Halo 3 and Reach. Never tried 4 or 5 so cant comment for those. But damn I enjoyed other sci fi FPS shooters a lot more and the latter games eitrher sold less or got worse reviews despite doing more or being more of the same.
COD!! I hated each one of them! What a pile of overrated crap. A mediocre, superficial series. The series' success makes no sense. There is no artistry, no depth, nothing. Same with Battlefield, Ghost Reckon, Raibow Six, Medal of Honor, etc. These bullshit games glorify war and they were literally interactive propaganda filled with idiotic stereotypes about arabs, russians, mexicans, germans etc. These games are dangerous for the uneducated and they should have been banned from the face of the earth.
World of Warcraft. and Pokemon games. These are addicting games whose success IMO rely a lot on smart design mechanisms that trigger similar addiction to gambling.
Any new Mortal Kombat game or any game that falls into that universe. If it wasnt for the tied franchises or the violence I am sure the series would have vanished.
Oh....
Wow
Well I think if you're being critical as in the sense of a food critic I think you've nailed some good points. I think Roberta Williams at her prime described these types of games as dumb games, basically fulfilling teenage boy dreams. In which, compared to the other games back that which were getting increasingly more complex, these Doom
Type games (Hexen, rise of triads, etc) were getting huge traction; there is some truth to that. Some. I'll get into where the exception lies.
However, I think in some ways, rainbow six and world of Warcraft don't apply to that. R6 actually just let you draw path lines hit the run button. You didn't even need to play the game. You could be the mission planner and tell the crew mates where to run and look. It had FPS and this frozen synapse style game all in 1.
Now for WoW, I mean there wasn't much of a loot game there, because all the loot outside of raids are reknown to be garbage filler. Players fought to organize and coordinate and beat 40 Man raids which required a great deal of coordination, downloading mods, and commitment from players.
Many players for the first time were really understanding the need to min/max, to coordinate and follow orders, to know where to stand, and watch. And I think games like WoW, are the first time in which PVE folks really got a taste of what type of dedication and skills are required to operate as a functional unit (that you would find on an esports team).
Which leads me to the exception. Roberta Williams never understood or could see the rise of eSports. She could not see this level of gameplay elevated by competition and sport. So while the games were simplistic, at the competitive level it offers something completely different, it was no longer a game with a backstory or with political issues, it was just about how your team beats the other team.
And all these shooters that are simplistic and boring in Single Player had a completely different angle to work with at the competitive level. And it's extremely rewarding to compete, because most of the time when you compete you lose. But when you start to win, you feel like you really learned something.
That feeling, of getting better, being better, and moving further up level of competition is something no single player campaign can ever emulate.
I've seldom see people fist bumping, crying, getting upset and enraged over a single player campaign, but esports. All those emotions are real.
And so. That's the exception.
