Halo? I should be there!

Halo Reach this Thursday!

I've died and gone to heaven! Halleluiah!

...so basically ya, I'm in.

Not sure if I'll be free or not.

Why not right? Although this week, I can't stay past midnight since I've got to make a trip early the next day.

I'm interested but I don't know much about my Thursday at this point. Mark me down as tentative.

Halo Reach! A fine choice. I hope I can make it, but I'll have to declare my presence as tentative.

I will try to make it, but may be an hour late.

My birthday is tomorrow... Not sure what festivities are planned yet...

You're all doomed.

What's the most awesomely amazing flag return you've ever taken part in? Yeah, that's cute. Tonight our Bungie.org team experienced one 9.79 times better. Imagine, if you will, that funny little island on Forge World. The one past the long slanted tunnel near Blood Gulch, with the mountain in the center, and the beaches and hilly green space around the edges. Now imagine playing a decently, satisfyingly difficult game against an enemy who you scored once on and who scored on you once in return. Now, and this is the key that will prove that we had 9.79 times the fun you had, imagine a group of very enthusiastic Bungie.orgers humming, chanting, and otherwise abusing the classic, upbeat portion of the Halo theme. It was one of the most glorious moments of my Halo multiplayer career. I mainly handled the high end of the "bu buh's" while others took on the challenge of preforming the more central "da - da da da - da da da da da da - da da da da da da's" that form the core of the theme. Video Games Live had nothing on us. Nothing at all. Soon the flag was captured and a few minutes later victory was ours. While sweet, it was just one victory among thousands, but our “exquisite” rendition of the Halo theme will forever live on.

Let's see, other highlights of our Reach game night included:

- A pretty amazing Warthog run across the Reach-y plains of Blood Gulch where I drove quite excellently, someone (I don't remember who. Sorry!) did a good job gunning, and where Chewbaccawakka (I think... I'm pretty terrible at remembering who did what) rode shotgun with a sniper rifle and racked up kill after kill. Yes, he cleaned up after the Hog's LAAG a couple of times, but there was at least one moving headshot in there. And to top it off, our little subteam of three scored the final kill of the match by dodging a rocket fired at us from close range and by sniping the would be rocketeer dead a moment later.

- We had a lot of quitters playing against us. It was common for us to play against teams of half strength and I'm fairly certain we never played a full enemy team.

- There was a strange custom game of trying to use a Banshee to push a bunch of players off a long narrow bridge like structure before they reached a button at the end. For some reason the game choose me as the Banshee pilot several times. In the final round I inadvertently* bailed out of my invincible Banshee while fumbling around trying to get it to do a flip or a barrel roll. Many laughs ensued.

- I got a good laugh by standing by a health pack on Boardwalk so Xenos could come and find me and it. Before he could make it to me I was attacked and nearly defeated. Xenos walks up a moment later and asks where the health pack was. I answered that I had just used it. Laughter and conspiracy theories about my injuring myself just so I could waste Xenos’ time quickly followed.

Meh. That's all I can specifically remember right now, but in general we had a great time playing Reach multiplayer. I still think it has the best pacing, weapons, grenade power and physics, and just overall feel out of all of the Halos. I had a lot of fun and as a result stayed up too late. Thanks guys!

* The bailing out was done for comedic effect, but I really couldn’t figure out how to make the thing flip or roll

Thanks to everyone that came, I had a great time! I apologize if my tiredness and endless barrage of dumb jokes chased any of you away, but I can't guarantee it won't happen next time :)