Halo: a series of video games that centers on the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced human super-soldier equipped with technologically-advanced battle armor, and his artificial intelligence (AI) companion, Cortana, as the humans of a futuristic universe battle the Covenant, a theocratic alliance of alien races. In the game, the term "Halo" refers to Halo mega structures, large orbital constructions, similar to those first popularized by the 1970 novel Ringworld by Larry Niven, though smaller in scale.
And the hardest video game I've ever played! The plot and rules of the game I do not get in their entirety. There are so many controls, some easy and some complicated that I end up feeling Halo-disabled. For a Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts freak such as me, Halo was a whole new language. Allow me to explain some of the problems I encounter exploring this whole new "language".
First when I sat down to watch the guys play the game they explained everything in Halo talk. I had no idea what the heck the "Covenant" was. So of course I was introduced the game, completely confused, which of course isn't a good thing.
When I finally tried to play, it was with someone who had completed the game two times around and was steadily making her way through Halo 3. She handed me the X-Box controller and said "Just follow me," which shouldn't have been hard right? WRONG! The controls on that game are completely whacked out! Its like to run you move the right analog stick, but at the same time you have to control the camera angle with the left analog stick. Which I could not do. I wound up running in circles; both staring at the sky or the ground and getting myself stuck in corners I couldn't figure out how get out of.
Then there’s the many different buttons that control many different weapons that you have to remember. If my memory serves me correct the left trigger controlled the grenades and the right trigger fired which ever gun you were using. The "A" button made your man jump, the "B" button melee-d (whatever that is), the "Y" button switched weapons and the "X" button reloaded your weapon of choice, if you had the ammo.
Then the aliens came. Since I had no talent at controlling the camera angle my aiming skills weren't that much better off. The monsters were to fast for me to get a good aim on, so I ended up wasting my ammo on the wall instead of hitting the aliens. I would also often confuse the buttons that controlled the grenades and fired the gun. So instead of attempting to murder an alien I would accidentally toss a grenade and blow up some unsuspecting human. Which, I learned, isn't a good thing. They turn on you! I quickly learned that when a battle approached it was best to run and hide and let my friend kill off the enemy. When the battle was over I would "stumble" from my hiding spot and shoot the dead aliens, to look like I did something.
At some point in the game my friend showed me how to aquire a strange flying machine called a 'Ghost'. After nearly twenty failed attempts at knocking the creature who was in it I finally hopped on. In my attempt to follow my friend I screwed up the camera setting and managed to lose her for a second and when I finally caught sight of her I had believed she went down a "tunnel". It of course wasn't, so after saying, "Are you down there, how'd you fit?" and her laughing hysterically at me for literally 10 minutes, I discovered it was not a tunnel but was in fact just a shed like structure.
I'm sure there are people out there who think Halo is the greatest game and are probably pro-players at it. They'll probably read this and go, "Was she on chemicals when she played it?" or "Nooob!" (The second one is less likely but some nerd may say it) or they'll even go as far as to say "Well no wonder she sucked, girls don't play video games!". And there may be people out there who completely agree with me and were just to afraid to admit it. No one can be perfect at every video game. We all have our own genre, mine just happens to be in the "Almost everything except for Grand Theft Auto and Halo" genre. Doesn't make me any less of a gamer, and definitely saves me a lot of money. So permit me to leave Halo to those who can speak that language, and I'll stick to chilling with Sora and Cloud.
