Classic Multiplayer Fun

So I don't know if you've noticed, but Halo3 is extremely moody lately.  You get into a lobby and it says "Failed to load information from the Halo3 server."  And everyone in the room goes WTF?  So Lonewolf1973 and I got to reminiscing about the good ol' days of Xbox Live :

MechAssault!

 If you were in the second position right below the host before the game launched, you might as well find a book to read, because there was about a 50-50 chance that you were going to get dropped when the game loaded, and there was no way in once the game started.  We had a procudure we used to use to try and increase the chances of that person getting in.  First of all, everyone OTHER than the #2 slot would check in, then the #2 person would check in.  If anyone else rechecked, you'd have to start all over again.  Then everyone would go find a pinch of salt to throw over their shoulder and a lucky rabbit's foot to rub.  And if that didn't work - guess what?  We're quitting this game and going back to the lobby to try it again!  Good Times.

Then there was the Power Drop.  This was used by Timmies to short circuit games that they weren't winning.  Basically, if you turned off your Xbox during a game, it killed the game for everyone.  There was really nothing you could do to stop it other than play with friends only except that private parties weren't a part of the game so you had to continually boot people (even good people that you just didn't know) to make sure this would never happen. 

Come to think of it, we also had a "talk" rule.  This was before the headset was standard equipment and a lot of people were playing online without them.  If you didn't plug in a headset and start talking inside of 15 seconds from when you joined the room, out you go.  The reason is that I played only CTF games and it really ruined the game if team members couldn't talk.

Three Maps.  We bitch about 11 maps for Halo 3?  We had 3 maps to play CTF on.  City, Desert, and Ice (I've long since forgotten the actual names)  They did make the bridges destructable on Desert and Ice and the buildings on Midtown.  There was nothing more satisfying than bringing down a bridge to kill a mech.  As I'm reading some of the old news on the game, I think they added 2 maps later on.

Onto the actual gameplay fun, there were three classics that I remember from the original MA :

"He dropped the soap" - in the original MA, you had "runners", "defenders" and "midfielders", because you had to choose yer mech before you launched the game and you couldn't change it for the duration of the game.  I was always a Belial because the combination of Level 3 Gauss and decent speed not to mention jump jets would usually allow me to chase down most runners.  The Gauss cannons also had knockdown capability.  Well, when a mech got knockdown, it always landed face down.  Which of course led to a lot of anal rape jokes as we poured ammunition into his behind until he blew up.  This allowed for some teabagging for the kill, although if you did this and you were not a Kit Fox or something else small with jump jets, you were more than likely to die yourself.  So, typically, one guy would yell out "He dropped the soap!"  to which another would respond "Put that soap on a rope!".  Good Times.  We were a young group, what can I say?

"The Party Sweater" - just before you would blow up in MA, your mech would light up from the inside out making you look like you were glowing.  It also looked a bit like Grandma Ethel's not-so-good knitting concoctions, and hence it became known as "the party sweater".

"Swooping the flag" - I was never very good at this, but if you noticed a runner was about to go down either because he was limping or on fire, the idea was you would jump jet directly above him and then just as he exploded, you would dive in to grab the flag since CTF on MA was touch reset.  Hence, it became a very tense moment whenever the flag carrier went down, and mechs with jump jets like myself were expected to sacrifice their mechs to reset the flag.

I remember by far the best weapons were PPC's because they tracked targets (in fact, it was my job to light up cloaked mechs in the base so that the guy with the PPC's would have something to lock on to), the Warhammer missles which could drop any runner with two even close hits - the Warhammers real power is that they had the explosive power of a Halo3 RL but you could time the detonation so that you didn't have to hit a wall to have it explode, and last but not least but my trusty Gauss Cannons.  These things were like snipers only you didn't have to aim especially well to use them.  When yer reticle turned red, fire.  When it's not red, probably best not to.  I think that's why I can't use a sniper rifle for shit in Halo.  I'm always waiting for the reticle to line up just right.

Ah to walk down memory lane again... :)  I think overall people got tired of the game because it was a LOT slower than Halo which is what ultimately spelled doom for MA2.  It was good for me, because as you all know, I'm slow.  :)