Christian, although good at the multiplayer, preferred to play split-screen co-op. I think he particularly liked playing with me because he felt it was more of a challenge to keep my buffoonish ass alive. He was always asking me, “Wanna do some ‘Assault on the Control Room?’,” referring to Halo‘s most expansive and engaging level. We played it countless times. He was really good at it, and bragged that he had defeated the entire campaign on Legendary without allowing a single AI-controlled marine to get killed.
I remember one time, Christian and I were playing Halo co-op while incredibly high. There’s a part in the campaign where one of the central characters gets turned into a mindless “Flood,” or zombie-like alien race. The main character, “Master Chief,” has to retrieve an activation chip from his cerebral cortex. So he just punches straight through the Captain’s head and pulls it out. I played for like five minutes after that before asking Christian, “Wait a minute, did he just punch through Captain Keyes’ head?” And Drew responded, “Yeah, man, I think so.” And I protested, “Surely he wouldn’t have done that.” And Drew replied, “Yeah, man, I think he did.” We were so high we literally couldn’t comprehend what was happening right in front of us.