My last game of Halo 2 has been fought and won. This statement is both true and false for an equal number of reasons. There it is…
...set in stone [or what passes for stone in the virtual world] for posterity.
I went out on a high note. Gulch Wars always was great for some big dumb fun late on a Sunday night. For years now, many a weekend has concluded with some honking, burning Warthog antics as the final item of business before retiring to face the work week. In this game, like most games, I was flanked by some of the finest people you could ever have shooting a gun at you.
To say that this game was my last game of Halo 2 is, of course, misleading. There is no doubt that this multiplayer classic will make appearances at LAN Parties, or perhaps on evenings of nostalgia via Xbox Live. The game illustrated above, however, is the last game in a years-long, unbroken campaign as a gamer that marched through Halo 2 with a dedicated army in tow.
Tomorrow, millions of gamers will acquire Halo 3 at Midnight. For many, it will be like a graduation ceremony. Anxious students from the School of Bungie will line up to walk the stage and ascend to the next level. From the hallowed halls of Halo 2, we will invade an institution of higher learning en masse – and collide with a noise never heard in the industry of games.
Halo 2 will be ripe for a visit when [and if] we need it. Coag may yet beckon. Relic may well call. When we visit those places again, they will feel alien. The body memory in our hands will have us lashing out in the wrong directions when it is time to reload. The vistas will lack luster. The weapons will sound wrong. It is from there that this maudlin sense of finality emerges.
Tomorrow, everything changes. All bets are off. It’s time for each of us to learn how to walk again.
For those of us who held out and made Zanzibar our home away from home, it’s as if tourism season is about to kick off again. Our community of people [population: about 200,000] played Halo 2 throughout the long winter – not to metion the endless summer – before Halo 3. That sleepy little town is about to become a Nation again. Hoards of fair weather gamers are about to storm the beaches with free vouchers for Xbox Live in hand.
Can you feel the ground shake from their approach?
Forget all about bumping into your favorite sister-clan for a serendipitous challenge arranged at the hands of Matchmaking. The several hundred thousand of us that have kept one another such good company in the twilight days of Halo 2 are about to become surrounded by millions of faces that will be storming the ramparts built into Halo 3. Some of them have been on World of Warcraft sabbatical. Others just tire of a new toy after a few months. All of them will be gunning for us with a clumsy ferocity that we will have no choice but to share with them.
Here we go. The War of the Halo Nation spills out onto a new battleground tonight, or tomorrow, or next week – if you just can’t chance a spoiler in the pre-game lobby.
This is for all you new people: Everyone fights. No one quits.
The TTL Gunslingers will travel the paths of this new game. At last count, each of us had 117 other teammates to lay down covering fire. You will see us. We are easy to spot. And no, we don’t need a clan list to remind us that we are a team.
Hype time is over. Time to play the game. That is what Tied the Leader is all about. See you around campus.
Wishing you a good game in Halo 3,
TTL XerxdeeJ.
p.s. Thanks for all of the good games in Halo 2.
See you at homecomming.
It’s been a crazy ride. Great write up Deej, I think we’re all looking forward to your thoughts on Halo 3.
Thanks Halo 2, you’ve provided me with good times, bad times, emotional highs and controller heaving lows.
Good Game H2, Good Game.
Damn right, good game. I have to wait an extra day here in Holland, but I’ll be skipping school and work again soon to play in matches that I’ll never forget.
Good times for the last two years my old friend… Halo2 we have known you intimately and yet at times feel like we have hardly known ye.
Thank you old friend.
Time for me to go check out and play with your new hot young sister.
sniffs, brushes tear away, So long ole friend. Our times were filled with frustration as well as jubilation. I will look back at you fondly as I’m grinning from ear to ear for the next two years or so.Nice epitaph Deej!
Good times. Halo 2 has spent the vast majority in my game console and rarely has taken a seat back in it’s case since the beginning.
Now it’s time to fight the renewed masses in Matchmaking. I hope that feeling of wonder and awe will match with what happened back in ‘04.
You have an amazing way with words…nice writeup,and hopefully i will see you on the battlefields of Halo 3!
Can you belive that it’s been almost 6 years since we first put Halo in our disk trays? Wow, time sure does fly.
I know what you mean, playing Halo 2 these last few months was fun; lose a game, start a new one and as you’re skimming through the list of players you notice that the guy who owned your ass last game was now your team mate!
I’m not picking up my copy until tomorrow, so when midnight hits I’ll sign onto Halo 2 to see how much the population dwindled.
It will be a sad occasion, had many a good night and day with Halo 2; downing a 2-liter of Mountain Dew in 5 hours while me and my friend over Live got our Skirmish level past 20. Quitting only when I realized I had 3 hours of sleep before my morning classes.
Or that time I spent an entire game of BTB CTF on Terminal humping and yelling at the men, who fell to the might of my BR, “I owned you, bitch, don’t forget that.” I must’ve did that to everyone, because when I died trying to take the flag with 10 seconds left in the match, the whole team convened on my body and proceeded to hump the snot out of it, all whilst screaming “Oh, yeah, we owned you. Suck it, whore.”
Good times had by all.
Halo 2 has indeed been very, very good to me. It brought me to this fine group of gamers/friends with whom I have spent many an enjoyable hour. Say what you will about Halo 2 (host advantage, malfunctioning weapons, button combos and map glitches), but despite it all I will always have fond memories. I look forward to new friendships and memories to come with Halo 3, and like any Gunslinger will not forget wherefrom I came, nor the face of my Father.
You really captured it here. I really get this sense that we’re moving into a new era of gaming.
See you on the other side =).
And only a few days ago we were teaching/learning some new tricks on terminal. I guess you dont realize the ending is really here untill you read the words out loud, until you see all your games pass just before youre ayes and notice a small smile in your face, knowing, for ever, that Coag will live forever in your heart. I left Halo 2 on a win as well. Boy does that feel good. Its like kissing good bye before the brake-up, it hurts, but it conforts both at the same time. Bring the next fight, we are ready, we are Ka-tet.
It was a good time indeed, I’ll get on for my last H2 game tomorrow and will make sure to end on a win as well.
Hope to see everybody on the other side.
While I don’t want to say good-bye, I realize that as with all good things, this too must end.
I will be awaiting for my copy to arrive for a short while still, and I will cherish the last few games of Halo 2 while I can. Sure, Bioshock has taken a hold of me, and there’s a lot of other work that I need to be doing, but I think the ghost-town of H2 will be yet another link in the chain of memory that Halo has been for my life.
Man… I can’t wait to see what they have waiting for us. new guns, new armour, and new vehicles… and this equipment thing. It’s all to cool.
Lot’s of learning ahead for us, and as Zues said, there’s still a few things it H2 to learn.