What happen to Halo night?

After the last blog post on online gaming I found myself thinking about times I actually enjoyed playing multiplayer games, and I realised that the best time was always when me and my friends would get together for Halo night, yes even before big bang theory mentioned it we where playing and calling Halo night as far back as halo 2. These are some of my favourite gaming memories we would get together, agree who's turn it was to bring there Xbox around to the party grab an extra television from somewhere and play 8 player LAN line Halo. It was truly the best thing ever.

But it doesn't happen any more, why? When I became a parent I wasn't sure that I would have time to join my friends anymore for these sort of nights but to my surprise we seemed to stop having them as well, why? maybe it was because we had grown up and moved apart a little but maybe it was because everyone was to busy playing call of duty on line with people they had never met. I never got this, as you could probably tell from my last blog post, the enjoyment for me came from knowing each other; how we played in the game, the weapons we all favoured, the tactics we used, the alliances we forged an then broke as well as knowing each other outside of the game which always made for some amazing smack talk.

I remember the best player in our group was a friend of mine called Manny, he was brilliant, unstoppable, especially if he got his hand on a plasma sword it might as well of been game over at that point, so it always devolved into 'keep the sword away from Manny', which obviously wasn't a game mode but became our own mode, and that is what is beautiful about LAN parties the connection the personal stories from your group and going to school on Monday and

recalling the battles with anyone who couldn't make it, or who refused to play because he was a PlayStation fanboy (you know who you are). I miss these days. I mean I have friends who I met at Halo night and have gone on to being good friends with.

Just as my daughter was getting to the age where she was interested in videogames Halo Masterchief collection came out and we where hooked together, we

Just as my daughter was getting to the age where she was interested in videogames Halo Masterchief collection came out and we where hooked together, we played through Halo 1,2 and 3 on co-op mode and I had that same feeling, plus I got to re-experience the story with fresh eyes through my daughter. It brought me back to playing multiplayer co-op with my friends again and reignited my own love of videogames. We started Halo 4 together but I had a hard time committing to playing with her with my Job schedule. It didn't matter though because we where gonna make it up together in Halo 5 when that came out, she was a little older and better so I really wanted to experience a new Halo for the first time with her and push her with Legendary, we where so excited, we watched all of the trailers and where pumped.

What my daughter is now like when shes online

I went to go and buy the game so me and my daughter could play all weekend, walked into game picked up the box, turned it over to inspect my new trophy and then saw the worst thing imaginable, single player, online co-op. What happened? Why is there no co-op story mode so I put it back and went home to do a bit of research turns out there was no couch co-op at all. I don't get it Halo has always been about coach co-op since Halo combat evolved, shit its the game that basically launched the e-sports that we know today and it's just befalling that the new curators of the Halo universe (343 studios) took out the best part of the game, I mean would you take online out of Call of Duty. No it would kill the franchise. So I have never brought Halo 5 or any other Halo game from 343 studios because I feel at least 50% of my game has been taken away from me.

So if there is another Halo I want there to be at least coach co-op and if we can get a LAN connection sorted then I want to start organising some Halo nights again because like Fallout 76 wanted us to know 'it's better with friends.'

Until Next time...

Toby