As some of you will no doubt be aware, PlusNet sponsored and provided the connectivity for the Sychosis 2 LAN party held at the Doncaster Dome last weekend. We also fielded a team of gamers to enter the tournaments... Counter-Strike Source and Call of Duty 4. Your cannon fodder combatants: -pNet- kk -pNet- GRIEFMONKEY -pNet- Mike -pNet- cuddles -pNet- shyvy88 So. We're not pro. We're not sponsored. Sure, we have nice kit... but it's cos we're nerds and have decent jobs. We were in it for the fun, and believe you me we (and everyone else there) had ALL the fun. Props to -pNet- shyvy88 for being the only laptop gamer in the building... Here's the score. I mean me personally, well I lent half a grand off a mate recently to buy an engagement ring for our lass and as such couldn't afford COD4 until payday (for the record that was the last working day in June). My first time playing COD4 online was at the lan party, I believe it was the first matchup which was against team AWOL at 1pm on the Saturday. We lost 13:0. We'll not mention CS:S, that went worse. Though we did win one round... (not a match, a round - we r0x0rz!) I'd also like to say a special thanks to the gentlemen that came up to me at the end of the first round and confused the hell out of me by telling me that it was no wonder I lost, my config was all wrong, how can I see anything with it set up like that? It took an hour's explanation following that match (with [PB] YoMma, who can snipe like I've never seen - nice handle, by the way, I hope you like the Pharcyde) before I understood what he'd meant. I've left the config as is... we'll see if anything changes there. I'm skipping ahead somewhat there. I'll start at the start, on Friday. Setting up. A few teething issues with the new sharedband that were quickly resolved. However at least 2 of team -pNet- were having technical issues. Myself, I had a new graphics card with a newly fitted heatsink. Now it takes a bit of time for thermal paste to cure and start doing an optimum job of heat transfer from chip to heatsink, which meant that my rig kept resetting due to said graphics card running hot enough to fry lava. Not only that, but a reinstall of Windows was required. Unfortunately I have my hard drives raided, which means - WHY DOES IT MEAN THIS MICROSOFT! WHY! - a floppy drive is required for the install. Thank you, generous person with floppy drive, you are the Don. -pNet- Mike was also suffering resets due to graphics cards. Fortunately it would run on minumum settings without a reset... ah well. It didn't slow him down and all credit to him for that. Took a few install/uninstalls of said drivers to get it going though. Well the preliminaries were interspersed with games on Guitar Hero and Rock Band, a bit of Unreal Tournament and plenty of trips to the very nearby 24 hour supermarket for food, cigs and energy drinks. The matches went on and our tactics developed to the point that a secret plan was brought to fruition. The last round of the last match. Reason-gaming had given us the utter tonking we were expecting from the to-be-winners. We knew we were beat (well we knew we were beat from the get go but it's all about the game). The shout went up from team -pNet-: "SECRET PLAN!" The grenades came out. The secret plan phrase was uttered, and the explosions were maHOOOsive. The bodies went flying everywhere. Grenade related group suicide FTW! And thus ended the COD4 competition, for team -pNet-. Having said that, we'd like to thank everyone else for taking our lack of skills very well and for coming over and having a laugh with us after the game was over. Further proof (as if any were needed) that it's all about having fun. Fortunately we weren't out yet. http://www.projectorgames.net were in attendance and let me tell you, a group of 25 people haven't had this much fun together in the same room since Roman times. Now I have a lot of respect for these amazingly talented FPS players, but most of them weren't there in the 1980s playing Frogger and Killer Gorilla on the BBC B. Gimme that old skool gaming, baby. Yeah. 25 players, 40-odd games, a lot of prizes and a 3 round set on the (party-elected) fall down game to win 1) a Razer sticker, 2) a Roccat mousemat and 3) a Razer DeathAdder mouse. Yep. Yours truly fell further than all the others. On all 3 rounds. Cue cheesy grin on my part! Oh boy will -pNet- be there in full force for Sychosis 3. With bells on.
Sychosis2 Lan Party... with added Plusnet goodness!