Some friends and I had a LAN over the summer to great success. A few friends I had never known were even remotely interested in computers had just built gaming rigs, and gotten hopelessly addicted to COD4. As for myself and a few other friends, we were more into Team Fortress 2. Just a few days before that LAN we got some of the others to get it and begin playing. This led to a small amount of TF2 play at what was primarily a COD4 LAN. However, over the course of the fall semester, the host of these LANs became more and more enamored with Valve's bright and shiny child.

On top of the Left 4 Dead had just released to much success, which was what we had originally planned the winter break for. However, it became clear that TF2 had only become more enjoyable as my friends who hadn't been playing it got better. In addition, another two of us, including myself, had ditched laptops to build desktops. This still left two people on laptops though.



So the LAN grew another head and became the TF2/L4D extravaganza we all enjoyed. We started around 7PM, and finished up the next morning at about 8AM.

Along the way we did hit a few snags though. We had tried to get eight people, but ended up with only seven. Then one of the people couldn't connect to the router. We were in my friend's basement, and had strung cord all the way from the main router on the first floor to an 8-switch one underneath the tables.



It was universally decided that this was because he sucks, although in reality it was probably because he was using 64-bit XP, which no one else was. Other OS's included 32-bit Home Premium and Ultimate of Vista, 64-bit Vista Ultimate, and regular XP. NO one else had any problems. We also blamed his issues on the fact that he was wearing a hat that made him look like a turn of the last century corner newspaper seller-boy, and that he didn't have a widescreen monitor. While we played arena mode in TF2 he struggled with his computer. We even tried routing internet to him through one of the other computers since several of our motherboards have dual ethernet ports. When we tried that it turned off our internet as well. In the end he had to leave and play with us from home over the internet.



Even though he was now playing with us at home we continued to rip into him for his hat, his use of 64-bit Vista, and for not having a widescreen monitor. This led to him rage quitting during Left 4 Dead. We were playing versus on Blood Harvest. It was the map where there is a barn then the survivors jump down onto the side roof of a train platform and proceed down the tracks. The person who wasn't with the rest of us was also probably the worst among us. Because of this he was always pretty far behind the group. So, just as the the last survivor before him jumped down I grabbed him as smoker. The other team quickly decided to cut their losses (telling him so) and left him to die, leading to him quitting the game and not showing up online the rest of the night.

I went through four Rockstars too quickly, leading my already shaky hands to get even worse, which resulted in the terrible picture taking you see here.



I was also unaware that after telling the iPhone to take the picture it takes its own damn time in doing so. Because of this I would start moving the phone for another picture before the previous one had been taken.

As far as the actual gaming went, we had a great time. I hadn't played arena since the week of its release, and this was definitely the best way to play it; with some friends in person. It was a lot better this way.

We played through each versus campaign in Left 4 Dead, and then TF2 the rest of the time. I made sure to grab some screens from TF2.

End of one of our first sessions.



A few times that the team held all three top spots.






And finally, our scores from the night-ending match.



It's so much more fun to play these games with your teammates in the same room.