Halo 3 on Feminist Friday

I have finally completed both games now in the Halo 3… franchise? Series? What do you call it? Anyway, Halo 3 and Halo 3 ODST, and they were pretty fun games. It reminded me of the joy of the Halo games, the excellent story and gameplay they combined to make some of the definitive FPS experiences.

I don’t tend to play the realistic shooters (Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, these sorts of things), and so Halo, Timesplitters, or Borderlands are more my sort of game. The stories that can be built once you’re freed from the real world sorts of conflicts and interplay are interesting. I’m not looking for the violence, or for the mulitplayer; I’ll take story and co-op. And playing through the Halo 3 games I wasn’t co-op: so just the story, then.

So while the gameplay elements are all there to make Halo 3 like the two previous installments, by the end I realized they had ended up leaning on a crutch to complete their story, and it kind of bothered me. So then, I got to playing Halo 3 ODST and the larger cast of characters was fun, and nostalgic of Firefly (as I mentioned the other day). But then, they reminded me of a character I was missing: the female captain, voiced by Tricia Helfer. Both games dip into an interesting place regarding their female characters, and so I thought I would consider both games here on Friday, as part of the larger Feminist Friday movement. What happened to my Halo games? Spoilers for much of Halo!

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Catching Up – Video Games We’ve Been Playing Since We Got Our PS3

I feel like we’ve played a lot of video games lately – I think we moved into a video-game phase when we bought a new (for us) console, the PS3. And I don’t feel like we’ve written much about the games we’ve played lately, because we’ve almost moved too quickly through them. We’ve mentioned them in passing, as we’ve started them. Or as we finished.

And maybe that’s okay, as many of these games have been out a while. Maybe the point where talking about them is interesting has passed. However, I’m sure there are many games you, faithful reader, are also considering and haven’t played yet. So maybe we’ll spark a thought for you.

Lightning Returns arrived today (finally!) and I have a feeling it is going to consume our time, and pull us away from other games. Which is too bad, but it also means I kind of want to get these games out of my system before we move completely on! So here’s a lightning round (pun intended?) of the games we’ve been playing lately, my quick thoughts and recommendations on them. Onward!