Heeeeello Halo!

I consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer. I’ve got multiple consoles and at least one handheld and stacks of games cluttering one corner of my living room. I regularly light incense and bow prostrate before the guy who came up with the idea of an Italian plumber jumping on turtles in a toadstool kingdom (mushrooms indeed!). Even still, for the past several years Halo was something that other people stayed up all night playing. I had my precious RPGs and Action Adventures—my Final Fantasys, my Zeldas, my Elder Scrollses—and decided I had no interest in first-person shooters. However, after recently having my mind blown into several thousand tiny little pieces by BioShock (see my full review in Paste‘s November issue), I decided that maybe, just maybe, I was out of my mind and had wasted 28 years not savoring the full awesomeness of the FPS genre. Even though I’d never played the first two installments of Halo, all of a sudden I absolutely couldn’t wait for Halo 3 to come out.  To the point that I decided it would be an extremely good idea to go to a Harry Potter-style midnight release party and geek out with lots of people I didn’t know.

This is my view from the back of the line. I was very relieved when a few guys strolled up and stood behind me because it made me feel like a silver medalist all of a sudden. I would not be the last human being on earth to drop $60 on this game. It was interesting to survey the people standing in line. What exactly does a gamer look like? Well, the line consisted mostly of dudes, a few girls, black people, white people, Asian people, guys in wheelchairs, fat guys, skinny hipsters chain-smoking and chain-texting, people with tattoos, middle-aged people with flat-top haircuts, guys in Bonnarroo t-shirts, etc. I overheard a guy near me bragging to his friend about taking off work and getting a whole free day with the game. Everyone was friendly, if not chatty. Despite our differences, we had lots in common. We liked to blow things and people up. We liked to shoot lasers and be ambushed by strange monsters galloping through the jungle. We liked shiny, reflective visors and things that look “futuristic.” We liked fun. There was acres of common ground.

After picking up my game, I got a picture with Halo‘s main character, Master Chief. One of the popular conversation topics in line was this guy and his outfit, mainly how much it cost (roughly $5,000). There’d been a girl hanging out just past the checkout line taking pictures for people with their cameras, but I didn’t see her after paying for my copy. So I asked a police officer who was standing nearby if he’d take the picture for me. He shot me a look that said, I’m a law enforcement officer, not a @#$*! event photographer so I told him not to worry about it. Eventually the girl showed back up and took the picture. Then I drove home quickly to play the game.

One of the great features in Halo 3 is the theater playback option. It lets you watch a movie of your progress in the game and control the camera as it orbits around Master Chief. I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to watch the replay of my first few minutes in the Halo universe. I rotated the camera view as Master Chief plowed through the jungle overgrowth with his gun raised intimidatingly. Then he came up to a giant fallen tree crossing his path, only to stop and fidget for an extended beat while he struggled to figure out which button let him jump over the tree. He looked at the tree through his gold reflective visor, changed guns, stood still, reloaded his already full clip, then finally jumped in place, then jumped forward over the tree and progressed through the game. I felt self-conscious even though I was alone in the living room, my wife fast asleep in another part of the house. I felt like I was watching a movie of myself relearning how to ride a bike in the wake of a traumatic head injury.

Soon I’ll be fearsome. Soon I’ll be one not to mess with. Soon I’ll know how to jump over a log. Soon I’ll be able to save the world.