Unranked Team SWAT is back!

Originally Posted on 02/05/2007 01:15 AM PST

Frankie announced in the recent weekly update that Team SWAT is coming back and is going to be unranked. Waahoo! i really like it this way. Free of modders and rank obsessed freaks. Team SWAT is a get in, get out, get on with your life kind of play list that i really need. I mean i like objective games too but sometime all i need is few rounds of SWAT to unwind from the days work.

Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that i'm good at spotting the enemy but weak in actually taking him down so SWAT just works for me really ;)

Posted by naveeda @ 6:12 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Crackdown on my Xenophobia

Originally Posted On: 12/31/2006 04:56 PM PST

Just checked out this 1up news story about Halo 3 beta keys inside Crackdown game package, and the first thing I thought was "oh its just MS being M$" but then I thought basically its not them, its us. This is the same reason Mario has to appear in every other Nintendo game, people have so much fear of unknown they wont try anything new, so these guys have to sugarcoat it for us. Creating a new IP is almost impossible now, unless of course you spend millions of $$ in marketing hype extravaganza, something like MS did for gears.

This is probably the same reason Viva Pinata won the best game nobody played award, it was a new IP and people were afraid to try a new thing while at the same time halo 3 beta has like a gazillion signups already. I'm afraid I’ll include myself in the same group, I haven't tried viva pinata myself and took me some serious therapy to the try Val’s Burgers in Hayward while I have no problems with McDonalds, only because I was afraid to try a new thing. Val’s is great BTW. Note to self: get a copy of viva pinata first thing in the morning and stop being a Xenophobic (phobic attitude towards strangers or of the unknown).

Posted by naveeda @ 3:27 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Halo 2 LAN party a.k.a Fight Night - Round 2

Originally Posted On: 12/18/2006 08:21 PM PST

ZS hosted the second "fight night" so I thought I’ll publish a Post Game Carnage Report.

Only 7 guys showed up so we had to do a 3 vs. 4 split, which i think we did well because I played one of the most intense games of my life, like winning/loosing KOTH by 1 or 2 seconds. The lead was traded multiple times in pretty much every game except i think the Team Slayer BR or Team Slayer Rockets where of course my (red) team rocked. Overall I think blue team had most wins but we did manage to concentrate and win the last game and leave with our heads high, mind you none of the wins were easy for either team and some of them were just damn luck.

We played on Turf and Sanctuary mostly, and with shotguns pretty much all the time. King of the hill was the most favorite game. We did try one Odd Ball on Lockout but it didn’t turn out very well because my team was mostly lost. CTF and Assault were fun too.

The XBL players didn’t have any particular advantage this time, people are getting better. Two of the guys in my team were new, but we were still 4 and blue team countered that with strategy and they did well, anyone playing against YL should watch out for his ninja flag stealing abilities, you'll only see him either when he is about to score or has scored, and pretty much invisible rest of the time.

I have to give it up for IK for not only his 100 times improved game play but also he single handedly captured many a flags, planted the bombs and captured the hills while the rest of us were busy fighting(and dying). Jer was good with all ranged weapons but everyone insisted on playing with shotty. In rockets at least twice we both jumped, fired rockets in mid-air and both died. It came to me after the party that we should have chosen the sword as the secondary weapon, sword vs. shotty is a great combination, may be next time.

For food we got excellent pizza from Pizza Guys courtesy of AS.

I had a ton of fun, and in fact the games were so intense that I was too exhausted to drive back home and had a hard time going to sleep as adrenaline had replaced 80% of my blood stream. All I could see was grenades flying and shotguns cracking.

Thanks for the good time folks.


Posted by naveeda @ 3:26 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Why halo is bad for business

Originally Posted On: 12/18/2006 01:45 AM PST

Okay don’t get me wrong, I’m a biiiig halo fan, and that’s exactly the problem. Ever since I’ve started playing halo 2 on XBL I don’t care about any other Xbox game.

Before i got halo 2 or before I started playing it on XBL, I used to buy a game pretty much every other month. Here was the modus-operandi: Just pickup the latest EGM and see what the reviewers are raving about, grab the one the looks interesting and spent the next month or so playing it. So slowly my collection was expanding with all the Xbox block busters.

But halo proved so much fun that I didn’t finish some of the best games out there, including Doom 3 (Collectors Edition), Farcry Instincts and Elders Scrolls: Morrowind (Game of the Year Edition). Okay I quit morrowind because I wasn’t having any fun. But that’s beside the point. The point is that I have limited time to play in a given day and i just play halo 2 when I have it. I've stopped buying more games now because i don’t need them. Bungie guys keep the play lists always fresh, the matchmaking has it flaws but still pretty good in terms of convenience, the community is ever thriving and the game play is simply awesome.

So I’m thinking that’s bad for M$ business right, and there is no way I’m the only one having this experience so it must be hurting the new game sales a lot, even if halo 2 sold 2.4 million on the first day, there is no way its going to make up for the lost profits in other game sales. Or will it.

[Update: There is finally a game: Gears of war that I’m excited to play now, and i might buy a 360 just for that]

Posted by naveeda @ 3:21 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Our First Ever Halo 2 Lan Party

Originally Posted On: 12/11/2006 02:45 AM PST.

The idea of setting up a LAN party started when I started playing on XBL. Playing with friends is always more fun then playing with some unknown players at XBL because most of the time you end up with complete jerks or people who just play team games on their own.

So I sent a mail to my friends with whom I’ve played co-op on my Xbox. My plan was to have at least 8 people, 2 Xboxes and 2 TVs so that we can at least have 2 teams. The response was positive. A date was set. Saturday Nov 4th.

With some help from Amazon and folks at bungie.net forums I was able to figure out what kind of cables and setup is needed to setup a LAN based game. Acquiring the second TV turned out to be a bit tricky but i was able to get one 32" Panasonic from craigslist for 50 buck's. Acquiring 8 controllers and another copy of halo 2 turned out to be easy as the people coming in had those.

Next up was the question that only one other player had played on Xbox live so how do i balance the team. If the XBL players grab the power weapons and critical locations, they will completely own the first timers running around the map with an smg. So I created custom game types where everyone had the same type of weapons and so were the weapons on map, for example, team duals (where all weapons on the map were smg, plasma rifle, needler or pistol etc), team rockets, team shotgun etc. Same goes for objective game types.

So finally the day arrived, some of the friends came early to help me with the setup and carry the 2nd TV upstairs. we had the setup done pretty quickly and people started to pour pretty much on time. We divided into two team with the 2 live players, me and YL, became team leads. You must understand that for a desi gamer the hardest part is to leave the wife behind and come out alone for a party or something so the ppl who were showing up were really brave hearts.

We started with team duals on Coagulation and before we knew it YL was on rampage on the warthog turret. His team won easily. dang it, I should’ve turned off vehicles for matches with duals or shotguns. After that no particular team took the lead in terms of number of games won. But it was fun nevertheless; it gets boring if one team wins continuously.

My favorite matches were 1. Team Rockets on Beaver Creek where i completely wrecked havoc on the opposing team and 2. Crazy King on Burial Grounds it was a very very close match and we won because YL's team couldn’t find the way to the hill in the last few seconds. YL kicked a** in Team Snipers on Ascension. ZS also plays pretty darn good, which for me was kind of surprising because he doesn't play on XBL at all.

A funny thing happened during the first few matches that one of the guys in YL's team took the tag that tells the location of teammates as bulls-eye and thought he needed to shoot these guys, imagine the guy sitting next to you on the couch constantly betraying you! finally ZS asked him "O yaar aap hamein to marna band karein" (hey man stop killing us). I think it was hilarious.

For food I ordered biryani from shahnawaz but it didn’t turned out to be fresh, infact we had to throw out pretty much half of it. i called them later on but in vain as you might guess.

Anyways it was time well spent and i had a ton of fun. Can’t wait to do it again

Take care
Naveeda

 

Posted by naveeda @ 2:10 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments