Jack of Harts

I have been a video gamer most of my life. Starting with Intellivision, going on to Nintendo, SNES, N64, Game Cube, various Gameboy models, a brief foray into the disappointing-to-me Playstation and Playstation 2, the Sega Dreamcast, the modern Nintendo Switch, and I have been a Day One buyer of the various XBox consoles. The original, the 360, and the One are all prized parts of my gaming collection. I have yet to get the latest version because I have yet to see one in a store to be able to buy it.

Unfortunately, my gaming has been hammered a bit over the last years. Two years of helping my mom fight cancer. And then a year after she died I’ve been clearing and donating and tossing things. The last time I sat down and just played was probably some time in 2021, and it had been a year or so before then. I remember a couple days of enjoying Halo Infinite and another couple days of Final Fantasy XV. And that’s pretty much it.

So today I pulled my Xbox One off the old shelf and plugged it into what may be its new permanent home. Maybe. I may move it, but I’m happy for now. And of course it spent an hour updating, and finding all kinds of apps that it couldn’t update at all. That will take some time to track down. Then I dropped Halo Infinite in and IT spent an hour updating and trying to get it back up to booting up. Oh for the days when we could plug a console in, pop a game in, and just PLAY.

There is nothing like hearing the Halo theme coming out of your speakers. It isn’t exactly the Halo theme Bungie put together back in the day, but it was close enough. The Marines were wise cracky enough, and the Warthog moved good. The grunts were easy, the snipers a bit of a challenge, the elites made me think, and the big buggers with hammers were fun to bring down in a hail of crossfiring machine guns and rocket launchers. I shot them, I ran over them, and my Marines were right there helping me with loud mouths and louder trigger fingers. I was the Master Chief again, a Big Damn Hero protecting humanity from the alien menace, and it felt oh so good.