Which Game? Please Help Me Decide.

Okay so I just got an Xbox 360 for Christmas and my mom is allowing me to buy one game for it (for no of course lol), but I am having a TOUGH time deciding which game.

- Halo: Reach
- Call of Duty: Black Ops
- Mass Effect 2

So which game? Halo Reach looks insanely awesome [and is better than Halo 3 I'm hoping, lol]. Playing as a spartan looks cool, also. Black Ops is the most popular game right now and a lot of my friends have it and told me to get it. But, the campaign doesn't look so fun and playing on live looks like the only "fun" for COD Black Ops. Mass Effect 2 looks extremely awesome. The first Mass Effect changed the way we looked at the Action/RPG genre and proved that the folks at BioWare have enough creativity to keep themselves in business for years to come. Mass Effect 2 has been rated #1 on many sites.
 

Lamppost

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well i have all three of them and the only one i really like is mass effect 2.

Halo: Reach gets extremely boring extremely fast and black ops is just about the same thing as mw2 which is also really boring.
 

az

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kinda sounds like you've already decided for yourself there, good buddy!

i personally find the halo franchise intensely boring and uninnovative, so i'd skip that (you are guaranteed more of the same)

cod was never my thing either but i hear from cod fanatics black ops is a step down from its predecessor

haven't played me2 but i have heard great things, and if you enjoyed me1 i don't see why you wouldn't enjoy me2
 

reyscarface

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I dont have Mass Effect, but as you and az said ive heard very good things of it.

Halo Reach is very fun when you first get it, after a month you wont be playing it though. Gets boring incredibly fast, repetitive, too.

Id tell you to buy Black Ops, solely because im one of those casual players that only get games for their Multiplayer value and to play with my friends / Smogon players, therefore im biased towards "more mainstream" games. But being honest, the multiplayer blows, at least for me, barely ever play it. Only thing that keeps me hooked is zombies, which I play a fuckload and havent gotten bored of it yet, but the only good map out is getting old and probably the whole gametype will get boring soon, but im not sure.

So yeah, if you dont care about playing much with your friends on Live, probably Mass Effect is the best pick for you, as in the OP you make emphasis on wanting a good campaign mode.
 

Lamppost

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Mass Effect has a great campaign and story.

Call of Duty also has a really good campaign but it's pretty short and everyone just buys it for the multiplayer.

So if you just want a good campaign go with mass effect as reyscarface said
 
I'd say that Black Ops is a decent choice for you, if you do enjoy playing with friends. I'm not as big a fan of the series as I once was, but I do think that if you like the multiplayer it brings and have a good group of friends to play it with, you'll get a lot of game time off of it.

I heard Reach's playerbase went drastically down. Like, if you aren't playing at peak times, only the major game modes will have good connections. However, if you were a big Halo fan, I've heard from a lot of the hardcore lot that this was the best of the series, so it'd still be solid pick I guess.

I can't really say much about ME2 other than all the praise I've heard with it. If you're okay with buying a game that you might beat and not want to play again for a while, this should probably be your choice. You could always buy the DLC for it, or just any Xbox Live Arcade game when you're done with it.
 
The only reason to ever consider CoD is for the multiplayer, but even then it doesn't change drastically enough between games to make Black Ops the "must buy" of the franchise. The campaign alright but nothing worthwhile, and the multiplayer is forgettable (if you look at the Smogon thread, a lot of people are already burnt out on it). It isn't worth my recommendation, even if your friends have it. Based on the few sentences you gave, single player is just as important as (if not more than) multiplayer, so if you're really interested in the CoD franchise (and not considering it solely on peer pressure), I'd recommend the Call of Duty Saga pack (contains Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2). MW1 is my personal favorite for multiplayer but it's quite old and lobby sizes are pretty small. Modern Warfare 2 is still ridiculously popular and a lot of people prefer it to Black Ops.

Now it sounds like you have experience with the Halo series and yes, Halo Reach is better than Halo 3 in pretty much every fashion. Some would argue that multiplayer isn't as competitive (read: hardcore) but that should hardly bother you. It is pretty cool to play with a Spartan but even better than that is that you can customize every aspect of your appearance. Campaign is pretty great, well paced and enough action to keep it interesting. Multiplayer is pretty fun but I'm not going to pretend it doesn't get old after awhile. I haven't touched the game since I beat it on Legendary, even though a new map pack was released. Forge is pretty great if you're into map creation, and there's always Firefight but it's not what it was in ODST.

Mass Effect 2 deserves every ounce of praise it has received. There's a lot of replayability and the universe itself is incredibly immersion. I really recommend playing the original Mass Effect first, but if you're unable to get a copy of that it can work as a standalone, but you lose a lot of the flavor. On top of all of this your progress will be importable to Mass Effect 3 when it comes out!

So all in all, if you enjoy deep gameplay experiences regardless of single/multiplayer, get Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 2 is easily the "best" game of your options, but of course each game has their own perks (the others being multiplayer). Since it's considerably cheaper than Reach or Black Ops maybe you can con your way into Mass Effect 1 also ;P Oh and if you're fast enough, all Mass Effect 2 DLC is on sale today for 200MS a piece (so 600 total, ala $7.50). Fantastic deal, if you plan to get the game regardless of your decision now (and have MS points) you can grab that DLC for reserve until you actually own the game.
 
it's really no competition, I own all three games and the one I've easily put the most time in is mass effect 2. Blops is quite fun if you're playing with friends, but without them it's the shits, campaign isn't too bad but short. Reach can also be fun but again mostly only with friends, forge is really awesome in this game though. Mass Effect has an amazing story and also sex @_@ but seriously it's a great game with some cool environments and characters.
 

Firestorm

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Have you played Mass Effect? If you can, convince your parents to grab you both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 as that'll run you the same price as Halo Reach and codblops. Halo Reach was a good game but I liked ME quite a bit more. Much more satisfying single player campaigns. codblops I wouldn't recommend as people will have moved on in a year when the next one comes out and I've never found the games particularly interesting.
 
I've also been told codbo is a step down from its predecessor, and I've played Halo Reach, it's not amazing, but it isnt bad. I got black ops for christmas, and I'm currently playing it, only bad thing is I got it for the wii, so the wifi factor of it is non-existent, making it almost irrelevant for me to play. I'd personally go for Halo though, as I've never played Mass Effect, and there are far better halo players than black ops players on the 360. Also its really fun to troll the 40 year olds on reach until you get banned.
 
Haven't played ME2 but I played 1 and loved every second of it, I'd definitely get ME2 because I heard Black Ops is pretty awful and Halo is only fun when it comes to the Matchmaking, and even then you get bored pretty quickly, I'm assuming Black Ops is the same way.
 
If you want the most playtime per dollar, get COD. Mass Effect 2 is a loooong game that encourages more than one playthrough and Reach has decent multiplayer, but black ops trumps both by having a massive amount of modes and unlockables in its multiplayer. When regular multiplayer on black ops gets boring just play zombies until it feels fresh again and vice versa when zombies gets boring.

This is coming from someone who's last mainstream FPS game purchase was COD4 though, so take it with a grain of salt.
 
I am still one of the few that prefers Halo over Call of Duty. I can't stand CoD. Everyone buys it for the multiplayer anyways. Halo: Reach has completely custom maps you can make, endless waves of survival in Firefight mode, and the usual multiplayer stuff.

Mass Effect 2 is going to take more of your time though and unless you played the first one, I wouldn't recommend playing the ME2 just yet. The story line is very involved and just jumping into the middle of it would ruin a lot of things. Anyways if you prefer more RPG in a shooter than you want Mass Effect.

Also, @popemobile, practically every shooter has a zombie like species in it. Zombies are overused.
 

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