My brother is 11 years old. Rather than a beat-up CRT monitor and SimCity 3000, he’s got an Xbox Series X and a controller with paddles on the back. Becoming a professional video game player is not beyond the realm of possibility. I hear you can even learn how to make those there games at school now. All things considered, my little brother’s got it good. Except he keeps getting fried by 30 year olds in Halo Infinite.
He talks to me about these things. Sometimes he screams them at me through the floorboards. “I hate this game” is a common one, although sometimes he just sobs “Why, why, why.” I’m not taking the high ground here. I’m 26 years old and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t gritted my teeth and clenched my fists in quiet frustration at Battlefield 2042 this week. Getting killed in a video game sucks. Especially if it’s by an old person.
I said to him, “There are people playing this game that have played since before you were born.” This is one of my favourite things to say to him. Pokemon - before you were born. Mario - before you were born. He was born in 2010. All of human history had happened before he was born. That includes ten MLG Halo championships. People have been bashing other people over the head in Halo for almost 20 years. Sometimes for large sums of money.
Halo is not a twitchy shooter. It’s not Counter-Strike or Quake. Fast reactions mean little here, child. You’ve entered a different realm. This is a place where maps have been memorized, where buttons are emblazoned into the backs of eyelids, and where the warm embrace of Chief’s arms remind us of a rainy Saturday afternoon, sitting in a room full of televisions, eating prawn crackers and laughing with our mates.
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“Your quick fingers aren’t enough to destroy the evening of a tired old 30 year old snatching a couple hours of Halo after work,” is what I want to say to him. But I don’t, because that sounds like I’m Hannibal Lecter. Instead, I try to explain to him that there’s a lot to learn. He’s used to games like Apex Legends and Fortnite. Fortnite is all about building and dabbing, Apex is all about fast-paced movement. Halo has the heritage of a slower pace. Positioning is important. Throwing your grenades is essential. Bashing should never be forgotten. These are muscle-memory attributes, and our brains, the brains of old people, are full of them.
It’s a testament to Halo Infinite’s success just how much this feels like an original Halo game. This is also the reason why my little brother doesn’t know what to do. He’s good at games (I’ve been secretly training him for years) and is used to picking up a launch title and doing pretty well at it. Except this isn’t really a launch title. Halo Infinite is nostalgic because it's basically the same game those 30 year olds have already played. They’ve played it since before he was born. He is so entirely out of his depth that it’s immensely frustrating for him. I get it.
When I was a kid, the most I had to contend with was a couple of teenagers that had played Wolfenstein and laughed when I said it was too scary. There were no veterans of the games I played. They didn’t exist yet. I played the first Halo games, I played the first Call of Duty, I played the first Counter-Strike. These games are a part of my identity. Their style and function have remained relatively unchanged for decades. My little brother, on the other hand, was only five years old when the last Halo game came out. He started early, but not that early. I’m pretty sure those were still his Peppa Pig years. Don’t tell him I said that.
This is one of the best examples of young versus old, the newcomer versus the experienced, in gaming. Even I have to admire the grit of my little brother when he sits down to play Halo and tackles the veterans. I couldn’t do it. Not now. I’m far too tired. But he’s not. He’ll stay up until past bedtime and play on the weekends. He’ll watch YouTube videos and Twitch streams. He’ll map his paddles to jump and bash. I hate to say it to you all, but this is a war the kids win. Watch out, 30 year olds, there’s a very determined little boy on his way, and he’s just learned how to use the Gravity Hammer.