I have nothing against M$ as far as producing goes. Developers under their [huge] wing have had nothing but the most of both time and monetary resources, and that almost always spells good games.
Halo, however, was a good game. Just a good game. It wasn't the damned second coming of Christ everybody thought it was. It was a straight-played by-the-books generic shooter. However, all people saw were the 1534 layers of polish it had. (NOT the pc version, that had -453 polish.)