MLG Denver Combine.
After weeks of preparation, the day finally arrived: RoboAwesome would be attending the MLG Halo 3 Combine in Denver, Colorado, in the hopes of bringing the House that Awesome built pride and glory. Nathan D and myself were the only RoboAwesomers that reside in colorful Colorado, so we had to recruit two of our friends that are actually good at Halo: TJ and Mike.
I went to sleep early the night before the tournament, but for whatever reason, I woke up at 2AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. I sent a text to Nathan that read “Monster Hunter?” and was surprised to get a reply back with “Go to sleep”. Instead of sleeping or even playing a dual analog shooter similar to Halo, I decided to fire up Monster Hunter Tri and play that until 5:30AM, at which point we all met up at Nathan’s house to head out to the Crowne Plaza Convention Center near DIA.
The excitement was building. Nathan, TJ and Mike were discussing various strategies for victory as I leveled up my Cyndaquil on the drive to the Convention Center. Each match was a best of three on the following maps: Construct, Heretic, and Narrows. The first and last matches were Team Slayer, while the Heretic match was Capture the Flag. Like every other super hardcore team out there, we had our own set of call-outs and re-group points for each map and game type. We even mastered the time it takes for power weapons — the sniper rifle and rocket launcher — to re-spawn, along with the custom power-ups. Despite having never practiced as a full team we had high hopes as we pulled up to the nearby Burger King for breakfast, 30 minutes before 8AM check-in.
Burger King > McDonalds.
After a delicious bacon and cheese wrap, it was time to bring RoboAwesome glory. We arrived to a nearly empty Convention Center only to find out that check-in actually started at 10AM. Thankfully, however, the 64 Xbox 360′s running Halo 3 were free to practice on until game time at noon. We quickly found a set to practice at before all the aspiring “Pro Gamers” scampered into the Convention Center. The recession must have it MLG hard, because none of the 64 Xbox 360′s in the room had a controller attached to it. I suspected something was up when I saw a little kid walking around with his own controller, but I just figured that he thought it was special or something. We still had a little over three hours before our match would start, giving us plenty of time to drive back home and grab some controllers. To make matters worse, though, the controllers had to be hard-wired and not wireless. Who has hard-wired 360 controllers? Nobody. Our buzz was effectively killed at that point. Trolling was next to impossible since everyone there took it so seriously they were oblivious to the troll. It was time to leave in shame.
From left to right: TJ, Mike, and myself. Un-staged photo by Nathan D.
But wait! TJ came up with the brilliant idea of giving the MLG officials collateral in order to rent out controllers, putting us right back into the game. Team Desert was ready again to claim victory! There were only two open 360′s to practice on, and practice we did. After a few matches against ourselves, a team across from us challenged us to a scrimmage. Their leader had an extremely annoying Texan accent so we assumed he was mentally retarded and would therefore suck at Halo. He didn’t, and his team thoroughly raped us in every match we played. We shook it off and remained confident. These kids were nothing. They may have team coaches and play Halo 3 eight hours per day, but they were nothing.
Four controllers, unite! Take form of people who are good at Halo!
The first heat of the tournament went by; it was time for Team Desert to rise to the top and defeat teams that take the game too seriously. To illustrate this point, there was a team near us that would get up and scream “YOU GUYS SUCK!” to the other team after every kill. After bursting out with laughter at those poor souls, we were ready to play. The first match was Team Slayer on Construct. Our main strategy was to grab the sniper rifle and custom power-up, then maintain top control. That didn’t happen. The other team quickly disposed of us within the first five seconds of the game, then nabbed both power weapons and established top control. From then on the match consisted of us trying to ride the elevators to the top and take it over, ending with us getting killed almost immediately. The final score was a loss, 50-11. Capture the Flag on Pit — instead of Heretic for some reason — went slightly better. We had times where we would steal their flag and take it out to about half-map and die. They, however, had little trouble stealing our flag and beating us 3-0. They had a sniper picking us off as we spawned, two players guarding their flag, and one going out for our flag when we would rush.
The tournament was double-elimination, but we didn’t stick around for the loser’s bracket. Even though we’re terrible at the game, one thing was learned from this experience: when you take a video game this seriously, it drains the fun from something that’s meant to be fun. This observation was confirmed for us when a “Pro Gamer” called Adrenaline was on the center stage preaching to everyone about being down six kills and staying confident. There was also a grown man as one team’s coach that would shout to his team call-outs. He happened to be the loudest person in the room.
