Well, it’s June. Where has this year gone? And how did it go so fast?

Yesterday wrapped up my May game challenge, and, since my rules for the month were relaxed a bit, I had no trouble accomplishing much of what I wanted to.

Success!

I set out to play Bloodborne, which I did, but didn’t get far due to my tardy completion of my April game challenge, as well as the release of The Witcher 3.

I feel the need to recap a bit of my experience with Bloodborne here.

I was god awful at it. I mean really and truly terrible. I started to wonder out loud why anyone would play this game that clearly hates everyone who plays it.

But.

My dear friend Grunts offered to help me get through the first part and let me just tell you, were it not for his painstaking instructions, I would still be eating sh*t on my way to the first boss.

I tried and tried to take out all the villagers, first come, first served, but then magically some would spawn behind me and I’d be toast all over again. It was only at my most desperate that I said I would pull a Hail Mary and just run for it…and I made it! Grunts helped me find the thingy that would allow me to start gaining XP, thus allowing me to, just maybe, take down some of those jerks in my quest to play the game.

The atmosphere is amazing, and the creatures are striking. I can’t wait (or can I?) to get back into it, but I have a feeling it will be July before I do.

From the moment I started playing The Witcher, I was hooked. I adore it. It’s been difficult not to play it, but until CD Projekt Red gets this XP bug patched, I’m going to leave it aside. The last thing I want in an open world game is for my game save to become corrupted or my Geralt to gain no XP. I mean, sure, I’d do these errands for people without hope of reward, but I need that XP.

Now then, on to June!

It’s no secret that I’ve been down about my co-op experiences of late. I’ve lost friends that I cared greatly for in Destiny, and that’s colored my experience of the game for the worse, sadly. Two really lovely people helped me over the weekend, and with them, I finally got to beat Crota on hard. I had often previously said that once I beat Crota on hard I just might be done with Destiny, and I mean it. Between the negative energy surrounding the game, and my negative attitude about losing my co-op partners, it may be healthiest for me to part ways with it.

But the jury is still out.

That being said, I felt like I needed to renew my faith in online co-op. And that’s where this month’s game challenge comes in.

It was last year that I played through the Borderlands series on Xbox with two friends. One ended up much in the same “we don’t game or speak anymore” camp as these recent Destiny folks (boo!), but the other person I have been quite excellent friends with for years and I was thinking, how great would it be if we could hit up some co-op this month and talk about all our E3 dreams?

So it is with much pleasure that I announce that Grunts and I will be playing through the Master Chief Collection this month! He knows his way around the Halo universe far better than I, and I can certainly use his expertise in those many indistinguishable hallways.

And of course I will enjoy his company as I always do. He is a super duper co-op partner and an even better friend. We ran amok on Pandora, and again in the sequel. We did…something, playing through the story in Destiny (I will have to consult my Grimoire cards to be any more specific than that) that resulted in saving humanity or something.

And now we are going to Master Chief up.

This will also be the most time I will have spent with my Xbox One, and I have to say, I’m really looking forward to it.

So with that, I wish each of you a glorious beginning to June, and I am looking forward to many positive co-op gaming experiences in my future.