So in the past three weeks I have been treated to some fun and interesting times with community get-togethers in Halo 4, Halo: Reach, and Halo 3. In personal historical opinion order, I absolutely dislike Halo 4, I enjoy Reach quite a bit, and I also enjoy Halo 3 quite a bit. All three games have had and still have their problems.

So where am I going with this? Well, I'll start off with Halo 4. To my extremely pleasant surprise, my time on Halo 4 with 16 other HBO/DBO members was absolutely fantastic. I seriously can't think of anything that I found frustrating or any time that I just wanted to get off of that game. Assuming pete is reading this, his gametype with the Warthog King of the Hill where all 16 players turned the game into a hilarious bout of chaos actually had me tearing up and dying of laughter. I remember boldly claiming to pete many months ago that a game like H4 could never make me laugh and have fun to the point of tears. I was quite happily proven wrong by one of his own gametypes.

The following week was Halo: Reach. I prefer Reach to H4, and am usually on it whenever I get in the Halo mood. The turnout wasn't as large as the previous week's H4 turnout, and while I had an enjoyable time, something just wasn't clicking. I guess it just felt like normal. I play Reach so often that it almost felt like just another night on Reach, with the added benefit of having new faces and players around from the community. It definitely added to the enjoyment, and I really had fun, but it almost felt like going through the motions gameplay-wise (which is to say nothing about who I was playing with or the fact that it was a community event. I feel like this was strictly a Reach-the-game thing).

Which leads me to Halo 3. My feelings with regards to Reach actually had me on the fence about even playing H3 last night. Unlike Reach, I had many, many reasons for being excited to get away from H3, even with how little I play it now adays. Reach was such a breath of fresh air, primarily due to all of the latency, host, and lag problems that H3 has had for years going back to before Reach's launch. And let me tell you, for a few of those games last night, the lag and latency did not disappoint in how terrible it could be.

H3 has plenty of problems beyond that, but even though the group was a lot smaller, I felt like H3 was just way more fun than H4 and Reach. Is it nostalgia? A lot of my negative thoughts to H4 pertain to being too much like H3 in most of the bad ways. I think that one thing that H3 has going for it that both Reach and H4 lack are some really nice maps to play on. Not all of them are anything special or fun, but they make for great encounters and hilarious moments. I feel like it still encompasses that LAN feel, where you're sitting there in a room with your buddies, talking trash, taunting each other, and one-upping each other. It's not intended to be malicious, and it's oh so sweet to shut the person up when you get the chance (that person usually being Snipe and me, at least as far as these community nights have turned out :P).

I guess what I'm getting at with this post is that sometimes it takes a community that I already knew was great and that I already enjoyed playing with to remind me about just how truly great and special it really is. This community can make it so easy and natural to like a game that I generally can't stand. It can re-introduce me to a game that has all but been abandoned that I still really enjoy.

As far as Reach goes, I'm thinking that maybe we just needed more people. The most enjoyable parts of the night occurred when the group got smaller, but it was never at a truly large capacity. Maybe Schooly will step in with another amazing time of Classic Customs with another Epic CTF thrown in. Which leads me right back to how this community, especially in larger numbers, really makes for some fun and special times.

So I just want to say thanks for the great times the past few weeks, and I'm absolutely looking forward to the community nights that continue.