Halo 2 Holiday

So, I'm off work today. Kinda. The last two days have been all about Halo 2. First, I left early to go down to the EMP and partake in the fanfest. The line was not exactly small and I got there an hour early.

When we finally made it in, although we missed the free t-shirts by about 16 people ahead of us, they had food, drink, Halo on the Sky Church's giant screen and prizes. People got to take turns playing in 16 player matches. It was definitely something to see.

About halfway into my time there (after waiting for about 30 minutes) an announcement came on and said that they had a lot more people than they were expecting and if people would kindly file out after they had played, everyone would get a chance. I felt guilty at that point, so I took off without playing, in hopes that one of the kids outside would get my spot. Besides, it was just cool to see.

On the way out I noticed that Bungie brought one of their pimp mobiles to the event.

Then I went back to work, where I found that someone had been kind enough to get me an early copy of the Collector's Edition of the game. So, I took it home and played with Craig and John until about 11pm when we decided it was time to hit the line at EBX. I had already stopped by during the day and picked up my placeholder (they were handing out papers with numbers on them) so we got to be number 107, 108 and 109 when we got there). There were about 400 or 500 people.

I know it was kind of nuts that I went and lined up for a game I already had, but it's sort of the fun of the launch....being around all those people and plus, they were giving away all kinds of free junk. They were throwing bags, pens, games, clothes, books, stickers....all that stuff. I only got a pen and a sticker. Oh, and free pizza.

Finally, about an hour and a half after we lined up, I picked up my copy (which I had pre-ordered for John) and Andrew, Justin and Craig all got their copies. Andrew and Justin were tired so they took off, but Craig, Bhaskar, John and I went to work for what was supposed to be a huge party at one of the newer buildings. We lined up in three conference rooms down a hallway from each other and played for about an hour networked. Here's a picture of me in the dark, because the flash killed the cool image of the projector.

About 2am we were getting tired of playing alone at what was supposed to be this big networked party, so I went upstairs to search out the guys who had invited me. Turns out they were all playing single player and didn't want to link up because that was too exciting and new. SO, we packed up and moved the party to my house, where we could get onto Xbox live and play with the whole world. Soon we were in 16 player matches and it was all great. That's the best thing about this game is there's always going to be people to play with. Even at 5am when we finally started winding down.

I slept until about 10:30, then got up and had to get ready to go. I have a Halo 2 tourney today at 230pm. Hopefully I can do better than last place. :-)