Hail to the Master Chief

Mom always said video games would rot your brain, and once you brought home a bad report card, she took them away for a while. \nMom feared the power of video games -- probably because she couldn't understand them. With respect to the poor grades, in particular, the Nintendo didn't actually make you any stupider -- it just came down to priorities. A minute spent reading and writing at the dining room table was a minute that could have been better spent with that warm, glowing box.\nOnce in a great while, a game comes along that changes everything. Mario, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, Wolfenstein, Doom, Warcraft II and, most recently, the phenomenon that is Halo.\nThose who love this last game know the bittersweet temptations of video game addiction. You'll play it all the time; before a morning shower, after and during classes. Then the game eats your study time. It steals you from your girlfriend. \nHalo, for you laypersons, is developer Bungie and publisher Microsoft's embodiment of the perfection of a first-person shooter -- the same genre of video games that has parents afraid other 5-year-olds are toting high-caliber pistols and plastic explosives to show-and-tell. \nThe game's central character, the Master Chief, is a masked, green-armor-sporting super human genetically engineered to be mankind's greatest weapon against alien invaders -- a certified bad ass to say the least. His exploits are legendary, his one-liners questionable, but his greatest power lies in his ability to conquer the brain cells of any human (all right, male humans 8 to-30-years old) with nothing but time and an Xbox controller in their hands.\n"You end up working your day around it -- talking about it at dinner," senior Zach Held said. "Anything that brings people together competitively for that period of time is great."\nHeld, who is considered by many in his fraternity to be a premier Halo gunslinger, remembers vividly some of his greater Halo moments.\nTime frame: spring 2003. A group of 16 men at the Sigma Chi fraternity house have just hooked up four Xbox systems to the house network in order to partake in a what few others have experienced -- a Halo free-for-all with the game's maximum capacity of players. In room 301, four guys stare fixedly at their fourth of a 35-inch television screen, eyes twitching in anticipation of the unprecedented spectacle before them.\nThe games begin. Sounds echo through the entire third floor -- pistol fire, grenade explosions, the sound of sniper bullets in sonic boom, constant swearing each time someone's digital warrior is gunned down running, picked off with precision by a sniper 500 yards away or blown to pieces by their own grenades.\nNo pride is at stake, no money, no one is harmed in the process and all leave satisfied.\nAnd that was the pinnacle of the Halo experience. After that, there was nothing left to do.\n"It became real inconvenient," Held said. He and his friends have since begun to engage in nightly poker matches. "The desire to play Halo is still there, but there's only time for one addiction at a time," he said.\n People went back to their lives, girlfriends and studies. The Master Chief's armor began to lose its luster and, the following semester, most of the Xboxes were left at home. \nFor a while, the aliens would be left alone.\nUntil…\nUntil this coming summer, when the sequel to the single greatest game ever made will finally be released. \nAnd then … once again …\nYour grades will plummet. Your girlfriend will be put off. Your productive free time spent at the HPER or participating in worthwhile extracurricular activities will be devoured by a black hole of time spent staring blankly at a warm, glowing box, twiddling your thumbs. \nIt just comes down to priorities. Sorry, Mom.