It’s hard to believe this game launched on this day 4 years ago. I’ve been saving up money to buy the Xbox one Halo 5 edition for weeks now, and didn’t actually get it until like the first or second week of November. I was so excited when it finally came in that I didn’t do all of my homework that day.
I immediately fell in love with the Xbox one controller design and it make the 360 controller feel like a pile of garbage. I hooked up my shiny new Xbox and did the initial setup and system updates, which took about an hour. Meanwhile, I was getting so hyped for the campaign by going back and watching all the trailers, Hunt The Truth, and reading all the lore cookies that came with the bundle.
When the system updates finally finished, I immediately began installing Halo 5 and waited ever so impatiently for it to finish. To my discontent, it didn’t finish installing that day and had to finish it overnight. So, I got up early the next day before school to load it up and look around the menus. At the time, there was a pretty strong rumor going around that the Vulture would be in the game, and after finding the my req collection menu, I was a bit disappointed that there was no Vulture, as were my friends when I told them later that day.
I was so excited to play Warzone when I got back home from school. When I clicked Warzone from the main menu, I got really confused when I saw 2 options pop up: Warzone, and Warzone Assault. All I wanted to do was play the same Warzone that we all saw in those gameplay videos. I eventually clicked on Warzone Assault as its description more closely matched the gameplay videos. Didn’t take me long to realize this was the wrong option.
I loaded up on the assault variant of Stormbreak on the attacking team. I absolutely has no idea what I was doing. I walked up to this big cliff that the bad guys were on top of, and after trying to figure out the controls, I got ground pounded. A few minutes later after we took the fortress, a Phaeton appeared. Presumably from a very lucky random vehicle card as it was way too early for lvl 8 reqs. The guy immediately landed and got out I’m guessing to have a close look at it from the outside.
Literally everyone in the area, reds and blues, completely forgot about the objective and forgot about killing each other. We were all making a beeline for that Phaeton. Shooting would just slow us down! Needless to say, I think the guy who called it in lost his Phaeton so someone else. Whoever actually got it clearly didn’t know how to use it however, and it didn’t last long.
After that game, I then went and started on the campaign. I was so excited for it because I knew deep down that this was gonna be an absolutely fantastic campaign. In fact, I was do blinded by my own excitement that I would have been impressed with literally anything. I didn’t actually start to realize that the campaign really wasn’t that great till about 2 weeks after I finished it.
After finishing the campaign, I went into a custom game by myself. Without forge and a very limited req collection, customs were the only way to really explore the sandbox. I loaded up on OG Orion. After walking around a bit and playing with this new Splinter Grenade and showing my dad how good the game looks, I found God’s very own anti son of a -Yoink!- machine: the Incineration Cannon! I picked it up and quickly found a Warthog to blow up. I looked at my dad and told him of its power and said to watch how easily it absolutely wrecks this Warthog.
I took a few steps back for safety and pulled the trigger, fully expecting an impressive firework show. Instead, out popped 2 little grapefruits that did literally nothing to the Warthog. My dad kinda laughed a little and walked away. At first, I was too confused to be disappointed, but after realizing they completely changed all of the Forerunner weapons, I died a little inside. I didn’t realize that the Incineration Cannon has a charge up feature till about 2 or 3 months later, and even that hardly does anything against Warthogs.
These 4 years really flew by. What were your earliest memories of Halo 5, and what were some of your memorable times throughout the years?