As the curtain rises on another one of my attempts to entertain our reading public, I would like to take this chance to write a bit theatrically. In the past my articles have been broad, lists or rants or what have you. This time I would like to tell a story. Picture, if you will, my silhouette entering from the side of the stage ala-Hitchcock. Imagine the music playing in the background. Are you imagining it? You better be.

My story today, or tonight, depending on when you’re reading this, is a one of epic adventure. You may laugh, you may cry, you may write an angry comment. My friends, I shall tell you of the times I play Halo. “HALO?!” You’re saying to yourself, “All you do is sit there, there’s nothing exciting about that.” Well, I have a problem. As soon as I pick up the controller and we start playing Halo, I turn into a monster. I’m normally quite a calm and collected person, but Halo just does something to me.

I live in a dorm with a roommate, she and I are pretty much best friends. Most times of the day, our other best friend and my gaming partner is normally in the room as well. He’ll play, for example, mega man, while I raid on World of Warcraft. For the purposes of this article, er, play, if you will, I’m going to call my roommate Quistis and our other best friend Mega Man. (He specifically requested I use that name)

It’s late on a Friday night, around one or two AM. We’re all riding the waves of a sugar rush, and generally being obnoxious to each other. Mega Man sets up the Xbox and gives me the stare, and I know what to do. We normally always play the original Halo, just because it’s easy and familiar. The screen comes up and my hot little hands are already wrapped around that HUGE Xbox controller. (Yes that spelling is intentional)

We ping in our characters and start off getting back in the gaming groove by testing our rusty skills on the Pillar of Autumn in legendary mode. We get in there and I say to him, “Hey, remember that time I switched the controls to southpaw mode?” and we both had a good laugh.

Ya see, I am in fact a lefty. Aiming for me in halo is um, interesting, to say the least. Normally I use things like right handed mouses, etc. but I’m willing to admit that my ability to control my right hand is drastically lower than my left. It’s hard to be precise, is the point I’m trying to make.

So since I have a problem with precise aiming in Halo, I decided to try out their southpaw mode. It basically switches the movement analog and the aiming analog. So I could effectively aim with my left hand, and move around with my right. The first time I tried it we started with the pillar of autumn level, and all was well and good until we got to the part where you have to move and jump at the same time. Y’see, it’s hard to move and jump when the analog to move is directly under the jump button. And when I say ‘hard’, I really mean ‘impossible’. I’m sure there’s probably some way to fix it, or they’ve since fixed it in later versions, but I just gave up and went back to the old control style.

So here we are Friday night, winding down from a very long day of classes and generally enjoying ourselves. If I had to define my Halo style, it would be: Kamikaze. I’m that one who runs in there and sprays bullets, occasionally chucking a grenade if I’m about to die. It’s entertaining to me, and effective if you have a good partner to back you, which I did. Thankfully.

I also tend to whack already dead covenant/flood with a rifle seven or eight times after they’re dead for shits and giggles. Hey, it’s entertaining. Don’t question me.

I’m also quite fond of ghosts. Which is, um, a bad thing…for my partner. But you know what? Who cares. He’s an asshole sometimes. Like that time we were running through the tunnel and he stuck a plasma grenade to my hip. Oh, and that time he blew me off the wheels of the tank. You know what? Now I don’t feel bad about running him over.

Anyway.

My biggest flaw when playing Halo is that I yell and shit talk. A lot. I turn from a modest young lady into some strange version of Hulk Hogan. Shouting, “WHAT’RE YOU GONNA DO, BROTHER?!” and various other wrestling themed things.

So where am I going with this?

Mega Man and I are enjoying ourselves and generally melting face. We’re on the library level with that annoying cube flying around giggling like a young schoolmarm. At some point we get into a rather sticky situation involving flood coming from the front and behind. Here is how the scene played out:

Mega Man: “Oh hey, we got exploders.”
Me: “I may or may not be out of ammo-oh wait, there’s some.”
Mega Man: “Okay we have to wait for the thing to come back again.”
Me: “Man $@*# that stupid cube ($(@!. No wonder it got left behind. Stupid punk @*(*.”
Mega Man: “Oh hey, there’s things coming from behind, look out.”
Me: “Oh what? Oh God. OH GOD. OH MY GOD.”

At this point I’m yelling pretty loudly because who wouldn’t when you turn around and get a face full of flood? It gets worse, though.

Me: “Oh GOD OH GOD. OH MEGA MAN. OH MY GOD. OH MEGA MAN OH OH OH MY GOD. $*@*. @*$*(@!! $#*($*(@*(!!!!”

Suddenly the top screen pauses and I’m confused.

Me: “Wait, wtf dude? You can’t just pause like that!”
Mega Man: “Sorry I had to pause and point out what you were just doing.”

Suddenly the realization of it all sinks in. Keep in mind there are like 8 other people living in very close proximity and could likely hear everything I was shouting, despite not knowing that I was shouting because I was being attacked by disgusting space aliens.

Yeeeeeeah. See where I’m going with this? If you don’t, here’s what Mega Man said next:

“Sorry but you just boosted my ego a little bit there.”

We all laughed for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. Hilariously, I still didn’t stop yelling when we kept playing.

So in the end, that’s my story. I think our room is pretty notorious now. The things video games do to me, seriously.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Video Games, Gamer Culture, Raves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.