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Halo 2 World Tourney Finals - Aussie Champ's View
Remorhaz writes "Some of you may be aware that the finals of the Worldwide Halo 2 tourney over Xbox Live was held on Friday night (10th June) with the 24 Xbox Live Region winners duking it out for ultimate glory. I was there with Cabel (the Australian representative), his brother and Pidge from Microsoft Australia to play the finals - Cabel made it to the grand final round - but didn't take first place unfortunately (congrats to King Tuur from the Netherlands) - but he's done us Aussies extremely proud :) Here's Remorhaz' "writeup of an insider's view of Australia's Halo 2 representative - Cabel's progress to the finals and the night's events at Australian Microsoft HQ."
No more sleep for me
Acrylic Bubble Panels www.beyond7.com
I've long since been burned out on the incessant stream of racial, sexual, and downright lame spoutings of the usual "gamers" in every online game no matter what the genre.
It really is a nice sight to see what real gamers around the world can come together for actual GAMING
Hats off to you guys.
There is truth in humor.
I had this great idea for a glove-type of controller. It would allow for quicker movement (especially with caffeine).
It's so bad.
ok first off, doom 3 has been out for some time, not to mention its recently released expansion pack, so that leads me to beleave this is a re-post by a troll of another thread. anyway ill still take the time (because im bored and find this post comidicly innacurate). First John Carmack (not Jon Carmack) has had a major role in coding fod ID software, he had nothing to do with the development of Unreal (by epic games) or duke nukem (also by epic games i beleave). The shooters at Columbine which every body points to when referencing how violent and bad videogames are hadpre meditated the killings (for those trolls out there, this means they planned them!) and playing violent games like doom was mearly ment as a "practice run" not that it would have dont much good, as most these games pit you aganst demons from hell, not Danny from third period. As far as target practice, i do not see how playing a video game can improve that by itself, as there is no recoil from a mouse, you do not hold the mouse in the same way you hold a gun, nor do you get any expirence aiming with the "targeting" system in all FPS's, no the killers at columbine had access to real guns, and were practicing with them long in advance of the killings. And if you want to blaim their psycho killings on the video game industry, who not blaim the paint ball industry aswell, that is a more realistic and less seperated form of "killing" people. Or for that matter the gun industry who made the guns which the kids used? or even the school system for not having metal detectors, or the cops or their parents for not checking out their weird behavior leading upto the day of the shooting. The fact is that the role violent games played in that incident (if any) is no more than the roll the teachers played for not asking more questions. Hell the bullies who pushed these kids over the edge are more to blaim than the games they played.Now as to your cousin who "became catatonic" after losing a death match, not only do i not beleave it (and if it is true it wasnt the game that caused it, it would have been a chemical in balence in the brain that caused obsessive cumpulsive tendencies, in which case you are as much at fault as the game is for not picking up on this and trying to get him help), but im willing to say if your not making it up, its more your fault or whoever was with him or closest to him for not stopping him or trying to get him help. anyway i dont know why im replying to this AC troll, i guess just because i havent seen a good responce to posts like this in the past so ill take the time to respond as best i can.
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
Playing a first person shooter with a joystick is analogous to driving a car with your buttcheeks.
I've played PC games for over half my life and I still can't grasp controlling a FPS on a console. I'm sure any awards that were given out were well deserved.
1) Out of mousemat error. Sooner or later, your going run out of mousemat when your turning and will have to lift the mouse back onto the pad to continue. Meaning you'll simply stop turning while your doing this. On a DJC, you just tilt the right analouge stick right or left for continuous turning.
That's silly. Any experienced gamer uses a large mousepad and sets the sensitivity so that moving to the left or right edge of the pad == 180 degree turn. It's common sense. No lifting of the mouse is necessary. If it is, then the sensitivity is not set correctly.
2) Out of fingers error. With a keyboard and mouse, you aim with the mouse, meaning one hand, and all its fingers, can only access, 2-3 buttons.(Scrollwheels help with this a lot though) Usually these are shoot,change weapon and other. Meanwhile your other fingers, usually 2-3, are stuck on WASD for moving. If you want to crouch, reload, zoom, jump or perhaps change weapon reverse, you will need to do some keyboard gymnastics, look down, or (horror of horrors) stop moving to press other buttons. On a DJC, one thumb is used for movement, the other for aiming. Flipper pads mean four buttons are easily reachable by two more fingers, and the dpad and other buttons are acessable by a nimble other if required. Bottom line. You can keep moving while you perform on the fly weapon maitainance. DJC has a lot more buffer space for out of fingers errors.
Again silly. Good gamers don't usually use WASD. It's not the natural typing position and limits the number of keys that can be used without moving the hand. Gamers that need a lot of keys use ESDF because they never have to look at the keyboard because there's usually a divit on the F key to keep the person from losing position. Using the home typing position, 28 keys are available without moving the left hand out of standard typing postion.
3) Mouse Error, Error. Most comupter mice are fairly cheap anyaway. Mice get junk in the wheels. Even optical mice glitch from time to time. Buttons sometimes get stuck, and of course hands may slip or be jostled from time to time. The average DJC is of a higher quaility than the average mouse and suffers far less from any of these problems.
meh, I don't want to bite on that hook.
4) Keyboard limitations Open up a text editor. Press and hold E. Without letting go hold C. Now while holding, tap U. See the problem? Now try W,D and E. E will not register. Try WAQ. There are umpteen other combinations. Keyboards can't handle many multiple keydown combinations. DJC can.
More trolling. Cheap keyboards only register 3 keys pressed at one time. You know that. Spending more than $15USD more often than not gets a keyboard that can handle more than 3 keys at at time.
{SNIP REST OF BS}
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
A number of guys that made it to the finals boosted their way there. You can check some of the match histories for the gamertags and see the boosting that's happened.
Kinda ruins the whole thing when you can't trust that the people who should have been at the top actually were.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Yeah, but you would end up bunny hopping around like a maniac, and everyone would know what you were doing, you sick puppy!
Seriously.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
A Day in the Life of an International Halo 2 Tournament - Cabel vs. the World!!!
An insiders view of Australias Halo 2 representative - Cabel's progress to the finals.
The scene was set - it was the day of the World Halo 2 Xbox Live Championship Finals. The 24 Xbox Live Region champions had been decided and it was game on for the final series.
This was the worlds first global Xbox Live Halo 2 tournament and the final series was being decided by a playoff on Xbox Live. The global championship rounds were played on Friday June 10th in double elimination rounds. The 24 regional winners were sectioned into four pools of six players each. The top three moved on to the next round, while the bottom three from each group moved into an elimination bracket. Once a regional champion lost twice, they were eliminated. Each round lasted 10 minutes with unlimited kills. All the final matches were played on the new Halo 2 map, Warlock as a Free For All Slayer with standard SMG spawn (what! no BR you say ).
More info at: http://www.xbox.com/halo2/tournament.htm
Earlier in April; Cabel had beaten out a very strong field (including his brother who almost snaked the win ) in a close fought FFA at the BigPond Halo 2 Tournament to be crowned the Australian champ and our representative on the world stage.
I arrived at Microsoft Australia's Headquarters at about 6:45PM with the trusty 'XboxZone Com AU' server in hand. We had thought that given our location in the world that we needed every advantage we could get to overcome the tyranny of distance (or network latency LAG for you simple folks ). Cabel may be playing on the 10Mbit link at MS HQ but nothing compensates for the 200ms delay to most other countries. I offered my server Xbox for Cabel to play on for the night - it was hoped that since this Xbox has been hosting Halo 2 games pretty much non stop 24x7 since early January on a 100Mbit link that its awesome Halo 2 host record/rating (300+ clan matches, 1500+ Big Team Battles, 2000+ large custom games, etc) could steal it host in some important games. Alas it wasn't to be so - each of the finals matches was hosted by a Referee (XboxLiveCommish the guy in white hiding in the corner ) at MS HQ in the states - I suspect Bungie rigged things up so he'd always be host for every round - which is fair I guess with no player getting direct host advantage.
Cabel and his brother Senyo were already there with Pidge and Kumar from Microsoft and after a bit of networking jiggery pokery it was practice time before the first game at 9PM.
It was then Pizza ordering time and since we had to plan ahead for a long night (if we made it to the finals they wouldn't be played till 5AM - so think positive and plan to be needing food for the long haul ). Senyo got to order a crapload of pizzas for the four of us on Microsoft's account - nice
In the first round Cabel's pool included:
ii CaBeL ii - Australia
l Kobegod l - Taiwan
Otcho Boy - Switzerland
ZpiKeY - Norway
Billykater - Austria
GermanFreak - Denmark
Pregame chat in the lobby was pretty friendly and discovering that GermanFreak was in fact NOT from Germany but from Denmark was a bit of a head spin - but hey - whatever makes you happy
Cabel had a slow start but picked up the pace as he went along to eventually catch the leader just at the end equaling on Kills but taking the win on Assists and lower deaths.
Full game stats at: http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStats.aspx?gameID= 201030311
Our next round wasn't till midnight so it was going to be a long 3 hour wait - time for some practice, customs and a bit of matchmaking.
Cabel and his brother Senyo also whittled away the hours with some head to head and double teams on the fast link at Microsoft - I couldn't believe how many people quit the games against them or worse tho
Any experienced gamer uses a large mousepad
As a fairly experienced (and ranked in UT at one time in 2001) gamer, I can tell you that any gamer worth his tag uses a trackball. There is nothing better for FPS. The control you get from one by simply moving your fingers is far superior than what you'll ever get by moving even just your wrist, never mind the whole arm.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I don't see how any of you play games like that. It's not very intuitive at all. I use the following.
J: Jump
U: Up
D: Down
L: Left
R: Right
F: Forward
B: Backward
C: Crouch
Left Alt + S: Strafe Seft
Right Alt + S: Strafe Right