My formative years were spent with the Halo series. My first encounter was on a visit to my cousins. I was an annoying kid at the time, so one of them fired up what I would learn years later was the last level. I played for a few minutes and then went to sleep.

A little while later, my older brother got an X-box, and I saw him watching the opening cutscene. I made my own profile and played my own campaign, and ran crying into my parents' room after the cutscene in 343 Guilty Spark (which I have long since memorized).

Whenever the cousins visited, Halo was the game we played when we weren't doing something else. My brother and I shared the experience of Halo 2 and 3.

Later on, my brother's friends would come over (he was always the one with friends), and the four of us would play Halo Reach, dominating other teams on X-box Live. Back in those days, it was possible to have four people playing on one console, split-screen, and sign in to X-box Live to play in online multiplayer matches as a group of four. I was the youngest by far, but also the best - well, alright, my brother sometimes got a higher score, but usually I was the one who carried the team. We'd also play local multiplayer, on custom maps I'd made earlier in the day. Sometimes we'd play into the early hours, then watch Hot Fuzz or something else (since we were tired enough to laugh even at the more juvenile humor in an otherwise perfect movie).

Apparently there have been more games released under the Halo name, but I looked at the credits: the developer is listed as "343 Industries", which sounds like a fan group; Cortana is voiced by Christina Hendricks. Needless to say, these games are not Halo as far as I'm concerned.