Two games are etched permanently in my gamer memories. The first is Diablo II, the game that got me into PC gaming. The other is Halo. I remember that fateful night when a buddy of mine and I rented an Xbox and a couple of games, including Halo, at our local Rogers Video, and headed home to see what this game was all about. Five or six hours later, and a phone call from his desperate wife wondering where the hell he was, Halo had forever changed who we were as gamers.
Since then, the Halo franchise has seen new iterations, some better than others. With the soon-to-be-released Halo Reach, Bungie is again pulling millions of gamers into its addictive time warp. Over the last few nights, I've popped Halo 3: ODST into my trusty Xbox 360 (don't laugh, since coming back from Microsoft the white knight of consoles has performed flawlessly!) and had fun blasting through the dreaded Covenant.
This will sound corny, but Halo has this familiarity that few other games have—besides EVE Online, of course. I can't put my finger on it, but everything seems familiar; it's as if I've spent so much time in these games that the environments, the sounds, the HUD—they all feel second nature to me.
So the folks at Bungie may rest assured, they'll yet again see my money when Halo Reach comes out.
Do you have a game or game setting that has that same effect on you? I'd be curious to know!
