Humpday: Cavegirls
Posted by KPaul at 7/6/2006 3:44 PM PDT


A lot of you Bungie.net regulars are at least familiar with the Cayote Cavegirls group. For the uninitiated, however, Frankie sat down over the interzone/webernets with the leader of the Cavegirls, Cayote, to better aquaint you with the group.



What is the Cavegirls and when did it begin?

A group of girls that love gaming. It began one cold night in December of 2004. *reads it off the group's home page*



What's different about playing with girls, versus boys?

Ha ha! I would like to say that girls are more supportive-but there are just as many supportive guys out there as well. *doesn't want to diss on guys* When playing with girls-we can relate to each other-because of the same experience we go through being a girl gamer.



What's the most common problem you encounter while playing out there in the real world?

Well… we don't get hit on by other girls-(mostly). And then of course there are the insults and stereotypes. We think girls tend to enjoy the game more, while boys enjoy the competitive aspect. Girls do too, but it isn't a life or death situation to them. Boys get mad too easily and are sometimes too serious about the game. Girls are more laid back, they can be competitive, but they can do it without getting mad at each other.



What's the most fun experience you guys (well, technically, girls) have had playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live?

I play for fun, and always have. I do all night sniper matches, where I leave the room open and anyone can join. I love driving around in warthogs on the bigger maps-and doing flips. The most fun I have is with the girls-when we all get together and have a good time.



Who is the hawtest Bungie dude?

Frankie is the hawtest Bungie Dude.




This week's games set a couple of records. The first was " awesomest warmup game performance evar ", earned by yours truly. The only word to describe it is raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambunctious. Yes, that's the word. Rambunctious. The second was most ridiculously long pregame lobby time. Frankie and I had map loading troubles and there also seemed to be widely distributed funkyness throughout XBL. We finally got going after about 50 minutes or so.




The Cavegirls rotated an insane amount of people in order to get as many people as possible a chance to play.


Cayote- Queen of the Cavegirls.
Post Road- Queen of bounty hunting.
THE DON WAN- Queen of the night.
Indian Princess- Queen of Sneakiness
Shoelacepirate- Queen of switching teams out of spite.
Zoom Demon- Queen of headshots.
Tinkerbell23 - Queen of Haxxorz
bs angel- Queen of Hexic.
Meghan x- Princess of the cavegirls.
Jaymine- Queen of NO SCOPE TO THE DOME!
Lady Nightshade- Queen of inanimate objects.
LadyRziha- Queen of unpronounceable names
Venus Envy- Queen of cryptic innuendo.
An Actual Girl- Queen of gender issues.
RaHikaru- Queen of sugar high.
Clobberella- Queen of -blam!-
CG Primal- Queen of Pregame Lobby Blabberosity



Bungie's team captain, Frankie, insisted we bring our A games this week. Instead, we brought these jerks.

Frankie-
King of content.
Ninja 0n Fire- King of matchmaking.
Danger Boy- "I'M CHRIS CARNEY, I'M A TINY MULTIPLAYER GOD."*
evil otto- King of user interfaces.
Harangutan- King of purty weapons.
dmiller - King of campaign design.
Thug Larz- King of multiplayer design.
Jejor- King of layups.
KP- King P.







Game 1:
1 Flag CTF
Game Stats
Relic, normal weapons
Game Duration: 10:03
General Tone of Game: lolchix







We should probably stop letting people pick games that can end in a draw. It was your pretty standard game of Relic 1 Flag. The first two rounds were duds all around, as both sides basically threw the usual tactics at each other to gauge defenses and such.

Bungie and the Cavegirls employed essentially the same tactic of letting a few players roam free around the edges of the base while the majority stood guard in front of the flag in the hallway out of view of snipers. This was effective in the first round, as Hog and/or Ghost rushes were met with enough frags and stickies to thwart their incursion. The second rounds on both sides were a bit different.

Bungie went on the offensive and did a good job of securing the power weapons, largely because the Cavegirls neglected them. Danger Boy - really New001/Joe Tung on Chris Carney's account - was pleasantly surprised to find the Covenant Sniper sitting at its spawn, as was Ninja 0n Fire to find the sword sitting under the base. An initial Hog rush was deflected but after we were organized, with Danger Boy and myself providing sniper cover from the rear of their base and Ninja wreaking havoc with the sword on the side, both a full Warthog and the Ghost struck at the same time and Larz made it through the gauntlet to jump off the top of the base with the flag and we eventually scored.

The Cavegirls employed a radically different tactic; they didn't patiently wait to accumulate all the power weapons as did we, in fact they rushed with the Hog, parked it outside the base and used it to jump onto an unusual entry point of the base. Indian Princess killed the only person in her way while the rest of us were off getting weapons or dead from the initial assault. The Cavegirls then inched the flag back to their base to score. That evened the score at 1-1 and the game ended. 1-1. Draw.






Game 2: Team Slayer
Game Stats
Lockout, normal weapons
Game Duration: 8:35
General Tone of Game: Surprising






The Bungie guys assaulted the Sniper tower and ended up holding it for the majority of the match. Possession of the tower traded hands a few times but never for long enough for the Cavegirls to get situated and firmly control it.

Several times Ninja and I found ourselves side by side holding the upper levels of the tower alone, he with the Shotgun and I with the Sniper. Together we had a pretty good combo as he watched for people coming from the bottom and I picked off helpless Cavegirls from up top.

We took the lead early and held on to it for the entire game. The Cavegirls whittled it down to 88-80 with about a minute left but we must have benefitted from some good spawns because by the time the game ended I was seeing all of my team mates on either the Sniper or Battle Rifle towers and we went on a 12-5 spree to close it out. 100-85. Bungie Wins.






Game 3: Team Slayer
Game Stats
Coagulation, Snipers
Game Duration: 7:40
General Tone of Game: i am not lik snippers.







The Cavegirls basically kicked our ass in this game despite the close score. They dominated the rock garden throughout the game, we were only able to fully unseat them from it once. Despite the fact that they were holed up in the rock garden they were still able to keep one or two players in the caves opposite the garden to provide cover.

They basically used two of the best areas for cover perfectly to their advantage while we ran around clinging to the cover we could find, but we weren't able to use any of our cover as effectively as they. The ridge near the rock garden was our best weapon against them, but when ever we began to rack up a significant amount of kills from it, someone in the caves would poke their head out long enough to take some pot shots at us.

We got it really close at the end but we weren't able to pull off the comeback and the Cavegirls prevailed. 50-47. Cavegirls win.




The match once again ended 1-1-1 with no clear winner. Although, if you add up the total amount of kills from the Slayer games, Bungie has a slight edge. Not to mention the warmup game that we owned. Clearly the skeelz with a z were more prevalent on the side of Bungie, but in the name of chivalry, we'll call it a draw.

The Cavegirls were a really cool bunch of gals to play against, everyone at Bungie had a good time. If you're a chick looking for other chicks to pillow (or tickle) fight in your nightie (their claim, not ours), The Cayote Cavegirls should be among your top choices.


* Carney's identity could not be independently verified at this time.

Bungie Weekly Update: 02.05.10 

Posted by urk at 2/5/2010 4:51 PM PST

Return of an old foe, effects upgrades, and Alpha on approach.

Read Full Top Story

Halo 2, Xbox LIVE and You 

Posted by Sketch at 2/5/2010 9:53 AM PST

Microsoft announced today that Xbox LIVE support for original Xbox games will be discontinued on April 15, 2010.

Halo 2 fans take note - you have ten weeks left to play multiplayer games over Xbox LIVE before the service will be discontinued.  Microsoft announced today that as of April 15th they will no longer be supporting the original Xbox console or software on Xbox LIVE. This also applies to original games being played on an Xbox 360.

You can read their official announcement HERE.

We're all saddened at the realization that an era is coming to an end but looking back, we're incredibly fortunate to have had such a great run and such strong support from our fans. Halo 2 has been at or near the top of the Xbox LIVE charts for original games since it launched over five years ago.  We're extremely thankful to everyone who has played, enjoyed and supported Halo 2 over Xbox LIVE.  We've had some great fun together, including far too many humpday losses to even recount. 

That said, mark your calendars now - on April 14th let's all rally to go online for one last hoorah. One final farewell and one final opportunity for all of you to kick our asses at Halo 2. 

Stay tuned to Bungie.net  in the weeks to come for more details.

When You First Saw Halo 2... 

Posted by urk at 11/9/2009 10:26 AM PST

...were you blinded by its majesty?

Okay, admittedly that title and subject are more than a touch self-serving, but we figured hey, if we were gonna make mention that today is the five year anniversary of the second installment of our dear Halo franchise, we figured we might as well go all out.  How awesome are we?  So awesome.

Of course, Halo 2 would have been far less awesome without all the players.  If you counted yourself among the masses that made it your business to give our inaugural matchmaking run a good, hearty spin, thanks for playing.  If you're among the tens of thousands of players who are still going round and round in the Halo 2 hoppers, trading Battle Rifle blows and rushing headlong into, well...Headlong, double thanks. 

That's two times the thanks!

If you haven't played Halo 2 in a while, go ahead and slap our old gal in the disc tray tonight and get your nostalgia on.  You might have finished the fight, but the war still rages.  Rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.  Oh, and there's this one multiplayer map where a friggin' runaway train comes blastin' down the tracks like a lightning bolt shot sideways out of Zeus' blamhole.  It's awesome.  Trust us.



Halo 2
November 9th, 2004
Earth will never be the same...

Roger's Recon Hunt 

Posted by urk at 7/7/2009 9:02 AM PDT

How about a nice game of Tag?


Since we know not everyone has access to an Xbox 360 for Bungie Day, Roger thought it would be cool to run a Bungie.net contest for Recon. If you were planning on spending the rest of the day wallowing in your own terrible misery while everyone else jumped into Halo 3’s Matchmaking for their shot at Recon, it’s time to dry those tears and get focused - iIt’s puzzle time.



Roger as "Outermage." Costume design: K. Thaler

Here’s the details, straight from the Wolf himself:

Hi everyone,

It's Bungie Day, and I feel like handing out some Recon. So let me tell you a story...

There's a cool event that happens every year or so at Microsoft called Puzzlehunt. Teams of a dozen, many of whom work at Microsoft, spend an entire weekend without sleep solving puzzles created by that year's hosts, fitting into a theme. Two years ago (when we were still at Microsoft), the team hosting Puzzlehunt 11 invited me to join them in writing game-themed puzzles. How could I resist coding a puzzle into the stats result of a made-up game of Halo 2? What's more, the guys at RvB were about to stop by for an early look at Halo 3, so I whipped up a quick script and asked if they'd perform and record it. They were happy to, and it became the intro to this puzzle.

The puzzle been sitting, hidden, on Bungie.net for almost two years since then, so just for fun, we'll let you take a crack at it for a chance to win Recon. Be warned: it's not at all easy, since it's meant to be a challenge to the types of people in and around Microsoft who spend a weekend each year solving puzzles for 36 hours straight. But it is solvable, since most of the teams got it.
Keep reading to see how you can get Recon.

The theme for this Puzzlehunt was Tron - teams were zapped into the computer by an evil program, and had to solve puzzles to do battle with him, and eventually escape with the help of friendly video game programs they'd meet along the way. This video introduced the Halo puzzle:

Red vs. Blue: How About a Nice Game of Tag?

Players were then directed to this page, which is the puzzle itself. You don't need to navigate away from this page to solve it. Just click the links that change what you see in the main image.

Want to play for recon? We've set up a Bungie.net account to receive your answer. Simply send a Bungie.net private message to this user with your answer as the subject. The answer is a single word. We'll search through the PMs and give Recon to the first five correct answers who we deem to be provided by legitimate solvers (so don't write a script to submit a word list! And we'll check for answers automatically, so be sure to spell correctly.) We’ll also pull a couple of random users with the correct answer out of the pile too, so if you don’t get it right away, keep at it until you have it solved.

Employees of Bungie or Microsoft, participants in Puzzlehunt 11, or others who have had similar exposure to the correct answer, are not eligible. Players who post the puzzle answer to our public forums, share it via PM, or otherwise distribute the answer will be banned from both winning Recon and from Bungie.net. Plus, they’ll only be hurting their own chances by adding more players to the random drawing.  Oh, and there's a discussion thread attached to this article.  Please use it.

Happy Hunting.

Halo 2 Speedrun 

Posted by urk at 3/16/2009 9:45 AM PDT

There are those that said this day would never come.


You know the rest.

Announced over at HBO, this band of merry men have tackled Halo 2 in record time.  For a look at the entire run in all its astounding glory, check out the link below.  If you find yourself without the time to ingest it all in one sitting, they've burned some extra seconds to segment it for you.  Well played.

Halo 2 Best Time (Legendary Difficulty) 1:30:29

Segmented by Level

Tags: Halo 2 (Xbox)

permalink