Halo 3

So, I finished Halo 3 tonight. Online, with 3 good friends. Two of them are here in LA but one is in Montreal. This weekend I will be playing with my best friend in Tokyo. Seamless voice chat, two player co-operative story based gameplay, teaming up to shoot lots and lots of aliens. The other night after a particularily brutal battle Hideto and I just chilled out and talked for like 45 minutes in a bunker with some wounded marines, the place was getting shelled way up above but the noise wasn't too loud down where we were. We had intended to quit playing and I was going to go to bed but the conversation just rolled on, the voice was clean and clear, and it was FREE. We just sat there and talked, it was so cool.

We live in the future. It was just like living back in Tokyo, playing Halo with my best friend, only now I am 3000 miles away and he is only virtually on my couch. And we both get full screen! And we're both at home so our wives aren't lonely even if we are a little cut off from them. Last week I played for hours with Darin, one of my oldest friends who still lives in Seattle. If it werent for Xbox I would get to hang out with him MAYBE a couple of hours a year. Now it can be whenever I want, and its more interesting than sitting around drinking beers, its like a huge crazy battle and we are making up strategies on the fly and generally having an awesome time. I love it. Although the story is a bit shit, the game itself is fully a worthy successor to what was until now, in my opinion, the best game of all time, HALO.