Halo 4 launch with Xbox

I was away from Brussels this week... in Liechtenstein of all places. I was covering the Halo 4 launch for AP. Halo is a first person shooter for the Xbox and has shifted over 46 million copies, with worldwide sales worth over £1.9 billion. The Xbox 360 was launched in late 2005 and it’s getting a bit long in the tooth. Therefore, Halo 4 is an especially important release for Microsoft to help extend its console’s lifespan until a successor emerges (perhaps in 2013?).

Halo 4 game launch in Liechtenstein

The journalists were all meeting in Zurich. Rather than fly via London I chose to hire a car and drive the 400 miles. Europcar tried to fob me off with a Smart car but I pulled a puppy dog face and got upgraded to a Mercedes A-Class.

Brussels to Zurich didn’t look far on the map and I was feeling bullish. I once rode a motorbike from Munich to Peterborough in a day. As it turns out, 400 miles is a long and tedious drive on your own. For example, it’s 270 miles from London to Newcastle. So I was driving the equivalent of London to Edinburgh and back, all in less than 36 hours.

The trip was largely uneventful as I counted down the miles through Mother Europe at a steady 80. Foolishly I’d only taken a single CD - a Norwegian black metal classic; Burzum’s 1993 Det Som Engang Var. I don’t know how familiar you are with Burzum’s early work, but it’s a primitive and unsettling aural experience, certainly not the sort of album you can sing along to. Varg Vikernes (the sole member of Burzum) received a life sentence in 1994 for stabbing a man to death in Oslo and burning down four historic churches in Norway. The charred skeleton of the 12th Century Fantoft Stave church featured on Burzum’s 1992 EP, Aske (which translates as Ash). He’s out of prison now and recording again. 

Stunts like this give black metal a bad name

Now as much as I enjoy Burzum, Det Som Engang Var is an album that appreciates some time between spins. As a consequence, I spent most of the journey listening to European commercial pop radio. After four hours of Adele, Michael Jackson, and Queen I wanted to suck my brain out through my nose like an Egyptian mummy.

I only realised how desperate the situation had become when I missed my Ausfahrt at Karlsruhe because I was excitedly tuning for a cleaner signal on Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do. I could feel myself degrading. It was time for some peace and quiet.

Entering Switzerland at Basel I was pulled over by the border guards. They said, rather curtly, I had to buy 12 months road tax to even turn a wheel on a Swiss motorway. I read between the lines and thought we had an understanding; I slipped him a crisp 10 Euro note in his breast pocket, patting him playfully on the cheek. It turned out we didn’t have an understanding and they don’t have the Euro in Switzerland. After some unpleasantness I was back on the road.

The Xbox press team had asked us to assemble at Zurich airport because our destination was top secret. But I already knew we were heading to Liechtenstein because I had been chatting to a news reporter from Radio Liechtenstein who was covering the launch and had seen all the preparations. He was also a mad keen Halo fan. All his Christmases had come at once. He told me Radio Liechtenstein has more listeners in Switzerland than in its own country. Gosh, I said.

Liechtenstein is a tiny country with a stinking rich population of 36,000 people. It's wedged high in the mountains between Switzerland and Austria. Liechtenstein is stunningly beautiful with sheer mountains towering over deep glacial lakes which mirror the cloudless ultramarine Alpine skies. It’s also impeccably clean and tidy. Later I told Sam this, but he suspected it masked a heart of darkness. Just don’t ask what they keep behind the locked cellar door... that’s what he was thinking.

As we ventured deeper into Liechtenstein our bus was pulled over at a barricaded military checkpoint. Dry ice covered the road in a thick fog and burning oil barrels cast an orange glow in the cold night air. We were told there was an alien invasion and we were being evacuated. The armed marines boarding the bus barked at us to hurry up. I said yes, but first I had to put my Kindle in the overhead locker. They’d interrupted me at a rather inopportune moment, heroic General Rodimtsev had just led a suicidal crossing of the Volga with his rifle brigade in a bid to relieve some pressure on besieged Stalingrad.

One journalist wanted to take his bag with him and was told he couldn’t. He tried to push past but the soldier snatched his bag and stamped on it. The journalist screamed “my laptop” but was roughly bundled away and shot. In fairness, we’d been pre-warned we were entering a military base deep behind enemy lines and were subject to martial law. Personally, I admire the efficiency of a kangaroo court. Having spent six months covering trials at Southwark Crown Court (with all its delays, bureaucracy and jury lunch breaks) I might email Theresa May some suggestions. Of course, the journalist wasn’t really shot, I later found out. He wasn’t even a journalist, just another actor. I felt a bit silly for having given him my business card on the bus.

We were packed into canvas topped military trucks in the pitch black. The actor soldier in our truck told us some cliched horrors of war he’d seen. He asked me if I had any “kids back home”. I asked him if he’d ever played a shoplifter in the Bill... I knew him from somewhere. I think I’d broken the fourth wall and it was all a bit awkward after that. All the more so because I was in a truck with the competition winners and the Halo super fans who were taking it all really seriously.

We were given military clothing, face paint and torches and then led around the woods as things jumped out at us. It got rather hot at one stage, we were surrounded. I thought the soldiers showed a surprising lack of phlegm - think Hudson’s panic in Aliens (1986). At Stalingrad they’d have been shot in an instant for panic mongering. I think we were supposed to be hunting for some alien glyphs which - because of some plot - would save humanity. Anyway, we ended up in a quarry surrounded by aliens and it all looked pretty bleak. As Wellington would have said, it was a damn hard pounding. Anyway, at our darkest moment Master Chief turned up and saved the day. Don’t know who Master Chief is? He’s a Spartan IV super elite space marine with the United Nations Space Command. Basically, he’s the Super Mario of Halo... but you’d definitely rather go for a pint with Super Mario. Master Chief is a faceless, mirthless, laconic killer. 

Master Chief... I'd rather go for a pint with Super Mario 

Here's me togged up in my camo-poncho as the alien glyph saves humanity. I sure was relieved 

The grand set piece finale took place in Gutenberg Castle, Liechtenstein’s famous 13th Century landmark. It was lit by a laser light show and the deafening sound of a whirring nuclear engine was pumped through hidden speakers. It was quite a spectacle against the icy, starry sky. Then we had beer, burgers and a monster LAN party with Halo 4. I’m terrible at Halo and got comprehensively humiliated in every game I tried to play. 

Gutenberg castle with Halo logo and laser light show

I then had an interview with Halo 4’s producer Kiki Wolfkill. She not only has the best name in video games, but also in the world.

Then it was bed, breakfast and a nine hour drive back to Brussels.