Perhaps Not What They Expected To Be The Selling Point

I used to own Halo for the XBox. It was the game that introduced me to the XBox, playing multiplayer with a bunch of Papafred's computer science buddies. I died a lot, the poor schmuck who didn't even understand the controls* against these guys who beat the game on its highest difficulties.

In spite of all that, I did buy the game sometime after I purchased my own XBox. By then, Halo 2 was already out, and people were probably anxiously anticipating Halo 3, so it was kind of old news, but what the hell. I played it a bit, mostly when I had someone else to play either with or against. Not a lot, but enough to beat the game. I think the massive multiplayer games I'd started with kind of ruined it for me. Playing against one person made the arenas feel terribly empty, when I was used to at least 4-on-4 games. That was never a problem with Goldeneye. Or maybe I wasn't used to being the best player in the match. It was strange, not constantly thinking I was seconds away from dying.

Still, the bit about Halo I liked best had nothing to do with the gameplay, or the graphics, or the story. At the title screen, the background music is these monks chanting, or vocalizing. 'Oh-oh-oh-oh-ohhhhhh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ohhhhh', and so on. I loved that, pure adrenaline rush, made the hair on my arms stand up. Like the opening to Mason Williams' Classical Gas, actually. I could sit there and listen to that for minutes, to hell with killing aliens or defending humanity. Plenty of people around willing to take care of that business. I'll be over here appreciating the monks, thank you very much.

I've had some other games like that, where I appreciate them as much for their music as anything else. All the Sonic games I had on my Game Gear had at least one level with music I absolutely loved, to the point I'd pop the game in, and go to the Options menu so I could call up that particular theme, just for kicks. Majors Pro Baseball, any time the computer team would get runners in scoring position, they'd start in with this fast, tense beat that just worked so well. I didn't even mind that I was in danger of letting the other team score, because I was getting some good music out of it.

* I remember Papafred telling me to click the thumbstick to crouch, and me looking at the controller bewildered, wondering how to "click" a thumbstick.