I honestly see nothing wrong with the Halo franchise. There's no blood (from a human perspective at least, the aliens drip some sort of plasma), no excessive swearing - although if its quieter enough you can hear the odd marine say something a bit more 'blue'. And most of the ways of disposing an enemy are quite clean either a clean cut (i.e. with no flying limbs), a melee hit or the old projectile firing weapons. I see it no different from say Jedi Academy or Unreal Tournament, plus the added bonus is your fighting and destroying aliens instead of humans games which even Jedi Academy and UT are resposible for.
I suppose the concept of killing anything non-human at any means possible, could be considered violent, atleast to old or overly religous people. Dude, this game is defaintly not violent, mind numbing, but not violent. You have to understand that there is a certain level of violence in 90% of all video games. The violence in halo is not there merely for the sake of being violent. It is there to carry along the gameplay and story.
Jurasic Park is more violent than Halo, if your mom doesnt let you watch Jurasic park, then you need to get ready to be a very lonely, and un aware person in life, because you are being sheltered.
It's not violent.
When players get hit they shimmer in a goldy force field. No blood.
Aliens bleed toothpaste.
Nothing gets ripped apart/decapitated/amputated.
The people that think Halo is violent are the same people that think Pokemon is cruel to animals because it's a game about IMAGINARY creatures fainting.
while I believe strongly that halo was much more deserving of a TEEN rating, than an M rating, saying 4 year olds should play it is a little overboard.
everytime I see a "are video games getting more violent? our studies say yes" type media deal on the tv with a 9 year old playing GTA, or Halo 2 just pisses me off.
Games have ratings for a reason. I may not agree with all of the ratings, but osme are correct.
I believe halo is fine for a teen around 12 or so(maybe a year or 2 higher) if they havent played it already.
I would most definetly NOT allow a 12 year old to play halo 2.