Hey Phaethon! Let's go to the Chili Cook Off!

Haha if only you knew just how true both of those top statements are Grift, I think you would be surprised.

I was Cal-M and beyond in both CS 1.5 and 1.6. In fact, I've played as a ringer in actual Team 3D matches, and I actually think a few of the hltv and first person pov demos from those matches are actually still on the internet ;). If Gotfrag.com weren't down, I would link you to them directly. Also, I was top fragger for both halves in one of those matches. I was playing pretty good, but if you look carefully, you can tell I'm not as good as the other players, even though I was kicking ass. There were times when I was confused about what the strategy was, and you can see me completely turn around and go back the opposite way I came because it clashed with the intent of the other players.

Oh, and, yes, believe it or not I do happen to know Bill Gates fairly well. That doesn't mean we're somehow best buds or that I'm a fellow multibillionaire or anything crazy like that, but I do know the man and he most certainly knows me. He knows my mother, he knows my family, we've met in person, we have even had dinner together once. When I say I met him in person, I don't mean I bumped into the guy at some event that he was attending, and then ran up and asked him for an autograph (I did get his autograph, though :P). We both met at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel here in NYC in, I believe, 2010, and I'm extremely proud to say that the purpose for him being there was, in fact, to meet me. Hell, I even have the man's personal number. Although, if I'm being honest, I literally never call it with the rare exception to call and congratulate him for some incredible work that he and his wife's foundation are involved with. It isn't exactly impossible for your average, everyday person to know Bill Gates, no matter how famous the man himself may be. He's pretty damn down to earth and normal. If you didn't know who the hell the guy was, you wouldn't think he was much of anything. In fact, if I told you that he knows even less about the next xbox than your typical forum goer that follows all the rumors and leaks, most would be surprised at the thought, but it's true.

That said, Halo 4's campaign is the best one yet, in my eyes. Halo was at very serious risk of losing out in a vital area of relevance and popularity to other shooters that it absolutely could not afford to let go unanswered, and that was in the fact that it was losing its identity, and seemingly abdicated a great deal of its responsibility to showcase why these other games were no Halo. It was beginning to get harder and harder to say why that was. The gameplay was always there, but it was a very fair criticism that Halo had been grossly under utilizing advantages over other shooters that, if they made a commitment to do so, would easily make the difference and provide the kind of separation that Halo needed to have, and must have, from all these other shooters out there, and I'm speaking strictly about the SP campaign, not MP. Halo 4 breathed much needed new life into the Halo franchise and the future of the franchise will be all the better for it. You call it a corridor shooter, but it's far from being such a thing. They, in my view, more wisely took advantage of level and map design in this Halo game than in any other Halo game that I've played. The levels aren't just big for the sake of being big, and you definitely get that sense a lot of the time in Halo games. Play space was used more wisely in Halo 4, with the exception of that one awkward moment on the mammoth level, where if you went across the water you died, but friendly or enemy ai didn't. The levels are bigger when they need to be in Halo 4, and when they actually seem to make more sense. The levels seem more focused and purpose built for the story they are trying to tell, and that counts for something. The art direction has never been more excellent, the production quality has never been better, the character development has certainly never approached this consistent degree of quality before. Having master chief in your game should mean something. He shouldn't just be no different from some random character behind the gun in other shooters, and that's what Halo was risking becoming. Halo 4 took a big fucking bite out of that notion. Master Chief was so fucking badass in Halo 4. Cortana's character was handled so skillfully. Yea, no surprise, I love Halo 4 to death. It's an amazing fucking game. One of the best paced, most enjoyable shooters I've ever played.

How fucking intense... When she slapped him in the face, I got chills :)