InsaneBear

Our Adventures: First LAN of the Summer

So as you may have inferred from the title of this snazzy little post, we here at InsaneBear recently had our first LAN of the summer. It was sort of a low-key and disorganized affair in comparison to what we usually do, but it was fun nonetheless. We thought we’d share some pictures of the good times and spread the good word about LANs.

Things started out kind of slow with some people showing up late, so the five of us who were there for the first hour decided to play some Left 4 Dead. We just went through the No Mercy Campaign and switched off controllers whenever someone died. Highlights included a Tank punching me off of a sky scraper and not one, but two team members walking off the elevator ledge while everybody else was getting raped by Smokers.

We came back to Left 4 Dead later in the night for some Survival mode too. That got pretty frantic, especially since most of the people there had never played the game before. Everybody seemed to take to the game pretty well, though. Guess you don’t need to know what a Hunter is to know that somebody should probably help you. I just wish we had enough copies of the game to try out some versus mode.

As more people started pouring in we had to audible to a game with greater numbers, and after much debate we settled on a classic–Halo 2. We played some Slayer, some Classic CTF, some Assault, and that’s probably about it. It wasn’t the fever-pitched experience of Halo 2 LANs past, as we were working with seven people (there was an eighth guy, but for some reason he came to a LAN and didn’t want to play any video games) and we didn’t take proper measures to balance the talent on the teams. The long and short of it is that I dominated every game by a pretty wide margin. I mean, I am pretty awesome and all, but things are usually a little more even. The highlight was probably a game of Classic CTF on Burial Mound, in which I came to the realization that it’s “the body part map.” “The Ribs,” “The Purple Nips,” I don’t even want to think of where this could go if I really started thinking about it…But yeah, since I didn’t get any pictures of any Halo rounds, enjoy this photo of people fighting over a bag of Crazy Core Skittles, aka, Crack-Coated Candy.

Sometime after that near-death experience, everybody took a break for some pizza rolls and gathered around the smallest TV in the house to finish watching a bootleg copy of The Hangover, which had been playing in the background of the Halo games. And don’t worry, everybody there had already paid to see it in theaters, some people twice, so we’re not scumbags who just steal our entertainment. Well, most of the time, at least. But anyways, The Hangover. Funny movie. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as some of Todd Phillips’ previous work, like Old School, but it’s definitely good. And that’s why we watched it. And now I’m having trouble remembering if this happened before Halo or after. We might have started it in Left 4 Dead and then finished it with a break and then moved to Halo…but yeah, since I can’t remember, have a picture!

I’m getting really blurry on the details of time and people and all that stuff right now, so we’ll just say some people started leaving after The Hangover and then the remaining participants enjoyed some Gears of War 2 Horde mode. I want to say we did ten rounds or so on River, and highlights included Tim repeatedly bitching that he’d lost his Lancer, me dying as I tried to get a picture of some chainsaw action, discussions on how satisfactory the gore in that game is, and Bloodmounts doing what Bloodmounts do. Gears was definitely fun, and I wish we’d done more of it (next LAN maybe?).

And I think things sort of came to a close after that, probably sometime around 3 AM. That’s actually pretty early, considering most of our LANs end when the birds start chirping and we realize we’ve been rambling on about various gaming topics for hours after the games ended. So yeah, all and all, it was a pretty fun LAN. Not as organized as I would have liked, but it was a good first effort. We’ll fill you fine readers in on all the action for the next one, and hopefully we’ll have some more shots of actual gameplay. But until then, enjoy some of our very photogenic regulars.

And by popular demand…

Author: Cody

Tags: fun, gears of war 2, halo 2, lan, left 4 dead, Our Adventures, skittles, the hangover