My experience as an Xbox player was atypical, to say the least. I was months behind on game releases, and tended to play single-player games, so when some of my coworkers invited me to join them for a few rounds of Halo 2 online, I was slightly concerned that I'd repeat my performance of the original Halo (see http://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/1872).

But, since it was competitive, and nobody could *actually* see my screen, I figured that while "competent" might be a bit of a stretch I might be able to avoid becoming a legend. What I didn't realize is that I had gotten good enough at the Xbox family of FPS's that I could play on my tactical strengths, and I became a legend after all.

One of the modes we played was Juggernaut - one player is the Juggernaut, who gets a point for every other person they kill. Everyone else has the job of killing the Juggernaut. Kind of like "tag", but with high explosives. One of the cool features of the game mode was the radio system - hold down your talk button, and you could send radio to all the other non-juggernauts, but the juggernaut wouldn't hear.

We were about halfway through the match, and I'd gained a reputation for being dangerous with a rocket launcher. I had just started to figure out the map layout, too, so when I became the Juggernaut I knew exactly where to go to gain positional advantage. I snuck up behind two of my coworkers, who were chatting... at which point, I realized the game has *two* talk modes. Radio... and proximity. If you're just talking into the microphone, players near you will hear the conversation.

They're chatting, and scanning the horizon. "Do you see him?" "No. And if I did, I couldn't hit him." "Yeah. Mostly I want to see where he's going so he doesn't sneak up on me." Meanwhile, I'm sneaking up on them, and trying really, really hard not to laugh and give myself away. I melee bashed Joe from behind, doing the instakill, and I backpedalled to get ready for a shooting match with Chris.

He didn't notice.

He stood there, scanning the horizon some more. "Where do you think he is?" I aimed my rocket launcher, and said "Oh, I bet he's pretty close." I waited for him to turn around, ready to time my shot juuuust right.

Chris didn't hear the difference in my voice. He thought he was still talking to Joe.

"You think so? Shit, maybe. I don't see him anywhere."

"Yeah, if I were him, I'd be around here somewhere."

"Aw, hell. You don't think he picked up the rocket launcher again, do you?"

I said, "You tell me," and squeezed the trigger.

My only regret is that I wasn't on the non-Juggernaut radio channel after that - I'm led to understand that Chris was upset that Joe wasted time talking about my rocket launcher instead of shooting at me, and Joe explained via very short words that Chris was a goddamn idiot.

Later, we played Oddball - the deal there is that there's a skull on the map, and the player holding it can't use any weapons and runs a little slower than everybody else. You lose the skull by dying. The goal is to be the first person to hold the skull for more than some number of seconds. Kind of like "tag", only with heinous mob violence.

At one point, I had grabbed the skull, and was running down a winding corridor. I could hear Rob chasing me down the hall, and I was wracking my brain trying to figure out how to weasel my way out of this problem, when I discovered that while you can't use any weapons, you can make melee attacks with the skull. Figuring that anything was better than running, I hid in a corner, turned around, and waited.

Sure enough, Rob came running around the corner, not expecting to find me there - it was like a fox chasing a rabbit, only to find that the rabbit has stopped to scratch its ass and take in the scenery. I ran right into him and started swinging the skull, while he started trying to hit me with his machine gun. THUD ratatatatat THUD ratatatat THUD ratatatatatat THUD ratatata SPLAT

... splat? Somehow, during the fracas, I had gotten behind him, and once again - melee attack from behind for an instakill.

I just waited, standing in the hall. I figured that either way I ran, I'd be heading toward an enemy, and I didn't think that trick was going to work twice - but no one came. A few moments later, I had racked up enough time to win, and we were dumped into the chat lobby. I guess the conversation had already started over the not-it radio channel, because I came in to this:

Rob: "Rocket launcher? Bullshit, rocket launcher. Any asshole is deadly with a rocket launcher. This dude killed me with the SKULL BALL. OK? I had a gun, he had a dead guy's head for a football, and he beat the *shit* out of me with it, and then he won cause none of *you* assholes wanted to fight him with *your* guns, and there weren't no fuckin' rocket launcher anywhere in the damn room."

Joe: "Well, *technically* he killed me with the rocket launcher, but he didn't shoot me. He just bashed my head in with it."

Chris: "He shot *me* with it."

Joe: "And I had to explain that to you, ya jackass."