You sign onto Halo 3. The little white dots spin round and round, and the cold blue of the interface fills your screen like hydrogen-injected ice. The rumor is true. BTB has become a ranked contest. You grab as many gamers as are on your friends list and jump in there.

What lot does the matchmaking service cast you?

Holy Crap!

You’ve been playing Halo 3 since it launched – and before, with a former version of code. You ain’t never seen that many Generals at once ever before in your life.

And birds, too. Lest we forget that birds are dangerous, too.

What do you do?

I’m sorry to say that you lose, partner. You lose ugly.

At least I did. Seeing Big Team Battle go ranked was a shock to the system. When the competitive gamer joined us in the waterpark that was Valhalla, it was hell and flood.

Allow this gamerblogger an absolution before you start hating on me for taking combat-ready teams into social playlists. I need Big Team Battle. This SPARTAN can’t play Halo without regular cavalry charges in the Warthog. Correct me if I am wrong, but you don’t get that in Double Team.

When you throw a party, you aim to have an ass in every seat that the venue allows. When I play Halo, I want a good, old-fashioned shit-kicker of a brawl. I have wanted that party ranked. I have asked – point blank – for it to be ranked.

When the party got ranked, my little joyride was over. I can assure you that I got exactly what was coming to me. I passed out some Steak. I got around to eating some o’ my own, mind you. But I had to skulk back to my own forum [like a Patriot does] to lick my wounds.

That was the best part. When I got there, everyone was talking about the game again. A bunch of punch-drunk Gunslingers were shaking off a string of heartbreak matches. The YouTube media bee silenced, and the War Room was abuzz again.

We even drew some guns back from the front lines of Call of Duty. Saturday night saw a Friends List swell reminiscant of launch for Halo 3.

It was an interesting reminder. You only learn how to play the game better if you are losing. Winning is never fun when it involves rolling some unsuspecting house-guests who are trying the game for the first time on a friend’s couch. If you are not learning something new doing a thing, that thing becomes boring. Rote. Routine.

The new challenge is what stokes replayability of a multiplayer title like Halo 3. If there is no new horizon to tackle, the eager problem-solving minds that hold a team together will migrate to new shores.

The best way to bring them home to the Halo Nation is to shuffle the deck from time to time.

Thanks, Bungie.

p.s. To those houseguests that we rolled, keep playing the game. BTB Social is yours, unless it’s really late on a Friday. At that point in time, you probably won’t care anyway.

p.s.s. To those Generals that took us out to the woodshed, we did not waste money on matching names. All we did was lose. It happens sometimes, even if you are playing a good game.

Posted by XerxdeeJ