A Week of Practice! 03-06 May 2011

This is me at Cinco de Mayo!

Yes.

On to practice!

Isn't this a shitty fucking picture? I think so. Oh well.

Fuck yeah, we won!

Another awful picture. You can't even see our scores.

We were 1 for 4 on Tuesday and that's just fucking gay, especially since we took some time out to legitimately practice on a couple maps. It has become apparent that our lack of teamwork and strategy is showing. We have decided that the only way to become better isn't necessarily on a personal skill level (although that would help) is to have unique and independent strategies that are specific to each map and each spawn.

We are awesome!

More awesome!

I can't believe AC:B is actually working!

4 for 4! We're generally pretty good at this game but I think we would benefit from increased teamwork, map strategies similar to Halo and better pairing and cohesion. The targeting system in this game blows.

Reach for the Tuesday: 09 March 2011

Uh oh! Get read for some craaaazy stuff! Not really.

I thought this was cool at first but the more I look at it the gayer it becomes

We had a very good first match, Dillon and I were almost the same person. We still need to get used to the new play system that's going on with arena, it's no longer pro slayer but much more arcade like in nature meaning new weapons are available that weren't before and new opportunities for play arise. But like in all other endevours we will adapt.

We were getting rolled on this map. The other team had the lock down on the upper levels and we couldn't stay together long enough to function and operate, they grabbed the power weapons and they pineed us down. The best player on their time was a sniper and a damn good one at that. Surprisingle Dillon got most of the kills and he wasn't even sick.

I blame myself for this one. It just felt like I was out of it I guess. I saw Dillon charge after people with his shields down instead of falling back to let himself recharge and I just lost it. There was a lot of screaming and no teamwork.

Well we came back and won the last game at least.

So overall it was a 2-2 practice session but I won't be satisfied until we're 4-0 like on our AC:B practices. The new expansion came out so that should be interesting and also I would like to bring up the pacing of FPS. The debate was that Call of Duty was faster in Halo. In Halo it is harder to die, this is true. You have shields and super powers and it makes things interesting. Call of Duty is all about the perks and crap and you die quite quickly. I don't think the strategy is there, however. A lot of the kills in Call of Duty are luck and bullshit. I think as a tactical and proffesional game Halo takes the cake. Go me.

Reach for the Tuesday: 01 March 2011

Ah yes you may be wondering where last weeks performance reviews went. They went here:

We had this thing going where we didn't work together at all and yelled at each other a bunch. Now this strategy may seem sound but in all reality it wasn't. Near the end we began to stick together and work as a team a bit more but by then it was too late and we lost. 0-1

Here we are back on Anchorage, the same as the first map of the day except this time we pulled together and kicked some arse. Now look at Ogachy's score, you'll notice he has a bunch of kills but was responsible for more than half of the enemy team's points. This is because he was desperately trying to be a one man wolf pack and fucking FAILED. It should be noted there has been a lot of changes to ranked Arena matches to include more armor abilities, assault rifles, changes to maps and so on but we did a fairly good job regardless until... 1-1

Not this one. This one we did okay. It was on Asylum, we held down our fort pretty well while the Reds tried to engage an assault we fended off multiple times, they had one guy as bait while a sniper attacked from afar which seemed to be decent enough but ultimately ineffective. Kudos for Ogachy and his turret and Fat4all with his sniper rifle. Shadonickles did a good bit with his sword and I held on to the shotgun. We did good overall but could have worked a bit more on positioning, we were pretty scattered. Oh, and... 2-1

This was the match I was getting at earlier. We were rolled. The changed up Cage map had us off with new routes and weapon placement, the Blue sniper as you can see got 22 kills, they were spread out but in such a way that they could cover each other's backs and ultimately kill us dead. Like really dead. I got 3 fucking kills. 2-2

Overall it was a good practice, nothing gained or lost and we're a match closer to being ranked but we could have done better. Teamwork. Maybe we should set aside a bit more practice time before we should go into ranked?

Side Note: Comedy

Darris and I had an argument yesterday. Now this should not come as a shock as we tend to do this often because one of us goes on a troll spree. Our arguments are the classic paradox, an unmovable object meets an unstoppable force. This isn't because one of us is right or wrong it is just that no one likes to quit and even if irrefutable evidence is shown in the matter it is still a matter of opinion and no one wins. These debates can be fun until it gets stupid. It gets stupid when one side says "I don't want to have this conversation anymore." That's the hint that we should change subjects. When the other person does not take this hint and presses on like Phoenix fucking Wright well grudges and bullshit happen.

Point in case, yesterday we argued about comedy. Dillon and I were quoting a Scottish stand up comic named Danny Bhoy who was making fun Irish accents and French people and other European countries and it was all in good fun. Darris chuckled at our quotations and I asked him if he had watched the link I posted ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgunWu3dWW0 ). He said no. I asked him why. The conversation degraded into me trying to explain why Danny Bhoy was funny, Darris wanted to know what was funny about him, I told him, Darris made light of it all saying he was just a gimmick comic and there was nothing special about him. I said there's nothing truly special about any comic, originality is dead but that doesn't stop him from being funny. Darris brought up Lewis C.K. and how he said he would fuck a dead kid if he wasn't wet. I told him that offensive humor isn't original.

This went on until I got mad and we stopped talking for the rest of the night more or less. Now I'm sure everyone has had these kind of arguments but the question is still up there. The REAL question. Are gimmick comics worth the time of the viewer? Is it fair to discredit a comedian having never heard or seen him/her perform? My outlook on it is this; if I went through the trouble of recording an act or a song or created a work of art I would want people to at least look at it and give me a shot, even if they thought I was fucking retarded they at least gave me the time of day to judge for themselves.

Comedy, like all art is relative to the person perceiving it. I may think something is funny like a kitten being put in a Lego airplane and thrown off a cliff. Not all people think this is funny. But don't discredit the hilarity of a dead kitten until you've given it a shot. That's all I ask.



Reach for the Tuesday: 15 February 2011

Another Tuesday Halo practice for the books and a glorious day for Raptor Inc.. When you look upon these results I want you to smile and think of all the good we do for the world by spending our free time playing video games. Sure there's hungry homeless out there and children that need mentoring but you know what? They're homeless for a reason and those kids need to learn for themselves that AIDS is forever and heroine only leads to being a celebrity and making all your wildest dreams come true.

She knows.

Why hello there first round of the evening! Dillon took a good lead and we did surprisingly well considering we had no warm-up and we rushed right into ranked play. We may have been playing against people who play with their controllers in their mouth. A Type 2 gamer if you will. More on gamer types in an article to follow. I got 7 assists this round, I couldn't kill shit but dammit I was a team player.

We had a good strategy the whole day, stay close to someone. If you got seperated from a team mate, you get back as soon as possible, don't worry about them coming to you, you go to the group and hold fast, find a choke point and let the other team beat themselves against it.  

The placings were the same as the first round. Dillon was sick this whole day and we have found he plays better when he's closer to death. When we play a tourney I'll be sure to poison him before the game and promise the antidote only upon a performance I deem worthy of life. We had a good 10 point lead in the beggining and then began to dick around and almost lose but we won anyway. If you're Blue and on Pinnacle than you're garunteed to get all the power weapons before Red team except for one sniper rifle so that doesn't hurt either.

The most interesting match of the day was our final match. We got all cluster fucked at the begining because no one called out what weapon they were going for like we usually did, we kinda just went with it. Needless to say we ended up holing up in one of the bases (we were playing on Asylum) and go with our usual strategy. When we started to break Dillon had the fantastic idea to sneak around behind the enemy team without telling anyone and attempt to assault them on his own with a brash display of daring heroics. He was murdered. When I asked him what he was thinking he responded: "I got this".
 We kept the fight up in an otherwise close game, it should be noted that Darris tried to pull a Dillon lone gun manuever later in the match and we had to ask him if had become Dillon, to which he offered a resounding no. We beg to differ. This was a clan match by the way. And the other clan? Look at the results.
Overall 'twas a a damn good day. I honestly think we got lucky but hey, we took out some rival clans and had fun doing it and that's all that matters. Viva la Raptor Inc..

Side note: I was thinking today about things that I hate and chihuahuas came to mind. I fucking hate chihuahuas. Any person who claims one of these creatures is a sad being indeed. You only need one of these rat shit things if you want something that could possibly be more pathetic than your own sad existence. They piss and run at the sight of anything bigger than a soccer ball, they bark like a smurf cracked out on ice, and they feel like a wriggling, twitching sack of epileptic slinkys. Fuck you, that's a damn good analogy. Oh, and they're disgusting bug eyes give me the creeps. I make sure that if I am ever forced to be around one of these creatures I wait until we're alone then I kick the living shit out of them. Then giggle my mother fucking head off.



I hate you so much.



Reach for the Tuesday: 08 February 2011

First game of the day. We suck. No literally. From the get go our cohesion was shit, we had no direction and we spent more time arguing with each other than actually playing. Dillon was basically carrying the team which was inexcusible because it's fucking Dillon. I am pissed at this point.

Oh look we pulled it together to win a game! We are up against a shite team on Cage, we held down the castle center of the map and worked together to pull off a clean victory. Red took the lead about halfway through the match and I thought we were lost but good communication and the ability to poke an eye ball out of our assholes saved the day. Not to mention power weapons.

Rolled. That's the only word I can use to describe what happened to us. We're good, don't get me wrong but we're not COMPETION good. We're the kind of good that happens from playing video games all our lives and can twitch off some good shots, but when it comes to competitive play we're not all there. I believe this is because A. We don't get into the game. B. We argue with each other more than we talk strategy. C. We have no plan. These are issues to look over. The Blue knew where we were at all times, pinned us down at out spawns and made sure we could never regroup in time to fight them off. We would focus on one and then get pummeled from a different angle. The assist count says it all.

We could have one this one, we were up against 3 guys who only had the jump on us because they knew where the power weapons spawned. We were playing on a map we didn't know (Anchorage) because Ryan didn't have the map pack until tonight and we basically got out equipped. We were Native Americans fighting off the American Army. Didn't work. Don't you bring up Custer's last stand on me, that was a fluke. Fuck you. I hate you all. Thank the Gods Thursday is AC:B practice.

Comic of Dillon

Frankie is working on some commissions he didn't do and he needs done soon, therefore, he had no time to work on a comic. SO! Instead, I shall be posting one. I have been working on sprites and just threw this together in about 15 minutes as a test, not proud. So here it is. Halo based.

On a side note, I am about done coloring the rest of the comics released, so I shall replace them with full color ones soon.

*Note, WEIRD BLURRINESS AHOY!

Comic - Raptor Inc. : Rocket Race by Frankie Sanabria 007

So this is of course a true story as all the Raptor Inc. comics are. This particular one being with myself and... well you can just put any other person from Raptor Inc. into there and you'd be accurate. Rocket Race is one of my favorite game types, once Shadonickles introduced me to the concept of "boosting" by shooting a rocket behind your mongoose to create an explosion that sends you flying across the map I became a changed man. Nothing got done from that point on. It was and still is amazing. For those of you who discredit Halo for whatever reason, there's no better way to have some physics related fun and cause some massive explosions than with a good ol' round of Rocket Race and I highly recommend giving a "boost" a try.