You say Halo, and I say Goodbye... (apologies to Paul and John!)

Finally, after months of aborted attempts, I have finished Halo 5: Guardians. to be honest, I perhaps could have finished this game earlier but it turned out to be a bit of a slog.

Firstly though, a bit of background...

I have been playing Halo games since the original Halo: Combat Evolved back on the original X-Box. Indeed, since then, the only titles of the series I have missed are the two Halo Wars titles (never in 20 years have I gotten used to playing a real time strategy game using a console controller) and the twin stick shooter Spartan Assault.

I shall be honest and admit that I have enjoyed the storyline of the first three games, even forgiving that ending in Halo 2 but, looking back, cracks started to show in thst title that grew progressively worse as the series continued.

Halo: Combat Evolved was a marvellous, self contained adventure which, leaving room for an obvious sequel, did a fine job lof having a beginning, middle and end. Halo 2 pushed that story further yet made a cardinal error that Guardians repeated: you kept being pulled away from the series main character, the Master Chief. Indeed, whilst Halo 2 added to the series mythos that paid off handsomely in Halo 3, the first sequel suffered from a rushed devlopment, off-kilter game design and a terrible, terrible ending.

Halo 3 stepped up the pace when it debuted on the X-Box 360 and gave the first game a close run for it's money quality wise. The extra development time allowed Bungie to properly flesh out the story and add a degree of polish that demonstrated what Microsoft's then new console could do. It's companion piece, Halo 3: ODST provided a nice little side story and offered a different way of playing in the Halo universe as you were no longer a super soldier, just a trained grunt. Having said that, they did feel a little soulless despite the promise that the story would be wrapped up in a proper conclusion. All told, though, the trilogy was complete.

Of course, the success of the trilogy meant that it was worth too much money to let things lie there. Enter stage right, Halo 4. This title introduced a new set of villains to take over from the Covenant and the Flood. This time, it was to be the Prometheans. As the first proper game created by 343 Industries after the handover from Bungie (whose final Halo game, Halo: Reach was perhaps their best after Halo: CE), it had a lot to live up and it tried really, really hard. But... (there is always s but)...

The Prometheans were boring, too much a bullet sponge and just plain annoying. The story piled complexity upon complexity in order to kick start another trilogy and felt undercooked. Halo 4 was both a technical wonder and a sign that the decline hinted at in 2 and 3 had been joined in the move to a new developer by something worse: Hubris.

You see, by this time, there were Halo books, comics, webisodes, limited TV series and the like that built upon and expanded the mythology. And yeah, these were designed to hoover up your money, never mind the quality. I did read a couple of the early novels but soon lost interest. There was a short series, "Forward Unto Dawn", followed by "Halo: Nightfall" that, given their budgets and background, were not too shabby at all. They provided background to the new series of games and, when Halo 5: Guardians was released, the story of that game required a hefty level of knowledge from these additional sources if you wanted to understand what the hell was going on. I didn't have that knowledge.

So, after piling through the missions, watching the cutscenes (and marvelling at gaining an achievement for one mission by walking and pressing X once to talk to a character), I finished the game feeling at best ambivalent and, at worst, like I had wasted my time. I cared not for the characters and the story made no sense, mostly because I lacked the background knowledge that spending a couple of hundred pounds would have fixed. The gane itself had a co-op mode that was of no use to mesonI had three AI colleagues who, no matter what happened to them, remained with me at the end of each level because the story demanded that. There was also the issue that you spent half the game not playing as the titular lead character. It may have helped the story but the whole point of playing Halo (certainly CE, 3 and 4) was that you are the Master Chief. Guardians took another step away from the clean design and style of CE (which itself stands up very well after 16 years or so) and brought in too many extra ingredients that spoiled the broth.

Looking back from every game in the series I have played, Halo CE remains, in my humble opinion, the best of the bunch. Halo's 3, 3 ODST and Reach all stack up pretty well, but 2, 4 and Guardians are poorer relations.

Where does this leave me? Well, I still have the Master Chief Collection so I can see a time where I will have another play through of CE again. Will I play Guardians again? Probably not. Will I buy the next Halo game when it is eventually released? Hmmm, maybe... Maybe not. I picked up Guardians for £15 and that, to be honest, was probably a tad pricey. If Halo 6 (or whatever it ends up being called) follows Guardians in style and gameplay, then I'm out. If they step back from the co-op play and set out a cleaner, more focussed story, then possibly, nay probably, I'll get a copy at somepoint. however, looking at the slaes figures and critical reaction for Guardians, I don't think i am the only one whobmay be leaving the series...

2020 World at War - a book review

This book neatly and succinctly sets its aims out at the very beginning. What if there were a modern day take on the seminal work "The Third World War" by General Sir John Hackett? Bookending the contributor scenarios, the editor does a good job of highlighting not only the dangers of predicting the future but also the timey, wimey, wibbly, wobbly nature of such works. Sadly, it falls foul of the very goal it aims for.

Each of the sections takes a slightly different take on world geopolitics between 2017 and 2020. Needless to say, Brexit, Islamic terrorism and China feature heavily. To be fair, some aren't bad, though real life events have already taken over several of these scenarios (the 2017 General Election being just one example). As such, it falters in its, admittedly "we are not worthy" comparision to Hackett's work.

The key problem is that Hackett and his contributors had time on their side. Their book was published in 1978 (and the follow up in 1982) and this gave them plenty of time between publication and their speculative future 1985. With 2020, there isn't that gap. already dated in some aspects, it becomes far less interesting when the speculation it provides has already been removed from the bounds of probability by actual events. A similar fate has befallen 2017: War with Russia, although that tome did smack of being an opportunist rather than a more considered approach like 2020.

Still, some of the scenarios are interesting and there are one or two that could have been expanded, rather than just being left as more of a teaser.

Overall, it's not a bad book by any means and if you have any interest in speculative fiction, I advise you to give it a go. Just try not to hold them to their Hackett comparisons.