The Midnight Hour

On Friday, July 14th at 2100 the MWR (morale, welfare, recreation) internet café hosted a Halo 1 tournament on Camp Fallujah. It was far from a perfect; the rules and procedures did have flaws. However, for the level of funding and experience I expect from a government contracted company (KBR), I thought it was awesome. I suppose I am a little biased, however, because I won.

I started to not even go to the tournament. I had to take three hours out of my sleep schedule to attend, but as I set my alarm that afternoon I thought to myself, “You ought to at least try to have some fun or do something memorable while you’re still here.” I brought my own controller, anticipating widespread deployment of substandard MadCatz controllers. I was wrong. When I arrived I was shocked to see four large, identical TVs. Each was very new, and I estimate they had 32” screens. Connected to each TV was an original Xbox console, and what surprised me even more was that each Xbox was modded! You can see an aftermarket dashboard in one of my pictures. Three of the four xboxen appeared to have identical dashboards, while one was different. I expected this enabled the internet café to download multiple games to each hard drive and neglect the need to purchase multiple copies, but once again, I was mistaken. The tournament director placed a copy of Halo1 “Collector’s Edition” into each console. BTW, I’m proud to own an old school copy of the Halo packaging, before it even had the “Game of the Year” graphics attached.

The rules were pretty straightforward. You played as an individual in a group of four players on one TV in a game of free-for-all slayer. 25 kills, normal weapons (not pistol/assault rifle start), no radar. Map was chosen randomly at the beginning of each match by drawing out of a hat. Possibilities included Battle Creek, Damnation, Hang’em High, Derelict, Prisoner, Rat Race, and Longest. The winner of the four-man (as you might guess, no females showed up) match moved on. After two matches in this manner the final round was played to 50 kills via system link with each player on a separate TV.

Here’s my dissection of the weaknesses of the tournament:

1. Everyone on the same screen (excluding the final round). Your opponent can always know your location by looking at your screen.
2. Normal weapons. I would have preferred a pistol/AR start. The first round was very chaotic because of the weapon selection at Battle Creek, and I almost lost.
3. In the second heat of the first round and in the second round there were an odd number of players. Yep, some people got half-screens while their opponents on the same TV got quarter-screens. I saw the problem coming and ensured I picked up the controller attached to port 1 that would give me the half-screen. In an individual event (excluding team events and my normal leadership responsibilities in the Marine Corps), if someone is going to get screwed I’m going to do my best to ensure it’s not me.
4. Opponents were selected randomly (no seeding). This is picking nits, but the system allowed two good players to eliminate each other in round two, when they would have beaten some players in the final round.

Let me very clear: Overall, it was an excellent event, and I was very pleased. Given the amount of equipment and funds available for such an event, I was honestly impressed. I have seen much better equipped businesses promote and execute tournaments of far less quality. While there were imperfections in the tournament, I think that most of these were necessary. The Marines and sailors participating in the tournament probably work long days or a 12-hour shift like me. There isn’t time to make a tournament an all-day event; there wouldn’t be any participants. There isn’t enough floor space and funds to have enough TVs and xboxen to accommodate so many players without grouping people on the same TV or having 5-6 heats per round, which would take too long. It would also be impractical to implement a seeding system due to time constraints. All those things were simply unavoidable. The choice of starting weapons was a matter of preference, although I believe my preference is shared by almost all Halo gamers.

The first round pitted me against three young Marines in Battle Creek. As usual, too many people were pressing buttons while choosing profiles and gametype, and I had to exclaim “Nobody push any buttons! I’ll do it!” to which they complied. Only one opponent was a real threat, but the other two (one of whom asked me “How do you change weapons?”) were easy prey, and the 2nd place finisher almost beat me to the punch. I became a little flustered when I couldn’t find a pistol in the lower entrance to each base, but settled down with a plasma rifle and began to use grenades more. I tried to whore the rocket launcher but it just didn’t work out. I believe the game finished 23-25.

The second round was my toughest of the tournament. When the director announced only three names I quickly began to look for controller #1. Unfortunately, another player, Undisputed, was closer to the far left seat and sat down in it, taking what I thought was controller #1, the controller that would have a half-screen. Feeling that all was lost, I decided to look at the Xbox to see which controller I had. I had #3, but #1 was still available, in a seat further to the left of Undisputed. Undisputed had chosen #2, which would still get the half-screen if nobody picked up #1. Like Lumberg in Office Space I leaned across Undisputed and muttered, “Yeah…let me just go ahead and grab that.” And so goes the story of how I managed to get a half-screen. Untold is the story of how I almost squandered it in a loss. Undisputed led 21-16 at one point. The map was Hang’em High. Thankfully, I started with a pistol. Unthankfully, so did Undisputed. In a late game killing streak I utilized time-proved “clean up” methodology which included hurling frag grenades all the way from blue base to red base, where I netted a kill on one of my two opponents who were fighting with each other. I then approached with the pistol and cleaned up the other player, who was weakened by his previous fight. Leading 24-23 I danced and hopped like a fairy behind red base in a pistol battle with Undisputed. With no shield I came from behind a tombstone in one final, glorious rush aimed at finishing off Undisputed, whose shield was partially or completely gone. The winning headshot missed, but landed as a body shot. The distance quickly closed between us, and before he could pull another headshot to remove my few remaining bars of health I executed a melee to his forehead with my pistol. Game over.

Undisputed was one of the 2-3 other players in the tournament who was a real threat. He was actually the stereotypical loudmouth of the tournament, but wasn’t as arrogant as some I’ve seen. You know the type—there’s always at least one. He was telling everyone tricks, tips on strategy, and bantering back and forth with someone about playing for “$100 a game.” I think it’s an appropriate cliché that of all the tournaments I’ve participated in the loudest talker never wins. Never. However, he was a great competitor, and wasn’t at all offensive with his chatter. He just talked a lot more than I do. I was the guy sitting in the back quietly answering the repeated question ‘Sir, are you playing?” with “I am.” For some reason it was startling to them that an officer would play Halo seriously. That was all I said except the occasional “Nice shots,” or “Now that was not nice!” when someone would kill me in an especially spectacular way. Overall, the tournament atmosphere was fun and inviting.

The third round was fun, but not as challenging as the second. It was played to 50 kills at Derelict. Derelict is one of my favorite maps, especially against people who don’t know how to time weapons/powerups with a stopwatch. Yes, I timed every game with my Timex Ironman. The game began to progress with close scores up until the mid teens. At that point, as usual, I told myself to settle down and play what I knew. I tried to always keep a pistol, used grenades to my advantage, watched the teleporters high and low, and most importantly: whored the overshield. During one scenario I actually felt bad for the other Marine I was fighting. I already had one overshield and another was only a few seconds away, so I was hanging out near where it would respawn in the center. During my constant visual checks in 360 degrees an opponent portaled to the top right after I had checked the portal and moved on, giving him the drop on me. He fired a charged blast from a plasma pistol at me and landed it. As it hit me I turned and began to engage him with my pistol. He had smartly followed up with a grenade, but I grabbed the next overshield (possibly before it had even appeared on his screen) just as the grenade exploded, boosting me into the air unharmed. I then tracked him down and finished him off with the pistol. If he didn’t know the strategy that had been used against him, and from the fact that he never used it against me I have to assume he didn’t, it probably seemed like magic (or cheating).

When it was said and done I had managed to win the Camp Fallujah Halo Tournament, which is closely akin to being the best looking actress from The Golden Girls. It was a great time, partly due to the fact I got to LAN Halo without lifting a finger or herding any cats. I sat back and enjoyed the event without feeling a single shred of responsibility for its conduct or management, which was a welcome change. I think there is a Halo 2 tournament early next month. While I’m not too hot on the idea of Halo 2 tournaments, I may just have to participate to remind me what it’s like to LAN.

GG.