The Zero Punctuation videoblog at The Escapist proves that it's much easier to be funny when criticizing something than praising it, and their review of Halo 3 is indeed funny. I just can't figure out if it's funny for the sake of it, or whether the reviewer honestly dislikes the game as much as the review says and being funny is just a byproduct of that.

However, all I can think of watching the recycled criticisms (the game is short, the story is incomprehensible) is that I don't see the basis for them. At all. Estimates of game length are all over the board, from 8 to 20 hours. And yet all of these are called "short". Compared to what? Oblivion? Are all games supposed to deliver the same number of hours of play for a single price point? Is it fair to hold Halo 3 to that standard while saying "I don't give a flying shit about multiplayer"?

Would this stuff be deemed funny if someone lampooned the plot of The Return of the King from the perspective of someone who had neither read nor seen The Fellowship of the Ring or the Two Towers and therefore didn't know anything about these wacky short people called Grunts Hobbits and this all-powerful Halo Ring everybody is on about?

Game too short? Man up and quit playing on Normal, or be grateful you're able to finish the game in short order and so get on to the next one.

Difficulty is schizophrenic? Why, because it doesn't ramp up in a smooth curve? Where is it written every game should do that? If the plot dictates certain kinds of encounters to support it, sometimes large, sometimes small, sometimes difficult, sometimes not, what's wrong with that?

Tone is schizophrenic? Because the game sometimes tries to scare you (Flood) and sometimes tries to be funny (Grunts)? My God, a game can't try and do two things. Game reviewers don't have that kind of attention span.

I honestly can't figure out some of the logic here. To finish the game so fast as to call it "criminally short", you've got to be playing on Normal or perhaps below. Then the complaint comes that the friendly AI can't even gun, and that doesn't make sense at all. Play The Storm on Heroic and there are parts where you can stay out of the battle entirely and in a few moments the Marines will have made short work of two Wraiths; this review makes it sound like they can't hit the broad side of a barn, which isn't true. They can. The problem is, they do it whether they're gunning or driving.

Why is shortness the major complaint? Why are people unhappy not to have more of something they claim not to like? Again, the real objection here seems to be: Halo 3 is terribly popular. The reviewer takes exception to this (he also didn't like Bioshock, either) and laments the fact that no matter how funny the review is, that can't be changed.