After 5 months of me pouring my time and heart into this girl, she decided to cut it off for reasons I did not know about until last night. I don't have a problem with it except I wished she had communicated this with me before. As tough as I try to act oftentimes, I must admit I am a little distraught because I really, really like her. Anyway I'd rather not go into details here and to be quite honest, I don't know why I am even posting something like this here to begin with. Just got to get it out of my system I guess.

On a slightly brighter side, I have put 30 hours into The World Ends With You since launch, am not even halfway through it yet and am immensely enjoying it. I also think I probably should not be at level 60 when I'm not even halfway through when the level cap is 100. Anyway, I totally recommended it to anybody with a DS who likes action-rpgs with style.

As you know, I try and spare the details, don't want TOO much of these personal things up here. I would like to mention though, that I had a 3 day planned events going on for my valentine, and she LOVED all 3 days. The first days I was anonymous and set stuff up for her and when she found out it was me yesterday she want ballistic and couldn't stop giggling hahaha. That being said, she dodged the main question (regarding dating) but that is ok. She has never dated before and she is excessively shy, so no need to push it on her. With how much we go out we practically are dating anyway, it is just a matter of letting her be ready to make it 'official'. Anyway, I fear I've said too much already. V-Day was great overall, minus the unanswered question and the two finals.

As for other events, I've had too much time spent studying, so I haven't really had much time for much else. I did manage to finally beat Myst for the first time a few days ago, and though I really want to play Riven, I seem to have become readdicted to Super Luigi Galaxy. I have 92 stars so far so I'll probably be done soon, since it IS my second play through. Great game. I plan on picking up Professor Layton tomorrow, it's always caught my eye and after reading the review it looks like the perfect portable game to compliment Wipeout Pure right now.

Anyway, I think that about sums up what's going on for now. Nothing really exciting besides the V-day thing. Okbye.

Looks like that Halo 3 conclusion story is going to be postponed indefinately (like the Halo Movie XD) if I keep up like this, but as my life moves on, other things happen and I tend to blow off the Halo thing. Anyway, good job.

So anyway, as I've mentioned in passing in the past, there is this girl I've been interested in work. For the sake of privacy, I will leave out all the fun details, but to sum it up, she is a REALLY shy girl who is very afraid of dating (as I was back in the day, so I understand). With that being said, I asked her to a movie, she said yes, and today was the day. It went absolutely fantastically and I am very happy. I haven't dated for about 3 years due to a major focus on college, and this is definately nice. I guess even the nerdy, locked up scientist has to socialize sometimes too right? :-P

I just wanted to mention that I just gave my first 10.0 to a game in my life, and that is a big deal. I don't rate games harshly when it comes to being good (8.0-9.0), but when it comes to being 9.5 and above, I am VERY thorough and harsh. With that being said, Half-Life 2 passed through all of my scrutiny and deserves every single part of its 10 from me. It is a first for me, and don't expect it to happen again anytime soon (it also is a big deal because my favorite games of all time: Final Fantasy VI and Xenogears, did not even get a perfect score with my objective rating....well as objective as I can make it).

As a side note, I have NOT forgotten about my little look at the Halo series, I merely haven't had time, expect the final part to be up by the end of next week.

Sorry about the delay in the next part, ironically enough I forgot about this due to staying up all night playing Halo 3 XD. Anyway, time to continue.

So Halo was announced for PC, and naturally I was interested. I didn't seriously consider getting and Xbox or the PC Halo still, but it stayed in the back of my head. Time passed and then suddenly Halo 2 came out. I was reading all over the news (gaming news) about how big it was, and at that point Halo was available for 19.99 new so I just bought it for the PC. The campaign was fun to try and get through by myself, but I had done it before and the story hadn't changed. The thing that really appealed to me was the multiplayer, which was now online, had 6 new maps (all of which I liked better than the original maps), new weapons and vehicles and moddability. The fact that it was online was a big deal for me, in comparison with the Xbox version. I will admit though, the Xbox version added something new into the world of console gaming that never really caught on in the past: LAN parties.

LAN parties were not something new to the PC world, but very few games on console have ever used LAN effectively before Halo, and in fact most of the older consoles didn't even have the ABILITY to LAN (PS2 first in Sony line...GCN first in Nintendo line and Xbox first in Microsoft line....if I remember correctly). Halo brought people together, and led people to want to be able to take advantage of the 16 player multiplayer, and so oftentimes people would have LAN parties just for Halo. Since then, console LAN parties has become quite a bit more believable.

Moving on, I got Halo PC during a time where DSL was still not too big, so my family only had dial-up. I still distinctly remember always playing Halo online on my dial-up. Yes, I played Halo on a dial-up. I was usually able to play with up to 6 people without any severe lag. Looking back on it, that was very impressive, and I don't know HOW that was even possible. However they did it, it worked, and it kept me immensely satisfied. To the point that I lost care for Halo 2. Well a year passed by and two other games on the Xbox caught my eye: Conker Live & Reloaded and Destroy All Humans!. Between those two and Halo 2, I felt I could finally justify buying an Xbox. I wasn't rich though, so I had a lot of saving to do. To make sure I didn't miss a beat though, I bought a controller S and Halo 2 before I even got my Xbox, to make sure I dedicated myself to getting an Xbox before I spent on other things.

Well, after about 2 weeks post-Halo 2 purchase, I finally got my Xbox...my first ever non-Nintendo console.

(You have to wait for part 3 to get more information now! I know I know, it is painful, but I need time to sleep, eat, and play Halo 3 don't I? :-P)

Well, I have spent a boatload of time with all three Halo games, and I think it is about time I finally take a look at the trilogy as a whole and each game individually, making a comparison and relating it to gaming as of now.

You know, I still remember when I had first found out about Halo being a launch game for this strange new kid on the block: the Xbox. I saw the Xbox as Microsoft trying to suck money out of its consumers some more again, and figured it would be a total failure. What on earth could Microsoft do to make a game console work? They had no experience and would fail as far as I was concerned. As for me, I instead impatiently awaited the release of the Gamecube so I could get my hands on Rogue Leader. At the time, my gaming revolved around nothing more than Nintendo and PC. I never was interested in the PS2 and the Xbox was FAR from interesting to me. I mean, an FPS on console? And that being the consoles flagship game? RIDICULOUS. Goldeneye was fun and Perfect Dark was a blast, but there was a good reason why the majority of my games on the PC were FPS games. I did not see FPS as being workable on a console, with only a handful of exceptions.

Well, the Xbox released shortly after the Gamecube and I of course took no heed. My friend bought a Gamecube as well and we played all the time. One day though, this guy invited me to a house and what was sitting next to his TV? AN XBOX! Blasphemy! No gamer would own that junk! He insisted that I sit down and play some co-op with him, on this little game called Halo. I remembered the good days of playing Perfect Dark on co-op so I gave it a chance. The first thing that hit me was the controller. It was....akward to say the least. Still, it grew on me very quickly. I liked the set-up of the buttons, the feel of the controller, it felt good after a while. Granted, my hands were small, and the Gamecube controller was far better suited to my hands (it was perfect), but the bulkiness of the Xbox controller made me feel like it had substance, like it was a power unto itself. Still, that console made me laugh. We started up the first level, I remember hearing the name of the main character. Master Chief. Who came up with that rubbish? He even looked kinda stupid to me, a typical space-marine in a special suit. Big flippin' deal. Well, by the time we had finished the first level, I had decided to come over to my friend's place everyday until we beat the game. We went through the whole thing and afterewards would have 4 player gaming sessions all the time. I never did like the Xbox, but Halo grew on me, in a way that games don't usually do. I won't lie, the game was not very creative or original, and from the campaign I was able to gather very little about any sort of interesting story, but the game was fun to play with others, something that I never really got out of console FPS games normally.

Well, time passed, and so did the fad. Halo dissappeared from my memory, and I continued to enjoy my Gamecube and GBA, despite all the bashing it received as being a kiddy system. I had a good time, and then there was a little announcement that caught my eye: Halo was to come to the PC.

(To be continued in Part 2. I will tell the story of my experience with the Halo series, then I will talk about their importance as games and their relation to eachother. No matter what people try to say about how good or bad the Halo series is, it HAS made an effect on the gaming world.)