It is with great happiness that I can announce success with this month’s game challenge!

But it didn’t come easy. That’s for darn sure.

On Thursday of last week, Grunts and I dove back in to the broken co-op mess that is Halo 4 on the Master Chief Collection. We said we would give it another couple of tries to see if we could get our co-op game going on the Xbox One before resorting to just playing Halo 4 on the 360.

As you may expect, it didn’t go well. We would get a certain way through the first chapter and it would boot him. We decided to give it one last ditch attempt, and it seemed to work…just not very well. Every single time we reached the end of a chapter, it was a huge relief that we wouldn’t have to restart said chapter from the beginning because he had been booted again. How they didn’t implement a co-op checkpoint system or a drop-in and drop-out system is beyond me. How much time did we have to waste because of restarting a chapter?

Too much time.

Then it got really ridiculous.

We were on the second to last chapter right near the end of it. The game started to seize up and halt often. We thought we would be able to get through it. And he got booted. It was infuriating. So we started again. We made it through the entire chapter to right around the same point…and he got booted again.

It was so frustrating.

We had to decide what we were going to do. If we were going to start the entire chapter over again, or try to just access that particular chapter in the game menu, as that was the only way the rally points actually “took.” So we did that, and finally managed to cobble our way through the god forsaken level. The only trouble was, because we had to leave our playthrough of the campaign and access this mission through the separate menu, it didn’t give us credit (or achievements) for completing it.

It’s a super petty thing, but it annoyed me. It was bad enough that the game was still co-op broken, but it was first-world insult to injury that we didn’t even get credit for making it through the flawed process.

And there was still more stupidity to come.

Without spoiling anything, the end chapter of Halo 4 is sentimental and moving. And the way in which we had to play it completely ruined it.

I will skip ahead to the final battle cutscene, as it proved to be the icing on the proverbial cake.

The prompts for the QTE didn’t work. And we died. Over and over.

I would try to do the button presses as they came up. I memorized all two of them. It never even registered that I hit the second one. Ever.

Grunts tried to do them. It wouldn’t work.

We jammed on buttons. Still nothing.

Eventually, it either took pity on our situation or it allowed Grunts to do it, as we finally “succeeded.” It was a relief to have it over with, but it was a disappointing way to finish the collection.

And we didn’t get the achievements for completing the last chapter, and the game at large, either. That was the kick in the pants. We “suffered” through the deeply flawed game experience and weren’t even rewarded for it. I don’t normally care about achievements, but I felt we earned those achievement points.

Alas.

Either way, I’m thrilled that we made it through the Master Chief Collection, and all flaws aside, I had a stellar time gaming with Grunts. He’s one of my very favorite co-op companions, and I hope we are able to connect again soon.

And there you have it! The success for my June game challenge came through with over a week to spare!

And in the spirit of co-op gaming, a totally bonus experience presented itself to me: a friend who had never completed Borderlands 2 mentioned that he would like to complete it, so I jumped at the chance to join him in playing through the game. I am always ready to play more Borderlands, and we both started from scratch. I forgot how crappy it is to be underpowered! Even so, I’ve been having a great time, and depending on schedules, I anticipate we could complete it by the end of the month. It would be fun to get another co-op game completed before the onset of July (and I have a fun game challenge in mind for July!), but we will see.

Is anyone else out there doing a June game challenge? Or is everyone consumed with the release of Batman tomorrow?

P.S. I had forgotten about my favorite line in Borderlands 2, but I thought I’d share it here for maximum hilarity:

“WHO’S READY FOR A MOTHER HUMPIN’ TEA PAAAAAAAAARTY?!?!?!”