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| Re: Halo - a look back over seven years | |
| Posted By: [AMS] GreyThor | Date: 11/16/08 5:41 p.m. |
In Response To: Halo - a look back over seven years (Louis Wu) : http://halo.bungie.org/news.html?item=24503 : Give us what you got! Wow, I can't believe I missed this thread last night! I blame paintball in Savannah and Ludowici! Back in November 2001, I was a Nintendo freak. The N64 was my platform of choice, and I was still playing those old school games like Super Smash Bros, Rogue Squadron, and Ocarina of Time. All great games, but despite being 14 and in 8th grade at the time, I had no intention of even giving Microsoft's new Xbox a chance. Shoot, the PS2 was out for about a year back then and I hadn't even played it. All that changed come November 15th 2001 when the tenant staying in my family's rental cottage said he had a surprise for us and we'll find out in for Christmas. I must've been slow back then, because I never put two and two together since I knew Xbox sales and stuff were through the roof that day, as well as the fact that Mr. Bob was really into the Xbox. He said he has a brother or a cousin working in distribution or something... that kind of degree of separation. But whatever. So I pretty much went through November 15th until Christmas Eve thinking there was that Gamecube tucked under the tree. Man was I wrong when I unwrapped the Xbox at midnight! I wasn't ungrateful or anything - it's just that the last thing I had expected for Christmas was an Xbox. They were expensive back then! Even for the Xmas holiday demand! And for Mr. Bob to sit on this "Launch 'Box" until Xmas night... what a surprise! The Xbox came with only one controller and a copy of Halo. He wanted to see the game in action, since he had heard so much about it since November 15th, so we fired it up. I never was into FPSers other than Tribes II, but Halo definitely hooked me from the beginning. Just loading it up and hearing Marty O'Donnell's music.. those Gregorian vocals! I sat there, watching the opening cutscene with my brothers and family. Mr. Bob's ranked up there with family now since he's been living with us for... must be over ten years by now. Anyways, Pillar of Autumn.. amazing! Being unfamiliar with the controller scheme, I got caught up when I had to press A to jump over the pipes, but I soon figured everything out. By Dec. 27th we bought three controllers, some more games, but I had a friend over and we had beat Halo on Easy.. haha it took us seven tries on co-op to get through the "Hitchhikers Might be Escaping Convicts" drive! But oh man the biggest shock of all was the night of Christmas Day when I crept through 343 Guilty Spark, watched the Pvt Jenkins cutscene, and was introduced to The Flood. Oh man I screamed so much. "What the hell is this?!" I must've been so close to the TV, so into the game, the lights off in the room, but all of it... but I thought that was so real. Didn't even save or nothing. Just shut the 'Box off! That night will forever be with me: the night I bore witness to one of the most insane video game plot twists of all time.
Nowadays, it's amazing, funny, and some part sad at just how much Halo has been a part of me. I got Xbox Live when the Map Pack came out of disk form, Halo 2 when I barely had my license for a month, and didn't really need to drive anywhere in Savannah for any reason. Just barely got my game disk and back to school in time for basketball practice. Gaming online with the crowd of HBOers was amazing. Like Hawaiian Pig, I was introduced to IBO and HBO's Forums where I was able to meet a (relatively) sane crowd of people. I think one of the most memorable things that came out of Halo and HBO's community for me was meeting retsamolah at his college across town and driving back to my university's hosted Halo 3 game night. Between us there wasn't much competition. A two vs twelve match on Highground sort of highlighted that!
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