Snapturtle

Went back to Macworld yesterday after work because I just had to spend something while it was in town. What’s the point of going to Macworld and not buying a single thing? While I was there I noticed a Halo tourney was going on. I figured that they’d already filled all the slots when the “MacSoft”:http://www.macsoftgames.com/ guy running the show announced that 2 slots remained. I jetted over to the “official score keeper” and entered my name. Never played in an official game tourney, only those that I setup with friends and only to win bragging rights. The winner of the Halo tourney would receive an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card valued at $400, with the 2nd and 3rd place finishers receiving a free copy of the game.

I waited around for about 30 minutes before my preliminary round began. In an attempt to psych myself up I plugged in my iPod and rolled some “311″:http://www.311music.com/.

Show time. I’m a nervous gamer when playing online or in “friendly” competition. I want to win. I hate losing. All of this was going through my mind as I stepped up to the 5th position dual Power Mac G5 (nice). Another thing going through my mind, no one on this side of the computer stations (5-8) had won a round in 6 attempts. This was the final prelim and if I wanted to make it to the finals I’d better win.

I started off neck in neck with a few good kills. The map was big (Timberland) so finding gun fodder was no easy task. I started looking for a hog to drive around but soon found that if I wanted to get to 15 kills first I’d have to stick near the spawn points or face certain doom.

Someone had 14 kills. Someone else had 13. I only had mustered 12 and I needed 3 more to win. Armed with the fusion cannon, I hunted for more blood. I found two guys blasting each other and unloaded on them. Double kill! Sweet, now I’m at 14 tied for the lead. I started taking fire on my right flank so I swung my cannon around, picked up kill number 15 and won the match as the crowd goes wild. I had gotten my final 3 kills in a 30 second span, narrowly escaping sure defeat.

There was a short break between my awesome prelim victory and the final round as those that had finished 2nd in the prelim got another chance with the winner moving on to the final round as the 8th spot.

As the finals started I knew I had a problem as the map was changed to Battle Creek, a close quarters map that I’m not very fond of. I opened the round with 3 kills, tied for the lead. That’s where it all ended. I then killed myself with a poorly thrown grenade, knocking my score down to 2. That’s where it would stay until the winner was declared.

For some reason I just couldn’t get it going. Battle Creek has you starting out with a fusion pistol instead of the normal pistol (which I love) and I couldn’t get a good rhythm going with it.

Oh well. At least I was able to pick up The Sims Superstar expansion before heading home so maybe I’ll get another shot at stardom. Wait a minute… it’s only a game. Bah.

posted from my t68i and 12″ powerbook