HALO 3!

Ah, yes, Halo 3 came out today, and I am happy. It is as awesome as everyone hoped and as Bungie promised. The textures, the graphics, the gameplay. Yay! I am giddy. I can't wait to get into it a little deeper, and especially to play the multiplayer with my oldest son. He had No Child Left Behind testing today, so he didn't have any homework, so he and a few of his friends got together after school and had a ball with it. Now this always brings up the question with my wife about whether or not these games are too violent for a 12-year-old to be playing. I always say no, because he has the ability to separate the game from reality. It's not like he's going to be grabbing himself a rocket launcher and blasting up the school. However, one concern I do share is the amount of time spent playing the games. I know I can spend hours at a time in front of the screen when I am engaged in a good game. Other than being a waste of time, it's not detrimental to me. Until my wife finds out and wonders why I am playing a video game instead of cleaning the house or doing yardwork, then it's detrimental to me! With the kids, though, I always feel that they should be spending more time exercising or reading. But it is especially difficult to convince them that they should put down the controller and go outside when I am still sitting on the couch with the controller in my hand!

Video games have been a big part of my life since the early '80s when Pac Man first came out. I can't even tell you how many quarters I spent on Defender, and when I worked at Aladdin's Castle, a local video game arcade, when I was in my early twenties, they became an even bigger part. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II were huge, and I loved them all. I was a little sad as consoles began to get more and more powerful and fewer and fewer people went to the arcades, but the quality of the games became so much better that there was no need to go anywhere to play a good game anymore. Instead of coming to the arcade for the higher quality games and settling for whatever happened to come close on the console, now the consoles are the top of the line, and they are amazing. The pure eye candy of games like Halo 3 make them so much better than their arcade predecessors, that they are well worth the $60 that they cost. I bet I spent twice that trying to beat Smash TV.

A friend and I were discussing what we would have thought if we had been given these games to play ten years ago. We decided that we would have lost our minds. Our heads might have actually exploded. Thank goodness this kind of progress is gradual...