I have never played a Halo game in my life. I've mostly been a PC gamer and the last two consoles that I've owned have been of the Sony variety. As a PC gamer I have a certain natural aversion towards playing FPS games on the consoles. I've essentially been trained to play them with a mouse and keyboard since the late 90s. In fact, the only FPS game that I've ever played with a controller is Killzone 2. It wasn't the most horrific experience of my life, I could definitely see that the control method worked and wasn't completely atrocious. Although, I did sometimes spend considerable amount of time admiring the sky and ground textures as I struggled with the controls. I ended up finishing the campaign, had no real interest in the multiplayer at the time, nor really knowing where the story or the characters would go in Killzone 3. The game just didn't grab me.

Then there's Halo. I've followed this industry for a long time now and for most of that time, Halo has always kind of been in my periphery. Since I haven't had a machine to play the games on, I've never really paid too much attention to them. Hence my knowledge of them are bits and pieces that I've picked up from podcasts, live streams and forum discussions. Something about Cortana, Halo rings, finish the fight...? There's almost an air of mystery around the series for me. That added to the fact that it seems to have a very dedicated fan base, has basically kept me curious about it for years now.

Which brings me to the far away past of a few-weeks-ago, when Drew and Alexis decided to live stream themselves playing the first three Halo games for 24 hours (for the kids!). I hadn't really thought about Halo for a while, but two guys, who are obviously pretty passionate about the series, doing something like that has a way of piquing ones dormant interest. So I turned it over in my head a few times, made a list of games that I can't currently get on any other platform and finally, last weekend, decided to buy a 360 and pre-order Halo 4.

At this point, I have some idea of what I'm in for, based on watching parts of the live stream. Apparently you point the reticule at dudes and shoot at them? Sometimes you throw grenades instead? I'll be curious to see how quickly, if at all, I'll adapt to the controls and eventually fare in multiplayer. But mostly I'm just interested in experiencing a part of a franchise that some people hold in very high regard and to see how I feel about it myself.

So that's where I am now. I've just gotten an email telling me that my order of Halo 4 has shipped and I should be getting the console later this week. No matter how I'll end up feeling about the game, all told, this should be a pretty interesting experience.