I Came, I Saw, I Conquered

Finally the DADDY has come back to Evansville! Prepare to be my bitches! ...

And so began a fateful journey to the video game mountaintop. I was invited to a Halo 3 tournament by my cousin a few weeks ago. It was a small tournament with mostly coworkers, but I was brought in as a ringer. And I made that fact perfectly clear as you can tell from my reply above. I wasn't sure about the level of competitors or even the rules for the competition, but I figured that I would come out on top. I've been playing Halo 3 since it came out on September 25th. I stayed up until 7am playing the night it released and then took a 30 minute nap before going to work that day. It was a rough day, but well worth every minute fragging with friends. I figured the tournament would be more of the same even though I did not know the other players that well.

As soon as we pulled into Evansville on Friday evening, I connected my 360 to the HDTV in the living room. I then plugged into the internet connection and played a few matches online for practice. My Mom and Aunt wanted to watch some TV, so I waited until about midnight to get back to the game. I was having some difficulty concentrating as my family watched and heckled. Eventually, I turned things around and ended up on the winning team several games in a row. I also earned MVP status a handful of times. Cousin Vic decided it was time to get some practice in for the tournament. I set him up with a new match after going over the basic controls. It was not pretty. Lambs being led to slaughter felt sorry for him. He "pulled an HK" by looking around at his surroundings more than shooting at the enemy. He didn't have a firm grasp on moving both the analog sticks to control his Spartan and ended up painting the walls he was looking at with his own blood. After a couple of matches, he got frustrated and went to bed. I stayed up for another hour or so fragging all within my sights.

I got up fairly early the next morning and headed downstairs. The ladies were gathered around discussing different craft ideas while watching one of those home makeover shows. Anytime I gave up the remote over the weekend, it seemed to end up on a home makeover show. I tried to get a plan into place to watch the UK game at a local bar, but Nikki still had some things to get done before the guests arrived. The ladies and Vic headed out on some errands, while Dad and I hung out at the house and listened to the game on the internet. UK seemed like a pretty good team in the 1st quarter, but things went South by the end of the half. I think Georgia's touchdown right before halftime was a huge momentum shift. UK never recovered. The game ended less than an hour before people were supposed to arrive.

I waited around and even poured myself a drink. I picked up some Elijah Craig (12 year) on Friday night and it was very smooth going down. Michael was the first to arrive and we hooked his 360 to the 2nd TV. We then tested to see that we could connect to each other and have a private match. After the test game of rockets, we waited for the rest of the contestants. There was some weird goings on with picking teams, but after a while everyone was paired off. I ended up with Brian and everyone's fate was sealed. The matches were first team to 20 kills with a 10 minute time limit. The boards were picked at random. We had our 1st match against Michael and his partner. It was a close match and we even fell behind at one point, but the outcome was never really in doubt. There were 3 other teams that stood up only to get knocked down very quickly. After taking out the rest of the competition, we were asked to get up and let the others play. Brian and I got some drinks and mingled while Michael got the opportunity to win some matches. He went through the other 3 teams as well eliminating them from the competition. It came down to us. They would have to beat us twice in a row in order to eliminate us from the tournament. It wasn't close. We quickly dispatched any pleasantries and I took it upon myself to use the Ghost and chain gun to finish things quickly. The tournament ended with the presentation of awards. 3rd place received Halo wristbands, 2nd place got Master Chief stickers and the 1st place team received Halo pins.

The United Nations Space Command Defense Force in case you're wondering.

The only think left to do was award the booby prize for the worst player. There was secret balloting among all the players to vote on the worst player. Vic won in a landslide. His prize was a Naruto wristband. Naruto is a Japanese anime/manga cartoon that has been turned into a video game. It is most likely the exact opposite of Halo. Vic wasn't too happy about it, but I don't think it was entirely unexpected. After the competition was over, some of us ended up playing some random matches and then getting online and playing against the world. My undefeated streak did not last long after the tournament, but I accomplished what I came for.

I slept in Sunday morning. We waited for football to start and then waited a little longer for my little cousins to come home from camp. Their Gramoo really wanted to see them and while I would have been happy to travel completely by daylight, it wasn't that big a sacrifice. It was almost dark when we left for home, but we saw a lot of blue lights to guide the way. It was nonstop, Evansville to Lexington and we got back in just under 3 hours. It was a fun weekend and hopefully we can do it again soon.