I was really impressed with this game. Sure it was short, the campaign is only around 6-8 hours (I think?) and was over before I knew it. But it was a perfect rental for me since I have really no desire to play multiplayer. I started it on a Sunday, played a bunch that day and next, then finished the last 30 min. or so on a Tuesday. I had gotten myself to a point right before the end when I quit on Monday for the night without even really realizing it. I blew up a big ship thing, and then, boom, roll credits. There's an interesting little segment after the credits that I couldn't really tell how much of an input I really had and then it was really over. I guess I was used to Halo 3 where the sections just seemed to go on and on, and on. Not that it was bad, but this one was much more trimmed down.
All the familiar enemies from the Halo series seem to make an appearance. The only new things I remember are some non-violent ostrich-like things (that were fun to shoot and I later learned that there's an achievement for killing 7 of 'em) and the dudes with purple energy shields. They're a real pain in the ass. I think Bungie realized this though, as there aren't usually too many of them all together and they don't have too great of weapons. Unrelated to anything, I swear I heard one of my squad mates say "Just like shootin' swamp rats back home!" in a thinly veiled Star Wars reference.
Another new thing that I liked was the section where you take control of a fighter plane in space. Halo has always had you trying out different vehicle types, and this is a welcome new one. How can I tell they did a really good job? Moving around in three dimensions and tracking enemy fighters wasn't difficult at all. This is often where dogfighting flying games fail for me.
So it seemed a well done and fitting end to the Bungie-designed Halo games. The text from the developers at the end was a nice thank you to the fans, and since I've now played at least the single player for all of them, I consider myself firmly in that camp.
To be brutally honest, I didn't like this one at all. I vaguely remember playing this in the arcade and the SNES & Genesis. At the time I was at least peripherally aware of NBA stars since I played basketball. This time around, I hadn't even heard of many of the teams, let alone nearly any of the stars. I mean, seriously, Oklahoma City has a team!? Who knew? My second mistake was getting this one for the Wii, when it would have probably been better for me on the Xbox or PS3. At least then I might stick around a bit to try to pick up some achievements. Originally the Wii version was supposed to have more game modes and come out first, but that all got changed at the last minute, I think. I don't know, I only sort of keep up with that stuff. So I had put the Wii version in my queue and forgotten about it.
What didn't I like about it? Well, I guess I'm just not really looking for an arcade style game like this anymore. Another problem was the control scheme on the Wii and how the shooting and jumping is mapped to flinging the remote up and back down. Much less involved than they could have made it, sure, but I kept doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. And I couldn't figure out how to JAM instead of make jumpshots and lay-ups. That just seems wrong in a game called NBA Jam.
