HALO fun at the K bar!

The other day when Ani invited me to a games night at the local Uni bar (she knows how to get my attention!) a flood of memories came rushing back to me as she went on to explain the evenings activities. In true family guy style I had a flashback to when I was studying at that same university 7 years previous....

The student union had organised a games night in the uni bar, it was to be a competitive event with prizes to be won. There were gaming stations set up around the bar to keep people entertained throughout the night, there was a PS2 playing Mortal Kombat 3 and an classic NES playing Super Mario, but the main draw, the big event that we were all waiting for, was the 16 Player Halo LAN tournament. 4 Tv's, 4 Xbox's, 4 players per xbox, 8 teams in total.

It was going to be an awesome night

After the warm up rounds, the DJ calmed the music and the mood turned serious as the players took their seats. Memories get fuzzy from here on - probably because of all the geek adrenaline. I remember checking out the competition and getting a little worried. Some of these guys obviously played together often and our team had only been formed that week, with one member, Raj, never having played a game in more than 2 dimensions before.

It wasn't looking good

Remarkably we made it through to the second round, mainly due to a couple of teams having consumed a little too much drink making them easy pickings - suckers. Raj released his seat over to Dan Anderson by this stage, he was getting bored of running around looking at his feet. But this didn't dull his support for the team, things were looking good despite being a much harder round, every team was in it to win. Being the Halo veteran of the group I was racking up a high death toll, but if it wasn't for Halo newbie Mike Gray, we never would have made it through to the finals. As it turned out Dan Anderson was as good at looking at sky, as Raj was at floor.

intense!

We had a brief time to compose ourself as the final game was being set up. The map was Blood Gulch, each player had only 1 life but with extra shields. The winner; last man/team standing.

The other finalist team were the fan favorites, the guys that had actually set this night up, this put me in mind of the Mighty Ducks Vs the Hawks. The music was off altogether now and there was a reasonable crowd gathered around the gaming quadrant.
The classic Halo beeps counted us into the action, I was so focused on my portion of the tv screen that I couldn't tell how we were doing, my intent of finding and taking out the other team was all consuming.

I managed to find and take one guy down and was looking for the others when I realised my team mates were all giving encouragement, it seemed in no time at all I was the only chief left, the same was true for opposing team and it all came down to one on one

no pressure then?

As I popped out of a side tunnel I saw him leaving a base and walk into the open, I panicked and started shooting with my assault rifle - stupid, I was too far away to have any effect, fortunately he was on edge too and also used his assault rile. We ran towards each other strafing and jumping to avoid bullets, then, almost simultaneously, we ran out of ammo. Now much closer to each other I had a decision, my health was next to nothing, one more shot would end me. So do I keep running and try to take him out with a melee, or switch to my pistol and hope I can get in a head shot?

I switch to pistol, so did he. What followed must have looked like a jumpy futuristic western showdown. The pixel Gods were on my side, none of his bullets connected and he went down. We cheered. Mighty Ducks win. Who'd had thought it :)

Our efforts we were awarded with an old PC gaming controller that had been sprayed gold, it was silly looking and tacky, but to us it was the best prize ever.

... fond memory flashback over I returned to find a slightly annoyed Annie, I had quite clearly not been listening to her explain what was planned for the coming up games night. As it turned out, it was a very good evening, but I'll save that story for another day.

Geek out