The Halo series is considered to be one of the greatest first person shooter franchises of all-time since its inception back in the early 2000’s. The original Halo game came out on the original Xbox console back in ’01 and was arguably one of the few titles along with Unreal Tournament ’99 that helped revolutionize the first-person shooter genre of gaming. The older Halo games from the 2000’s were considered to be more memorable and have lasting appeal mainly due to Bungie being the developer for almost every game from ’01-’10. There are many people who would go on record and argue that Halo 2 and Halo 3 from ’04-’07 were among the best entries within the entire franchise to this day. Halo 3 was a game that eventually sold more than 14 million copies worldwide following its release on Xbox 360 in ’07. Halo 3 arguably had the best campaign mode in the entire franchise in relation to the 2000’s decade and the 8v8 multiplayer gameplay was something that Bungie perfected in a era where online gaming was growing in popularity. Halo 3 had features that most AAA first person shooter games do not have in this day and age. While games like Halo: Reach from 2010 was good it was not on the same level as Halo 2 and Halo 3. While Halo: Reach was a step down from Halo 3 the game had redeemable features including robust customization options, interesting characters along with a compelling storyline.

It seems like the quality of Halo games began to decline towards the start of the 2010’s with Halo 4 falling below many people’s desired expectations. Halo 4 was released back in 2012 and was one of the first major Halo titles that 343 Industries developed. Halo 4 was a game that had nice aesthetics in terms of how the open world environment looked but campaign mode was forgettable and the storyline failed the capture the interest of players. The love story between Master Chief and Contra was a bit of a turn off after having the main character woke up from a cryogenic sleep for an extended period of time. Halo 4 has also marked the start of the Reclaimer Saga and the introduction of new adversaries known as Prometheans. The story for Halo 4 was not nearly as interesting a Halo 3 which involved the Covenant and the Flood. Halo 4 was not necessarily a bad game but it definitely could have been better. Halo 5: Guardians was another game developed by 343 Industries that had refined gameplay compared to Halo 4 but the story was really no good. The idea of Master Chief disappearing in Halo 5: Guardians was uninteresting especially since he was considered to be the main protagonist in earlier Halo games. Even though, Halo 5: Guardians managed to reach around 5 million copies in sales following its release for Xbox One in 2015 it was unable to touch Halo 3 in relation to commercial success. There is no question that the 2000’s was a much better for the Halo franchise compared to the 2010’s especially since Bungie was the developer of the older games.