OK...Why do I love Halo?

So now I'm going to drop it on you...why am I so obsessed with a stupid video game?

Well, I'll start with the broad reasons first, then take you to nitty-gritty land:

In a very broad sense, I love the vibe of Halo. Like all great games, it has a unique feel, language, aesthetic...and it just pulls me in. I find my mind responding to it strongly.

In a slightly-less broad sense...

1. It has a great science-fiction story and setting...and I'm a sci-fi geek!
2. It is an immersive, amazingly well-designed first-person shooter (FPS)...and I'm a gamin' geek!

That was too easy, wasn't it? OK, let's get into the aspects of this game that make it so crack-esque to me:

1. Great visual design/graphics: You play through Halo as the Master Chief. Alright...the name is cheesy (before playing Halo and seeing the name, I started referring to him as the "Master Cheese"), but his character design is sweet. He's clad in an armoured suit and a helmet with a reflective faceplate. You only see yourself in third-person perspective manning a turret or during cutscenes, but even in first-person viewpoint, your gauntlets look formidable when holdling or reloading a weapon.

As Master Chief, you fight against a conglomerate of several alien races known as The Covenant. Each race is unique and looks really interesting. You've got the short, humpbacked Grunts with their methane breathing masks; the human-size Elites who have faces that split into four toothy mandibles; the bird-like, bipedal Jackals, with their mohawks and sizzling energy-shields; and the ferocious 12-foot tall Hunters, clad in spike-backed blue armour with huge fuel-rod cannons strapped to their arms. Later, you meet The Flood, who are essentially alien zombies and come in various shapes and sizes.

Some of the places you visit have really interesting architecture. Human and alien styles are very different from each another. There's no doubt as to what type of locale you're traversing in the game.

Graphics are a huge factor in enjoying a game, as far as I'm concerned. Better graphics make the game more immersive, which is key to a good FPS. You can walk right up to walls in a spaceship and the brushed-metal textures still look sharp and detailed close-up. When you land on Halo, you'll marvel at waterfalls, cliffs, rocks, swaying grass. And then you look across to the horizon...to see this ring-shaped construct arching far over your head.

2. Amazing enemy Artifical Intelligence (A.I.): Halo is revolutionary for this reason alone. In a FPS, once you get a feel for the controls and moving your character around and shooting are second-nature, you get an overall idea of the "game world": its rules (including its physics and types of weapons) and the behaviour of its other occupants...most notably, obviously, your enemies. In most games, you just shoot baddies who move around in a mechanical fashion and often fall into predictable patterns, or (even worse) just "glitch" and stand stupidly, facing away from you as you shoot them. Sometimes they don't even notice when you kill one of their pals right next to them. All of this really doesn't aid in immersion, if you haven't guessed, and greatly reduces the suspension of disbelief.

Not so with Halo.

Your enemies work in groups, approaching you from different directions, flanking you, charging you when you reload or if you "stick" them with an adhesive plasma grenade. On one level of Halo, I was playing a crazy cat-and-mouse game with an Elite around a large concrete fin on a bridge. It was like playing against another person: an intelligent adversary who used multiple tactics and could change those up on the fly.

In most shooters, you pop out from cover and take some shots and can pop back into cover again. You can put the controller down, get off your ass and go make a sandwich if you want, and they still won't have clued in to your location by the time you get back. In Halo, enemies will often remember where they last saw you and come looking for you. It makes the threat of them that much more real and immediate. In Halo, you really have to think often and think tactically to win; you can't just charge in with guns blazing and expect to survive. Brute force alone ain't gonna cut it. Kudos to developers Bungie for making a thinking-man's shooter!

3. Recharging shields. Ah, another design coup! In most shooters, you will be shot at, and hit, and lose some health. Typically, you wind up frantically scouring the level for health packs or cheeseburgers or whatever to get your health back up to full. Oftentimes, you'll run into a pack of enemies, have low health, and get mulched because you couldn't find that damn cheeseburger. Halo revolutionized this game mechanic. In Halo, all you need to do is hang back and find cover for a few seconds...and your shields quickly recharge to full strength! However, this is not as easy as it sounds as you get further into the game and face more aggressive opponents who won't give you a chance to duck into cover. But overall, this game mechanic minimizes frustration.

4. Frequent checkpoints: Typically, in any videogame, you'll have points to "save" your progress. In an adventure, action, or shooting game, you might clear a room of enemies. You want to save that progress so you don't have to do it again if you die or have finished playing the game for the day. This is also called reaching a "checkpoint": a signpost or milestone of progress. But most games are stingy about handing out these opportunities to "save" your progress; you can play for a half-hour or more, praying that you have enough health or time to make it to the next checkpoint.

But in Halo, any reasonable step in the game is "checkpointed". Your progress is saved very often compared to most games. In fact, the game generally errs on the side of being overcautious when it comes to saving checkpoints. This greatly reduces repetition and frustration; you seldom have to repeat a long section of a level multiple times because you got killed.

5. Cool weapons and limited capacity of weapons: Obviously, with a shooter, you literally live or die by your weapons. Halo has a great weapon set. Actually, it has two sets: human weapons, and Covenenant weapons. They're very different from each other in form and function.

Human weapons are made from conventional metal. They fire bullets, shells, or rockets. They're very similar to weapons that exist now. They have clips that hold bullets that need to be reloaded.

Covenant weapons are made from some strange-looking metal. They're typically purple or blue, and often have irridescent markings on them. They usually have a battery installed in them that depletes as you fire the weapon. When the battery is empty, the weapon must be tossed. Not very environmentally friendly, but hey: they're aliens bent on eliminating the human race. Additionally, though most Covenant weapons don't need to be reloaded, they can overheat and must cool before they can be fired again.

Lastly, in a unique and somewhat realistic touch, you can only carry two weapons at any time (in addition to your grenades, of course). This flies in the face of most FPSs, in which your character is carrying around scores of weapons.

To mix things up, starting in Halo 2, some weapons can be dual-wielded (one gun in each hand), which makes for many interesting combinations: two sets of identical guns, two different human guns, two covenant guns, a mix-and-match of human and covenant guns...sounds simple, but it's a huge deal. For example, I can fire off the sub-machine gun in my left hand. When it is empty and being reloaded, I can start firing the plasma rifle in my left hand. By the time the plasma rifle has overheated and needs to cool, the sub-machine gun will have reloaded and I can rock and roll with it again.

This post has gone on long enough, but I think illustrates things nicely. I hope you all understand why I'm so crazy about this game now!

A bit of videogamin' preamble (or "The History of a Twitch Junkie")

Let's start off with a bit of history here. I've been playing video games on and off since I was eight or so. I never had an Atari, Intellivision, or Colecovision. But I'd regularly go over to friends' houses who did own these systems and kick their asses at their own games. I still remember a furious friend of mine, when I trumped him in Space Invaders: "You don't even OWN this game!".

The first game system I ever owned was a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1988. My mum bought it for me for Christmas when we lived in London, England for a couple of years. Ah, the NES! Back then, you could buy a system and it came with a game packed in. In this case, it was Super Mario Brothers...and what a pack-in! I was hooked! Even my brother, who's not a gamer at all, was all over the Italian plumber's crazy adventures in the land of mushrooms and bricks.

After that, I got a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1993. The graphics were much better, and the games were amazing. By this time, I had moved back to Toronto and many of my good friends were also avid gamers. The nineties were all about fighting games, and we all had our faves: one friend was a Street Fighter nut, the other a Mortal Kombat enthusiast. My game of choice was Samurai Shodown, which preceeded sword-based fighting games like Soul Calibur. I also spent many nights playing Super Empire Strikes Back and the amazing 3D space shooter Starfox. I'm sure my grades took a hit as a result of this new burst of gusto in my old hobby.

I'd like to take a moment here and dispell a popular stereotype: a lot of people believe the tragic falsehood that videogame playing is an anti-social hobby. This may be accurate in some cases, but is not the truism many believe it to be. Yes, I play games by myself, but not as a substitute for spending time with my friends. I have a great social life, and not all my friends are gamers. But the ones who are gamers love hangin' out and playing games together. We talk, pass a controller around for one-player games, or each grab a controller for multiplayer games. But we're enjoying each others' company and socializing, not sitting like zombies all night. Furthermore, I think all of these stupid misunderstandings about videogames and their culture will evaporate, because videogames will one day overtake films as the dominant entertainment medium. They may be called "interactive entertainments", or some other such name, but they will, one day, be played by absolutely everyone. It may not be within my lifetime, but mark my words: it will happen.

OK, off the soap box, and onto the history...

Next up, I purchased the Nintendo 64 (N64) system. Notice a trend here? Yes, I was a hardcore Nintendo fan back then; they had proven themselves by having better games and better hardware than their competitors with the SNES, and I assumed the trend would continue with the N64. That was about to change...but more on that later. The N64 blew me away with what is still one of my favourite games of all time: Super Mario 64. The Italian plumber had finally been thrust into the third dimension, and the results were astounding. I sat, agape, clutching the strangely-shaped controller, panning the camera around to look at these incredibly huge 3D worlds. It really was like "playing a cartoon" at the time. You could run around and just explore each level. There were secrets in tall grass and flowers, huge rocks that rolled like marbles thwarted your progress, and cannons could shoot you onto platforms that were suspended in the air. It was a monumental experience. The introduction of real 3D into games resulted in a whole new layer of immersion. Other favourites on the N64 were Super Mario Kart (I have no idea how many hours we spend playing four-player split-screen, but they were VERY MANY) and Goldeneye 007.

Goldeneye was my first real introduction to a FPS, or "First Person Shooter". I had toyed with Castle Wolfenstein and Doom at friends' houses, but Goldeneye was something else. It was "true" 3D, not faked with 2D, but even more importantly, boasted technological features that brought new experiences to console gaming. Instead of wading into a level with guns blazing, you could walk up to a fence, pop up a sniper rifle, and zoom in on a distant guard tower. The view through your scope would bob and weave realistically, as it would if you were cradling such a weapon. You could snipe the guards long before you would normally have encountered them by travelling through the level. In another level, you could strap a silencer onto your pistol, crawl through the air ducts, and headshot a guard sitting in the crapper without anyone seeing or hearing you. You could also simply shoot off his hat just for fun. The game also had multiple gadgets to aid Bond in his quest. Add an amazing four-player splitscreen deathmatch game and you had an addictive package... and LOTS of swearing and trash talk...

My favourite type of game continues to be FPSs. The reasons are simple: for one thing, being in a firefight is adrenaline-pumping fun. But just as important, I find no other game as immersive as a good FPS. You're looking at things from your own Point of View (POV), and moving through and interacting with realistic environments and interacting with (hopefully) realistic characters. And Goldeneye was the beginning of my love affair with the FPS.

But things were not so rosey on the hardware side...the N64's games began to dry up, and what WAS released was often kiddie fair. The N64 began to collect dust a couple of years after I had bought it, and I was looking for something more exciting.

I was living with a friend at that point, and we decided to rent a PlayStation. We also rented a few games, including one called Loaded. This was a top-down-perspective shooter. You moved through a jail on a penal colony. When you shot the bad guys, they exploded and blood spattered everywhere. We were floored! Finally, a game for adults! And there were many more adult-tone games, such as Twisted Metal. We both purchased PlayStations shortly after, and that began a long love affair with Sony.

In 2000, I purchased a PlayStation 2 (PS2). I was willing to give Nintendo another chance, but their announcements that the GameCube would play games on a proprietary format (eerily echoing their mistake of sticking to the cartridge format with the N64), and wouldn't play DVD movies (like the PS2), left me cold. So the PS2 it was. The PS2 was an incredible machine, on which I played some of the greatest games ever made: various Metal Gear games, Wipeout Fusion, the TimeSplitters series, the Burnout Series, Gran Turismo 3, Soul Calibur II...the list is very, very long. It was also my first DVD player, and introduced me to the world of digital video. Including the DVD player in the PS2 was a masterful stroke by Sony; not many people owned DVD players at that time, and they were still fairly expensive. It made purchasing a PS2 almost a no-brainer.

Around the same time, Microsoft announced that they were throwing their hat into the console gaming ring. "Fucking Bill Gates," I thought snortingly at the time. "Doesn't he have enough money? He doesn't know shit about games! What arrogance!" Of course, I originally thought the same of Sony...and look how that turned out. A gaming night at a friend's house introduced me to Halo. He had the Microsoft console, Xbox, and the game. For those who don't know, Halo is a first-person shooter, only available on Xbox. I couldn't let go of the controller; I was absolutely hooked on the game (for reasons I'll get to in a subsequent post). But, at the time, I had bought my PS2, and that was the system for me now. My experiences with Halo were to be few and far between at that time.

Fast-forward to December 2006. I was working contract at an animation company, and was going to be laid off for a month. The other editor I had worked with generously loaned me his Xbox and Halo 2 when he heard I hadn't played the sequel. He didn't have the original Halo, though. I couldn't find it anywhere to rent, but a nearby Microplay had a used copy for $15. I smile when I think of that now. The amount of entertainment I've received for that $15...wow. I later also purchased a used copy of Halo 2. I'll add some detail to this part of my gamin' history in the next post.

Why did I buy games for a system I didn't even own? Well...

I had owned my PS2 for over six years. I had had some amazing gaming experiences on it, but the next-gen systems were out and I was ready to make my move. When the Playstation 3 (PS3) was announced at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo (or "E3"), an annual trade show, I was blown away. The demo videos of the games looked incredible! It would be the most powerful console available! It would play Blu-Ray High-Definition DVDs! It would have a hard drive! I was sold.

But over time, things changed greatly since that first reveal. First of all, the "demo videos" were actually pre-rendered "target videos"...and not actual gameplay videos rendered on the hardware. In other words, they in no way demonstrated what the machine was actually capable of. Sony has pulled this crap before, but when the development community began chiming in and saying games were not going to look that good, I became skeptical.

Subsequently, Ken Kutargi, the CEO of Sony, began saying strange things about changing the hardware configuration of the PS3 over the years. That's NOT what a console owner wants to hear. When you buy a console, that's the point: you don't have to upgrade the hardware like with a PC. And you don't want to get shafted because they release a better version of the machine down the road.

Then they announced the price.

$600 American for the only version worth buying! I couldn't believe it! I was now really thinking twice about the PS3.

But that wasn't all: developers were griping that the PS3 was difficult to develop for. More importantly, cross-platform games were going to look about as good on the Xbox 360 as on the PS3, (and in some cases better), despite Sony touting their technologically superior hardware. The reason for this was that many games were going to be created using graphics engines created for Xbox 360 and then "ported over" to the PS3, with little to no effort put into taking advantage of the PS3's extra muscle.

Even worse, Sony began losing key exclusive titles, so-called "killer apps": games so good they made you buy that specific hardware just to play them. It began with the loss of exclusivity of the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto (GTA) IV, which was a HUGE blow to Sony. This series is incredibly popular (and great fun, by the way), and Sony always got any installments before the competition. Maybe six months or more later you'd get them on Xbox. Some attribute a large portion of Sony's success in the last generation to the exclusivity of these titles. Then Microsoft announced that Xbox 360 would get GTA IV "day-and-date" with the PS3 version. The trend continued as Devil May Cry, Ace Combat, Resident Evil, Tekken, and, in another crushing loss, Virtua Fighter 5, all jumped ship and became multiplatform titles.

By this time, the Xbox 360 was lookin' REALLY good to me!

First of all, it was at least $200 cheaper. Almost every game I'd played on Sony's machines was coming to the 360. Two painful exceptions were Ratchet and Clank and Metal Gear Solid 4...and even MGS4 may be coming to 360 eventually. So now the 360 had almost all the third-party games I wanted, boasted similar enough technology, was cheaper...and was the only place to play the next Halo, of course.

By this time, I had become obsessed with the Halo series, and Halo 3 was the only next-gen game I really gave a shit about. Furthermore, the 360 was backwards-compatible with the old Xbox Halos...which is why I bought them; by that time, my good friends and I had decided that Sony had fucked up and we were going with the Xbox 360.

So now you're caught up on a slice of my gaming history! Whew! This turned out to be a much longer post than I thought, but I covered a lot of necessary ground, so that's good!

Next post, why I love Halo so much...

Halo, I love you...

OK, so I haven't written in a while. But I've decided to start again, specifically about a little game called Halo. I friggin' LOVE Halo and its sequel, Halo 2. I'm obsessed, addicted, whatever you want to call it. I've read some of the novels and bought the graphic novel from Marvel.

The purpose of the next couple of entries is to explain to people WHY I like it so much. People (even gameplaying friends) don't really understand why I love it so much.

I consider myself to be a fairly good writer, so I think this is definitely the best medium in which to explain all of this stuff.

First, I'm going to give you a brief history of my hobby as a gamer.

So buckle up and get ready...