I can t help but love Halo. It s one of the few things that lodged firmly enough in my teenage heart to build itself a permanent nest there, and it still comes and goes freely, even though the iron gate of age has barred so much else from getting in. Ever since 2001, when I saved to buy an OG Xbox purely for the sake of playing Combat Evolved, I ve gotten needlessly excited about playing each new release on launch day. I was also the guy Nate wrote this article about.
Over the last eighteen years, we ve slugged through pretty much every new release in the series together, and they ve burned a string of happy little plasma scars on my brain, each one a memorial anchor for a whole period of my life. A decision to join the army in my early twenties saw me playing Halo 3 in drafty barracks in Wales, about to be sent to Afghanistan. Despite feeling incredibly removed from normal life, just a few bars of the theme, or the familiar clatter of the battle rifle, would instantly transport me back to a sort of home.