By Terri Schwartz
After waiting in line at the Prudential Center Game Stop for more than two hours Monday night, resident assistant Jordan Clark returned to his residence hall with a coveted copy of the Xbox 360 video game, “Halo 3.”
Clark, a sophomore African-American studies and political science major, brought the game back to Stetson West where students hooked up their Xboxes in the lobby and played an entire game on story mode, along with its predecessors “Halo” and ‘Halo 2,” until 6:30 a.m. The students played non-stop, with the exception of one quick bathroom break.
Clark gave the game a positive review.
“The graphics were a lot better,” he said. “And the story line was really good.”
In 2001, “Halo: Combat Evolved” premiered as the lead game for the release of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
The anticipation of the release of ‘Halo 3″ has been a hot topic among gamers, video game stores and gaming websites. The release of the beta version, distributed May 16, drew more than 820,000 users in the three weeks it was available, totaling more than 12 million hours – or 1,400 years – of game play.
The official release date for “Halo 3” was Tuesday morning at 12:01 a.m.
“People were there at four o’clock [in the afternoon]. It was crazy,” said Brendan O’Dowd, a freshman chemical engineering major. “The first kid who got [Halo 3] ran down the aisle and there were people screaming and cheering.”
Clark said his favorite part was that “you can use the Mongoose [a vehicle in Halo 3] and use the rocket launcher to hit people in the back of the head.”
O’Dowd said if not for the ability to play with other gamers through the online multiplayer gaming service Xbox Live, Halo probably would not have reached the level of success it did, selling more than 5 million copies since its debut.
The second version, “Halo 2,” was the most popular game on Xbox Live, until the 2006 release of “Gears of War,” and at the time was the fastest-selling product in media history, according to Video Game Depot.
Middler electrical engineering major Karthik Subramanian said he had previously played “Halo 3” before the tournament. He regularly games, about two or three times a week for around eight or ten hours in total, and has played the Halo trilogy since the release of the first game seven years ago.
Subramanian said his favorite part of the Halo games is “the thrill of the kill. To kill someone in the game. That’s what I’m in it for.”
O’Dowd owns multiple copies of each game. He said he used the games to “system link” with other Xbox 360s when he played with friends in high school.
A five-year veteran of the game, O’Dowd has met people online playing Halo through Xbox Live, joined a group and traveled from his home in Massachusetts to Ohio to meet his competitors in person. He said his best strategy for the game is getting to the highest ground and using the Battle Rifle, a weapon only available in “Halo 2” that replaced the Pistol from “Halo.”
The Stetson West tournament drew mostly male students. While some girls passed through the lobby, only one took part in the event.
Freshman mechanical engineering major Chris Joyce attributed the low female turnout to the fact that girls “were in their rooms preparing for the release on their own.”
Two more “Halo 3” tournaments will be held Saturday, Sept. 29. The first, also put on by Clark, will be held in the Stetson West lobby from 10 a.m. until the competitors finish around 1 or 2 p.m.
The second tournament will be held from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and is hosted by the student chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and Microsoft on the first floor of West Village G. Interested students may sign up in teams of one to four people by e-mailing [email protected] with the names and e-mail addresses of everyone on the team. There will be free food and prizes, including copies of “Halo 3,” “Gears of War” and “Project Gotham Racing 3.”
