Squid Ink

I don’t own an X-Box 360. I can’t afford it. I don’t even own a regular X-Box, or a PS3, PS2 or a Wii. I do, in fact, own a PSOne, and I’ve not touched it in at least two years, despite having a handful of games I still enjoy playing on it (mainly the original Resident Evil, RE2, Monster Rancher 2 and Metal Gear: Solid). Two of those games are among my top 10 games ever, and it’s a shame that I really don’t have time to play them more often.

But, without an X-Box 360, there shall be no Halo 3 for me. I do own the original Halo, for the PC, and I enjoyed it a lot until the Flood showed up. I got very frustrated trying to out-walk them (Master Chief doesn’t run. Or if that is his running speed, it’s pathetically slow) through a maze of identical hallways, only to get stuck in a dead end and get killed by the little yellow bugs. Repeatedly.

I’ll probably get back to it someday, as it’s one of the few games where as I was playing it, I really felt like a bad-ass. There’s nothing like leaping amongst a group of grunts, blasting away, tossing grenades and hearing them scream "He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!" as they run for their lives. I felt like Arnold mixed with Kurt Russell.

Still, as much as I’d like to, I’m not going to get to play Halo 3 anytime soon. No chance for me to "Finish the Fight," as there’s no way I can afford an X-Box 360 anytime in my near future, as I have too many other things I have to spend cashy-money on, like rent, car payments and food. But at least I can enjoy all the fun web-based stuff. The Museum bits and that huge diorama are amazingly cool, and I recommend checking it out. The "interviews" with the survivors of the battle are also very well done. Bungie is going all-out to make Halo 3 a true event, and they’re doing a fantastic job of it.

I also enjoy their selection of Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude to play as you zoom around inside the diorama. Anything that gets more people listening to Classical music, and realizing why it’s still around, is a good thing, I think. I’ll actually go t to the web page and drop into the thing, letting the music play in the background as I do other stuff. It’s that good of a version, and I really hope they put out a Halo 3 soundtrack CD, with that on it.

But it also inspires me to want to play a table-top RPG with this kind of action going on. That would be a blast, if my friends could gather to game more often than once every other month or so. Ah well, the life of the older, responsible gamer.