I'll start off by saying that I'm a huge movie geek and just love doing marathons. My viewing endurance has been put to the test with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, X-Men, James Bond, 24, and more. The longest such marathon was Star Wars, which just so happened to take exactly 13 hours 37 minutes(Bond was done in groups of 4 or 5 over the course of a month, while 24 was done over a weekend). Earlier in the month I had an intriguing idea that I'm surprised hadn't come to mind sooner...a video game marathon. The franchise of choice, Halo. A friend and I discussed the pros and cons of the feat and decided to put it into action last night. Estimated time, 24 hours- 8 hours per game. This would leave my previous record of 15 hours straight spent with KOTOR in the dust. So I packed my tv and my 360, dug out my hub and some ethernet cables, grabbed my games and made the pre-requisite trip to wal-mart. The ensueing treasure hunt cumulated in a 12 pack of pepsi, a 12 pack of code red, an 8 pack of green apple jones, a 4 pack of orange monster, a 4 pack of red bull, a 4 pack of amp, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, a bag of bbq chips, and a pack of peanutbutter chocolate chunk cookies. That set us back $40, but was well worth 24 hours of entertainment. From there it was onward to my friend's house where we would set up our system link in his basement so we could play without bothering anyone with our monument to gaming. Considering I woke up around 11am, I wanted to get the whole show on the road a little sooner, but we ended up popping halo 1 in around 2:45pm. And thus the gauntlet began. NOT FINISHED...TAKING A BREAK.
Okay, so the past week has shown me that I'm never going to find the time and/or motivation to finish writing this, so here's the condensed version.
Halo 1- Best campaign, hardest game of the 3, during the Silent Cartographer an elite leapt into a great abyss...HILARIOUS!, explosions were really big for some reason, Captain Keyes is awesome, some kerosene heater mishaps resulted in a basement full of carbon monoxidey smoke...that was fun, realized we couldn't system link halo 1...kinda gay but it all worked out.
Halo 2- Nada for the system link here as well, made me realize how bad the campaign was and how much it drags on towards the end, generally not that fun, began to see our breath, so cold, my friend was fortunate enough to have extra clothes which resulted in him wearing literally 5 layers of socks etc, I had to suffer in my thin loin cloth...err, normal clothes, had some funky taco bell...didn't sit too well, strange conversations about Miranda Keyes getting to "know" Cortana began, did I mention how much it dragged on towards the end?
Halo 3- Home stretch, cracked into our first energy drinks, which were sadly our last as well, disappointingly short...only took us like 5 hours, hence only needing one energy drink a piece, despite the shortness it was by far the most fun because of campaign scoring, soooooo fun, so cold, did I mention we can see our breath every time we open our mouths at this point?, actually lanning it now, that made it better too, anybody else start rofling when the Arbiter roars after killing Truth?, I take the campaign scoring crown in a 5 to 4 contest.
End Result- Awesome time that won't be soon forgotten. There were certainly bumps in the road, like a smoke filled basement, lack of system link for Halo 1 and 2, bad tacos, and sub zero temps, but it all worked out in the end. Sadly it only took like 19 hours and wasn't quite as epic as we had hoped, but it's still a pretty sweet achievement...hmmm, bungie should make an achievement for that. Anyways, there was like half a case of dew, half a case of pepsi, and a crap load of energy drinks left afterwards, but those will definately be put to use some other time. Probably the weirdest part of it all, even moreso than the fact that we were locking ourselves in a basement for an entire day just to play video games...how stereotypical is that?...was the fact that my buddy's friends/family watched a good portion of it. Everybody always talks crap about such a loserish feat, yet they were all there watching history in the making. But that's not the point, the point is we stayed up for around 28 hours straight to test our mettle in a testament to our gaming fortitude and are better gamers for it. I would gladly do it again and highly suggest that all of you other gamers out there try out a gaming marathon as well. It's wicked fun, and you can write a crappy blog about it afterwards. Tell me what you think of my feat, and if any of you guys have ever participated in a gaming marathon. I'd love to hear some other ideas.