imo Halo realy started becoming unpopular once they realeased halo wars, odst, and alot of people didnt like what they did with reach. it seamed almost as if they were going the cod rout and realeasing a lesser and worse quality game every single year instead of what they used to do when they would realease a new better quality game, what, every 3 years i believe it was. Also cod gets a ton of undeserving hype. And this is coming form a person that actualy kind of ejoys the game just because it is so easy lol. another thing that kind of lowered my halo multiplayer experience was when they made party chat. I remember being able to go into games and communicate with people, or attempt to comunicate with people. I feel like that added to the multyplayer experience, and i sadly think that that is a feature that will never come back because every body is always in party chat. also now there is more competition in multyplayer games. Halo, Cod, BF, Gears, etc.... Halo used to be one of the only games that was REALY REALY good for multyplayer, heck, halo still proubably is one of the better qualtiy games, every body just buys into the hype from game reviewers and stuff. and as for those review places giving strange or crazy reviews, you would have to think that with how much money games like Cod make, they could practicaly buy a positive review if they wanted. its very interesting.