[Bard09]

I've seen a few of these threads come and go, and it just occured to me:

Aren't we separating game quality from gaming milestones?

Myst was THE game to get people to purchase CD-ROM drives.
The 7th Guest was the FIRST game to exist on a CD-ROM drive.
The Sims made PC Gaming profitable on an entirely different level (to the mass public).
Halo on its own introduced hundreds of different types of console gamers to the addictive nature of co-op gameplay (not everyone who bought an X-Box remembers NES titles like River City Ransom).
Warcraft II popularized the RTS and was pretty much the first big RTS game for LAN play.
KoToR made Star Wars and the D&D RPG "cool" for people who wouldn't get between 200 ft of dice or a lightsaber.
Half-Life proved that dedicated communities could make or break the life of a game.

I think it's easy to get out your magnifying glasses and point out the holes in the development quality of these games. But these games are also the pinnacles of PC and console-gaming history, despite the fact that they might not individually be perfect games.

I know I'm on my high horse, here, so I'll get off.

But to go with earlier posters, I absolutely agree with the comments about Halo. I was a DIE-HARD fan of the game when it was going to be produced on the Mac by the "original" Bungie. Back when it was going to be a third-person, over-the-shoulder squad-based tactical shooter. Bungie clearly had to make some major concessions when they were bought by Microsoft and the engine and level design were the first things to get scrapped. I was disappointed to see Halo switch to first-person as much as I was disappointed with the repetitive level design at the end of the game.

Still, there are points when playing through single player Halo when you just go, "Damn." And that's why I love it.