Archive for August, 2006

What a night. We had 6 XBOXs! At one point 7 but the 7th (Billy’s 360) simply replaced Eric’s (360) since Eric had to leave early. We had 2 XBOX’s in the front room, 2 XBOXs in the Living room, and 1 each in David’s room and the Office. We never had more than two player’s per XBOX, which was great, and some had one to themselves. Two people rotated in. There was a wide diversity of experience. 5 were basically new to Halo2. One game, we had Ed and Matt take on all the boys. They won easily. Something rediculous like 50 to 2. Matt in a vehicle is virtually unstoppable and he obviously shows no mercy. That’s ok. The kids will only get better! Then we tried a rematch. This time Ed and Matt were not allowed to use vehicles. The kids won something like 50 to 27.

We had 8 kids playing:
Conner
David
Eric
McLean
Hunt
Charlie
Joey
Grayson

And 5 adults:
Billy
Ed
Matt
David
Paul

I didn’t even get to play. With some of the parent staying for a little party, I was running around playing host. If it weren’t for Clay, Eric’s Dad, we would have been eating crisp Hotdogs and Brats (I get easily distracted).

I think next time, we’ll most likely have two games going on and split up the experienced players from the inexperienced players. It’s really hard to come up with balanced teams in one game. Using numbers to make even teams doesn’t always work because the experienced players simply have more targets to shoot at and can run-up their score faster.

Next game is in two weeks. Let’s see how 1st Friday of each month works. I’d be willing to play more than once a month but I’m sure activities are going to get in the way and we also don’t want to get sick of XBOX!

As always, I encourage all attendees to leave a comment and let me know what you liked or didn’t like about the evening. This way we can improve the experience for everyone.

We had a great night last night. We had six kids total and three adults. First, all the kids played a free for all to see how they ranked against each other. The standings were:

1. Joey 25 kills
2. Talon 19
3. David 12
4. Mickey 10
5. Eric 5
6. Tommy 5

The next game, we paired the boys and the result was:

1. David & Mickey 25 Kills (David: 22, Mickey 3)
2. Talon & Eric—-10 (Eric 7, Talon 3)
3. Joey & Tommy -9 (Joey 5, Tommy 4)

Later on, the three adults Alan K, Alan C, & Matt took on ALL the boys. It was a bit disorganized with some of the boys getting used to determining who was on their team and who wasn’t. There was also some betrayals. Half the boys came downstairs complaining they were booted from the game. I learned that if you get betrayed from a team member a second time, you have the option of booting them from the game! And that’s precisely what happend! Needless to say, the adults won easily.

Take aways:

1. Make sure the game you create has friendly fire turned off to disallow betrayals.
2. Expect delays as newer members learn how to join games and learn how to recognize team mates from the enemies.
3. Even with X-Link in the same house, it’s fun to use headsets

If you were there that night, leave your own comments to this post.
Another adult Billy joined us late with his XBOX and we had for XBOXes going at once with only 1 split screen. The network in the house worked flawlessly.