Anticipation was heavy Monday as I awaited the remake of Halo CE. About 8pm local (EST) I took a shower, got dressed in appropriate Halo attire (UNSC flat cap, the kind MSgt. Johnson wears) as well as a t-shirt sporting a Mark V/Football helmet mashup title “The Chiefs,” and grabbed my “guns.” I have a Covenant Plasma Rifle and two Plasma pistols.  Both were made years ago and I was fortunate enough to get them on sale. I only took one of the pistols and the rifle. The are kind of like Laser Tag props. I brought them for a kind of show and tell, much to the delight of some of the other folks in line.

On that note, I was first in line as I usually am at these sort of things. This was at my local Gamestop, were I know most of the staff.

I hadn’t intended on buying the game guide, but since I was going to get 20% off, and it does have some cool art in it, I thought, what the heck. So I bought it.

At the stroke of midnight I got my copy of the game and the book and proceeded home with a short stop to a convenience store for some late night munchies to have while playing.

When I got home a problem arose. I had NO AUDIO! I had turned on my TV and XBOX and no audio whatsoever. Frustrating indeed. After downloading the Anniversary maps, Grunt Funeral Skull, and the Male Master Chief Avatar item, I shut down both the TV and XBOX and turned them back on. Much to my relief the familiar sound of the XBOX “swish” hummed and I knew I was on my way.

First thing I did was go to the multiplayer maps and checked them out in Forge. *NOTE: do this and use the “Juicy” item to really pop out the color of the maps. Wow they look fantastic. Even without Juicy applied though, the maps look great.

I gamed until about 3:30am, then hit the sack to play later.