halo losing its luster

after my monster dinner tonight i fired up halo 2 with citizen x for a few hours. we got fucking reamed in a bunch of games, mostly because we were playing with other players that lacked basic communication skills. as in they were silent.
but early on in the evening, there were a couple of games that were buggy as all hell. apparently there is some kind of router/modem exploit that allows people to cheat. we were on the receiving end of this bullshit and it pissed me off to no end. and the assholes had the gall to gloat after beating us 4 (of them) on 2, after subjecting us to a stop and start game where we were dropped and reconnected about 6 times (that’s the way the cheat works). the real appeal of xbox live is the concept of a completely level playing field, free of processor speed advantages, vid card superiority, keybinding scripts, etc. the only application in which the monolithic conformity of microsoft truly makes sense. every game after that first fraudulent one had me wondering whether we were getting hosed by skillful players or some packet-echoing hack.
cheating and unfair advantages suck shit. it’s why LAN games were always a bit unsatisfying. someone or two people had ripping machines, and the rest didn’t. guess what? the guy who needed four extra fans in a separate PCI slot to cool his turbo vid card ALWAYS WON.
to become all smug in the after-game lobby after “winning” through illegitimate means is UNCONSCIONABLE. those little fucking punks, i…hey wait a minute. those guys are probably all of 16, and i’m pushing 40. i should just let it go.
but if microsoft and bungie don’t straighten this out, it could be real trouble for xbox live. at least, that’s what my gut tells me. little shit bastards…