In Response To: GSL/London Writeup (BOLL)
: BOLL's trip to London
:
: Intro
: Getting There
: Being There
: The Day
: Actual Halo2 Gameplay
: Boozer
: Aftermath
: Going Home
: Extro
: Reflection
:
: ===== INTRO =====
: So, I read Halo2 was going to be playable in London, on some strange event.
: I chatted with c0ld and he (obviously, as he lives in London) was going
: there, which made me think.
: Here I had a reason to go to London, to play Halo2, and visit c0ld at the
: same time. I've chatted with him constantly for more than a year! :o
: Anyway, there was no way I was going to fly (never done that before) to
: London, all by myself, so I asked my cousin if he wanted to tag along, at
: around 2am. And sure, he‘d love to!
: So we planned what airports to use, how to get there, what it was going to
: cost etc, talked to c0ld about getting picked up, sleeping at his house,
: cuddling with his cat and eating his food. When all was set we ordered
: bus, train and air tickets.
: ===== GETTING THERE =====
: Friday 3rd of September 2004
: Then, a month later, we're off to London. First I met my cousin, after
: taking the train to where he lives. A little strange as I haven't met my
: cousin in real life in eight years(!!!)! So I hardly recognized him. We
: walked the town a little, bought some stuff, then had dinner at his
: apartment, which we walked to, a very long walk, in my new-ish shoes, that
: apparently were a little too small.
: After a humongous dinner (took me an hour, at least, to finish) consisting
: of rice, some strange fish, and some chili sauce with vegetables in it. We
: took the bus to the station, and headed for the airport. Getting to the
: airport was done via two trains and three buses.
: This was my first flight ever. Of course, as the very nervous and worrying
: person I am, I imagined planes crashing, wings falling off, fireballs
: going through the cabin, how it would be to crash in the sea with sharks
: chewing at our feet, how it would feel if the pressure would fail, stuff
: like that. All my head’s doing, always.
: The flight went by pretty smoothly. Each shake of the plane made me think of
: a possible and horrible cause, but apparently, anything bad never
: happened. Also, as it was dark outside (plane took off at 8pm) I wasn’t
: able to see much except a few tiny lights now and then, which was actually
: calming.
:
: ===== BEING THERE =====
: When we got into the arrivals place in Stansted, and we had walked quite a
: bit, we passed a passport control and got around a corner, BLAM!
: It was like seeing a cartoon character in the real world! It was c0ld and
: demonelite standing in the next turn, shaking my hand.
: While trying to understand their British English we were escorted to the
: c0ld-mobile, with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car! After
: paying the parking ticket we headed for the c0ld-house, driving on the
: wrong side of the road! I think c0ld said something about "It's
: definitely not the right side!" but more like
: "Is'defnaly'no'de'ra'sad" It was pretty freaky, especially in
: turns on two way roads.
: After less than an hour, and some detours due to c0ld's reckless driving,
: and maybe the fact he had never driven to that airport before, we arrived
: at the famous building.
: Can you believe it? They have fitted carpets in the whole house! Even the
: bathroom, and the kitchen! (strange!) I never checked the cellar.
: The house itself is several stories high, but most like a tower than a
: house. Together with the neighbor house attached to the c0ld-mansion two
: of these towers make up something that looks like a house. We were showed
: around and given rooms, yeah, Extion got one room containing c0ld's DVD
: collection and a double-bed, and I got another containing fuel (alcohol)
: and a double-bed. Awesome! :)
: Before going to bed, we watched some crazy British TV (brainiacs, quite
: interesting) and me and c0ld had a game of Halo: Keyes, Heroic, Co-op. I
: got killed by shotgun floods pretty many times, but we finished it, and it
: was good.
: Sleep. The bed was really nice; I could stretch my arms and legs however I
: wanted... I think I need a new bed, double-bed, and a bigger room....
:
: ===== THE DAY =====
: Saturday 4th of September 2004
: We got up around 6 in the morning, eating breakfast, some of us at least,
: getting ready for going to ExCeL. c0ld and demonelite had already fixed
: these magic tickets that lets you go by bus and train as much as you like,
: for one day, very useful. We took a walk to the bus, then rode that to the
: train station, took the train to somewhere, and then switched train, and
: switched again and BLAM! (yes, again) We were attacked by a madman in a
: black outfit!
: After some odd looks, turning heads and general suspicion, the crazy man was
: revealed as Stuntmutt (though no one can remember who pointed it out, one
: theory is that Stuntmutt doubles as a ventriloquist). Even if the day was
: hot, with a blue sky and a burning sunshine, Stuntmutt wore strict black;
: jacket, shirt, trousers, shoes even a black wig! (it might have been his
: own hair, I never pulled at it)
: I've had little practice in speaking English, which makes it somewhat
: uncomfortable, so I was mostly trying to understand their weird accent
: than making myself heard. c0ld and Stunt chatted pretty much while I was
: half asleep, then we swapped to the ghost train (no driver) heading for
: ExCeL.
: When we came to the entrance of ExCeL, there was hardly any queue at all,
: nice! But there's 1½ hours before the event even starts. When it was
: almost time to enter the hall, a guard tells us to move to the second
: gate, as the queue has gotten too long. Sure, but when we got there, we
: noticed that that gate was closed(!!). After waiting the remaining 15 or
: so minutes, we see the queue we stood in before starting to file into the
: hall (with a roaring sound) while our gate still was NOT open! It started
: to slide upwards though, and people pushed forward to get in, showing
: their tickets to the guard. When everyone had gotten through, we followed
: c0ld as he ran towards the Halo2 area, as we had planned beforehand.
: Stuntmutt mentioned that he was checking if I was keeping up with them,
: though by the time he had turned his head around, I was right behind c0ld,
: in front of Stunt. Long legs help.
: demonelite had run like a mad cow directly when he had gotten in, and he did
: that before all of us, so he was sliding around inside the queuing area
: when the rest of us got there.
: We ended up with only 6 people in front of us, but we let three past us as
: we wanted to get in as a group, and one lucky sod from the back of the
: queue as there was another group behind us that also didn't want to split
: up.
: After a few minutes we were led into the bunker. There it was, Halo2, in
: real time!
: First I had to remember I had to aim non-inverted (gah!) and with a
: Controller-S (damn white and black buttons), then I almost got deaf from
: the incredible loud voice explaining to us what we were about to
: experience.
: What first struck me when I started playing was nothing caused by the game,
: it was the screen, the contrast was not adjusted, or badly adjusted, so it
: was milky gray, I'm not sure if this was the case with just my monitor, or
: all of them, as I didn't spend too much time looking around the room while
: I played. The sound was also pretty loud. It was hard making out what
: sounds were coming from what game.
: Maybe I'm just stupid, or used to other hardware, but that's how I
: experienced it.
: Now, to the game itself... I can't really say anything that hasn't been
: said.. but at least I can sum up what I did.
:
: ===== ACTUAL HALO2 GAMEPLAY =====
: First, I ran towards the ghost, I wanted a vehicle. The "Normal"
: control setting really messed with my head, but I didn't need much
: vertical aiming. I used boost (Woohoo!) to swoosh into the middle area of
: the level, crossing it strafing and firing towards the defenders'
: building. When a Spartan appeared, I pushed the left trigger and
: boost-crashed him into a wall, very satisfying. A little after that I was
: flipped over by a rampant Warthog (I later found out it was demonelite
: driving, curse him) and was engaged by Spartans. I ran to the side and
: entered the building, running for the flag, but was killed on my way out.
: I never really spent any time checking out details or animations...I just
: got immersed and played the game. This has caused me to not really
: remember what happened, but I remember killing someone with the rocket
: launcher, dual wielding Sub machinegun and a Plasma Rifle, feeling the
: recoil while filling up a desperate Spartan, driving the hog for half a
: second before it got blown up, wondering about the onscreen player icons
: and lowering the bridge to the Plasma Sword just as the game ended.
: I did score the flag once, after running with it from the base, almost to
: the beach, died, and then picking it up again after someone else had
: carried it a bit further but died and carried it to the capture point,
: looking at my legs at the same time.
: The game ended way too fast, and the queue waiting outside wasn't really
: encouraging waiting for another go at it.
: After melting that the game was over so quickly, we looked at a few other
: games, then I and Extion borrowed c0ld’s cell phone so we could run off on
: our own without being totally lost forever. c0ld and demonelite had been
: there the day before, so they had already seen most of it.
: At one point demonelite called me, some time after I called him but he
: didn’t answer, and told us they were at a bar outside the hall. So we went
: there.
:
: ===== BOOZER =====
: We found the bar, or Extion did as I looked past it, and entered. Two of
: it’s walls were glass, so there was plenty of light. We saw Stuntmutt
: sitting there as if he owned the place. He asked us if we wanted anything
: to drink, and he got us cokes even if he tried to make anything we said
: into “Vodka?” c0ld came back from his business just a few seconds after we
: had sat down, and demonelite came back too, from whatever he’d been doing.
: We met him walking the other way when we walked to the pub (and I still
: can’t understand a word he says).
: We sat in the pub for quite some time, talking about lots of things Halo,
: HBO and just life. It was the first time ever that I’ve talked with real
: HBO people about HBO stuff outside the Matrix, and probably the first time
: for the others as well. It’s really odd to take up stuff that has only
: been chatted about, that there really are people that ARE interested in
: the same stuff as yourself! Wonderful :) We discussed lots of areas,
: artwork, gaming tactics, road cones, people etc.
: Stuntmutt had lots of funny stories, and we had many good laughs. He also
: showed us how to draw the One One Se7en Master Chief, I missed the start
: though as I fiddled with the digital camera to find video-mode. :(
: We had more to drink and some chips, then we headed back into the hall.
: Extion and I ran off alone again, to see if we had missed anything. After
: watching people screaming for freebies in front of a stage, and walked
: around looking for free stuff ourselves, we ended up at the bar again. We
: expected to find our people, and we did.
: A few more cokes, more chatting, and then one last run into the hall before
: it closed, to see if we could play Halo2 again. When we got there, the
: queues had closed, but a bunch of people were standing in line at the
: exit. We lined up too, but were told by some evil person who had stolen a
: Halo2 shirt that the ones before us were the last players. And that was
: that.
:
: ===== AFTERMATH =====
: The whole group headed for the station, to go home, or wherever Stuntmutt
: were going. We shook hands with Stuntmutt and thanked for a wonderful day
: :) then jumped on a train to escape him. c0ld was pretty wasted, too many
: beers, I guess :X
: When we got back, we were pretty exhausted and my feet were living dead,
: damn shoes. As we had gotten pretty hungry, c0ld ordered pizza, very
: tasty.
: c0ld and demonelite began listening to a football (soccer) game while I
: messed up c0ld’s computer, abusing his IRC client and chatting in his
: name.
: The football enthusiasts were semi-awake, so we decided we should go to bed
: early (around 9:30pm) as we had to get up at 5 the next morning, to go to
: the airport.
:
: ===== GOING HOME =====
: Sunday 5th of September 2004
: c0ld has an amazing ability to sleep even if his alarm clock is making lots
: of noise. I didn’t dare wake him up myself though, as I feared for my own
: life. After a short breakfast and packing our stuff together, c0ld joined
: us and we went out to the c0ld-mobile, yet again.
: As the clock was about 5:30, attention wasn’t at its peak. I sat in the
: front seat, next to c0ld, as demonelite was happily snoozing back in the
: c0ld-palace.
: We reluctantly saw a black cat sitting next to the road, nothing special
: about it. Suddenly the cat looked at us, just a few meters before we would
: drive past it. I could see the two bright white dots that were light
: reflecting in its eyes. And then it leaped out into the road. *THUMP* c0ld
: tried to avoid it in the short time we actually saw it moving, but it was
: too sudden. We’d hit a cat. Not much were said except c0ld pointing out
: that he hadn’t hit a cat before, ever.
: When we got to the airport, after a rollercoaster trip on the highway, c0ld
: guided is to where we checked in, we shook hands and said our farewells,
: and then c0ld went home to bed again, before his car could get towed away
: from the drop off parking section.
: The travel homewards wasn’t that spectacular. We waited to check in, looked
: at tax-free merchandize, walked to our gate, boarded the plane and flew
: home.
: This flight was a little more interesting, and a little scarier, as we had a
: very nice view out the windows. Geez, England is flat! We saw an infinite
: pattern of fields, areas of buildings and small dots of woods. After
: flying out the coast and all that was seen was the blue ocean, I spent my
: time reading about Louis Wu in The Ringworld Throne while Extion continued
: gazing out the thick glass.
: After landing, we traveled with buses and trains, again, to get all the way
: home. I had a little detour as I had booked my tickets with Extion, so I
: first went to his home town, and then back a bit and then towards where I
: live. I was home that evening around 10pm, mostly late because we had to
: wait for four hours at one location. I got picked up at the train station
: by my brother and driven home.
:
: ===== EXTRO =====
: All in all, it was a very nice trip, not too much because we played Halo2,
: even if that was exciting, but to meat physical HBO people :)
: Huge thanks to c0ld for his insane hospitality, and Stuntmutt and demonelite
: for their fantastic company and Extion for being crazy enough to go with
: me ;)
: ===== REFLECTION =====
: After having met the people IRL, I thought chatting with them would change,
: but it’s practically the same :) which is fine by me! We just know each
: other a little better now ;)
: ===== BONUS MATERIAL =====
: If you've read this much, I almost feel sorry for you. Anyway, here's three
: videos, two of them utterly pointless, but the first one is pretty
: interesting. Too bad I missed the beginning.
:
: That is all ^.^ //BOLL
Sounds like you guys had a blast, good to hear.
Best write-up formatting evar!
KP
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