I’ll Be Focusing My Chi, Too
The Halo illness previously hinted at continues unabated. Indeed, like any noxious disease it has now laid waste to several friends whose only crime was to stand precariously close to me during the first five days of infection.
It was the promise of a DoubleXP Grifball weekend that pulled me back in and somehow I am now playing more than I ever did at launch, a phenomenon which continues to defy any of my explanations. The days immediately following that first revelatory round of Grifball were spent in a kind of stupor while I stumbled around and grumbled under my breath about which real world activities could be immediately improved by the addition of gravity hammers. If you’d like to simulate this experience for yourself, just think back to the first time you left the house after playing Tony Hawk and began mentally tabulating which items you felt like you could successfully grind on.
My transition back into the world of Halo has been immensely improved by one thing, however, and that’s the discovery of the voice privacy settings for my account. Thanks to that handy little setting, I can now only hear and be heard by people on my friend’s list, and the result has been as though a healing salve was applied directly to my soul. Previously, the space during matchmaking between when a full lobby was formed and the game actually launched stood as a sort of mini-game to me, testing whether or not I could mute all the fuckwits in the time allotted. Not all of my friends understand why I’ve chosen to shun the outside world in this way, and my now-standard reply is that the next time they’re listening to a stoned 14 year old call them a racial slur in their shrill, pre-pubescent voice, I’ll in a zen state of mind, wrapping the silence around me like a blanket.
To the Unknown Hero who came up with this miracle setting: I salute you, sir. Your contributions to gaming and my personal happiness cannot be underestimated.
The Halo fascination is likely to take a small back seat sometime this week after the release of GTA IV on Tuesday, and the already overdue TF2 patch which is supposed to include the new medic achievements and Payload game type. With all the buzz over the Medic achievements and unlockable weapons, it’s going to be a great goddamn time to play a Heavy.