Quick Thoughts- Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room, where we're always slightly behind the times but still ready to offer an in-depth analysis. Somewhat.

Anyway, today's behind-the-times review comes in the form of Halo 4, which I decided to pick back up recently because I wanted to shoot aliens and I can't afford an Xbox One, and also because I realized I never completed the game on Legendary mode, the hardest difficulty level. Released in 2012, Halo 4 was, from what I understand, lampooned by fans because it strayed too far into the "Call Of Duty" realm that has nearly consumed all modern first person shooters. I agree with that to an extent, but I don't think it necessarily "killed the series," as some have claimed.

Picking up three years after the events of Halo 3, the Master Chief and his A.I. companion Cortana have been drifting aimlessly in space when they are suddenly attacked and boarded by a Covenant armada. This, within the first 2 or 3 minutes of the entire game, is kind of where they lost me.

See, by the end of the events of Halo 3, the humans had reached a resolution with the Covenant, finally ending the long standing conflict between the two. However, three years after Halo 3 came out, a prequel to the original Halo was released called Halo: Reach. I have never actually played this game, but from what I understand, it takes place shortly before the events of the first game, where the humans are at the apex of their war with the Covenant. Naturally this game would have to portray the Covenant as enemies again, and they did so by totally redesigning all of the Covenant aliens and making them even more intimidating and fierce looking than they were in the original games.

That's all fine and good, but what does this have to do with Halo 4? Well, Halo 4 portrays the Covenant exactly the same way that Reach does. But wait, aren't we friends with the Covenant now? The game explains this away in that Chief and Cortana just run into a "rouge fleet." Oh come on. That's the best you can do? You couldn't just think of another explanation as to why the two factions would be at war again? It all just seemed like a really lame excuse to keep the style of Reach intact while continuing the main story. 

The Covenant was made menacing again thanks to the powers of exposition.

Anyway, that minor detail aside, Chief and Cortana have some other problems as well: Cortana is is beginning to experience "rampancy," which basically means she's falling apart. Thinly vieled metaphors for neurodegenerative disease aside, the other problem they must deal with is the Prometheans, the new threat that has joined forces with the Covenant. Who are the Prometheans? Uh...something something something Forerunners. You know, the beings that built all of the Halo installations. Sorry, I pretty much skipped all the cutscenes this time around due to lack of interest.

The Prometheans are being controlled by the Didact, the big bad of this game who was imprisoned in a floating ball for some reason...and now...uh..he wants to destroy the universe...or something...

Sorry, I'm just gonna stop trying to explain the story and discuss the gameplay.

Halo 4 throws a lot of new things at you in the realm of controls. There's now running, special item usage (i.e. jetpacks, shields, hologram-decoys, etc.) and a lot of new weapon mechanics. Actually, potentially none of these things are "new" because they may have already been implemented in Halo: Reach, but they were new to me, so that's what I'm going with here.

Again, I can see what they were complaining about here in making it more like a Call Of Duty game, but it still does feel like Halo to an extent. You've got all the classic enemies from the Covenant dropping by to throw a plasma grenade at your face, plus the new Prometheans, as I mentioned before. The Prometheans are all kinds of annoying. You thought the Elites were tough to kill? It seems like the developers intentionally made the Prometheans obnoxious just to give you that much more of a headache while you're trekking through a level on legendary mode.

They come in a few different flavors: there's these little dog-like things called Crawlers which will come running in and surround you in a circle. They aren't too dangerous on their own, but a group of them can easily overwhelm you and since they'll be running around at high speed, it can be a pretty frustrating affair to take them all out. Then there's the big guys, the so-called Promethean Knights, who I think look a lot like the aliens from the movie Independence Day. These guys will do everything in the book to annoy you. They can teleport away when being fired at, they'll use heavier weapons on you (some of which can instantly kill you), they'll run and hide when their shields are down and when you chase after them to finish them off, you'll likely be attacked by a group of Crawlers which will buy the Knights enough time to escape.

 It's all I thought about when I saw them.

But by far the most obnoxious enemies are the Watchers, which are these little drone things that buzz around in the air above the Knights and Crawlers. These things were specifically made just to piss you off. They don't really attack you directly, but they'll provide shields for other enemies, they'll catch grenades that you throw and hurl them back at you, and they'll even resurrect Knights which you've just killed if you aren't paying attention. And worst of all, these little pricks will quickly fly away the second you attack them. It doesn't take that many shots to take them out, but if you focus on one and start to shoot it, it will swiftly buzz away and you'll need to chase it down, leaving you open to attack from other enemies. This got me killed more times than I want to admit to and made me hate these things so much I'd be screaming at my TV just trying to destroy all of them.

However, like everything else in Halo, you can certainly make it through with a little perseverance. There's a boatload of hidden easter eggs to find and achievements to unlock if you wish to squeeze every drop of content out of the game, but I honestly couldn't really be bothered anymore- I just wanted to beat it on Legendary and call it a day.

And so I did, first playing through on Heroic mode before switching over to Legendary for one more go-through. There are certainly a few high points of the game. Among my favorites was getting the opportunity to actually pilot a Pelican, which are the classic drop ships that you had previously only hitched a ride on in previous games. Getting to fly it around and fire crazy powerful weapons at enemy ships was a ton of fun, even though you only get to do it for a fairly miniscule portion of the game. My other favorite moment was the chapter "Reclaimer" in which you rode around on the massive "Mammoth" which looks a lot like the Sand-Crawlers from Star Wars and provides you with a slew of heavy weaponry and vehicles to battle the Covenant. You also get this little gizmo called the "Target Designator" which allows you to lock onto certain targets and then annihilate them with a massive laser from space. Pretty awesome.

Ever wanted to fire a giant laser from the sky? This was your chance. No, I have no idea what you mean by "Gears of War did it first."

But by the end, I didn't quite feel the same sense of achievement upon beating the game on Legendary as I did with the previous entries in the series. I don't know, maybe I've just gotten more cynical as time has gone on (the original came out nearly SIXTEEN YEARS AGO after all), but it just kind of felt like "eh, whatever" compared to the epic finales of prior games. Oh well.

In all, it does feel somewhat different from the previous Halo games I've played. I suppose that's largely due to the departure of Bungie studies, which had developed all of the prior games in the primary series, but I can't tell you for sure. It just has a much different feel to it. Does that make it bad? Not really. Forgettable maybe, but certainly not bad. At the very least, worth a playthrough if you were a fan of the originals. And this isn't even getting into the multiplayer portion of the game, which I didn't play nearly as much as I did with Halo 2 and 3 but still provided quite a bit of fun.

To sum it up, no, Halo 4 is not as good as its predecessors. But did it kill the entire series? I wouldn't say so, because if I had enough time and effort and energy, I still would've purchased an Xbox One and Halo 5. And maybe I will anyway someday, long after both of them have faded from the public spotlight (I kind of feel like they already are). But until then, I'll just have to stick to killing grunts the old fashioned way on the old fashioned consoles. Thanks for reading.

Gaming Memories: Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room, where the ectoplasmic residue is the real thing and all of our nuclear accelerators are licensed, thanks for asking. We all have that one special childhood thing that we have the fondest memories of as we grew up. For some of us it was Star Wars, for others it was Batman, and still others it was Ninja Turtles, Disney Movies, Transformers, what have you. For me, that thing was Ghostbusters.

The 1984 comedy classic that spawned a sequel, a lengthy cartoon series, and a huge amount of toys- yes, it was just my thing as a kid. I'd spend day after day playing with my toys until they were so worn down that they were practically falling apart. I'd run around in my backyard with my plastic proton pack strapped to my back having adventures and capturing ghosts everywhere I went. And even though the world's enthusiasm for Ghostbusters started to fade as the 80's turned to the 90's, my own certainly didn't. I was definitely one of those people always waiting in vain for a third movie that would never come. However, in the year 2009, I did get something awfully close. But let's back up a minute here.

When the cartoon series "The Real Ghostbusters" ended in 1991, Ghostbusters as a whole almost seemed to end with it. The original actors moved on with their lives and careers, the toys stopped getting made, and the brand name just went quiet for a while. Sure, there were minor resurgences here and there- Dan Akroyd dropped rumors about a possible Ghostbusters 3 all through the 90s, a short-lived cartoon show called "Extreme Ghostbusters" aired in 1997 and had it's own brief merchandise run, and of course "Ecto-Cooler" lived on for quite a while in the lunch boxes of kids all over the country. But for the most part, Ghostbusters as a franchise went dark as the 90s gave way to the new millennium and for a while, it seemed like it might stay that way forever. Then, in late 2007, something big happened.

Throughout the mid-2000s I had a subscription to the magazine Game Informer which I received monthly in the mail. This was back when I was still hip to the cutting edge of gaming and had all the latest consoles as they arrived, so I still had plenty to read about as the magazines came in. I loved seeing all of the latest news and goings-on in the gaming world, as well as checking out the current hottest games on the market. However, I was totally shocked when I opened my mailbox in December of 2007 and saw this:

Ghostbusters in a video gaming magazine? I never saw it coming. I frantically flipped through the pages to get to the article, where I read all ten pages of it from start to finish. A Ghostbusters video game was in the works for the latest generation of consoles. It had a script written by Harold Ramis and Dan Akroyd, just like the original movies. It had ALL FOUR original actors (Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Akroyd, and Ernie Hudson) reprising their roles as Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, and Winston Zeddmore. Hell, even Annie Potts and William Atherton were returning as well (unfortunately no Sigourney Weavor or Rick Moranis, but I was still happy with what I got). 

I read the article again and again and again. I scrutinized every picture and piece of concept art. And then read it one more time. The new game was set to take place three years after the events of Ghostbusters 2 and would have the player assuming the role of a nameless rookie who joined the team as the fifth Ghostbuster. As per the article, the game would have the player clashing with familiar foes such as Slimer, the library ghost, and even the Stay Puft marshmallow man himself. It all seemed too good to be true. I couldn't wait to see how things would play out.

There was a long time of silence between the announcement in the article and any further news, but the silence was broken in December of 2008 when a trailer was finally released to the public. I remember jumping on my computer with my face glued to the monitor as the trailer started. Just like the article I had read earlier, I watched it from start to finish. And again. And again. It was really happening. There was Murray delivering his deadpan Venkman lines, Ramis and Akroyd spitting out scientific technical jargon as Egon and Ray, and Hudson doing his down-to-Earth Winston. It didn't seem real, but somehow it was. We were going to get as close to the third movie as we ever would.

Some time passed and while I anxiously waited, the advertising campaign ramped up. Commercials were on TV and various alternate trailers were released. For a short and beautiful time, Ghostbusters was back. It was delayed a bit for some time but eventually was released on June 16th, 2009, nearly coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the release of the first film on June 8th, 1984. I promptly arrived at Best Buy that morning to procure a copy, which I did and rushed home to play.

While previous Ghostbusters games may not have lived up to the franchise's potential (or have been downright awful), Ghostbusters: The Video Game is just about everything you'd want as a GB fan. It wasn't the third movie we all wanted, of course, but it was close enough to be it. Picking up where the story last left off, the Ghostbusters' business is still booming and they've even started pushing for franchises (much like Venkman mentioned in the first movie). They've hired a new member to the team, a so-called "experimental weapons tech" who basically serves as a guinea pig for the Ghostbusters' many untested gadgets. You assume the role of the nameless rookie, who also has no speaking lines in the game. Some people might scoff at this but I think it was a perfect idea because it preserves the interactions between the four main Ghostbusters that we loved so much from the movies. Anyway, shortly after the newbie joins the crew a massive spectral energy force is unleashed upon Manhattan and it's up to the Ghostbusters to figure out what's going on.

With a third person point of view, you guide the rookie in and out of situations where you trap ghosts and solve puzzles throughout levels. Ghosts aren't entirely uniform, however- there's a wide range of types that have different strengths and weaknesses and must be dealt with accordingly. For example, many ghosts require the typical method of blasting them with the proton stream and then sucking them into a ghost trap, but others require you to freeze them in place with a different type of beam and then disintegrate them with a shotgun-like blast. Trapping ghosts earns you money, which you can then use to purchase upgrades for the four different proton pack weapons you switch between. There's the regular proton stream and the stasis stream which I just mentioned, as well as the slime tether and the meson collider. The slime tether is pretty much exactly what it sounds like- you use it to shoot a tether of slime at at object, which you can then attach to another in order to move it out of the way. You also must use the good slime to neutralize the effects of black slime which you'll encounter throughout the game, as well as defeat certain enemies. Finally, the meson collider acts sort of a like a powerful machine gun version of the regular proton stream.

By far though, the most fun I had in the game was by trapping ghosts using the regular proton stream, just like in the movies. It works a tad differently however, as they needed to add some extra layer of challenge to the game. In order to be able to trap a ghost, you need to first substantially weaken it by slamming it around using the proton stream. Holding onto it for longer charges the "slam meter", and once that is high enough you can deal greater damage to it, thus making it easier to drag into a trap. It sort of feels like fishing, except way cooler because, well, it's Ghostbusters.

As you progress through the game, you can also use the PKE meter practically to locate ghosts and also find hidden areas (usually that lead to an achievement or trophy for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, respectively). You can also use it to scan different ghosts, which gives you more info about them that you can read about in "Tobin's Spirit Guide", which was mentioned by Egon and Ray in the movies. It's little tie-ins like that to the lore of both movies that made it such a fun experience for die-hard fans of the movies like myself. There's tons of little references everywhere if you look hard enough. There's also so-called cursed artifacts all around, which can be picked up and examined to even further expand the Ghostbusters lore. There's even a few nods to the cartoon shows for eagle-eyed players, such as the PKE meter at the workbench in the basement that looks suspiciously like the one from the Real Ghostbusters. Also, there's a reference to the hilariously badly translated ending screen of the first Ghostbusters video game for NES on one of the computers in the firehouse. Like I said, I couldn't get enough of it all.

 The appearance of the infamous ending text from the NES Ghostbusters game was just one little nod to a franchise with as rich of a history as Ghostbusters.

As you play through the game, you learn that the spectral energy surge has been the result of Ivo Shandor, the servant of Gozer who was discussed at length in the first movie, attempting to break through to our world and take control. You visit many familiar locations such as the New York Public Library and the Sedgewick Hotel, which all tie into the story nicely. You also get to sit back and let the four Ghostbusters work their comedic magic together again. For instance, one part that cracked me up was when Egon and Winston are assessing a giant machine.

"What if we try locking those things down?" asks Winston.

To which Egon replies- "I can calculate 54 likely outcomes...we'd survive three of them."

Winston then nonchalantly responds- "That beats our usual odds."

Aside from the comedy, you also get to experience a lot of the strange and mystical spirit world qualities of Ghostbusters, the kinds that were only alluded to in the movies, most likely because of a lack of production budget to bring them to life. For example, one chapter has you crossing through a dimensional portal into a nightmarish "ghost world" version of the New York Public Library. Also, there's a boss fight with a "giant Slor," which was only briefly mentioned in passing in the first movie. And of course every Ghostbusters fan wondered what the hell a Slor was! After this game, we finally knew- and it was just one more indication that the developers clearly recognized the franchise and its fanbase, treating it with the due respect it deserved.

Ever wonder what a giant Slor is? Well, there you go! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you.

The game mostly felt, to me, like a big combination of both the movies and the cartoon show. For example, in the chapter where you follow the Stay Puft Marshamallow Man through Times Square in an attempt to suck him into a massive trap mounted on top of the Ecto-1 called the "Super Slammer," it reminded me very much of some of the plots to episodes of The Real Ghostbusters. To further illustrate that point- in an episode called "Cry Uncle", the climax has the Ghostbusters chasing Mr. Stay Puft through the city in order to trap him, very much like in the video game. Also, in another chapter the Ghostbusters are riding a boat around that Ray refers to as "Marine Ecto-8." That had to be a direct reference to the cartoons, in which the Ghostbusters often used a helicopter called Ecto-2.

From an episode of The Real Ghostbusters...

...and the second chapter of the game. Once again, you can clearly see the influence with the right set of eyes.

This was all perfectly fine with me because I love the cartoons, probably just as much as I love the movies. Seeing them both mixed together and thrown into a video game was just about everything that could've made me happy as GB fan.

Just about. Now, I've said this to many people before and also alluded to it in a previous review, but I'm always quick to defend Ghostbusters 2 from the many people who claim it's a bad movie (many of which, by the way, seem to have suspiciously emerged within the last year or so. Wonder why that is?). Firstly, no, it's not a bad movie, and if you think it is then get out of my life. Secondly, as a fan of the second movie just as much as the first one, I would've liked to see more references to it throughout the game. There's a few minor ones here and there such as the discarded firehouse sign outside the window that can just barely be seen, or the cursed artifact of the "hot beverage thermal mug and free balloons for the kids," and even the painting of Vigo the Carpathian that's hanging around in the firehouse, but for the most part it is much more strongly connected to the story of first movie as opposed to the second. The closest the game comes to having a tie-in with the second movie is during the chapter on Shandor Island, in which you run around in a sewer-like area following a flow of dangerous black slime, which was quite reminiscent of the river of slime in GB2. However, that's about it as far as references. Personally, I would've loved to have seen a return of the Scolari Brothers- I mean, what a perfect opportunity for a boss battle would that have been? We got to see three of the big monsters from the first movie return to play prominent roles in the story, so why not the Scolari Brothers? Seemed like a missed opportunity to me.

The chapter which has you following an underground flow of black slime was about the closest the game got to a Ghostbusters 2 feel.

Anyway, beyond my gripes about the lack of Ghostbusters 2 references, there really isn't much I had to complain about while playing through. Just some minor things- for instance, sometimes the dialogue becomes noticeably unsynchronized with the character's mouth movements during cutscenes, something that seemed a tad amateurish even in 2009. And speaking of dialogue, it's pretty obvious in his voice acting that Bill Murray was not that into the project. You can tell almost every time he was speaking that he really phoned in his performance. In fact, sometimes you can't even tell what he's saying at all because he's mumbling his lines so much. It's a bit of a shame that he couldn't muster up at least a little more enthusiasm, especially since he didn't even have to do anything besides speak into a microphone, but I can look past it because at least he did it at all. At the end of the day, I don't even care if he decided to speak in a pirate accent the entire time, I'm just happy he was on board enough to be a part of it and step back into his role as Peter Venkman one last time. And lastly, the game is generally pretty short. It's fine because it gave it more of that authentic movie feel, but I only complain about it because I didn't want it to end. I wanted to see the Ghostbusters keep going forever.

Alas, nothing gold can stay. After the game came and went, it seemed like Ghostbusters was primed for a comeback. Talk of a third movie once again reared its head on all corners of the internet. Both Dan Akroyd and Ivan Reitman, the director of both movies, repeatedly stoked the flames for several more years. It was all speculation, but there was talk that a script was in the works. Would the world actually see a bonafide Ghostbusters 3 in the theaters? For a short period of time, it seemed plausible.

However, the end finally came on February 24th, 2014, when news broke of the death of Harold Ramis, the original actor for Egon Spengler and writer of the scripts for both movies and the game. With Ramis went the original Ghostbusters, and it seemed that now, once and for all, it was over. But you all know what happened next- shortly afterward, the "reboot" of Ghostbusters was announced, and despite all the doubt surrounding the franchise and the finality of Ramis' death, it continued to build steam and was eventually released in the summer of 2016. I have many mixed feelings about the reboot that are pretty much beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say that I think the whole thing was unnecessary. I actually enjoyed Max Landis' pitch for Ghostbusters 3 that has since surfaced on the internet and wouldn't have minded seeing that movie, but it's not what we got and unfortunately will never be. I also thought it was bitterly ironic that the original cast did a reunion for Entertainment Weekly magazine just 9 months after Ramis' death. I remember seeing it and thinking to myself "why couldn't they just put their differences aside like this when Ramis was still alive? He should have been there with them." We'll probably never truly know why.

Anyway, all of this only serves to illustrate how much the game meant to me as a fan. It is, for all intents and purposes, the Ghostbusters 3 that we all were waiting for. It was all of the Ghostbusters back together again for one final encore and it was the last sweet sendoff to a franchise that went away a little too early, as far as I'm concerned. Some might say that Ghostbusters has never really gone anywhere, but I'm in the camp that I would've liked to see all of the guys strap on the proton packs one last time on the big screen. However, I'm very happy with what I got in the game. As a video game it's a blast, as a continuation of the Ghostbusters franchise it's fantastic, and as the last remaining testament to the true fans, it serves its purpose well.

 I can't possibly describe to you how great it was to see the Ghostbusters back for one last ride.

The future of Ghostbusters is somewhat of a huge question mark right now. After the reboot had a mediocre showing in theaters, plans for a sequel were most likely scrapped. There doesn't seem to be anywhere left to go now, but I'm confident that the franchise will find a way to live on. It's my sincere hope that another cartoon series makes a return for a new generation. Hell, even as an adult you can bet I'd be parked in front of my TV every Saturday morning ready to watch further adventures of Peter, Egon, Ray and Winston. One can only hope. However, despite what may happen, the originals will always live on as unforgettable classics in the eyes of every nerd and geek who hoped they could build their own positron collider as a child. And right next to the two movies, you can add the video game to that list. Thanks for reading.

Gaming Memories: Reaching Level 50 In Halo 3

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. No collection updates to speak of today, but I have something instead that I wrote recently. I wanted to revisit something I started off the blog with and then abandoned shortly after as it proved a bit too ambitious for a recurring series: recollecting personal gaming memories. I wrote a whole huge 4-part saga discussing my memories of playing games in the Resident Evil franchise (which you can find here you're interested in reading it), but haven't really done anything else. So today I'm going to revisit a moment that stands out to me as a tremendous accomplishment as a gamer- not even necessarily because it was all that difficult of a thing to do, but more so because of the story behind it and the long path to victory that ensued.

I know I usually talk about older games, but there was a time in my life where I was hip with the world and up to speed on the latest and greatest gaming trends. I'm talking about playing games online, over Xbox Live. Obviously, this has become ubiquitous these days; online gaming is everywhere and almost everything. However, back in the halcyon days of the early-mid 2000's it was a little unprecedented, at least to the mainstream of console gamers (obviously PC gaming, which I've never been into, is an entirely different story). I remember that buying a wireless router and getting into a matchmaking game in Halo 2 for the first time seemed like the coolest thing in the entire world. For the first time in my life, I was playing video games with other people who weren't sitting on the couch right next to me- they were halfway across the planet! The concept alone seemed unimaginable to me.

But there I was, gunning people down in what had already become one of my favorite video game franchises ever, only on its second installment. It was mayhem. I spent days on end locked in my room doing essentially the same thing over and over again but with different people every time (and sometimes friends too). I stayed up all night, I didn't go out with friends, and my eyes were bloodshot from sitting 5 feet away from the TV for hours on end. I remember feeling like I wanted to be better at it than everyone I knew. Better than all my friends, better than everyone I faced online. Now, I'm definitely no pro gamer- I never was, never will be, and nor would I claim to be anything close. However, I will say that I am at least halfway decent at first person shooters, most likely one standard deviation above the mean, for you statistics nerds out there. The point is, I took my quest to be the best that I could be at Halo very seriously back in the day. But alas, the climb to the top was certainly not an easy one.

The early days of Xbox Live were kind of like the wild west. As I mentioned before, online connectivity between consoles was sort of a burgeoning market at the time. Sure, it had existed in some rudimentary forms previously, but it really didn't reach the mainstream until the early 2000's. Because of this, Microsoft didn't really have that sophisticated of a system for dealing with their own online market in the beginning. As a result, Xbox Live was overrun with rampant cheating. Modders who hacked the game to basically allow them automatically kill you, so-called "standbyers" who would use some complicated means of causing other plays to lag while they were free to win the game on their own, you name it- anyone who had the means to screw someone else out of winning a match for their own gain was free to do so, virtually free of any ramifications. Halo 2 also had a plethora of weird glitches that users constantly exploited during matchmaking in order to gain an unfair advantage over players who didn't know how to do so for themselves (admittedly, even I too used the "super bounce" glitch during matchmaking periodically). It was total anarchy.

Halo 2 had a pretty simple ranking system- the more games of any matchmaking type that you won, the higher your rank number got, the highest being level 50. For some odd reason, levels in the high 40s to 50 were denoted by symbols like the Halo ring, a sun or moon, etc. That's neither here nor there, but I remember one particularly disgruntled Xbox user who rambled on over my headset about how anyone with a symbol ranking was not "legit." He was right though- if you saw that your opponents had those symbols, even before a game started you knew that you were done for, and that precious rank you worked so hard to achieve would take a hit. The highest I ever even managed to get myself to was level 34 before I was decimated by cheaters. I loved the game, but after match upon match upon match of getting unfairly beaten down, I grew incredibly weary of the experience. It made me hate playing the game not even very long after I had learned to love it.

Symbols denoting levels 44-50 in Halo 2's matchmaking. If you saw one of these in the lobby before the game, you pretty much knew you were screwed.

About three years after Halo 2 was released came Halo 3, this time on the next generation Xbox 360 console, and you bet your sweet ass I was one of those people parked out in front of my local game store at midnight waiting in line to get my copy on September 25th, 2007. By now, Xbox live had been totally revamped for the new console and things were quite different. Microsoft seemed to have finally gained control over their online empire and now monitored carefully for the aforementioned types of cheating. Any type was met with a swift ban, and finally we were all free to play and rely solely on our skill to win. This time, I wasn't going to let anything stop me on my way to reaching level 50. I played endlessly in the games' "Lone Wolves" matchmaking mode, a free-for-all battle in which 8 players duked it out against one another for 25 kills to win. I was pretty good at it- I even managed to make it to level 47. I was so close- only 3 levels away!

Halo 3 had a bit of a different system for raising your rank than Halo 2- ranks were determined individually by different matchmaking types. For instance, I could have a rank of 47 in Lone Wolves, but only a 7 in another type like Team Skirmish. However, your highest achieved rank in any game type was always displayed proudly in your user profile, the highest once again being level 50. Not only that, but you were also assigned a military rank for higher levels- such as Captain, Colonel, and Brigadier- and only if you managed to reach level 50 would be awarded with the coveted distinction of General.

I had come so far in Lone Wolves, but it got incredibly difficult to raise my rank at that high of a level. Lone Wolves was almost entirely built on preying upon others- as in, using every dirty trick in the book like camping, stealing kills from others and grabbing hold of high powered weapons and powerups as soon as they spawned. For me and my ridiculous sense of gaming morality to a fault, I could never take enough advantage to get over the proverbial hump. So, I had to start over from the bottom by trying my hand in Team Slayer.

Another thing I should mention is that I never really used the headset that came with the console or listened to other people in-game. This is almost a requirement of Team Slayer, but I made things a bit more difficult on myself by purposely choosing not to do so. Additionally, I never joined up with parties- even in a team game, I always chose to go it alone. Even still, I got better and better. I rose all the way to level 48; however, it was there that I hit a wall again. I would go on long steaks of alternating wins and losses, never gaining any ground. I would win several games in a row, just waiting to rank up to 49 but never seeming to get there, only to go on and lose several more in a row. I wondered if I would be perpetually stuck at 48 forever. I was good, but not good enough to rise to the next level. This went on for weeks. I remember reading somewhere that the ranking system was complex and through some sort of algorithm, it always left you at the rank it believed you should be at, and once you reached your limit there was no way to change it. Not knowing if this was true or not, I started to believe that I would never get any higher than level 48.

Even still, I refused to quit. Despite playing as a loner, despite never coordinating with my teammates through headset, I pushed on. I had come so far, gotten so close- the glory of a General rank was too enticing to give up. Finally, my day came. I was on a winning streak and every game I was kicking ass. And then, like a shimmering beacon of hope, I broke through- I ranked up to 49. I was ecstatic; the rumors weren't true, I wouldn't be stuck at 48 forever. However, I knew this wasn't the end- there was still one last level standing between me and the illustrious 50. But now, there was absolutely no way I was giving up. I was too close. I trudged forward, once again facing alternating wins and losses. I wasn't sure how long it would take this time. With every loss I feared that my rank would be lowered to 48 once again. I even kept track of every win and loss, charting out my progress. After days on end, I was trending upward. I knew the end had to be somewhere in sight.

 My actual "charts" of my progress in matchmaking wins, dated February 13th, 2008 and March 8th, 2008. Up arrows are wins, and down arrows are losses. Note the long periods of back and forth wins and losses for both 48-49 and 49-50. Also, apologies for my terrible handwriting. It hasn't gotten a whole lot better almost 9 years later.

And then it happened. I remember the game clearly- my team was getting beaten down from the very beginning. I had won eight of the last 10 games and desperately wanted to keep my streak going, so I buckled down and willed my team to victory. I had the overwhelming majority of kills on my team and despite them dragging me down, I carried us forward and won the game. Then, as the post-game stats screen faded and I was brought back to the matchmaking lobby, something was different. My rank was 50. And then, the shining golden General ranking was bestowed upon me. I leaped up and shouted with joy. I had finally done it. After all of the "unfairness" I had faced in Halo 2, after all the roadblocks put in front of me in Halo 3, I had broken through. I was one of the best of the best now.

I never played Team Slayer again after that day, leaving my 50 ranking as a testament to my dramatic triumph. Now, obviously for many people who are skilled at first person shooters, reaching level 50 probably wasn't a big deal, and if you are one of those people you're probably laughing pretty hard at what a "noob" I am right now (do people still say noob? I'm pretty out of the loop). Rightfully so for you, but for me, this was about more than that. It was about redemption. It was about earning my keep. It was about being the best I could be, and for that one day, I had done it.