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Number Four:
My brother loaned me his Xbox, for some reason, on June 20th, 2002. I don't know why he did it, really. He loaned it to me with copies of Oddworld, Dead or Alive 3, Halo, and something else. I didn't play anything past Halo.
I didn't even play Halo until the night of July 2nd. My friend had come up from the neighboring college town of Bloomington, Indiana, to see me late in the night. He brought his girlfriend. We sat in my backyard. He smoked, and talked about school. I talked about how I'd just kind of gotten a kind-of "job" writing about videogames for insert credit. He asked me what kinds of things I'd be writing. I told him to check out my upcoming article on Super Mario Bros. 3.
We then started talking about Super Mario Bros. 3. He still didn't believe me when I said I could beat World One in less than two minutes.
I took him inside, and showed him in my living room. Even his girlfriend got excited -- and not just because I had made my special "thousand-yen nachos" for us. Because of all kinds of things.
It was then suggested: what do we play next?
We turned up the air-conditioning, got a couple more drinks, and put in Halo.
We were still playing the two-player cooperative mode at noon the next day.
When I played Halo for the first time, something changed in me. It combined the thrill of multiplayer Goldeneye with the squad-based "in-charge" feel of any one of those PC first-person shooters I could never get into. It had vehicles that were bulky and shiny like Tonka trucks, so big and bulky and shiny that it made me think of the Xbox controller in my hand -- I'd not yet purchased my Controller-S -- as a kind of weapon.
Halo does so many things right it's not even funny. The levels are huge, the vehicles are a joy -- we raced flying Banshees for two hours before finally deciding to beat level four -- and the presentation is astounding. Where Perfect Dark failed at producing a story as deep as it was convoluted, Halo takes a simplistic, obviously biblical story, and tells it with honest-to-goodness heart. Real-life heart. When we hear our fellow space marines calling for help -- in surround sound, no less -- we're there. Even if the story is one we've seen done better in movies, we're there, and the game honestly and deeply loves us for being there.
Yes, it loves us so much it makes us play the same levels over and over again, forward, backward, and sideways.
More importantly than how much -- and how too much -- this game loves us, I love this game. And I love the way I love the game: I love it after it won numerous accolades, after Electronic Gaming Monthly voted it "Game of the Year 2001," after everyone and his brother and sister and mom and mom's pet ninja had played it to completion or knew someone who had. After all the haters came out of the woodwork and booed and hissed about the game's place in fraternity houses, its tedium -- eight months later, I was able to pick it up, and love it very honestly, with an old friend. And his girlfriend, who fell asleep on my sofa without finishing her nachos. Let's go ahead and say she loved it, too.
[next: number three: if that don't fetch 'em, i don't know arkansaw]
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