Xbox Live Marathon

Final Thoughts 2006

It has been a few days since the marathon. We are older (my birthday was monday), wiser, and we can now reflect back on what was largely a positive experience. What did we learn?

1. A marathon is much easier when you have a broad selection of relatively new and exciting games on a relatively new and exciting system.
2. Universal voice chat available across games makes it much easier to communicate and coordinate the gaming session
3. No matter what FPS you are playing, the quality of the players greatly decreases in the wee hours of the morning.
4. Racing games are just damn fun. Racing games were you blow stuff up are even more damn fun.
5. Who thought a game of Hearts could get your adrenaline flowing! Shoot the moon baby! Shoot the sun!
6. Achievments are probably the greatest invention gaming has ever seen.
7. Don't eat all your beef jerky in the first few hours...

I am sure there are more that Fatty Chubs can fill in... If you want to replay the entire event, start with Hour Number 1 and page forward:

February Archive (shows them all)

Hour Number 1
Hour Number 2
Hour Number 3
Hour Number 4
Hour Number 5
Hour Number 6
Hour Number 7
Hour Number 8
Hour Number 9
Hour Number 10
Hour Number 11
Hour Number 12
Hour Number 13
Hour Number 14
Hour Number 15
Hour Number 16
Hour Number 17
Hour Number 18
Hour Number 19
Hour Number 20
Hour Number 21
Hour Number 22
Hour Number 23
Hour Number 24

Hour Number 24

Done and done! Nothing but net! We could keep going, but only crazy people would do that. Full Auto saved the day, giving us something accessible, new, and exciting. PDZ was a good fall back, even though the quality of players deteriorated throughout the night.

Arcade Live Hearts kept us honest, Tiger Woods gave us a much needed little break. DOA was fun in all the ways that it normally is, and PGR had some purty lookin' cars.

In the last half hour I also scored Rank Level 10 of Full Auto! Huge!! All in one day!

Look for a full re-cap/summary of the 2006 Xbox Marathon as soon as we have a chance to sleep, reflect, and recover.

Hour Number 23

We decided that before jumping to Full Auto, we would throw up a CTF game against bots, leaving it open for anyone to join. Trying to find the games already in progress has only lead to frustration. We ended up getting a few solid players to join, but not enough to keep us around.

Cars are where it is at! Besides, I want to take a shot at getting a higher rank!

My new favorite car is the Outlaw. Steve was right. It is by far the best class A. A good blend of speed and handling, and more durable than it looks according to the stats.

Only one hour left... still feeling strong. This is definitely easier the second time around. I never thought I would be saying that looking back at the journal from last year.

Hour Number 22

At one point it was 4 against 12. What kind of person logs in to a game, sees the odds like that and says, "oh well I guess I will get on the team with 11 on 4." It really is crazy.

We are really getting down to the end of it here. I feel much better than I did the last time out, but I do feel the life getting sucked out of me by the crazies who occupy the games during this hour.

Only two hours left... its like a long dinner! We might actually end this on Full Auto. We have been having such good luck in that game. Maybe because it is new, everyone is having so much fun with it... including us.

Hour Number 21

The quality of players in PDZ seems to have dropped off a bit in the early morning hours. There seems to be a lot more uneven teams and team killers roaming about. For something different, we gave the sabotage mode a little try. We had a hard time attracting people.

We switched over to Onslaught near the end of the hour, but it was obvious that the pickings for games were getting slimmer and slimmer. This is the hour of the die-hards or the crazy insane.

Hour Number 20

We put a good hour into DOA. Fighting games were never a big thrill for me... but I rented this sucker from Gamefly, so we were determined to at least give it some time. The lag issues we experienced earlier in the night were gone, making the fights pretty enjoyable. Fatty jumped around to different characters while I stuck with the only one I know how... that put him at a slight disadvantage, but it didn't seem to bother him.

The end of the night is drawing near. Only four more hours left and there is still lots of energy to go around. On to PDZ to finish it out.

Hour Number 19

Late night Golf Time! I am brewing up a pot of coffee as an emergency measure. Besides, it is getting a bit chilly in here, and I could use the warm up.

Compared to the last time, the hours seem to be flying by. I don't want to jinx it, but it really seems like it has been much easier up to this point. Sure there are still five hours left, but there is still some great gaming to be found back in PDZ. By this point, we had played Halo 2 to death! With PDZ, we have been doing so many other things, we still want to play it!

We played a bunch of three hole challenges just to keep it interesting. Since golf is pretty passive, we were able to geek out talking about new software and other things way too nerdy to admit to. But that is us... geeks... we are doing this marathon after all. ..

Hour Number 18

Since we did all the circuit courses, we are moving through the down-and-back courses. I have started using the Outlaw for these since it has a much higher top speed and better handling.

I wouldn't be lying when I say that I can feel a tiny bit of fatigue pulling at my eyes. But that could just be from staring at a TV screen from 4 feet away all day...

I also got to rank number eight in Full Auto! It has been a productive day!

I will say that I have some massive pain in my hands from holding down the throttle trigger. Carpal tunnel here I come!

Hour Number 17

We are definitely getting the hang of Full Auto. The mindlessness of the racing is a good contrast to the technical nature of PGR. We raced a ton of Class A cars. My favorite is the Phantom with the assault load out. I don't know if it is my favorite, but I am definitely the most consistent with it. Fatty seems to dig on the Outlaw.

The only thing that would make Full Auto better would be some sort of free-drive mode with tag or something similar to Midtown Madness 3.

I jumped up to rank seven though... onward and upward... achievements all over the place!

Our goal this hour was to start at the top of the circuit maps and play every single one in order. We succeeded.

Hour Number 16

I got a pretty rad achievement in Hearts... shooting the sun. Good stuff! It is strange how a card game can be so exciting at times... or maybe it is the delirium of over two work days of xboxing!

There is a big slab of cold pizza sitting here... calling my name. To eat... or not to eat... that is the question. I wonder if anyone ever did a study of how many calories you burn playing video games... it has to be pretty low.

I shot the moon in the next round, but I ended up getting screwed two times in a row by Fatty Chubs, dumping the Queen of Spades right in my lap on the second hand.

Back to Full Auto. The schedule says Need for Speed, but we weren't both able to get it, so we have to throw an alternate in there.