darknorpo

darknorpo game footage found on HaloGaymers:

You know, because pink Spartan.

No Clan Night Tonight

I'll be in Tahoe.  That said though, the Majestic Map Pack has been released.  Given how much we played the Crimson Map Pack, I can't mandate this for the entire clan.  OD and I will download it for sure, and it brings a bunch of new 4v4 maps (for Poon and Norpo), but it will likely not see large clan play.

Free Double XP

Spare code from darknorpo: 9MHBNSLYAN

First come, first served.  Enjoy.

Clan night stats

Posted by request.  Click for huge.

Of note: OmniscientDeath went 21-32 for a K/D of -11 last week when matchmaking put him on the other team.  He went 97-30 this week in games on Exile when gunning in the Gauss Hog for a K/D of +67 with 68 Gauss Cannon kills.  gtdroptop was -17 in those games with a combined 72 assists as driver to enable those stats.

Octurian Pewn had a very impressive showing this week, green across the board.  Kudos to Mean Mrs Monkey for a non-negative game on Ragnorak.  Jests go out to darknorpo for somehow turning in a -12 performance on Exile when he couldn't get in his Banshee.

Revive RROD

From darknorpo:

Found someone on Craigslist that fixed my red rings for 50 bucks. No fix no pay and claims he guarantees it for a year but we'll see. Anyway I'm probably last but know anyone else whose got an old one they want fixed?

Contact him directly for details.

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Halo 4.

I'm out of town unfortunately, but Octurian Pewn will be on and hosting games.  I know that darknorpo and many others are playing all week as well.

H4: Specializations Part 2

We've discussed Armor Specializations before, but here's my quick cut:

• Wetworks: If you love assassinations and creeping around. (FragginURdoodz, TimMAY1023)
• Pioneer: If you want to level up as fast as possible. (CoolerSopranos2, UnsavorySamurai)
• Engineer: If you want to help the team coordinate special ordinance drops. (Beer4Porter)
• Tracker: If you love special weapons. (FishBone10, Masher 24)
• Rogue: If you spend a lot of time scoped in (Sniper, DMR, BR). (gtdroptop, Octurian Poon)
• Stalker: If you get fixated on killing one person. (darknorpo, QuelBelle)
• Pathfinder: If you're always in the gunner seat (OmniscientDeath, MEAN MR MONKEY)
• Operator: If you're always driving (BeerMonkeee, Mean Mrs Monkey)

Picking your Specialization is important because you can't change it until you've fully leveled it up.  There are 8 choices in total, with Pioneer and Wetwork being available to all players at launch.  Purchasing the Halo 4 Limited Edition gets you access to all 8 right away.  Those who pre-order and play by November 20, will get all 8 quicker as well, but probably not until 11/20 (about 2 weeks after launch).

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Halo CEA.

Look for darknorpo to be hosting games.

Halo CEA Reviewed

So we've had a couple of days to play with Halo Combat Evolved: Anniversary edition.  It does appear that you need to download the classic Halo 1 multi-player maps by using the code included in your game.  Some thoughts:

Campaign: It's sad that this is 2 player only, but it's still a pretty fun campaign with great music.  It's gorgeous compared to Halo 1, but I wouldn't say that it's quite "current gen."  Hitting the Back button is neat to see the original graphics.  The Grunt Funeral skull is a game changer, it basically makes killing Elites trivially easy.  Headshot one grunt in the squad, and everyone goes boom.  Also makes it dangerous to melee grunts now.

Firefight: This is satisfyingly fun to play on the Halo 1 campaign maps, and a nice alternative to campaign.  It basically gives you a way to play snippets of the campaign as 4 player co-op, on XBL, with Challenges available.

Multiplayer: This is launched from the Halo CEA disc, but takes you into the Reach matchmaking engine.  The game types and maps prefaced by "Anniversary" are the classic game types and maps.  Beaver Creek was the most familiar, but Damnation and Prisoner showed up several times as well.  Here are averaged clan stats from clan night, some things never change:

Clan Night Postmortem

Here are some highlights from last night.  Since we had a bunch of objective games, I didn't filter them out this week.  Also worth noting, even though it's not highlighted in the table, is Mean Mrs Monkey's career best game with 8 kills and +4 spread on Anchor 9 DMRs.  Most people seemed to really enjoy zombies last week, and there is talk of playing Left 4 Dead more than just once a month.  I've put a new poll up on the blog, go and vote to voice your opinion if you'd like to play L4D more or less.

Jerk Rating

Anybody who has spent any time within Halo Reach is intimately with Assassinations, sweet-ass animations that you can trigger if you are able to get behind somebody and hit the kill button.  They are fun as hell when you are delivering them, and extra embarrassing when you are the recipient.  The animation is a reward and celebration of sorts because assassinations can be pretty hard to come by.  A key component of the assassination is that both players are vulnerable to fire during the animation, which means either killer or killee may be killed before the animation completes, effectively stealing the kill.  If your teammate is assassinating somebody and you kill their victim before they finish, it is called a Yoink and Bungie awards a special medal for that.  As funny as it is sometimes, it's totally a dick move.  If you save your teammate by killing an opponent who is in the midst of assassinating them, it is called a Showstopper and Bungie awards a special medal for that as well.  Showstoppers are hard to get and awarded for exceptional teamwork on the battlefield.

Given these two stats, I have developed a "Jerk Rating" to see who Yoinks and Showstoppers the most in our clan:

As you can see from the table, FragginURdoodz is clearly the biggest Jerk in the clan with a 6.9 Jerk Rating, highest Yoinks Per Game ratio, and only 1 career Showstopper to balance it out.  OmniscientDeath and darknorpo come in a close second.  OD claiming the clan high of 21 Yoinks and norpo logging a surprising 0 Showstoppers.  MEAN MR MONKEY is amongst the nicest team players when it comes to Jerk Rating.

Reach Falls in 6 Days

There's some new info posted up at Bungie's Reach page.

• Fiction: In the CAA Factbook there's more details around the fiction of Halo.  One interesting tidbit is a page about piracy and space pirates.  I have to assume this comes into play in the story of Reach.  The ODSTs are also mentioned.
• Noble profiles:
• Noble 1: Carter (S-259), Commander, DMR, natural leader
• Noble 2: Kat (S-320), Lt. Commander, AR/Magnum, girl
• Noble 3: Jun (S-266), Warrant Ofc, Sniper Rifle, chatty
• Noble 4: Emile (S-239), Warrant Ofc, Shotgun, sweet helmet
• Noble 5: Jorge (S-052), Chief Warrant Ofc, Chain Gun, old guy
• Noble 6: XXX (S-312), Lieutenant, AR, hyper-lethal lone wolf
• Ordnance:
• Details around the Fuel Rod Gun, Concussion Rifle, which hadn't been mentioned much before.
• Notes on the Revenant, a Warthog/Ghost cross-over and the Falcon, essentially a flying Warthog.
• All Armor Abilities are listed, including the hinted-at Hologram and Drop Shield abilities.

Mrs. Monkey is our only girl, so I guess a natural fit for Kat.  I can see Porter or BeerMonkeee as Jun, OD as Jorge, and norpo as Noble 6.  What do you think?  Who's your favorite?

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead 1.

While attendance is still low due to summertime silliness, I'm planning to host an L4D1 tonight.  Campaign is still good times, and Versus mode works better with 5 people on L4D1 than on L4D2.  For all you goons that voted for H3, I need you to actually show up on clan night to make it work.

HR: Player Profiles - darknorpo

Player: darknorpo

• Rank: Corporal
• Games: 12; Kills: 135; Deaths: 158; Assists: 65; Time: 0:01:44; Wins: 5; Medals: 218
• Win %: 42%; K/D: 0.85; K/G: 11.25; D/G: 13.17; A/G: 5.42; M/G: 18.17; Encounters/G: 30.69

Bombadier Frontline Leader, Hammer Specialist. Having logged the fewest games in the Beta helped darknorpo to lead the clan in K/G (11.25), A/G (5.42), Encounters/G (30.69) and Medals/G (18.17).  Tending to use the default AR and frag grenades the most often like the Bombadier archetype, also shows an ability to use the Gravity Hammer effectively.

Best suited: Short to medium range slayer, leading fireteams into the frontlines.

Recommend: Logging more gametime and learning the maps.  A proven ability to lead in past games would be really beneficial to the clan in Halo Reach.  Also suggest getting comfortable with the Magnum.  Should be a fairly easy learning curve and more versatile for killing.

ODST Road to Recon

If you've looked in your Xbox Live inbox lately, you may have noticed that I have finished the Road to Recon and unlocked the coveted Halo 3 Recon Armor. Far and away the hardest achievement in this quest is Vidmaster: Endure which requires completion of the Firefight 4th set on Heroic difficulty with four players. The recommended map for this achievement is Alpha Site due to its strategic geometry, but it's still really hard and takes over 2 hours to complete. The 4th set activates the Mythic and Famine skulls, in addition to almost every other skull available. That means enemies are extra hard to kill, they all have shields, and ammo is extremely scarce. Completing this requires precision team work and smart kills using ALL the tips outlined in previously in this blog. You must use the correct weaponry on each specific enemy, or you will waste ammo, run out, and be left defenseless. In my opinion, one of the leading indicators of how effective a player is in Firefight is their points per kill stat. This stat is higher for players who are streakier (Killing Spree), get harder kills (Brute Chieftain), get better kills (headshots), get kills on higher difficulties (Heroic) and with more skulls activated (Mythic). Here's some key stats for the active players in the clan. Useful for picking Firefight team mates and looking for ways to improve your own game. Leave a comment here if you're looking for folks to play with. OmniscientDeath and myself are up for gaming most nights of the week after 10pm.

Clan night tonight. 8:30pm PT. Halo 3/ODST

Sorry for the delayed start time the past couple of weeks. I have a new (slow) customer in China and we have calls from 7-8pm PT. As they get smarter, I should be able to bring clan night back to 8pm. If you're going to participate in clan night, please try to be on-time. These are the kind of game types we can play with the number of people on-line:

1. Pocket pool
2. ODST campaign
3. Firefight 200k Slow
   
4. Firefight 200k Fast, Endure, Deja Vu
5. Social Slayer, Social Skirmish, Team Mythic
6. Ranked Big Squad
7. Social Big Team
8. Social Big Team, Team Mythic for Achievements, 2x Firefight

They are all fun game types, but game types for 4 and 8 players are the most popular. That means when we have 5-7 players, we're always trying to get to 4 or 8. We don't want to kick people out of the party if we have 5 players, so it's better if the 3 players who sign on late get on-line on-time so we can have 8 at the same time.

Clan night tonight, 8pm PT, Left 4 Dead

I'm moving the clan mail to a blog soon. This way, items in these weekly posts will be archived, and you can avoid clutter in your inbox. For the handful of you that prefer the e-mail, I can auto-email up to 10 of you. For the rest, I'm happy to help you setup RSS feeds so that it automatically shows up in iGoogle, My Yahoo, or your favorite reader.

Effectively, the entire clan has moved to Left 4 Dead. It's hella fun. Active players: gtdroptop, FishBone10, darknorpo, OmniscientDeath, MEAN MR MONKEY, Mean Mrs Monkey, BeerMonkeee, QuelBelle, Beer4Porter, CoolerSopranos2

Halo 3 Service Tags

• B80: gtdroptop (John Wei)
• B81: BeerMonkeee (Scott Lenker)
• B82: TimMAY 1023 (Tim Romero)
• B83: CoolerSopranos2 (Kevin Copeland)
• B84: OmniscientDeath (Ryan Averill)
• B85: FishBone10 (Laurence Day)
• B86: Beer4Porter (Brien Porter)
• B87: Available
• B88: Available
• B89: darknorpo (Nory Ison)

Halo 3 Final Stats

It's been a year since H3 came out, so this is the last week that I'm going to update the stats like I've been. Here's a dump of the past year:

• gtdroptop was promoted to First Lieutenant. Represented as clan overlord with a massive number of games logged, specializing in Team Slayer by optimizing play for K/D ratio and leading the clan in fewest deaths per game in all game types. Finishes the year with most games played, most custom games, most campaign missions, most enemies killed, best campaign K/D ratio, most achievements, highest gamerscore, most skulls, most meta-games finished, highest campaign level finished, least ranked deaths/game, best ranked K/D ratio, most social games played, least social deaths/game, least total deaths/game.
• BeerMonkeee finished the campaign on Legendary. Finished the year with the least ranked deaths (owing largely to very few games played there). The stats don't show it, but BeerMonkeee is an assist machine and is far and away the clan's best vehicle specialist with over 1300 Wheelmans and over 200 Splatters!
• TimMAY 1023 finished the year as the highest ranked active clan member as a Major, grade 2. TimMAY was a ranked matchmaking machine, logging some 4X the number of ranked games as the next closest person, and 7X the clan average! He had the most matchmade games, the highest skill, the most EXP, the fewest friendlies lost in campaign, the most ranked games, the most ranked kills, and the most total kills. His most important contribution is taking up his role as team sniper, something Bada Bing has always desperately needed, logging over 500 sniper headshots, and over 1100 total kills with the human sniper!
• CoolerSopranos2 fell from grace during H2, but has regained a shadow of his former glory. Though he remarkably leads in zero stat categories, he has maintained a positive social K/D ratio for almost eight straight months. An impressive feat, considering how few games he logs.
• OmniscientDeath is the clan leader in kills, taking the reigns from darknorpo's H2 reign. ODeath leads the clan in games/skill rank, skulls found, meta-games finished, campaign level finished, social kills, social kills/game, social K/D ratio, total kills/game, and total K/D ratio. His score-whoring is welcome because of his unparalleled skill on the chain gun. He proves that it's more than spray and pray, with two Untouchable and one Invincible medal in his medal chest.
• FishBone10 has been our small team's most consistent fourth. His video game ADD syndrome hurts his H3 skills, but he has racked up an impressive body of work, considering how many other games he has had to play to chalk up a clan leading 15,860 gamerscore. Though he doesn't lead in any individual stat categories, he does trail in the fewest, showing a consistent strength across the board.
• Beer4Porter gets special notice here for being far and away the most persistent n00b, sticking through the tough times to come out on the other side as a respectable team member. Gone are the days of being double digit negative, Porter finished a stringent training regimen through the lower ranked game playlists and actually bests CoolerSopranos2 in several real categories including: games/skill, games/exp, ranked deaths/game, social deaths, social deaths/game, total deaths andn total deaths/game.
• darknorpo has let work take priority over his true love, and his H3 stats have suffered accordingly. Once a clan powerhouse, he is now relegated to being an occasional average contributor. He does shine in games/exp, ranked kills/game and fewest total social deaths. But norpo is a shell of the master chief he once was. Maybe with the new map packs and new achievements, we'll see more of the pink wonder.

As a clan, the active members have logged:

• 4,253 games
• 44,764 kills
• 38,343 deaths
• 10.53 kills/game
• 9.02 deaths/game
• 1.17 kills/death