There is always a fine line between celebrating the past with ardent fervor and being hysterically shackled to it while suffering stockholm syndrome with a fearful smile plastered across a tear drenched face.


Ah, the good old Thanksgiving classic

With Mina the Hollower pretty much done and dusted, a small reluctance takes over me, as a reticent respite commands my attention, and a brief breather begets me before I rush onto my next project. Honestly, my schedule has been hectic enough in the past few days, I’ve had little recourse to do much else but just ruminate on recent experiences in lieu of starting any new ones, lest I put fire to any of my more pressing responsibilities and burn the whole thing to the ground in the name of some virtual nonsense. That is always one of the pieces of wisdom I do well to remind myself of, and that in adult life, one has time for anything but not everything, so prioritize wisely. Usually going with a “top 3 rule” can help maintain focus a little better, cause when you pick your top three things to care about, those are not only the most important, but realistically, all one really has time for on a regular basis without burning the candle at both ends.



Which does kind of bring me to a yet unshared elephant in my cognitive room of sorts, as one of the last major games I beat was Halo: Campaign Evolved. An elephant insofar as most of almost everything having to do with the seething disastrous entity that is Microsoft, and the abysmal shadow they cast over any easily digestible discourse on the games they lord over at large. They have such a terrible track record of public faux pas as of late, both big and small, even entertaining the idea of detailing any time with Halo gave me a moment of pause, due to the toxicity of the nature involved with the parent company. I’ve always advocated for platform agnosticism: I go where the games go, my allegiances lie within the dimensions of the virtual, and not at the feet of any one flag bearing wannabe god emperor within these realms of corporate madness and fanboyism gone disgustingly awry.



With that acknowledgment out of the way, though with more explicit finality involved: I know, I get it, MS sucks, I can’t do anything about that, and to tumble down the argumentative rabbit hole of what qualifies as ethical consumption would eventually lead me to the final conclusion that there simply remains no ethical consumption under the heel of capitalism, which means I’d have to sell all of my stuff, walk out into the woods, and start all over again. But, since that is obviously an absolutely ludicrous idea, for a myriad of reasons, not in the least of which is that I’ve worked hard to achieve the rather comfortable life I’m currently maintaining, I’m just going to have to face up to the fact that I operate within the pretense of philosophical incongruity, and continue to endure with the hypocrisies that befall me of my choosing there after.

On the one hand, all of that may seem like an excessive info dump that may have not been needed all things considered, but I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I have a much easier time getting thoughts to flow when they aren’t all jammed up with some petty trivialities that plague my mind. I suppose as much as I don’t want to talk about the business side of gaming for many, many reasons, I still do want to showcase a level of self-awareness by volunteering the information that yes, I know…I am quite aware. That doesn’t change the fact that the Xbox platform is one of several that cater to my interests, and it felt more familiar to me to play Halo on an Xbox, as trite as that may sound. Halo: Campaign Evolved already has enough issues to discuss without diving into the filthy swamp of politics involved with Microsoft’s innumerable fucking tragedies, so let’s just focus on one dumpster fire at a time, shall we?



I guess to call Halo: Campaign Evolved (which I’m just going to short hand to Halo: CEv from this point forward unless distinct need be otherwise), a dumpster fire is disingenuous; things in gaming that are actual dumpster fires include horrific launches like Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, Simcity (2013), the Diablo Immortal announcement at Blizzcon, the $599 US dollar debacle of the PS3 launch price, the red ring of death, Wii Music, all of the Virtual Boy…you get it, there are a litany of heinous moments in the long history of gaming embarrassments, so I need to pull the reigns back a bit on my…err, lack of total enthusiasm for Halo: CEv at the moment, but this release really does represent quite the queer value proposition…for a lot of reasons.



Right out of the gate, and perhaps I haven’t paid closed enough attention to gaming media in the lead up to the titles launch, but I don’t think it was emphasized enough that Halo: CEv does not include competitive multiplayer at all. Period. Not even a replication of the original Halo 1 maps in local matches even, competitive multiplayer is straight up non-existent in this Halo game, which may be a first for the series in 25 years? I don’t think I need to go out of my way to point out why that is kind of a big old fucking hmmmmmmmmmmmm moment for me. And, just for the sake of clarity, this isn’t akin to a Grand Theft Auto launch, where the single player and online components are treated as if two separate entities, almost like a two for one deal, with single player coming first, and then a roll out of multiplayer later. The Halo: CEv competitive multiplayer is just not coming.



So yeah, off to a great start here with the value on offer. I’d say as a weird tl;dr version of my summed up thoughts on Halo: CEv, we will start with my conclusion first, and then kind of work backwards from there, just for the fucked up fun of it. To that point, I believe this is the first release I’ve ever played that feels more akin to a game remake with the disclaimer in the trailer “based on a true story”, not unlike a premise to a movie loosely based off of a real life event but then greatly embellishing entire swaths of the experience, except in this case, it was as if someone with a foggy memory was trying really hard to recall what the first Halo game was like, but their nostalgia got all fucking jumbled, and elements of other Halo games bled into the nostalgic god damn mix.

I’ve run out of time, so we will ave to stop there for today. We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.

~Pashford