Friday 14 December 2007

Halo 3: Dying is nothing; killing is everything.

After two months of being generally disgruntled with Halo 3, I’ve returned to the multiplayer and, with the help of the new maps, discovered what it is that I enjoy about it so much. It’s the chaos; beautiful, spectacular chaos. You kill one guy, someone else clubs you into the air with his rifle, they gets about halfway through switching weapons before a warthog hurtles into them, flips over, and spirals over the hill as the screen fades out and your respawn timer hits zero. It’s utterly anarchic, and immensely enjoyable.

The best example of this is the new foundry map (or crossfire central as I like to think of it), which is, essentially, a microcosm of Halo 3 multiplayer. On a map that pretty much respawns players into the nearest gunfight, the average lifespan on foundry is about thirty seconds, if that. Dying becomes irrelevant and the match revolves around recklessly throwing yourself into the fray in the hopes of just one kill before you get shot, exploded, or beaten to death. It’s that bit in the halo teaser, where the Master Chief leaps down into a horde of covenant, on repeat; an endless cycle of throwing yourself into a glorious death. That is foundry. Foundry is Halo 3 multiplayer.

However, just as I uncover something wonderful about the game, I find another rotting corpse in the charnel pit that is the halo 3 community. Much has been said of the high pitched hellions that are the young Americans, but there is a less common, but equally annoying, animal that haunts the matchmaking rooms. The lesser spotted moaning Englishman.

The English have perfect moaning into an art form and these morose sacks of misery are no exception. They moan before, after, and during the match and it’s taken me less than a week to completely detest them all over again.

Team slayer means everyone on the team gets a running commentary on how shit a time they are having. “Waah It’s not as tactical as Call of Duty” and “Boo hoo I hate this map”. It’s like having a depressed, masochistic gnome sat on your shoulder for the whole match. Even when you aren’t sharing a team you get brief moments of “Bloody kids are ruining this game.” as they pass by your corpse.

These kind of people generally offend me, even more than the American banshees; at least they’re enjoying themselves when they’re questioning your sexuality. The moaning Englishman is never, will never, be happy, but will continue to play and keep everyone else updated on their situation; get two of them in a room and they become a whinging metronome. They annoy me so much that I make it a rule to hunt them down if they’re on the opposing side.

If they’re not going to enjoy themselves they can spend the whole match with my battle rifle up their arse.