Everything Broke, Hold On

**Jeff Gerstmann** (0:00)
So good, so good, so good.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
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**SPEAKER_3** (0:27)
This episode is brought to you by Facebook.
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**Jeff Gerstmann** (1:23)
Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the program. It's The Jeff Gerstmann Show here for July 28th, 2026 And we are here yet again to discuss the world of video games. I hope you had a wonderful week over the last week here, as I suppose I have. I don't know, it's been mostly okay hanging around. We're creeping up on school starting here very soon, and it's weird. I don't know. Everything starts very early, but also it's been a rough summer. It's just been kids all over the place acting crazy.
We've been doing our best, but yeah, I got emails from like, because my son is going to the school that he'll go to for the next several years. But it's like he's in TK, which is he's in Tony Khan School. I don't know what TK actually stands for. And yeah, so I don't know. We're getting emails about that stuff, and everybody had to go get their shots and everything. And everyone's just about ready to go back to school in a few weeks here, which is like way earlier than I ever went back to school. And it just seems really strange.
It just seems really strange. I feel like school started in September. But they got out a little bit early. I don't know. I don't know. School's fucking weird, man. That is the thing. Like school.
Like you have to, no one tells you, like there's stuff about like growing up and becoming an adult and whatever else that like, no one really tells you that exists or that it has changed or whatever. And then the people who work in that sort of field will act like you're supposed to have known that for years or whatever. And so like getting kids registered for the school that is like, that is their school in their neighborhood, the one that they're legally supposed to be going to or whatever. They're even there. They're still like, oh, I don't know. We might be full, you might have come, you were supposed to come weeks ago to sign up. And it's like, how the fuck, what do you mean weeks ago? Like how the fuck does school work now? I don't know. I haven't been to school in fucking decades. And back when I went, it was not like that at all. You didn't choose a fucking school. You chose where you lived and that's what school you went to, period. End of fucking story. Like that's, it's done. So yeah, this is a very, yeah, even even that change about like being able to theoretically pick a different school or whatever, just like upsets things in ways that just seem fucking insane. But anyway, whatever, that's neither here nor there. In the world of video games, Halo came out. You into this, you into this Halo? They re-released the campaign for Halo 1 They called it Ham, what they called Ham, Hambone. Halo campaign evolved instead of combat evolved, which is, it's cute. I don't know if that's like a clever, like if you've got to think up a new name for your, for your Halo campaign remake. Like, sure. Yeah. I see why you would name it that. It's fine. It is just the single player. It's got co-op, well, it's just the campaign. So it does have co-op.
And you can, you know, I guess on console platforms, it does still have some form of split screen, but you know, on PC, it does not because no one's, well, I don't know, maybe that'll change. I can say no one's ever going to crowd around a PC to play a split screen multiplayer game. And if you, if you say that you've done that, it's because you're sick. But you know, hey, we live in a world where now PCs are consoles too. So you know, like those sorts of features are eventually going to have to make their way back into PC versions of games. If we're going to achieve true fucking parody, and like if the Xbox is a PC and the Steam Machine is a PC, you know, like you're eventually going to get to a point where, like those sorts of split screen features will just have to appear in games or just be eradicated completely. I don't know, maybe that's, that's probably the way they'll go with it, to be honest. But Halo 1 is, you know, it's a mind-numbingly slow experience. I just like, they've done some things when they remade it to speed it up. You can sprint now, you know, they've changed the way that your battle rifle or whatever fires a little bit. And, you know, that's kind of interesting, but not a massive change unless you're looking for them. I think, for me, playing through the Halo 1 campaign again has been a really good reminder that just like the pacing of that game was never great. And when you get to the back half of it, it's, you know, like, it's like, oh yeah, this is all kind of... This game really takes a turn that makes it very similar for a good long time. But even in the first encounters, as soon as you land on the Halo, as soon as you get off the, what, the Pillar of Autumn, it's like, all right, stand here, and a drop ship's gonna come in, and eight guys are gonna jump out of it, and then you're going to kill them all, and then you're gonna wait for another drop ship to fly in and drop off another eight guys, and then you're gonna, and this time, two drop ships are gonna come in, and one's gonna be over here, and one's gonna be over here, but effectively, you're gonna kill this entire group, then run over here and kill this entire group. And it's just like, it's boring. It's really boring.