It’s been a while since my last Random Gaming Update, but hey, that’s why they’re called ‘random’ updates, right? As you can probably guess, I’ve played almost nothing but the Halo 3 beta for the past few weeks, and as a result, that’s the focus of this entry. There are probably dozens of really cool games that I could recap here, but I can’t remember all of them, and I’m lazy (I can’t emphasize enough the laziness). So, I’m focusing on a few specific events. However, I have a video to make up for the shortness of this entry, and as we all know, videos are awesome. So read on…  

I’m once again driving the Warthog, as my banning from driving technically only applied to Halo 2 (though several people dispute that fact). As mentioned in my asininely long beta impressions post, it took me a full six seconds from the time I first got behind the wheel of the Halo 3 Hog to achieve my first crash. Since my Warthog driving skills have obviously carried over to Halo 3, one would think that I would be driving as often as I can. However, being the noble (I’m using ‘noble’ as a synonym for ‘jerk’) person that I am, I have taken the high road and surrendered the driver’s seat most of the time in order to hold true to my Halo 2 promise (and because I don’t want to get yelled at/hit by certain people and I like to get kills). That doesn’t mean I can’t be a gunner though, so I’ve been taking up that position quite a bit while some poor soul, usually Adam or Chloe, drives me around. I’ve also been driving the Mongoose a lot, and have pulled off some really cool stunts. I already mentioned in a previous entry about the wheelie that I did when coming out of the mancannon. I actually somehow did it again, this time in the center of the map on Valhalla. It wasn’t as satisfying as the first time I did it (likely because this time I didn’t almost take Chloe’s head off), but it was cool nonetheless. However, after several unfortunate ATV crashes Eric, who hasn’t witnessed any of these awesome events, has banned me from driving the Mongoose. Naturally, I won’t listen.  

A week or so ago I was playing a game of Big Team Battle with a few friends when I managed to pull off what is by far the best kill steal(s) that I have ever gotten. Everyone on the team was playing well, and after only a few minutes we had established very healthy lead. About halfway through the game we noticed that the other team was nowhere to be found, even though they hadn’t quit out of the game. I had overheard one of them say something earlier about meeting up in the tunnel, so I picked up a Spartan Laser and ran over there. It turns out that all six of them were lined up and hiding in the pipe, and as I was approaching them on one side, Eric was on the other, tossing grenades in. I managed to get my shot off before his grenades detonated, and I got all six kills with the single laser blast, scoring a killtrocity. In all, I pulled in 13 medals with that single shot. Eric didn’t even get a single assist out of it, and as one could imagine, was not happy. He has since gone on Major Nelson’s podcast and called it out as the ‘biggest kill steal in the history of first-person shooters.’ Now, I don’t know if I would go that far, but it was pretty freaking cool.

I captured the video of the full game and intended to post it, but the audio quality was less than optimal and I was having some difficulties getting the thing uploaded online. However, a Live member going by the tag Quicksilver4648 got the video on youtube. Not only does it show the incident from both my own and e’s perspectives, but it also contains the voice over from that portion of Major’s podcast. Big thanks to him for getting it online and doing such a good job with it. Now, without further adieu, watch as e’s kills are ruthlessly stolen from him:

Okay, moving right along. This is very old news at this point, and not Halo related, but I promised in my last update that I would discuss it, so here we go. I’m very pleased to announce that Crackdown has been vanquished. I previously mentioned that I was going to make one last frustrating attempt to find the remaining 19 elusive orbs, and despite all common sense and logic, I went through with the search. Over the course of two days I spent probably close to 10 hours on Crackdown, searching each and every orb location again in order to weed out the ones that I passed over. It turns out I really did a bad job of clearing Los Muertos, and most of my remaining orbs were discovered in that district after only a few hours of searching. After clearing out Los Muertos the orb hunt became more of a test of endurance than anything else, and a number of hours passed without any progress. Finally, I found the last orb, hidden in a cave in the quarry of the Volk district (incidentally, my last agility orb was also in Volk). Finally finding all 800 hidden and agility orbs was a great feeling, which I believe I expressed by repeatedly yelling at and cussing out the game. The strange thing is that afterwards I just wanted to play more Crackdown, even though prior to that point my only real motivation was knowing that I wouldn’t need to play the game anymore after collecting all of the orbs. Whatever. The DLC is out now, but I refuse to go download it. With the Halo 3 beta out, there is no way in hell I’m getting sucked back into Crackdown.

And that concludes the third installment of my Random Gaming Updates. Stay tuned to this Space for more periodic random updates about stuff you probably don’t care about.