Halo: Combat Evolved was a game that revolutionized the world of video games. Even to this day, the Halo franchise is a powerful force in the world of video games (not necessarily for good reasons, looking at you REC packs). Many of my friends grew up loving this franchise and idolizing Master Chief. I was not one of those people, here's why. Before I get into this I just want to say I don't hate Halo its just as a kid I preferred other games and this is why.
1. No aiming down sights
In shooters, I try to be as accurate as possible when I shoot. I lean towards things like single shot rifles and snipers instead of shotguns or high rate of fire rifles. It was just how I liked to shoot. The shooter I grew up playing was Call of Duty, particularly Call of Duty 2: The Big Red One. So when I went over to my friend's house and we played Halo, something was always off. In the early days of Halo, not all guns could aim down their sights.
When I found this out it baffled me. Why would you not want to aim down the sights? Shotguns and rocket launchers made sense but rifles and SMGs just seemed wrong without sights. It bothered me since I was so used to aiming down the sights to be as accurate as I could be.
2. Master Chief is a boring character
I've always liked stories. I particularly like the stories in video games. The possibilities are endless in the world of video games. Which is why I'm saddened that Master Chief is such a boring character. He is a yes man. All he ever does is follow orders, at least until Halo 5. I get that he is a badass that has saved the galaxy from the flood and worked with the Arbiter and whatnot. He can do all of that but he can't act human for 10 seconds.
3. The weapons were boring
It feels like when they were making the game, the human weapons were just going down a checklist. Full auto rifle? Check. Burst Rifle? Check. Sniper Rifle? Check. etc etc. The alien weapons were the more interesting ones to me.
That was the case until you look at them and most of them are the human weapons but they fire plasma which works functionally identically. Only the sword, needler, and gravity hammer were interesting, and that's because two of those were melee weapons.
So all in all, the guns were uninteresting, the main character was just a dude that follows orders, and I couldn't be as accurate as I wanted to. All of that made for an experience that felt more like something that should've been in the bargain bin instead of the thing my friends wouldn't shut up about. All of this isn't to say Halo is bad, I have lost many hours to playing this with my friends, Halo was just not as interesting to me as other games when I was a kid