Halo PC Screenshots

Some score screens from Halo PC games online, recorded for posterity, in chronological order with any additional info I can supply. Very few of these were taken in the early part of my “career,” as it's something I just never thought to do; many more were taken later, especially when I started playing again after my ostensible retirement. More details are available from the recent games as well, of course, since I can actually remember their contexts.

Virtually all of these are from Death Island, either Slayer, Team Slayer, or CTF games. One thing to keep in mind when viewing them is that I often change teams in games to place myself on the losing team and make things more interesting, so some scores may not be wholly representative of performance.

A Slayer game from 2004. No deaths. Nobody I know.

Subsequent Slayer game on same server. One death.

Late 2004 Team Slayer game with my wingman, Orion, now lost somewhere in Canadian art school. He was flight leader (directs the two-person wing) for most of the game, myself the wingman. Virus is a fairly skilled player who used to play on my server; not sure what happened to him this game. Bad day, I suppose.

CTF match with Orion. I was lead. Papa Cap and Jacks are both fairly skilled tankers. One of those deaths was from switching teams.

Slayer game, one death. Killer Kel is one of the old guard, a very good Banshee pilot. (Anecdote: Once Kel changed his name to “vector41” for a period of a month or so, presumably just to be a bother, though he swore it made him play better. As a result the two of us were sometimes confused.) Crassworm is an HBO regular. xanax is an okay tanker.

CTF with Orion. One of my favorite screenshots; our scores are almost exactly synchronized, with only Assists being off by two. Denotes a very well-coordinated and balanced wing. Flying with Orion were some of my favorite times in Halo.

Slayer match with goatrope of HBO, a skilled (and very goofy) player, as well as Michael_M, also of HBO. One death.

Rather amusing screenshot from a Slayer match on my server. It was a game to 25 and I was doing well, but had apparently irritated everyone else so much that they all left the game, making it impossible for me to score the final point and win.

Team Slayer match from early 2005. Nothing remarkable. One of the first games after returning from my nominal retirement.

Team Slayer match from late 2005. Hood is one of the best tankers I have encountered, and part of one of the interesting situations I have found myself in . . . in one game, him and several other players managed to put my team (myself, Orion, and some sundry) in an almost perfect “clinch” (a clinch is how I describe a strategic domination, where one team controls the resources, spawn points, vehicles, etc. making it very difficult for the other to find a footing). They had one tank parked on top of our teleporter exit, one sitting on the turret outcropping aimed at our lower level, one in front of the tunnel exit on the left, and at various times a fourth tank driving around. In addition at least two Banshees were on patrol. My team was literally getting slaughtered every time we stepped outside; I managed to break the clinch and tie the game by taking out the tank on top, punching a hole in their fence, then completely ignoring all enemies and sprinting across the map with a Banshee and recovering their flag as quickly as possible.

Slayer match to 50. Three deaths. Odin is an okay tanker.

CTF match from late 2005. gunner is a very good tanker with a nasty sense of footing and directions. Five deaths.

CTF match with a late join into the wrong side of a clinch. Reversed it toward the end but clock ran out.

Team Slayer match with MrFluffy of HBO and the-Junkyard. AceHigh is one of the better pilots I’ve run into and I winged with him for much of the game. (Orion was no longer available at this point.)

Team Slayer game. Several players left toward the end, so the numbers are a bit goofy.

Team Slayer game. A Big Dildo is a decent pilot; Santos is one of the better players from earlier on (played with Longshot and Fairplay a lot), think he joined late in this one.

Team Slayer match. Nasty opposition in that one, nobody I knew but very good and coordinated players.

CTF match from early 2006. (xx)Hitler is one of the very good players I met later on and used to play on my server often. Michael_M and Jenkins are from HBO and were kind enough to play with me.

CTF game, myself versus several. A very funny game in which the opposing team grew steadily angrier as we played, becoming convinced I was hacking and providing proof for it. Two quotes were “I saw him disappear into thin air” and “He made me fall through the map.”

CTF game with SoCalGal, one of the better players I knew from my server. Almost certainly my best game ever played; I was playing beautifully and it felt perfect. Due to several players leaving after the previous game, the game started with myself versus four others, and two players joined shortly afterward that I had join the opposing team, giving six-to-one teams. I did not die until reaching 22 kills and three flag captures, and died only several times as the game continued. Toward the end one of the blues ((cf)Badass) switched to my team, against my explicit objections, and refused to leave; several other players then joined, adding to my team, and the game went unfortunately downhill from there, with a number of reds refusing to go blue. However, I was still immensely pleased with my performance.

Slayer match. One death. I'm afraid I was being rather horrible in this game; one of my kills was made by flying over a man trying to run away, repeatedly ramming and flipping a Warthog with my vehicle and fuel rods and trying to knock it into him. I did this for at least five minutes, the poor fellow running miserably in circles, before giving up and just shooting him. In another kill I held an entire conversation with someone in the game while dogfighting with someone else, just typing my lines between loops and keeping myself in safe positions, then finishing the conversation and killing him promptly.

Team Slayer. One of my rare perfect game. Full server.

Slayer. Perfect game.

CTF game on Infinity. I am playing as Dr Stoppage, a personal joke. Some good players, none of whom I know.

Team Slayer. Perfect game. Full server.

CTF game. Not actually that remarkable, I just stayed in the game forever and it had a long timer. Switched teams once near the beginning.

Really cool game. (xxx)hitler is a guy from the old days who has become a very good pilot (flies a lot like me, actually). (D) I have never met but was also very skilled, and THE DARK was only a notch down. People were joining and leaving throughout this game, but those three were there the whole time, and presented a very skilled front, doing a great job of dominating the skies and working together. Pure Halo, pure CTF, very neat.

CTF. Lots of fun. I’d never met Rommel but he was very good, not so much at any one thing as just being a great “Halo Player,” goal-oriented and knowing how to get the job done. The other team was darned good too, though more spread-out, and the game got very heated. Good times.

How cool! I was digging through old directories on my server and I found a couple of screenshots that Orion apparently took back when he played. These are either games he played alone or ones where I left before the end, presumably the former. SoA is one of the best clans (indeed one of the only HPC clans worth a damn) we used to run into, mostly just two or three exceptional pilots and all-around players, very good and very skilled at teamwork. Orion clearly did a dazzling job here against tremendous odds, and I’m awfully pleased to see it. (Some background on Orion . . . he was a guy I met either at Subnova or at Psyjnir, and after we’d played some I found myself giving him some lessons and showing him the Banshee ropes. We worked together for a while, myself very happy with his moves and potential, and eventually ended up flying together as equals, joining games as a dyad and just laying waste. A good two-person Banshee wing is a sight to behold and I was glad to have him. The day I decided he was my wingman rather than student was the day he took on a couple of nasty pilots with a style he just couldn't beat, analyzed their play, and concocted a complex solution that showed a deep-level understanding of Banshee dynamics and interaction. [It was, if I recall, to perform a long drop, land at the end, dismount and put a rocket into the pursuing enemy.] Great stuff.)

Another Orion pic. A perfect Slayer game! How neat. Nobody else here I know.

CTF, full game that lasted quite a while. Started on red but switched to blue after a few minutes of clear unbalance. SoCalGirl and Hawk7886 were both playing earlier (I winged a bit with Hawk, very cool).

CTF, full game, just a random shot.

CTF, full game, same business.

CTF with Jenkins. A really cool game. I came up with the idea to try playing with my off-hand—that is to say, with the mouse in my left hand—and that’s what I was doing throughout this game, with Jenkins coming on board as well. Great fun and actually not as difficult as it seems, though of course you have to get used to it. It helps that my flying has always been fairly technical; even slowed and awkward, I was more or less able to maintain the basics. (Mostly, of course, it helped that nobody in this game was much good.)

Second “lefty” game, still with Jenkins. At this point I was somewhat more acclimated. I think I’m going to stick with this, at least from time to time; it’s a lot of fun and a cool way to handicap yourself.