Another interesting article mentioned by HBO's Louis Wu is at GameStudies. This one takes a look at Halo, and suggests that it's more genre breaking than it seems-- with an emphasis on the work break :
All in all, Halo triumphs in understanding the anatomy of the FPS, pulling many of the right strings. It even manages to implement the FPS control system to the Xbox gamepad very well. Halo doesn't lack innovativeness. Rather, its innovativeness lies in its ability to mix. The game does not come up with ground-breaking yet simple design solutions, e.g. substituting the generic seek conflict convention with avoid conflict , as Thief - the Dark Project did. It does not have (under-used) gimmicks like the geo-mod feature in Red Faction, or the role-based multiplayer scenarios of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Halo is not so much about combat evolved as the subtitle suggests, but about genre evolved . As a consequence, a requiem for the FPS is in order. Anyone to the rescue? Warren Spector, Deus Ex 2, Thief III?
While the author did elicit some much-deserved groans by calling Halo the Terminator 2 of FPS games (groan) the rest of the article is a good read.