Link dump:
Mintz’s already wrote about the LAN: http://hushedcasket.com/node/1628/
Midnight blogged about it: http://midnight.hushedcasket.com/2007/01/16/gears-of-war-halo-1-lan-at-raptures/
70 photos from the LAN: at Flickr.com
THX’ers gather around for 3-shot lessons
This past Saturday the Hushed Casket held its first epic HALO LAN of 2007 in Huntsville, Alabama. It was massive (over 30 gamers), starting on Saturday morning at 11 AM and lasting until 6 AM on Sunday. That’s 19 hours of hi-def gaming. Travelers made their way to the event by flying in from as far away as California and Philadelphia. Others made the drive from the Auburn and Birmingham areas. While we’ve hosted LANs with more people in attendance in the past, the local Casket community brought the gear, making it the most high-tech and playable LAN to-date. We had nearly two dozen original XBOX and XBOX 360 consoles at the event along with 10 hi-def displays and copious standard-definition displays scattered throughout the home, including a 95” LCD projector display (
The Prey, Phoenix, and Myth trash rapture’s office
For almost the entire time, we LAN’d HALO like it was 2001. Actually, we weren’t running around spraying enemies with Assault Rifles halfway across Blood Gulch, so I guess we LAN’d like it was 2002. We had three 4-v-4 matches running at all times. Our only breaks were to eat the 20 pizzas (click for larger version‘>image), and to watch the lame ending to “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” deep into the night. (Why did we do that, again?) Team Slayer matches to 50- and 100-kills were the norm while sprinkling in the occasional Oddball and Capture the Flag gametypes. Damnation, Chill Out, Hang ‘Em High, Derelict, Beaver Creek and Wizard were played all night long. The night ended with Hog Wars on Blood Gulch in which we were blowing Warthogs across and on top of the map. Yeah. We were pretty delusional by then.
I picked jayWHY up at the airport on Friday. I showed him NASA and the military base before heading to Radio Shack to pick up an audio adapter or two that you-always-need-but-can-never-find when holding a LAN. FoulBreed joined us at the house and he started dishing out the tech goodness: namely two 32” LCD HDTV’s (click for larger version‘>image). He knew this LAN was about to rock. A few minutes later I noticed that people were showing up on time and in great numbers (much unlike our New Year’s Eve party we hosted earlier that week). People arrived so fast that I didn’t know who was arriving and when they arrived. We tried to LAN, but it just wasn’t happening. We couldn’t divide ourselves up into teams. We couldn’t settle on TV’s or consoles.
And then Midnight arrived (click for larger version‘>image).
Mintz was winning a lot of games over on his private LAN. He began to get cocky. Just when we got tired of hearing how Mintz and Frankie are best-friends-forever, how they LAN together ALL the time, how they play Guitar Hero II together, and how he’s got Frankie’s cell phone number, an amazing thing happened. Frankie "supposedly" showed up at the LAN (click for larger version‘>image). What a fun game! On LAN, the game ran smooth and the pistols were lethal. It was a good thing Slayer wasn’t there. I’m not sure that even then we could have handled his nasty Gnasher on LAN. Of course, he probably would have quit out during every other match, so he probably wouldn’t have been effective anyway.
After Gears, we returned to our first love and gamed HALO until the crack of dawn. All was well in the world of the Hushed Casket. We were definitely undead.
Interesting facts for the night:
I didn’t play on Chiron, Boarding Action, or Sidewinder once during the night.
I made the order for everyone’s pizza, yet, I forgot to order for myself.
I now have no H1 or H2 discs. GG, thieves.
This LAN was a success because of everyone who brought equipment (click for larger version‘>image) and breaking into Slayer’s perfectly neat bedroom and snatching his gaming gear. Thanks to Mintz’s mom for supplying Mountain Dew (←Previous Page
