As most of you know, I took part in the Halo National Tournament,
to try and claim my name in Halo history. The regional part of the tourney I
was in was in Austin, Texas at a place called LANS Edge at Northcross
Mall. I know you all have been waiting for this, so here it is! The good,
the bad, and the ugly about my experiences in the Halo National
Tournament.

All in all, it was fun, but a little disappointing too. Read on to get the
full story . . .

The place left a little to be desired, it was basically a hole in the wall.
They had 16 high speed computers networked together for PC online frag fests,
and 4 Xbox’s. 2 of them were on regular TV’s, and the 2 for the tournament were
on 50 inch projection TV’s. I was a bit disappointed with this, seeing how the
registration email hinted that we would be playing on 50 inch plasma screens,
like the winner of the tournament would receive.

I was the first one there at 9:50 AM, my time to play was 10:20. Finally when
they opened the place up, one other contestant showed. The organizer told us
if no one else showed, the 2 of us would automatically advance to the second
day of competition. Well, by 10:20 there were 4 of us, even though 8 were registered
for each match. We were assigned positions by the organizer and setup our players
on the xbox’s. He had 3 of us on the xbox on the left, but the last guy to show
was put by himself on the xbox to the right. This seemed pretty unfair to us
on the right, since, if you have played system link, you know the guy on the
right got to play on the FULL 50 incher, while us on the right
had to play 3 player split screens.

The guy sitting to my right had the top part of the screen, so he had a FULL
HALF of a 50 inch screen, while me and the guy to my left had the little
1/4 sized split screens. We felt a little gyped by the whole thing,
but we were there for the fun. The match lasted about 25 minutes, and please
still try to respect your mod Gronar, but I came in last. Guess who won?
That’s right, the guy with the 50 inch TV all to himself! The score was him
with 25 kills, the guy to my right (with the whole TOP HALF of the 50 inch
TV!) with 19 kills, the guy to my left with 17 kills, and your poor pathetic
mod with 11 kills. But hey! I had the most assists, 7, with everyone else only
scoring one. I did manage quite a few grenade kills, and a few with the pistol!

All in all I was not too impressed with the facility and the setup they put
us on, but I had a hell of a lot of fun. During the game an old man walked up,
at least 80 years old to see what was going on. He watched for a minute or 2
and then said, “I’m sure glad that ain’t for real!” Must
have been a war vet!

The one thing that really impressed me the most was, when we started the match,
there was only four of us there. When I turned around after the game was over,
the place was standing room only! The place was packed full of people,
and people from the mall were just walking up asking, “how do I get
in on this?” There truly are many Xboxer’s out there, and probably
a few more that will buy an Xbox after watching that. The organizers told me
they would have another non-MS sponsored tourney in November, I will be back
for that one, and hopefully I will be alot better and try to re-earn the respect
I had from all members of XboxSolution.com! Well, folks, that’s a wrap, and
look for more from me.

OK – you’ve heard my story, now let’s hear your thoughts . . . post a comment or discuss it in the Forums.

Filed under: Editorials

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