Nov. 2009. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. <http://www.mcvuk.com/news/36680/Call-Of-Duty-series-tops-55-million-sales>.
