Halo 2 Wank
Recently, HBO, arguably the world's most popular Halo fansite, linked an obscure gaming blog known as Tied the Leader. The authour is self-confessedly a Halo 2 fanboy. Pawing back through the archives, I discover a post with 92 comments, compared to the blogs usual, oh, two.

"Bungie. Smarter Than You."
This post is the single farthest I have ever seen anyone go just to say "STFU" and Reducto Ad Nitpicker. (admittedly, some of the complaints he quotes are ridiculous, such as blaming Bungie for the fact that a controller thrown 'cross a room will break) The comments are all either "I agree" or "ur wrong". A good number of them seem to come from Halo2Sucks, a website mentioned prominently in the article.

It is apparent to most now that the level of skill involved in Halo: Combat Evolved was a fluke. The spawn weapon that was your only hope against someone with a power weapon (rocket or sniper) was never intended to be what it was. Three shot kills! Oops - Now you’re not automatically dead if you spawn next to someone with a rocket! Evidenced by the fact that your first weapon in Slayer Pro was the Assault Rifle, Bungie apparently intended Halo C/E to be the spray and pray game that Halo 2 is designed to be. The pistol was simply overlooked (Quote Bungie: “Pistol sniping whores!”).

Listen to me: BATTLE RIFLE.

Good thing for us. Good thing for Bungie. Everyone knows Halo C/E would have never had the staying power that it did (and still does) without the pistol.

And here we are, over a year after H2 was released, and it has been on top of XBox Live for how much of that time?

Tournaments would have never been held, LANs would have been few and far between, and hardly anyone would know what XBC was. I can just picture the Ogre twins running around spraying players with an AR on Hang ‘Em High at MLG, and game after game of Blood Gulch on XBC with Plasma Pistols.

So you’re Bungie, you don’t intend to create the near perfect game of Halo, but you do. And unless your stupid, after 3 years you have to have some sort of clue of what made it so great. You now have a Working Formula. Now, Halo 2 proponents say, “Bungie never intended for Halo C/E to be such a skillful game so you are stupid to complain about Halo 2, which is what Bungie intended for Halo to be anyway.” This is just brilliant. So, Bungie stumbles across greatness by sheer luck, and they should neglect the greatness and go back to plan A for the sequel???

Using this logic, we can assert that Christopher Columbus should have turned right back around when he landed in the Americas. "Wow! Fertile soil, beautiful land, and wonderful opportunities! But, then again, I was never looking for this land in the first place. Let’s all go back, not tell anyone about it, and just start trying to circle the globe again (Plan A)". Good thing Columbus didn’t work for Bungie.

what

If you've been reading carefully, you'll note that they ignored the entire reason the Pistol was switched out; n00bs weren't using it, ditching it for the assault rifle. Speaking of which, I've barely played H1, and on one occasion I charged a guy with a rocket launcher and took him out with said rifle about two seconds before the match ended.* My point? The AR is remarkably underrated, and the battle rifle is only slightly weaker than the pistol.
In short, they're basically Halomians. Their website contains such gems as this, which purportes to be from a former Bungie consultant. I'm not sure if it's a parody or serious. The forum has a post wherin a guy figures out that the game sucks from playing it once. Also, Halo 2 is dead. It's the weapons! It's not the fact that I suck! Honest! And an entire subforum more.

From the replies on the TtL post;

Halo 2 fans:
Imagine that. A game that rewards the player for being smart. Here's an idea! Learn to counter the weapons! The OP speaks! It's a slippery slope, man! Um, you've started a war. "LT Colonel Halo Hater, Sir." is now in my vocabulary.


H2S:
Having to find good weapons and make do with one's spawns=weapon whoring. Dual weilding=easy kill. Not what they wanted=bad. Pardon me while I miss the point. I call you on your error while missing the larger point! Ur a moran! H2S is t3h revolution! Halo 2 would be good if it were the first in a series.

Neutral:
STOP WANKING. Look! I can use latin! This post seems to have been written about another fandom entirely (*cough*PrinceOfPersia*cough*). I'm sorry, I seem to have lost my point.

Dramatic Reading forthcoming.
EDIT: Dramatic reading of the H2S SoI done. Can anyone torrent it? Knowing F_W, Yousendit will drop the file by nightfall.

*Bragging? Where?