Stuntmutt

The sound design team did a bang up job on the multiplayer levels. Take Zanzibar for instance; the eerie creaking metal, the subtle ocean ambience. Sound effects add a new depth and realism to proceedings; the stereo panning of the rocket’s whoosh, the intricacy of proximity voicing. But I feel there are some serious omissions. Where, for example, is this sound effect for c0ld Vengeance lowering the base gate at the exact instant the warthog full of flag capturers (driven by my good self) is blown sky high killing all its occupants?

Narcogen, webmaster of Rampancy, flew into London for a business meeting. Whilst a native of Boston, Narcogen lives and works in Kazakhstan.
Naturally, we met up for a beer or two. Or three. Or…you get the idea. We started off with a couple of liveners in the bar at Paddington station and chatted about Halo (of course). Narcogen is an old school, way back Bungie community member. I’m a recent interloper, having arrived via a love of console based FPS games. It was probably that first sniper shot in Goldeneye that got me hooked. From thence to Perfect Dark, then Halo (courtesy of my mate Colin who took me through the entire game on co-op one rainy weekend).
From Paddington, we moved on to The Heights bar (which has great views of the London skyline) and on to sports. I say WE moved on to sports, I mean I ranted about The Spurs, and Narcogen was polite enough to listen. I said I’d been to a baseball game in the States and was amazed that when you wanted a beer, you passed your money into the crowd and not only did a beer get passed all the way up to you, your change did too. Bloody hell. Try that at The Lane and you’d be lucky if your arm came back with a hand still on the end. Of course, Narcogen was familiar with Roman Abramovitch, Chelsea’s benefactor, so we talked about buying success and how that had happened in America with Hockey.
By now, we were feeling slightly peckish, so I took Narcogen to a restaurant in London’s Chinatown. I hope he actually managed to eat something. When armed with chopsticks and faced with an array of oriental dishes, my right hand has been known to approximate a striking cobra …
We continued to converse about all and sundry. Narc was keen to attend the opening of an Apple shop in Regent Street the following morning. We were on the Tsing Tao by now. I have to say, I seriously doubted his chances of being up in time…
Narcogen was kind enough to stump up for our dinner. Cheers guv! I took him down to the tube station where, in order to point out his route on the Underground map, I had to clap a hand over one eye. A sure indicator of a good night.
You can read Narc’s far more eloquent version of events here.

I played quite a bit of Xbox Live this evening. And quite frankly, I'm rubbish. Truly pathetic. This is probably the best I will ever manage...

Heh. One One Se7en makes a guest appearance on the Halo 2 Limited Edition DVD. But not drawn by me! Instead, it's a picture by BOLL that he actually made for One One Se7en's first anniversary earlier this year. Stuntwho? Bah! If you want to see it, here's how.

Met up with c0ld Vengeance at se7en (ho, ho, ho) o’clock on November the 10th in The Tottenham pub on the corner of Oxford St. Basically, we had to kill five hours until Game’s midnight opening for the release of Halo 2.
Now normally, there’s nothing I’d like better than having to kill time using only a boozer and a drinking companion. Hell, I’ve lost entire weeks that way. But we reasoned that actually, we’d have to go a bit careful. It would be rather self defeating to get back to our respective homes so rinsed that we instantly passed out in front of the TV clutching our copies of Halo 2.
The Tottenham was heaving, so we moved on to The Blue Posts. The plan was to pace ourselves, have a couple of pints, watch the football (Toon versus Chelski) segue smoothly into a cheeky ruby then wander to the top of the road and start queuing sometime after 11.
The football was a bit dismal (0-0 FT – we actually missed extra time when the two goals were scored), the ruby was top drawer (Maharani, my personal favourite) and suitably fed and watered, we ambled up to Oxford St Game at around quarter past eleven. There were already twenty or thirty people there, hopping from foot to foot and shivering.
Every so often, a passerby would ask what we were standing in line for. Most seemed to be disappointed that it was for a video game, not some spicy new club. As time passed, the queue lengthened considerably.



Then we had a visitation from the staff of the nearby Dixons. First, they tacked up posters where we were standing, then tried to poach people with the promise of a free game if they bought Halo 2 from their midnight opening instead.
At about 11.45, Game was kind enough to open the doors and let us queue inside. They did, of course, have an ulterior motive. A smattering of bleary eyed staff roamed up and down the line trying to hawk strategy guides, controllers and even crystal Xboxes as we waited. One lad came over to myself and c0ld. “Look gents,” he said, “I know you’re not really interested but my boss is watching me and I’ve got to look like I’m talking to you. I’m on double time tonight.” You had to admire his honesty. “Have you been waiting long for it to come out?” he asked. “About three years,” I deadpanned. He laughed nervously. “Uh, yeah, I’ve been waiting a couple of months myself.” Then he leaned closer, and in conspiratorial tones he said, “You know the game was actually finished in January, yeah? They’ve just been tweaking it so it works on Live.” He nodded and smiled. c0ld and I just stared at him. His face fell. “Um, right then, well enjoy.” He shuffled off to the next punters. So there you have it. Halo 2 was finished in January. Every update we read was a lie. The Spotty Herbert in Game said so.
We became aware that there were blokes with shoulder mounted cameras moving around the store. Apparently the BBC and Sky were filming this rabble of geeks and nerds who’d crawled out into the London night just to be the first to play some game. We lifted our collars and shrank back a bit. You ain’t seen us, right?
The old Casio’s never been that reliable, so the first I truly knew it was past midnight was when people started to scuttle past excitedly clutching copies of the game and the free posters being given out with it. I have to say, the queue moved pretty fast. Game had a rank of tills going and were rattling out the sales. Just a few minutes later, we had our very own copies. Of Halo 2. Actually in our hands.
As we walked back to the Tube, I was aware of a slight quickening in our pace. And not just because c0ld needed to get the last train back from Liverpool St.
We hopped on a train and almost before I’d sat down I was attacking the cellophane.
c0ld just stared at his copy. “Not gonna open it?” I asked. “Nah. I’ll wait til I get home,” he said. I was already looking at the credits in the back of the manual.
“Spoilers!” I cried. “343 Guilty Spark, Tim Dadabo? 2401 Penitent Tangent, John Michael Higgins?”
“Gravemind?” said c0ld, eagerly thumbing through his own manual. So much for waiting til he got home.
We discussed what we would play first. c0ld wanted to get on Live as soon as humanly possible. I wanted to rip through the Campaign, just so I wouldn’t have to avoid spoilers anymore. The past few days had been agony and it was getting harder and harder not to see stuff that would ruin the surprises.
We arrived at my stop. I waved goodbye to c0ld, jumped in a taxi and was soon in front of the TV hearing the distorted guitar version of the main theme squeal out of the speaker for the first time. That’s not strictly true. It was squealing into my headphones.
You see, the young lady had to head off for work early in the morning. I’d meant to get some of those wireless headphones, but you know how it is…
So I ended up pushing the armchair right up to the screen, plugging a pair of Walkman headphones into the front of it and sitting there, hunched forward all night.
She later told me that although she didn’t hear any monks or biscuits (er – that’s her name for grunts. I asked why and she said “because they look like a biscuit.” Chicks eh?), she did hear me muttering, and the occasional “ooh” or “ah.”
I played from about one am to half six in the morning. As the lady got up to go to work, I took her place in bed and crashed out for four hours. I then got up at half ten and played through ‘til half four. I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t drunk anything. In actual fact, I hadn’t moved. When I did eventually stand up, I was quite dizzy and there were lights going off in my peripheral vision. Nothing a couple of pies and a can of Dr Pepper couldn’t fix. But I had finished Halo 2. Admittedly only on Normal difficulty (which doesn’t show it off in the best light), but finished all the same. There were things I liked. There were things I didn’t like. There were things I loved.
Maybe I’ll go into all that in another post.
It certainly gave me loads of material for you-know-what though. Hmm. Sorry about that. And I hadn't even touched Live Multiplayer yet...

My good lady asked me why I was swearing at Halo 2 the other night. I said it was because an invisible elite had jumped out at me unexpectedly.
"Oh," she replied, "how do you know?"

Recently had great fun making this entry for HBO's Guilt O'Lantern competition. Compared to almost all the other entries, it's embarrassingly bad. But something that was really nice was that my lady friend joined in and helped. It's sort of the first Halo thing she's joined me in. I once tried to teach her to play. Not being used to FPS games (or indeed video games at all), it wasn't a great success. In fact, her progress was utterly thwarted not by Elites, or even Hunters...but by the stairs. The Master Chief stood bumping into walls, falling off platforms or generally looking at his shoes as marines were cut down all around him. In this alternate reality, Earth fell to the Covenant much earlier. Due to a flight of stairs.


But she is VERY pretty.
One rather amusing thing (I thought) was her reaction to some of the in game dialogue. Hearing something one of the marines shouted (triggered by the appearance of the Chief), this was the response -

I got a lot of comments about this strip. Mostly along the lines of "No offence, but I hate you " (heh - someone really did say that). Most people were not happy about having to work out what the words were. But take consolation in this. I cut and pasted every single letter to make those speech balloons. It took ages. And the very next day, several versions of it as a font were posted. I could have just typed it all in. Bah.