Forming a Halo Player... Log 1...

Can you teach a 37 year old who's never played Console, FPS or Halo to be a "moderately decent" Halo player?  Challenge Accepted.

Back Story... I've been dating this girl for close to 6 months now.  The funny part is when we started dating I didn't know she was a gamer, We had been dating for a month or so before I learned she had been a Farmville junky.  I asked her why she never told me she gamed she said well it never came up.  Of course I wasn't playing much at the time due to a lot of crazyness in my life so I hadn't mentioned it either.  I introduced her to minecraft and she got into it pretty heavily for a while, to the point sometimes *I* would have to tell *her* to shut down the game and go to sleep. I've always been on the receiving end of those conversations it felt very weird to give one!

We had started getting into gaming on the console a bit as once I moved in with her and two xbox 360's became readily available not only were both of our kids playing on them on a regular basis, but their friends were coming over to play too. So I asked for Black Ops 2 and Halo 4 for Christmas.  I was still pretty busy and really didn't have a lot of time to game plus the kids and friends seemed to migrate towards black ops 2 so Halo 4 didn't get a lot of activity.

On my birthday I had the brilliant idea to ask for two copies of Halo Reach.  The idea was that it being older should be cheaper and we'd have two that we wouldn't have to split screen.  So we would 2v2 against my son and one of the neighborhood boys and we'd do some firefight or BTB but other than trying to teach her some basic stuff I really just left her alone to learn her way.  The moment I knew she was truly interested was when I got a phone call from her one day.  "I'm so frustrated" she said.  I said "about what?".  She said "Ok so I was playing Halo..." and that's all it took. :)

So she gets home about 4 hours before I do and I realized she was playing every day before I got home and then we'd play some at night.  One night we went to play and she grabbed the control next to the TV I'm on. I asked her if she wanted to play on her TV so she had the bigger screen and she said no this screen was easier to see even in split screen than her TV full screen.  Well if we were going to be on the same screen anyway, I went ahead and put in Halo 4.

So nightly we play some BTB and I am having a lot of fun, and I'd see her go 4 and 13 or 0 and 9 and I'd just chalk it up to she's gotta learn.  When I came to Halo 3 I had no console experience either and it took me 6 months to get "moderately decent", so I figured she just needed time.  But I come home last night and she jumps on the system while I'm doing a little work form home.  I told her to let me know if she sees one of the new maps because I wanted to see it.  So she does and I go in there and this is what I see... she's walking around aimlessly.  someone starts shooting at her.  she stops.  she turns around, she tries to line up her redical. she dies.  every. time.  So I started trying to teach her, and I'll admit frustration ensued. :)  But I taught her to use her minimap, I was working with her to stay with her team or at least stay away from enemies where she might get 2x/3x/4x teamed.  By the end of the night she was looking a lot better.  Playing throughout the night her last game (I'm trying to find the game on waypoint but not seeing how to view those, if there's a way and anyone can help I'd appreciate it) she had a ka/d over 1. I was so proud of her!

So as of February 21st she had a .28 k/d and a .50 w/l.  After last night (drum roll)... .22 k/d and .43 w/l.  But I'm hoping to see that go up over the next few weeks.

If anyone is curious, I need to find my Hava if I can I will get some video and upload it for reference point.  I know the key is that she has to want to get better, and she seems to thoroughly enjoy the game so I don't think that'll be hard.  We'll see, stay tuned if interested!  Also share similar stories you have if you have any!