WAVE 35!

I'm not one to get excited easily when playing online. I get more easily excited when playing a game with a good story-telling, and when I say excited I mean screaming and jumping and humping my monitor. EVE gets me focused, but rarely have I gone wacko in my signature way that sacre the cat and makes the wife want me (don't deny it babe).

Last night on Gears 2 Horde was a definite exception.

I played 2 rounds. The first took 10 minutes to find a game and I ended up with a bunch of noob losers. I almost went to bed afterwards because I was so pissed but I tried one more time. Quickly connected and we voted on the Day One map. Anyone who's familiar with it during a Horde game knows what the deal is. It's an intersection on a ruined street with a huge crater in the center. Locust can come from all 4 directions, there's 2 ammo boxes near the north and south sides of the crater, 2 outcroppings to snipe from, and a Hammer of Dawn in one of them.

The key is for two players with good skills with the Hammer and mortars to hold the outcroppings and support the rest of the squad as the run fast and coordinated at ground level. Support means good communication and direction, as well as covering fire. Communication is always key in multiplayer, and horde is no different. Silent squads who don't work together, die divided.

So, I say hi at the beginning, no response, Damn. Someone gets killed on wave 2, double-damn. I see one Wretch left being chased by everyone and I say "Whoever kills the Wretch gets a gold star!" Laughs all around. We rip a bit into the slacker who died in wave 2 and almost every wave after that, "Slim Tugger" being clearly out of his element. Suddenly we come together as a squad. I mean MAN UP! BUCKLE DOWN! BALLS TO THE WALLS! I lay out my plans and they come together like a real squad should.

There were are few waves were it was one guy left going Rambo and saving the match, and we'd shower him with praise. Wave 17 comes around, which was my previous limit. I pipe up with, "If we make it past this wave, you all make my friends list!" which prompted yays and laughs all around. In the end we made it to wave 35, and would have gotten further if Slim Tugger was not such a waste of virtual space. Sure enough I sent friend requests to everyone (expect ST). These guys are exactly the type of player you want to play with again. Guaranteed good times.

I really wanted to keep going with these guys, but I was already cutting into some much-needed sleep-time. I was so pumped that it took me a while to come down.

Will I ever get that wave 50 achievement? I don't know. I think it'll be a real rarity among the playerbase. Only held by real pros. It'll be something I and many others aspire to.

My weekend? I'll blow through the rest of the Gears book and give you my impressions on Monday. Hopefully I'll be able to work on Prano and hopefully my friend will come through with that copy of R6V2. Other then that, Empathy V finishes @8ish and presense IV will be the last Learning skill to train for me. Finally I can get back to skills that have a direct effect on my abilities. My post on the weekend will be about another near-perfect 360 game: Mass Effect.

I'd like to point out the poll is up but hasn't been getting much attention. It's a pretty simple question: What are you? Also, feel free to send me a friend request on Live, but be sure you identify yourself in the request and be ready to play online at least occasionally. I've added the Gamertag gadget to make me easily findable.

One last thing. I found this link that gives you a transparent .png of you Live avatar. Here's me and the wife.





Ja