My brother and I first were introduced to Halo Combat Evolved thanks to our school friend Abdullah aka Abe when he invited us over to play deathmatch. At the time my brother and I were Playstation 2 kids and got the hours in on Nintendo 64s but before visiting we had never seen an Xbox in person. All we knew was the hype that Microsoft pumped into every gaming publication and site at the time but sadly did not land as well as they had hoped. Adoption of the console would take time and it was not until the release of the 360 that Xbox finally became a true contender in the console wars.
Abe powered on the loud and mysterious black box and everything from the boot up screen to the opening sequences blew our mind. The main menu seemed pretty standard but when the four us got into the game our minds were blown. The graphics were unmatched across all platforms and the 3D graphics paired with the craziest gunplay we experienced let us know we were in for something special. Microsoft low key penetrated our imaginations and would mould our gaming tastes and opinions as we matured in our hobbies and subcultures.
Halo was different to anything else on the market and with Xbox Live online gaming was changing in real time. Lobbies became a thing over night and nobody was prepared for the level of trash talk, trolling and tea-bagging that would ensue. The explosion happened for Halo 2 which improved on mechanics and graphics while expanding the existing story and settting.
The story of Halo was very straight forward for anybody approaching the game, you take the role of Mater Chief a cyborg super soldier in futuristic Spartan armour which to most of us was some cool blend of Centurions meet Iron Man. A hard accent and some basics walk us into the action and to me and my bro having a coop split screen campaign on day one was epic. Being financially challenged as kids in a country where the majority of your classmates were not coop games were our go to games as we only ever had one console like most kids in the world. Back then console wars were serious business at the playground and at the arcade, you digest as much information as you could from the mags and tv shows to launch into debates to defend your franchise. The Xbox however blew its competition out the water and neither Nintendo nor Sony were even coming close the graphics and sheer power. Why? Simply put the Xbox was a PC crammed into a box and sold as a console and could output better resolutions and unlike the current models of the PlayStation actually had a built in modem for connecting online in every console shipped.
The controller of the Xbox controllers lent itself to the controls which pioneered and established the controls most of us use today in the bulk of FPS games and shooters. Unlike Medal of Honour which was a big title at the time you could only carry two weapons so resource economy was something you had to consider. Halo did not just eat everyone’s lunch because it looked good, it played just as well and Chief being a cyborg made the extra long jumps and fast dashing make sense in the setting we were playing. The soundtrack also is considered iconic with its low yet epic chants. The writers of Halo managed to craft a living world and infuse cliches and quality in the Bungie era. Blending in the feel of marines battling aliens like in Starship Troopers while also giving you that gruff military layer of the USNC. The ships were big, the vehicles unlike what we saw before and the asymetrical ways of battling between the Covenant and the Humans lead to diverse play styles from day one. With the addition of dual wielding the in sequel and becoming the must have app thanks to its superb integration and ease of Xbox Live online gaming took off and never looked back.
Bungie were invested in the narrative, everything from NPCs to storylines were reviewed and edited to give us the games which arguable changed the industry for the better. Fun fact, Steve Jobs actually hired Bungie when he saw their demos and it was originally meant to be an RTS game but when Jobs went cold and the board disagreed with him Bill Gates and the Microslop goons made their best purchase.
Bungie overlooked and were core to 4 titles, Halo Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo Reach and Halo ODST which are hailed as classics throughout the Xbox community. However with Bungie departing Microsoft after clash of ideas and greed Halo would start moving in a different direction. What attracted countless players to the franchise was the coop campaign, unpredictable multiplayer, hours of laughs in the lobbies alone had all of us enjoying ourselves in Bungie’s fictional galaxy.
Revisiting Halo today as an older gamer in his mid 30’s is bitter sweet and surreal at the same time. I never owned a 360 until well into its life cycle but was blessed to have friends who had the console both on campus and in Zagreb. Entire weekends finishing campaigns still replay in my mind when I walk down those same streets when I am back in the capital. For us in Croatia we never had Xbox Live, often resorting to using our friends addresses in other countries and their credit cards so you had to really want to play to overcome those obstacles in a time when the internet was by no means what it is today. Today Halo to be is nostalgia especially after the course shift Microsoft took with the narrative and franchise as a whole.
The big 343 studios elephant in the room. When 343 took over the franchise many of us held out hope as the press releases and expos often had talking heads speak of the legacy and how they wanted to build on it for the fans. Many things were promised to yet few if none of them were delivered. From changing Cortana to a mid chick, recylcing tropes that would not fit in the setting to removing releasing a buggy mess with Halo Master Chief Collection the writing was very much on the wall. 343 strayed from the casual fun and bad assery that worked for so long and by the time they understood their mistakes it was too late. Halo stopped becoming a competitive title and less and less Xbox players viewed it as the must have title. After loosing steam and money on their mistakes 343 took their ineptitude even further by releasing they poorly received Halo Infinite. There is not much to say about Infitnite other than the campaign was not finished on release and it had not couch coop campaign and was never patched. The uproar of boos and disappointed could be heard to the MIR space station and beyond as players in mass started walking away. Many gaming historians tend to site this time as the beginning of the end for Xbox as a console and powerhouse publisher.
Now when I power up the console and play Halo I am almost never playing anything post Bungie and almost always choose to play campaign. It was during a game session with my twin broski going through CE that I got the idea of hosting the first ever Halo tournament at a convention in my hometown of Split. I knew even then it would not be a massive turn out, add me getting pneumonia a few weeks out of the tournament I have barely managed to coordinate posters, posts, equipment and any meaningful promotion. Many of my local buddies asked me why was I even bothering with the convention let alone the hassle of hosting the tournament and in my eyes it is very simple. I love Halo, I love 7th Generation gaming and it has moulded the person I am today. The player first approach to games allowed me to grow up surrounded by games which could be considered art and microtransactions were never a thing. This tournament is a way for me to hopefully bringing gaming on the Xbox closer to other potential players or maybe some nostalgia for some of the expats who have been moving into the city by the the boat loads it feels recently. I want to give console gamers a home at FantaSTikon and this tournament I hope is but the first step in many on the path to getting more people into our culture and hobbies.
So please if you ever were interested in Halo, Xbox or just fancy meeting some other sci fi console gamers be sure to sign up. If you do not want to compete we will also have casual rounds in between competition to hang out and give others chances to try out the game.
The sign up sheet link is here
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Avalon Bros 
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