LEGENDARY ADVENTURES OF A LATE GAMER, Chapter 1: ODST

You down with ODST? Yeah you know me!!

‘Sup homie. That’s Jay’s usual salutation, as I step inside of his kitchen through the back door of the house. To this day I’m mystified why he won’t open the front door when I knock. He lives alone. I take that back – there is his Blue Pit, Sadie – but the mystery remains. We head upstairs into his ‘gaming suite’, and I hand him his next assignment: Halo 3 ODST.

“Ah, nah bro”.

“What’s the issue?”

“I don’t want nothin’ to do with the whole Halo thing.” Though he knows the whole story without playing a single campaign (in this era of gaming, that’s not a hard thing to do). I assure him that this was a little different, worth a play through. We had nothing else to do.

Popping the disc in, he turns to me. “Good you’re here. If I hate the stupid thing, I can give it back to you, instead of to Sadie.” He jokes…I hope.

The thunder booms, the clouds move, the sax soothes, and his eyes soften like egg yolk. I give you Jay, the Late Gamer:

“Dear God in Heaven.”

“What? It hasn’t even started yet.”

“Who did this music?”

“Same guy that did all the other Halos.”

“Nah, I’ve heard those. This is different. This is good.”

He plays up to the Mickey chapter.

“Aight, here’s what I’mma tell you, and I don’t care if you like it. If Bungie started their shit off like this, I’d be more impressed. I mean, shooting the life out of Brutes to a saxophone riff is eerie! And it’s PLAYABLE, oh my God! That’s why I never started Halo in the first place – people always complaining about how they can’t get past the shit. Plus, Master Chief is like that dude in Contra, and the ODST people are like Contra Hard Corps…though I hated that game, let’s be real. The point is I can’t relate to Master Chief. At some point they had to reveal that Samus was human…and hott. Makes the connection stronger. This music is off the chain. And I love coming back to rando Rookie in this hard-boiled hellhole. That’s what it reminds me of. Noir. I like Noir.”

“Then do you like this so far?” He didn’t answer me, but I’ll close with this. He nodded his head several times in satisfaction when I got the game back. Next time I heard from him, though, he was complaining about the 55-dollar price tag for a new copy. I hope he’ll be more open for Halo: Reach, and eventually, the rest of the franchise.