So, I took my original Xbox with me to work yesterday. 
 
No, it wasn't an act of self hatred (damn that thing is heavy), but nostalgia: with Reach out tomorrow, I wanted to go back and play some CE or the sequel, to get me back in the mood. I'm a massive fan of the series, and naturally I've played every part of the series. Heck, I used to own a mint condition Legendary edition of Halo 3 (which, due to some financial bumps, I've now sold). I figured going back to the first games would be easy, that it'd be a nice trip down memory lane before the new game. 
 
I was so, so wrong. 
 
Not for the reason you'd expect; gameplay-wise, it's still fantastic. I got back into the weapon trees, pistol sniping and so on very easily. The problem is... well, you forget how much they've honed the game now. The first time I had to quit totally out of the game to the main options just to invert my sticks (first time I had to do combat), I remembered how inconvenient gaming used to be. The first time I got in a Warthog, I discovered how much game physics had moved on. And everything was so huge (playing on the 42" LCD didn't help, natch), the controls were fiddly... 
 
I got up to Truth and Reconciliation (post-boarding) before quitting. By that point, on Heroic, solo, I'd had 5 deaths: 2 to enemies (damn that boarding repelling party is tough), and 3 to just not being able to control the Warthog properly. I love Halo CE, and I want it to remain that way - so I had to stop. I can't let reality ruin my great memories...