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Skip to the bottom if you just want the pics and vids.
On Saturday, April 2nd 2005, after 4 hours of classes (yeah... in the
words of one of my floormates, saturday classes are about as cool as
a barbed wire didlo... dont ask), I packed up my projector, xbox,
camera, and some other miscellaneous technology, and my Dad drove me
down through the bowels of Connecticut to the house of Louis Wu.
Arriving at around 3 p.m., I found people who had already been there
since the night before and were already in the thick of some intense
Halo 2 action. Of course, after saying hello to all the people I
already knew and meeting those who were still just words on my
screen, I wasted no time in setting up my projector and jumping right
into some games. We played some CTF on coag... some incredibly dumb
oddball games with needlers, bruteshots and no ball indicator, and
some others that I can't remember.
Then we broke out Halo 1 for some good traditional HBO action. We
started with just some straight up slayer on Chill Out and which I
did fairly sucky in as I had forgotten how to pistol whore. Then we
started an HBO classic... Rockets CTF on Prisoner... its not quite
the same effects as Hang em High (at the last lan, our CTF rockets
hang em lasted +2 hours and someone pulled the plug so we couldnt see
the scores... grrr....) but it was still quite fun... My box of me,
goatrope and Cody Miller led the red team with a steady stream of
"Double Kill... Triple Kill!... Killtacular!!'s" coming from the
shitty projector speakers. Next up was a rockets oddball on Wizard
with no shields to five minutes.... as you might expect, it lasted
quite a while. I kind of gave up getting the ball after a while and
just played slayer,
but it was fun none the less.
The highlight of the evening was, when Mig (perhaps inspired by
Furhman) called Louis upstairs saying he smelled gas. Everyone
abandoned their games and gathered around, cameras and camcorders all
focused on Claude. It was revealed that the gas was a false alarm,
and we started ordering pizza for dinner when Mig strategically told
Louis to shut up and went and brought out our gift for him. Many
members of the community had organized an effort to get a beautiful
custom Craig Mullins original print. Craig Mullins is the man, btw...
whipping up the awesome piece just for Louis and doing it for free...
We found out a Mullins piece typically goes for around $3500 these
days, so it is absolutely incredible that we managed to get one. It
was stressed that it was from noone in particular but from the
community as a whole, thanking the man who has put so much of his
time and money into this community.
We all migrated back to our xboxes to play for a while more until the
pizza got there and we pigged out as only LAN party guests can.
Afterwards we had a long interesting discussion on the pros and cons
of Halo 2 vs Halo 1 and what worked and what didnt. Rather than the
either Halo 2 bashing session or Bungie worship that often goes on in
the forum, our debate was mostly just an exploration of both games
and how both are excellent in their own right.
After that it was more halo... we played a mix of both 1 and 2 for
several more hours until people started leaving and we were all dead
tired. There werent very many very memorable games, and interestingly
Halo 2 seems to wear you out much faster than Halo 1 ever did...
maybe its just the pace of the game. Anyway, I finished off my halo
that night by 1v1ing KP on lockout... we have a running series of
games going and I had yet to beat him until the LAN where i pwned
4-0... then I was called upstairs and he looked fairly comatose and
was about to head home for the night.
We all went upstairs and found that nof had been kind enough to make
me a Mister Chief cake (dont worry it wasnt spiked with cynide or
filled with razor blades or anything) for my birthday which just
happened to be that sunday. It was quite good, despite being almost
deathly sugary, and we all had a piece and Furhman had 4 or 5. While
all this had been going on, goatrope and Cody Miller, the two awesome
halo speedrunners were blasting through the Halo 2 campaign on
legendary. I went up to see where they were from time to time and was
awed by their speedy skillz. At one point they were getting the
IWHBYD skull and pwning all those elites... it was quite awesome.
At this point, many had found some couch or floor space to sleep on
and me, nof, Furhman, and some others set up my projector to watch
the Star Wars: Clone Wars videos until we were all too tired to stay
conscious any longer. The next morning I woke up around 11 and
stumbled down to find everyone standing around chatting and watching
Furhman hog Louis' bandwidth with all his various downloads. Louis
left after a while to take goatrope and some others to the airport
and about the same time my ride arrived to take me home. I proceeded
to nap for several hours before heading back to school... content and
all halo'd out.
Huge Thanks to Louis for hosting another great experience, and
everyone who came and made it as incredibly fun as always. Its always
nice seeing all the regulars again and meeting some new faces.
I took some pics, but not as many as I wanted to, during the event...
you can find them along with the movie I put together showing some of
the LAN as well as the giving of Lou's gift from the community here.
-rets
[mirrored at b.org -lwu]
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