Memorable Gaming Moment 2001: Halo

2001 was not only a great year for hardcore gamers, but it was also a year when the world started opening its eyes to gaming as a very real entertainment industry; one that was starting to make billions and was slowly creeping into every household in America. Sony got its production issues with the PS2 taken care of and units were flying off the shelves. Sure, there were bad things that happened; specifically, I spent most of the year mourning the slow death of the Dreamcast (but I already talked about that).

The N64 had a few great titles that year (Conker’s Bad Fur Day, anyone?), and the PC market saw a few of my all-time favorite games such as Max Payne and Serious Sam: The First Encounter. I couldn’t have cared less about the Gamecube back then (mini DVDs? Really?), and I still wasn’t willing to give the PS2 my attention (we’ll call it Dreamcast loyalty). With all that said, absolutely nothing compares to my favorite gaming memory of 2001 - Halo: Combat Evolved.

Although I didn’t get my own Xbox until late in the next year, several of my friends were lucky enough to get their own on or around launch day. Sure, that meant there were only a few weeks of the year left, but I think that’s a testament to how much Halo really impacted me as a gamer, and within such a short amount of time.

Halo brought me so very many “firsts”. It was the first time I had ever truly listened to and appreciated a game’s original score. In fact, I still often listen to it in iTunes. It was also the first game that really challenged me to improve my skills with practice, practice, and more practice. Even with competitive shooters like MW2 that reward you for countless hours of online play and constantly give you a challenge through advanced matchmaking, no game has driven me to become the best at it since Halo (and perhaps Halo 2).

The first time a friend and I sat down to play the game in co-op mode, we finished it (on Easy) in a single sitting. Can you guess what we did next? We started a new game on Normal mode and played through it until we realized we were weak from hunger. Then, of course, we heard that there was a special ending if you beat the game on Elite difficulty and off we went! I have, without a doubt, spent more time in coop mode on the original Halo than any other cooperative game I’ve ever touched.

Another great “first” that Halo gave me was my first LAN party. It was about this time when I was coming to terms with my nerdiness and really embracing it. A LAN party was, and always will be in my heart, the most nerdy, amazingly geek-tastic fun a gamer can have. There’s nothing like showing up at a friend’s house, lugging your TV, Xbox, and four controllers with you, only to spend the next two hours stringing CAT5 cables all over the place. Then all you need are a dozen pizzas, ten or twelve 2-liters of Mountain Dew, some friendly smack talk, and you’ve got yourself an all-night gaming session that just can’t be topped.

Not an actual picture; just a Hollywood reenactment...

I told this short story on a recent episode of the Distributed Failure podcast, but I feel like it’s worth repeating here:

At one point in time, I was just about as good as it gets at the original Halo. It was my game – the one thing I could always come in first place at, even if I always got picked last in gym class. This was a game of responsive reflexes, quick wits, and lightning-fast hand-eye coordination. My favorite game type was deathmatch; my favorite map was Blood Gulch. It was there that I slayed hundreds of thousands of Spartans, and I usually did it with the pistol.

One night, a bunch of guys from my class were playing some 4-player deathmatch (on Blood Gulch, natch) on a large projector screen. There were probably seven or eight of us there, so we were playing by the old “last place passes the controller” rule. As time passed, people started realizing that I hadn’t passed the controller since I got it. Of course, this was because I’d been repeatedly coming in first place, so I technically wasn’t doing anything wrong. Nonetheless, a few of the guys started giving me hell for it. One in particular (a grade-A douchebag to this day), decided that once he got the controller back, he was going to take me out of the game himself. The rest of the guys playing agreed to help him, and so off they went – straight at me.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t get smacked around the map a little bit; I certainly didn’t come in first place. But, I made it a point to, when I could, specifically aim for the douchebag who started all of this. And guess who ended up getting last place? That’s right, it was the douchebag. In a fit of rage, he reached over, grabbed an empty plastic CD case, and chucked it at me from across the room. It gashed me across the forehead and hurt like hell, taking me out of the game the rest of the night. My battle wound needed medical attention, or else I would have never given up my controller. “Live to fight another day.”

Although it may not have been the best of nights, that’s just one of the countless memories that this game has given me, which is why Halo is easily my favorite gaming memory of 2001.