Shoot Club: Shoot Club: 'Twas the Week before Halo

"Wait, I thought the earth was already invaded. Didn't that happen in Halo 2? And now it's, like, the retaliation?"

"I don't know. I don't really remember that stuff. I guess this isn't the kind of game you play for the story."

"Good point. The gunplay's the thing."

"The multiplayer's the thing."

"The Plasma Sword's the thing."

The waiting's the thing. The waiting, unsullied by anything actual, is the easiest part. As a kid, it was Christmas. Now, it's game releases. The prospect of things yet unknown delighting us, mysterious things assigned their particular Tuesdays, which are sometimes Wednesdays. A Tuesday release isn't always a Tuesday release. Me and Trevor have EB, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target on speed dial, and Tuesdays are all about the hunt.

"So you're not actually excited?" I ask. We're playing the game that's already out, but thinking about Halo 3.

"Okay, maybe I am. But I'm definitely not psyched yet. I have to pace myself. When the beta first came out, I was totally psyched for a while. Then I went back down to excited, then back down to looking forward to it. It helps when there's another game like this to keep me busy." He gestures at the game we're playing, the one that's actually out.

"Yeah, this helped a lot," I agree regarding the game. "I almost didn't even care about Halo 3 for a while. I was all like, 'Who cares? I'm digging on this now. Get back to me later'. But still, Halo 3. Come on, admit that you're excited."

He chews his lip. He plays for a moment. "Yeah, I might already be at psyched. There simply isn't anything like Halo 3. This is big, isn't it?"

"Really big."

"And we're just biding our time with this. I mean, this is great, but it's no Halo 3."

"No, it isn't."

We go look around online to find which stores will have midnight sales. We make plans to be free on Wednesday so we can play all night Tuesday. We read a few previews and click through some screenshots. And we didn't even bother to pause the game we were playing, the one that's already out.

***

Tom Chick has been writing about videogames for fifteen years. His work appears in Games for Windows Magazine, Yahoo, Gamespy, Sci-Fi, and Variety. He lives in Los Angeles. Shoot Club appears in this space every Thursday.