Today marks the date five years ago that Foulbreed and I decided to call our fledgling Halo chapter on Bungie.net "The Hushed Casket" (THX). Much has transpired between then and now. THX has ballooned to encompass over 100 people playing a multitude of games. THX'ers have participated in gaming tournaments all over the United States, and we've actually even won some of them. Our Huntsville, Alabama, based group has changed significantly since then, and because an exhaustive history is available here, in this article I will only recap the past year (August 2006 - August 2007).

By August 2006 we were firmly entrenched with the Xbox 360 and awaiting a killer app to bring us together in multiplayer. We still occasionally partook in Halo 2 via Xbox Live, but before the 2006 holiday season THX's XBL activity was centered around Texas Hold'em and other arcade games. November brought Gears of War, which was just the killer app we had been waiting for. We dove into coop campaign and multiplayer with fervor, and for several weeks in late 2006 my friends list normally had at least 7-8 THX'ers on during prime time with all of them playing Gears of War. Often I would have 12-15 total friends playing GoW. Later, a team from THX entered the first MLG GoW online tournament and fared respectably, but was unable to place. We then transitioned to independent online brackets like Team Warfare League. We did extremely well there, but lack of mature competition quickly brought that to an end. Lesson learned: we should have used Game Battles.

Our first monster LAN of 2007, JANLAN, brought gamers and friends from as far away as New Jersey and California to participate in another gargantuan Halo 1 LAN. THX's biggest LAN to date, it encompassed 33 gamers and enough A/V equipment to make Huntsville Utilities pee their figurative pants. We also experimented with GoW via LAN on 32" LCD HDTVs and a couple THX'ers inadvertently got their picture on Joystiq.

GoW online play continued into early 2007 but tapered off shortly thereafter. Massive XBL group gaming became seldom. Website activity was centered around Halo 3 and the numerous highly anticipated titles of 2007. In May the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta landed with a thud, prompting every THX'er with a 360 to beg, borrow, or steal a way to download it. Most of us simply paid the $60 to buy it at retail (Crackdown). News poured in as revelations about H3's multiplayer features became apparent. We all had an awesome time with H3 Beta, and were sad to see it go.

In early summer THX was briefly shown on G4TV after being one of the first gaming websites to break the story on the Iris ARG being used to promote Halo 3. Rapture landed an interview with the poor guy who's cell phone number got caught in the middle.

JuLAN 2007 at Rayne's house proved to be yet another massive and well-organized Halo 1 LAN that THX is known for and prides itself on. Twenty gamers converged on eight Xboxen and TVs for two networks of killer Halo 1 action. Torrent posted the pictures from the event here.

A few THX'ers became involved in Shadowrun and went on to participate in MLG's first Shadowrun tournament, placing 5th at MLG Chicago as a part of the cooked Gamers.

We even managed to push out a few podcasts. HALO:Portable staffers Mintz, Funkmon, and Tex dished out juicy Bungie secrets and discussed HALO in several podcasts over the past year. Rumor has it that they'll have another one sometime before the end of the year (not-so-inside-joke).

We also started websites for HALO 2 (PC) and Shadowrun. You can check them out at http://halo2pc.org and http://shadowrun.hushedcasket.com. Those sites occasionally have input from developers that worked on those games.

Late summer 2007 has brought a resurgence of GoW online play, mostly because we're bored, and planning for THX's first Halo 3 LAN in October. Anticipation of Halo 3 is building exponentially as September 25th approaches, and hushedcasket.com is a haven for Halo 3 news of all sorts. A launch party is planned outside the University Drive Gamestop for the night of September 24th where we will finally get our grubby hands on Halo 3 Legendary Editions, and shortly thereafter Oculus will take a picture of his cat wearing the MJOLNIR helmet. Keep a close eye on hushedcasket.com and register for The THX 5th Anniversary Halo 3 LAN in October as we draw closer to finishing the fight.

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