Halo 3 or O'Hell 3

I spent the better part of the evening playing Halo 3 with Vanya, my 12-year old son. Instead of repeating everything everyone else has already written about this new release, I will give the impressions of a 41-year old guy who never even really got the hang of Halo 2. I will get past the obligatory "the graphics are much better" and "there's more stuff to shoot with more weapons." Whew. Glad that's over.

We played on our 61" Samsung in the full glory of 1080p (or as close to that as the XBOX 360 can deliver) in two player mode. Vanya had the top half of the screen and I had the bottom. Being the first time we played this release, we started with the standard single player (i.e. not online) mission. I think this is set up to make even terrible FPS guys like me feel like mad-dog killers blowing away little triangular creatures that make funny noises and more ominous nastier blue creatures of some sort. I am sure they all have names and that Vanya has told me what they are called a thousand times but I can't keep the covenant straight from the flood. Basically, I shoot at anything that appears red in my reticle (I even learned a new word) and it feels like I get lost a lot, backtracking frequently to finally get to where the game thinks I ought to be. Occasionally, I shoot at things that show up as green because I have an itchy trigger finger, but usually stop before any real damage is done or Vanya kicks me or decides to frag my ass.

The mission had something to with fighting aliens in the hangar of some base. We started in the control room, fought our way to the hangar blowing away aliens at every turn, and cleared out the hangar. Our valiant effort allows some of our compatriots to get away on some sort of flying transport. I can't even jump onto it before it takes off, abandoning us in the base. Terrific! Then we find out we have to go back to the control room because the aliens have taken it over and are planning to set off a nuclear bomb. Wait a minute. Didn't we leave a bunch of people there to guard the control room? After all, it is the control room. Maybe these were the same ones who just took off on the transport. There's some chick in charge but I swear she left with the others. So we schlep our way back to the control room killing more aliens along the way, retake the control room, disarm the bomb and everything is great, right? No. For some reason I still don't understand, the bomb is set to go off and we have to find some elevator in the hangar to make good our escape. I swear that somewhere along the way back to the hangar, killing more aliens (the same ones that we didn't kill thoroughly enough the first two times or new ones, I am not sure), some other of our so-called compatriots take off on another transport that I can't seem to jump into but I may just be mixing the sequence of events up. Long story short, we find the elevator and push the "down" button dropping into some sort of purgatory from which I still don't know if there is relief. At this point Vanya complains that he would like to do something "less violent" so we shut the game down and fire up season four of the Simpsons.

I have had vivid dreams that are very similar to my experience with Halo this evening. You know the kind I am talking about. I find myself needing to go somewhere to do something, but when I get there I find that I have forgotten some critical item, like my clothes, and I have to go back to where I started. Meanwhile everything has changed and the place I needed to get to has magically transformed into a university lecture hall, it's the last day of class and the final exam is about to start. The only problem is that I haven't been to class all semester, I didn't even think I was registered for the class and I'm still not wearing any clothes.

All-in-all, I will admit that I enjoyed my time playing Halo 3 this evening. I do, however, dread going online and playing some sort of matched game with Vanya and 10 or 20 virtual teenage or near-teenage boys. In these situations I find myself trying to stick to the shadows to avoid getting killed. This usually doesn't work out so well as I inevitably get sniped or beaten to a bloody pulp in hand-to-hand combat. I always feel great when I can shoot some unsuspecting person in the back before someone else gets me. Of course, this is less satisfying when the victim is someone on my own side. Vanya, who in my view plays well, has a terrific way of dealing with when someone comes and stomps him, even when he is emptying clip after clip into them to little effect. "Oh, he must be a mod'er," meaning someone who has some mysterious means of granting himself super-powers and invincibility. Maybe I will start using that excuse.