Chronicles of a Lan Nerd : Top 5 Old School Lan games
Dec. 3, 2013Chronicles of a Lan Nerd : Top 5 Old School Lan games
I remember my mate calling over and telling me to get my pc. I was like “what are you crazy, actually move my P2(with mmx) system more than 3 feet”. So anyways i got my da to give a lift to myself, my mate and our pc’s out to some dude’s house. I said hello to 4 total strangers. some dude handed me a CD and told me install this. Ok counterstrike wtf is that. After 2-3 hours of farting around trying to get a B&C network going. I loaded up half-life, clicked on mods and started this counterstrike. countless games and 6 bottles of Jolt later i was hooked. It’s not just the game at a lan, it’s the banter with the guy next to you or in the next room and the swapping of uumm…. nature documentary files\videos over network.
It started out with 6 of us and gradually as games got more popular we introduced more into group, through, school, then college, then work, irish net forums even had a few wife’s best friend’s husband. We usually got 16-20 throughout the day, the 2 houses we mainly used were in the sticks with crap internet so over the net was a no no.
Me and a few of the lads from AfGannonLan(wish i had the pics from 2 seconds later when i detonated the c4).
Here’s the old school top 5, no internet required in the playing of these.
Really old school, basic as hell, a few megs in size. This was played when waiting for the other idiots to sort out their network or usual BSOD of a system. Any system could run this. It was fun, it was bloody Tron, it was one of those games where you knew a good few seconds in advance that you were screwed.
It wasn’t the greatest game but this game was made for lans. A slightly more advanced counterstrike with a max of 8 players, 4 per team. There was objectives but we really didn’t give 2 sh**s about objectives. The beauty of this game was you could go lethal or non lethal load out, lethal was straight up guns, non lethal ranged from tasers, pepper nades, to plastic bullets etc. Non-Lethal was trickier but you got waaay more points for a non lethal take down and hand cuffing. The roars from the next room or the guy beside you as he was been taken down, you knew you were screwed and those 5-10 seconds before you were cuffed(ingame, shaddit) felt like hours. It was not just the embarrassment of being cuffed, the person who was taken the most had to do the pizza run that night.
I was never a big fan COD, it was too basic for my liking, it came out around the same time as battlefield and to me it doesn’t compare. However COD2, stalingrad map with sniper rifles only was beyond awesome. It was the main reason we all transitioned to headsets, a few guys still used speakers, you’d throw a grenade and if you heard it on their speakers you could pretty much figure out where they were. Once we all went to headsets, a mouse could be heard sneezing in the house, the silence was disturbed by the odd ****, ***** you **** or ah you ***** ***** *****. I’ve held my breath for shorter times under water then i did when playing this level. Awesome level and times.
The game that started it all. From the very minute i played counter strike i was hooked. getting flash banged(grenade, shaddit!!) for the first, i turned my monitor on and off and checked my vga cable full sure my crappy Riva TNT2 gfx card had crashed. So much fun with this, but the whole waiting for a round to finish bugged me, then day of defeat came out, awesome game with some amazing maps, dod_caen, i could spend hours\days playing this map. Once other fps’s came out we gradually stopped play it but would break out CS or DOD every now then especially when the source versions came out. In at 2 because it got me into lanning.
What can i say, i love this series. There’s just an infinite amount of ways to troll and to kill. For me it’s an FPS version of Dark Souls, there’s no set way to play it, so many ways to kill and die, there’s l33t tactics, there’s cheap tactics, there’s bug exploits and finally you get the odd hacker.
Ok it was the AfGannonLan, we were given strict instructions, bring a copy of BF1942 or buy one and bring a joystick. Initially panic set in as it crashed we desperately tried to download a new driver over an ISDN new connection. Loaded driver, hurray it works. Played the game, i liked it, guns, tanks planes, ships, cool. Then Mr Timewalk handed out a few cd’s to us all, “here pkunzip this to your drive and install it”, a 2 gig install files, WTF!!!!. Luckilly we’d a few burners and we all eventually installed this mod. I loaded up BF1942 desert combat and wow!!!, jets, new guns with sites!!!, heli f***in copters and z0mg!!!! C f’in 4. The guys who made this mod in their spare time basically made BF2. This game blew me away.
Then BF2 came out, that was some lan, again we’d all agreed to get bf2, pretty much everyone had upgraded or built a new pc for this, it was time to flash the e-penis. First 3 hours of that lan was spent fixing BSOD’s. I had so much fun with that game at lans, planting C4 on a heli, watching all the guys jump into it and then i broke into Sinatra’s my way, everyone was looking or going dafuq is he on and as i got to “my way”, i clicked on the detonator, it was beautiful. 6 guys calling me everything under the sun. some great mods too for the game, point of existence and another desert combat with scud launchers(camel wiping out 8 of his team mates with a misplaced scud as we launched an attack on the final flag).
2142 came out and pretty much killed the lans. A net connection was required and the mod community dried up.
The End.
I know i’ll get stick for no mention of unreal tournament of quake arena but those games never really grabbed me, we played them a bit but usually ended back on BF or CS after an hour so. I would like to give honorable mentions to Insane(bit like motorstorm) and Jedi Knight outcast, these were our “we’d need to give fps’s a break for an hour or so” games.
Lan scene for me fairly quiet now, a lot of the guys are married or got other commitments, the nets better over all now, so 20-30 of us chipped in and got a bad company 2 server with teamspeak followed by a BF3 server. We currently got a BF4 server with TS(i haven’t touched bf4 yet unfortunately). It’s good craic, there’s the usual banter on the teamspeak but i miss standing around the kitchen post round, eating cold pizza with Mr fitt, Yank, Mr Daz, Mr timewalk, bluedrax, Camel, airblazer, smiggy balls etc and joking about when x was blown up by y and “did you see when….”. Good times.
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AnCapaillMor
AM interesting list of games. I think I’ve ever done one lan party before. Can’t remember the game really though, might of been CoD or Quake.
Never did a Lan party…but it sounds like a blast. Checked out BF4…now I wanna buy it. I’m all signed up nice and proper. All I need now is my own disc. 😀
Ah, I remember playing Battlefield ’42… good times. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever hosted a LAN party either.Interesting…
Yeah 1942 with bots that worked.Trust me Lan parties are worth giving a go, they can get messy but the banters worth the mess.
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