Don P. Hooper

So, a friend of mine, a blogger by the name of Yogizilla, recently decided to bash Halo 3. Long story short, he played the Beta and wasn’t too thrilled with the game. And, I invite you all to read the article.

Ok, I agree with him on one point. Had Halo been released on the PC as opposed to the console market, it wouldn’t have been as big. That’s a given. I mean, I and many of the “Halo Geeks,” as you (Yogizilla)call us, would have never even heard of the game.

I’m a console gamer. Maybe, if the computer market wasn’t so expensive growing up, more people would have jumped onto computer gaming. I tried, but due to early 1990s’ issues with “Stack Overflow” errors, I gave up my dreams of being a PC gamer. I did play Wolfenstein and a little bit of Doom (among others I don’t remember) on my high school’s Yearbook computer, but that’s about it. Never really caught on.

I actually hated first person shooters. Never got into “Bond” on N64. That single analogue controller just didn’t do it for me. Then I came across Halo on Xbox. For the first time I could control a first person shooter with startling accuracy. People would come by and we’d play halo on a 19” tv split into quadrants. So, it earned a place near and dear to my heart. And, I grew with Halo. It grew with me.

Honestly, I love games like Socom 2. One of the teammates who I always run FPS with, we’ll call him Doc, got me onto Socom 2 for PS2. That was my first venture into online gaming. It made having a PS2 worthwhile. The first night I played, Doc and I ran the online game for 5 hours. I was amazed at how fun it was. It wasn’t just random carnage – there was strategy involved. But, in the back of my mind, all I could think was… “If Socom’s like this…I wonder what Halo 2 will be like?”

I didn’t jump onto Halo 2 right away. A coworker, we’ll call him Bizarro, told me about it. Again, word of mouth as you say won out. Six months after the release of Halo 2, I got on. And, for 2 years straight I played Halo 2, justifying the cost of an Xbox.

I did have the honor of playing Unreal Tournament on the PC – thanks again to Bizarro. Well, that was the first time in what must have been 10 years that I played a computer game. And, hey it was fun. The controls were pretty seamless. Everyone in the office got on. And, Bizarro and I dominated everyone in two-on-two battles. It was glorious fun.

But, you know what happened? After each win, we’d tell our opponents… You got to go home and get on Halo 2, so we can play over the weekend. Word of mouth. Indeed a powerful tool, which can also be a powerful adversary.

Now my speech on Halo 3 will be brief. I like Halo 3. But the map packs are just not quite up to the par of Halo 2. I still play. I can’t turn my back on Halo. Without Halo, I would still be forsaking the world of the FPS. I would never have got on Socom. Never touched Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare. I would be still be shunning a beautiful world, that without Halo, I would never have known to exist.

So thank you Halo. Thank you Bungie. You conquered this gamer’s hatred toward the FPS. You may not be the definitive solution. But, you were indeed an Answer. And, for that I’m grateful.

Over the past several days, I’ve found myself extremely stressed. Headaches/Migranes and just being a downright miserable mood. I’ll spare you the reasons.

But, at about 9:30pm on Sept 24, I made a decision that would end up changing the course of my week. I decided to head out to the city (NYC) to attend the Halo 3 Launch Party at BestBuy.

I have to admit, just getting ready and leaving home with Halo on the brain diverted my attention from the difficult moments of the past week.

Once I got to Best Buy, the pure excitement of everyone gathered peacefully outside BestBuy and cheering in unity for Halo 3 just boosted my spirit. The whole time I’m text messaging my friends Brian and Sean with real time updates from the party. Brian, one of the members of my Halo team, was also getting ready for the latest release by camping out at his video game store in New Jersey. Exciting times.

By 11:45 my nephew arrived at the Gamestop we reserved our copies of Halo 3 at. And, by 2am, my entire family was online playing Halo. Well, that is to say, my brother, nephew and myself.

Good times. Good times.

Halo 3 is on the horizon. This is how the real gamers prepare.

I just had to share this video.