HALO

Naturally, we all know that name. It is the name of the almost legendary FPS game, that has caused the name of “Master Chief” to become spoken in households all over this inordinately large land of ours, and recently my household was added to the tail end of that list. I’d heard much about Halo and seen the toys during my irregular excursions to Electronic Boutique and GameStop; they were undoubtedly cool to look at it, but didn’t have any real significance. It felt a bit like looking at an abstract painting for me. Things stayed that way for a while until the words “Red VS Blue” appeared on my monitor screen. And then, things really opened up. Tucker, Church, the Sarge, Shelia the Tank, and all the other characters that often had me doubled over with laughter; they were as close as I got to Halo for a long time, until last month, when I went down to my local Wal-Mart and asked that Halo 2 be removed from the locked glass shrine in which it’s kept.

 

I took out the disc and put it in my machine with Red VS Blue at the forefront of my mind, unintentional, but inevitable anyway. And now that the game is done, I decided to sit down and set down some of the essential differences between Red VS Blue and Halo 2.

Red VS Blue: Tanks are polite, genial, curiously maternal, and possess shocking amounts of firepower.

Halo 2: A tank is dumb machine who’ll let anyone inside it.

Winner: Red VS Blue.

Red VS Blue: Command sends you medics.

Halo 2: Command doesn’t even give you a funeral. In fact, they might just steal your weapons.

Winner: Red VS Blue, but not by much. Aloe Vera, anyone?

Red VS Blue: Endless opportunities for social interaction.

Halo 2: Same four people endlessly recycled.

Winner: Red VS Blue. Conversations are important.

Red VS Blue: Reinforcements are a group of l33t flag fanatics.

Halo 2: Reinforcements are Marines or Elites or Hunters or Brutes. Look, there’s just a lot more of ’em.

Winner: Halo 2.

Red VS Blue: Blaster pistol doubles as a medical scanning device.

Halo 2: Blaster pistol doubles as club and floor litter.

Winner: Red VS Blue; if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.

Red VS Blue: Your back up is Griff or Doughnut.

Halo 2: You are the back up...

Winner: Halo 2. You’re safer alone.

Red VS Blue: Villain is an AI construct who cackles and hates call waiting.

Halo 2: The enemies are an extremely religious group of aliens with awesome weaponry and a plant-based zombie like being, that is careful to leave one arm available for wielding guns; now that is being prepared.

Winner: Halo 2.

Red VS Blue: Sniper rifle in short supply.

Halo 2: Sniper rifles for everyoneeee!

Winner: Halo 2.

Red VS Blue: Shelia.

Halo 2: Cortana.

Winner: Halo 2, what else?