Love it or hate it, a lot of games are telling their "stories" in threes. Sometimes, these stories aren't planned as trilogies (Ok, they usually aren't). It's hard to say whether we actually need trilogies. I kind of like having different options, but our sequels are important, and trilogies are a way of doing it while seeming like you have a grander plan beyond exploiting sequels (and expansions). Othertimes, there are trilogies within series (look at Final Fantasy XIII, damn thing is its own trilogy now). I'm no expert. Nor have I played every game around. But I'd like to look over some of our trilogies. Here's five big ones to start:

Trilogy #1- Halo

It started as an unassuming game from a former Macintosh development team. Suddenly, they became the flagbearers for Microsoft's defective machinery. But the games made their mark and helped influence the shooter genre in a big way.

Halo: Combat Evolved- It was a shock. I hated console FPS before Halo. And Halo changed everything. It brought the core PC values of the genre over to consoles. Immediately at Halo's release, Rare's shooters became obsolete. Bungie held the crown. But was it a fluke?

Halo 2- Nope. Halo 2 lived up to the hype and then some. Halo 2 suffered a bit in people's eyes because it had a bad ending. But story isn't the main reason to play, going online meant we were in for the first truly great online game for consoles. Play whatever you want, have your favorites, but nothing beat Halo 2.

Halo 3- Bungie ended the series spectacularly, with a game that played essentially like a 12 hour ending. It also still stands as one of the best-paced shooters ever made. Online was improved even further and innovative ideas were introduced with the metagame and Forge.

What's Next?- Well, we had a spin-off, a prequel and a remake of the original game. Now Microsoft are set for the second trilogy, which they are calling The Reclaimer Trilogy. I doubt I'll play it though. The days of Halo's superiority have come to an end. It's officially a brand now, and that leaves little hope for continued innovation and inspired design. I'm sure the games will be fine, but it's time for me to move on.

Trilogy #2- Gears of War

Easily one of the most influential series of this gen. Gears of War has become synonymous with shooter gameplay these days as each game is praised for being better than the competition.

Gears of War- A fantastic game. It took a lot of the best parts of lesser (and better) games by borrowing mechanics from Resident Evil 4 and Kill.Switch among others and blending them to create a visually intense shooter with some fantastic level design and awesome cooperative play.

Gears of War 2- Despite all the praise the game received, I found it to be a bloated and glitchy mess. Design was subpar and funneled you forward more often than not, rather than leaving you hunkered down behind a slab of rock, fighting for inches of tactical superiority. It at least introduced Horde mode, but that's a cheap substitute for a lackluster campaign and (at the time of its release) busted multiplayer.

Gears of War 3- I played some cooperative play. It was entertaining enough. I have to give Epic credit for not compromising on the design of the game in the face of Call of Duty's dominance. Gears of War requires skill to play, and it's difficult to go online and win. But Epic have a genuinely unique game in those regards. My experience was short-lived though.

What's Next?- People Can Fly are developing a prequel with Baird as the star. People Can Fly are OK, I guess. But with CliffyB out of the picture, I don't know how the series will fare. It's clear the guy hates handholding, linear as Gears of War is, but I'll be sad to see the series lose some of its edge without him.

Trilogy #3- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Being friends with one of the original designers of the game makes for awkward conversations when he tells me how much better Modern Warfare 2 is than Modern Warfare 3. Then again, he's got a point. It is better. Of course, he thinks Modern Warfare 2 is a good game and that Infinity Ward as they are now, Sledgehammer and Treyarch are all losers (well, they are, but still)

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare- Not a bad game at all. It's the definition of a rollercoaster ride. But it does so with expert pacing. Pacing can make or break a game, and Call of Duty 4 nailed it. All the dramatic highs of the game were punctuated by some scenic downtime. All Ghillied Up was an atmospheric break that just had you enveloped in the mission. Ignore the fact that it's designed as a "Follow the leader" type level and look at how the dramatic highs are broken up with actual breathing room. Add in some fun multiplayer ideas and you have a pretty good game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2- Busted. The campaign is a mess of "LOOK AT HOW BADASS THESE EXPLOSIONS ARE!!!!" It's poorly designed and suffers from having the protagonist get killed way too many times. You play like five roles because everyone dies. It was a novel thing in Call of Duty 4 when your American player died and you walked his death. It was a dramatic high of the bomb going off and that somber low as you watched yourself die. In Modern Warfare 2, it's cheapened. You just freaking die. And someone new takes your place. To die. And at the end you're Soap again. Great. And that multiplayer? Glitchy and exploited to hell. And that auto-aim? Yeah, that thing was cranked to 11.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3- I don't remember it. I fell asleep on my cousin's couch after playing for an hour. That's all that needs to be said. For all I know, it might not even be a trilogy. But I just felt like pointing out that Modern Warfare 3 put my ass to sleep. It was like 6 PM. Nothing should put me to sleep at 6 PM.

What's Next?- Who cares? They all play the same. Respawn are busy making their own game to battle what they created in the first place. Call of Duty won't change, but maybe the original creators can try a new idea.

Trilogy #4- Mass Effect

Mass Effect has the benefit of starting out as a planned trilogy. So you figure BioWare's opus would translate well to the three game format. Thankfully, it does, even if it has a few missteps.

Mass Effect- An ambitious game that plays like a real-time KotOR. I can do without all of the drawn out explanations in dialogue and the side missions are boring. But the gameplay is well-executed, the lore and universe is nearly unmatched and the narrative is entertaining. Decisions are generally black and white.

Mass Effect 2- BioWare drops the ball here. It's clear that they wanted a TPS type game with ME, and they went that route with ME2. They just had no idea how to design it properly. Add in a subpar endgame, that Suicide Mission is a joke, and constricting level design that really bears down on you with cookie-cutter enemy placement and worse AI and you have a disappointing sequel. Decisions are also, still black and white.

Mass Effect 3- BioWare's ultimate success. Mass Effect 3 is everything the team has strived to create since 2003's Knights of the Old Republic. A smooth flowing hybrid that finally brings in real-time gameplay done successfully and utlized with genuine RPG elements. The level design is spectacular and the enemy AI is far improved. Of course, Mass Effect 3 is suffering from the Halo 2 syndrome. People think it s predecessors are better just because the ending wasn't that good. Oh joy. Whatever will we do? A videogaming ending that wasn't good. Never heard of that before. It definitely doesn't get the recognition for finally having a morally gray choice available throughout the game. A success in every way that counts. It's too bad that people are hung up over the last five minutes.

What's Next?- At the end of Mass Effect 3 a thank you message comes up stating BioWare's intentions to develop more games within the series. Apparently, people just realized this and are abuzz with news of Mass Effect 4. Whatever the case, it simply can't be a sequel. Just how the ending worked. To keep it within the same universe it needs to be a prequel or a parallel story. It'll be nice to visit the Drell homeworld for instance, *hint hint.* Though the doctors are gone, I don't think they needed to stay. Their time was up in this industry. They literally moved BioWare up to its highest possible point. Anything else would simply be impossible. They did good. Now its time to leave the genre in the hands of the younger devs.

Trilogy #5- Metroid Prime

Metroid Prime had all the promise in the world. Nintendo managed to finally, after a full system generation without the fan-favorite girl, find a developer that could capture the spirit of Metroid, and *gasp* manage to make it succeed as a, wait for it, first person shooter.

Metroid Prime- A miracle. One of the greatest games of all time. Unrivaled in how spectacular it is. A shooter for a different breed of gamer. Superior level design, all interconnected across worlds, with fantastic environmental puzzles and imposing boss battles make for one of the most genuinely excellent games of all time.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes- But miracles only happen once, and it's never easy to stand on the shoulders of giants. Metroid Prime 2 is a great game. It features some solid level design, some good puzzles and some nifty boss battles. But it lacks the ambition of the original and, depressingly, feels like a key hunt that's just dragged over the span of 20 hours. Prime hid its flaws by being fresh. Echoes however never corrected them. It is however, to this day, the most atmospheric game released. It is genuinely alien, in a wonderful way. A great game, some would say a superior game in terms of the ramped up difficulty and atmosphere, but its flaws are too noticable.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption- A fititng title for the game as it corrupted everything we had come to expect from the Prime series and Metroid in general. I stopped playing it halfway through because it was that bad. I picked it up again after a year, refusing to go through the first half of the game, just to see if it got better. A linear mess with a focus on gunplay with braindead AI, poor level design, worse narrative that detracts from the atmosphere, and a sense of childish urgency that belongs in the 1990's. Metroid Prime 3 is a disgrace to the trilogy and the series at large. Whatever problems folks may have had with Other M that they praise Corruption is flat-out stupid. If Other M is worse than Prime 3, that's no reason to praise this game for being better.

What's Next?- Nothing thankfully. Other M was generally considered a disaster (I honestly think people are over-reacting, just as they did with Mass Effect 3, but whatever). Metroid Prime 3 showed that Retro is completely out of ideas for the series and that they have no clue on how to move it forward. They should look to Demon's/Dark Souls for inspiration, honestly. Metroid Prime tells its story in a similar way, while the third game betrays that in every way imaginable. Brooding atmosphere and a story told through the environment is what we need, similar to the first two games. It also needs to avoid the "collect these keys/powercells/artifacts" to get to the final boss. Whatever is in store for Metroid, more Demon's/Dark Souls inspiration, less Halo. Halo's a success for doing its own thing, Metroid needs to be a success for doing its own thing and it lost its way this gen.
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Like I said, I haven't played every trilogy out there. The PlayStation ones elude me, so I have no idea how God of War, Resistance, Killzone and Uncharted fare with their respective entries. But if you feel like sharing let me know.