Relationship. Ooh, hot! =O

My first experience with Halo was shortly after it and the Xbox were released. I was visiting my friend, incredibly excited about this "new system" he kept balabbering about. Lo and behold it was the Xbox contraption that I didn't really care about due to my entrapment with Nintendo 64. Given this, as soon as Halo was booted up, I was shocked by the graphics. I had never seen any 3D game so detailed before. Being a stingy selfish fellow, my buddy selected a one player campaign on Sparkplug 67 (or whatever the heck it's called). At the time I was a First Person Shooter newcomer (all I had played was GoldenEye), so the gameplay was new to me. I watched as my friend blasted through hordes of aliens. Needless to say, I walked away impressed.

My friends was always a hog, so I sadly never had the chance to play Halo until my uncle purchased an Xbox with Halo and some other games. I visited him one day, and the two of us spent hours playing the co-op mode, which was surprisingly fun. But after beating many levels on legendary in co-op, I became bored. I still had not experienced the multiplayer, though. Before and after this bore, I tried many other First Person Shooters and realized how little Halo did. It borrowed from so many games that I just enjoyed more. I feel out of the ring. (pardon the pun)

Just a week ago, I had the chance to play 3 player Slayer with some friends. It was great. I then realized how Halo, while not bringing anything new to the table, did so many things right that it was fun.

My perspective has totally changed since that match, so now, I'm going to buy an Xbox with Live so I will be able to play Halo 2 among other games online and off.

But wait, there's more!

Because of my interest being sparked, I decided to read up on Halo 2. Here are some things I'm looking foward to.

-The Xbox Live "party" feature: As you may or may not now, Halo 2 has a Live interface that acts almost like a Halo LAN party. Players can invite friends or foes into their party, which causes all to act as one when joining matches. I feel this will make setting up a game with friends will be much easier and involve less confusion.

-Destructible environments: I love games that have this aspect. Being able to distort a map in many ways brings more strategy and challenge to a game, which is a good thing.

-Destructible vehicles: No longer will players drive circles around your base in a Warthog. Just a few shots, and you can disable a part of a vehicle making it harder to handle or even explode. I think this will bring in a whole new gameplay element when paired with

-Vehicle hijacking: A cool feature that hasn't been done much before. It will only add more depth to the multiplayer. =)

All in all, I believe Halo 2 will be a great sequel to Halo. Despite the lack of innovation, the game will still be good old fun. =)