Halo.

This is pretty mainstream, but I have to say, I love Halo.

It is my go to game whenever I am bored, and I will never get tired of them.  They are some of the best shooters I have ever played, and they make one of the best social games I have ever played too.  What better to play when you have 2 or 3 friends over?  It is simply convenient, fun, and simple.  Well, they used to be simple, but we’ll get to that later.

I really didn’t get into halo until over 3 years after the game came out.  And never owning an Xbox until last year, I played on PC.  And man did I love Halo for the PC.  We got it for my older brother for his 17^th birthday, but I bet I have played that game more than he has.  Finding the tricks, beating it on legendary, playing local multiplayer (we didn’t care much for playing online; especially our mother did not like it).  We downloaded the custom edition version to get extra maps with new weapons, even halo 2 maps, so we could get a glimpse of the game that would not appear on PC until 2007.  We did everything with that game. 

I must have played Halo 1 (or Halo: Combat Evolved, or Halo CE) about 15 times.  Between playing it by myself, to playing it co-op with my best friend Kevin, to multiplayer with my brothers, it is always a joy to play.  Lately, I even have been getting my wife to play it with me.  And she likes it.  Surprisingly. 

Anyways, I didn’t really hear about the game until about 2004, even though it was extremely popular starting all the back to 2001.  We ended up buying the game for my brother for his birthday, and I have enjoyed that game ever since.  I have played it inside and out, on every difficulty (even legendary) and I found a good number of the Easter eggs.  This game is the best of the series in my opinion, foremost because it is the original.  It still has its flaws (crummy assault rifle, repetitive levels, over powered pistol), but it also has some major plusses (great story, over powered pistol).  They released a high-def remake back in 2011, but I haven’t had the opportunity to play that yet.

Halo 2 was a huge hit, biggest game ever at that point in time.  I got to play it on the Xbox a bit at my neighbors or some of my friends’ houses,   but I never played the campaign mode or for more than a half an hour or so until 2008, 4 years after I got halo 1.  Again, because I never played it on xbox because I didn’t have one, I had to wait for it to be on PC.  Then, when they did release it on PC, it was only available on windows Vista.  So we had to wait another year before I had a machine with Windows Vista and enough horsepower to play the game.  But when I did get it, it was awesome.  I had a blast, and it ran great on my new laptop.  Since then, I have also played the game many times on Co-op with Kevin.  The game will never be as good as the original.  It did a lot of things right, but it still wasn’t Halo 1. 

Now, Halo 3 came out before I even really got a chance to play halo 2.  There was a Beta they released back a few months before they released the game, and I did get one chance to play that, which was pretty cool because it was so different, and it even had some differences compared to the final game.  I even followed the ARG (alternate reality game) that was connected with Halo 3, and I got pretty excited at following the release of the game.  But I never really got to play it… Kevin didn’t have an xbox 360, nor did any of my other close friends.  My real chance to play it came 5 years after the game was released, in 2012 as a birthday present.

Kevin picked up an Xbox 360 as an add-on to his new laptop, and gave it to me, along with a copy of Halo 3.  It was an awesome gift, and I finally got to play the game that I have waited 5 years to play.  The control scheme was better than halo 2, and so was the campaign mode.  I plowed through the campaign quickly with my brother, and the game has come to be one of my favorites of all time. 

Shortly after getting halo 3, I also got a copy of Halo Reach, a prequel to Halo 1.  This game has become my go-to halo game for multiplayer because of its flexibility that makes it great for many players of varying skill levels to play.  I also played this one on Co-op with my younger brother, and I have logged many, many hours playing the game.  I played online for a while with it, the first of the series I really played online.  It was a great game, and very worthwhile to pick up.  Also, if you have younger kids that want to try out the game, it is the best game for them, due to the lack of Flood (the zombie enemies).  Halo 4 is pretty good too, but Halo Reach would be the best for the younger kids.

Halo 4 was the first halo game that I got within a year of its release.  It was quite unexpected when released, but overall, a very good game.  To be honest, it is (in my book) one of the poorer halo game, down with Halo 2, but even a bad Halo game is amazing.  The story was more complex than others, and more character based, but it was kinda confusing at times, but overall a good game.  The multiplayer was also very good, and it was the first that actually allowed you some degree of control over which weapons you get to use at the start of the level, which was cool, but there were significantly less in the weapons on the maps, which was not cool.  It was just a big difference in dynamics over the multiplayer of the previous games.

The last game that I played in the series, also a bit late, was Halo 3: ODST.  This was completely different than every other Halo game.  No shields, no dual wielding, and a non-linear storyline where you control a variety of different characters.  It was a complete departure from the previous 3 games.  And it introduced the firefight mode that was so greatly improved upon in Halo: Reach, which is Brad and mine’s favorite.  It was definitely a twist on the standard Halo formula.

Now that I have thoroughly ranted about the pluses and minuses of each game, which you probably don’t care about.  The key is, these are my favorite social games.  You can get a group of friends together and play for 20 minutes or for 5 or 6 hours.  It has become one of my favorite pass times and if you know me well, you probably have played it with me.  If you ever want to play, my gamer tag is Stinger410. 

Til Next time…