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| Re: Halo - a look back over seven years | |
| Posted By: Sgt Zarathustra <roguenine@cox.net> | Date: 11/16/08 2:00 p.m. |
In Response To: Halo - a look back over seven years (Louis Wu) Before Halo, I was solidly a PC gamer, and I wasn't much into shooters. Mostly I played RTSs -- the Age of Empires games in particular. When I first heard about Halo, it was second-hand from some friends talking about multiplayer, and it didn't sound very interesting to me. I wasn't interested in guns or military stuff, and based on my friends' descriptions that was all Halo was. Sadly, I stubbornly ignored the game and missed out on a lot. Then I saw it played. I was at a sleepover with a few friends, and one of them dragged over an xbox and started playing. I was trying to put together a game of Risk at the time, and I was afraid the xbox would lure people away. As it turned out, I was right, and one at a time the risk board thinned out as players gravitated towards the crisp sounds and colors of Halo. I don't remember what made me glance at the TV, or when, but when I finally saw the game in progress my frustration melted to awe and I never looked back. Two of my friends were playing co-op on AotCR, and were navigating a tank filled with marines down the snow ramp when I first glanced over. I was shocked by the scale of the map, the seamless transition from walking to vehicular combat, the sassy marine lines, and the beauty of the jackals (both in their animation and the clever tactics required to defeat them). The two players went on up through The Library, and the rest of us watched with open mouths as if we were in a movie theater watching Star Wars for the first time. My only regret is that the revelation of the flood was one of my first experiences with Halo -- I wish I had had the opportunity to be a bit more surprised by it. I didn't buy the game after that, though. I never bought an xbox and I didn't have a computer that could run the game until sometime after Halo 2 came out. When I could run it, though, I went out and spent the best $20 I've ever spent, loaded up the game, and finally experienced the whole thing first-hand. I still remember my first real experience with Hunters on T&R, unloading a clip of sniper ammo into its head and thinking "good gods, these things are tough!" It's been a long time since then, and now I know how to dance with the Hunters. Then I discovered Halo CE, and spent about a year cruising the fantastic worlds that the PC community put together for that game. For anyone who never played Yoyorast Island, you missed out on one of the gems of Halo. When Halo 2 Vista came out, I spent the money to buy a brand-new Vista-capable machine, and I've been one of the regulars there since. I'll admit, Hired Gun didn't do a very good job of tailoring H2V to the PC... it plays exactly like the xbox version, minus the matchmaking and with a few new (very good!) maps thrown in. The game is riddled with flaws from a PC gamer's perspective -- but it's still the same stroke of brilliance that Bungie gave to the xbox, so I can't really complain. Now, I'm coming up on the second semester of my senior year of high school, and I expect to have some free time and money on my hands once college applications are in. Come January, I'm going to buy myself an xbox 360 and a copy of Halo 3. I've played it at friends' houses, but for the first time I intend to join the live community the way it was meant to be played. Microsoft, congratulations -- your decision to buy Bungie has, almost a decade later, secured you another console sold! Bungie, thank you for giving me the most expansive and engrossing sci-fi experience I've had this side of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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