Halo 3 Marathon

I just finished a 3-hour marathon of Halo 3 on XBox Live, with no break at all. Now I can barely get my eyes to focus well enough to type this blog post!

By the end, there were five of us in a party: myself, three guys from work (two of whom I'd joined up with last night or the night before, online) and a 9-year-old player with the gamertag of "Jakerman Can".

The second time I tried Halo 3 online, one of the games that I played had Jakerman in it. He was chatting away, and I didn't even have my headset on initially so I was just listening to everyone who did. But after hearing him trying to be friendly and the other jerks in the game treating him badly, I put my headset on and started talking to him. Despite us being in a deathmatch game, he wanted to team up with somebody, as he wanted a buddy to roam around with. I told him that I'd partner up with him, and then I found him in the game and didn't shoot him (which is always the acid test for teaming up!) We both stunk pretty bad but he was more interested in telling me all of the observations that he'd made in the game ("There's a rocket launcher over there... it's my favourite gun!") than in getting a good score, anyway.

At the end of that game, he asked if I'd go into a party with him, meaning that we'd travel to the next game together. I said, "Sure," and we did that for a few more games, and then I had to retire for the night so I told him that I'd had fun playing Halo 3 with him, and maybe we'd meet up again another time. Before I played the next time after that, he'd sent me a Friend Invite, and we've gone around getting killed together within Halo 3 a couple of times since then. He often just lets loose with a stream of consciousness - again, pointing out whatever he's seen or learned in the game for whomever's interested.

I'm sure it freaked out the work buddies that I brought a young kid into the party tonight, but whatever. I've been used to interacting with younger kids since I was a teenager - when I babysat practically every weekend, for three or four years - and I've always believed that you should set positive role models for them whenever you can. I'm not sure if first person shooters are the best place for that (!) but at least I'm always polite in my conversations with him and try to reinforce the fun aspect over the competitive angle when he's in the party.

Like Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS/3, Halo 3 online has military ranks that you move up through, the more you play (and accomplish). However, I don't find it as compelling as it was with R:FoM, nor do I think I'll ever achieve a high ranking (I'm Sargent 2nd Grade right now, I think). Poor Jakerman's still stuck at the entry-level rank; each of the work friends are way, way above me in both rank and skill.