This Week In Co-Op: A Failure to Connect

Mike "pheriannath" Katsufrakis October 7th, 2009 at 9:05 PM    


So it all started when Nick and I decided to play some Halo 3: ODST (Yes, ANOTHER ODST story) and co-op through Legendary.  Jason, having recently picked the game up, wanted to join our session, so we agreed upon a time to meet.  Our time arrived, and I partied up with Nick, set up the lobby, and threw an invite to Jason, which is where our story truly begins...

...You see, Jason recently moved and didn't have his Xbox headset at the time, so we had to rely on quick phone calls or text messages over Live to communicate. I invited him to the game. Time passed. Nick asked if Jason was coming. I figured that he was in the bathroom or otherwise away from his system, so I gave him the benefit of a few minutes.  Growing impatient, I sent another invite, at which point I received a phone call, paraphrased here:

"It says I can't connect to your game. I can join your party, though."

Now, taking a phone call when you've got a headset on already is always amusing, and this was no different- I started offering Jason some advice on router settings (he was on a new network, after all), and eventually Nick started paying attention.  We ended up having a technologically-advanced game of "telephone" going: Jason would inform me that his Xbox wasn't cooperating, I would repeat any relevant info to Nick, and so on. This went back and forth for some time, before we discovered that support for Jason's router was discontinued in 2007, agreed that some Google-fu was in order on his part, then said goodbye to him and finally started to play our Legendary campaign, with a few too many skulls turned on for good measure.

Legendary is already quite difficult, and when all your enemies are upgraded, have double the health and constantly chuck grenades while avoiding yours nearly 100% of the time, it becomes an even greater challenge.  Needless to say, our pace was slow. We reached the point in the first flashback where two Hunters are unleashed on you after battling through an arena littered with snipers. Our strategy to defeat said Hunters never worked. Our campaign score dropped by several thousand points. We grew frustrated. Finally, we decided on a winning strategy:

Run like little bitches.

You know what? It worked.

Postscript: Jason eventually got Xbox Live working again, proving that life DOES give us a happy ending every once in a while.



 Tags: this week in co-op halo 3 odst


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10 Total Reader Comments

ShadokatRegn at 04:44 PM on 10.7.2009
Glad to see there was a happy ending for that tragic event. Really though, communication issues are a bitch - especially with technical difficulties to go with it. So, good job on overcoming that, and enjoying the game regardless
 
Mrxknown_JG at 04:48 PM on 10.7.2009
Why drop support for a router? That doesn't make sense. Did the router become unable to deal with required settings?

Still glad things will work better the next time around. Love the picture
 
Anonymous at 04:52 PM on 10.7.2009
You can run through the campaign without killing much for the most part, except on the firefight-esque parts where you have to hold off a place and actually KILL things. This is how I beat legendary solo xD Coward tactics ftw!
 
pheriannath at 04:53 PM on 10.7.2009
Hardware End-of-Life cycles are a reality. The router's final firmware upgrade was released in 2005, which means the router was easily 5 or more years old.

NINJA EDIT:
The problem was eventually found to be caused by something else. I'll let Jason elaborate if he wants.
 
Jackel at 05:03 PM on 10.7.2009


Does this mean Jason, that we might get DoW 2 working out ?
 
mightbe at 08:24 PM on 10.7.2009
Try DD-WRT or Tomato. That usually fixes the shortcomings in the stock firmware.

If the router doesn't support either, then I suggest ripping out 30$ and getting a new one.
 
ong_elvin at 08:42 PM on 10.7.2009
'sif hax. Hunters are easy. With all those skulls on, lowly Grunts should be having an easier time killing you.
 
Grill Massah at 11:25 PM on 10.7.2009
Funny story. I had a very similar experience way back when my xbox was shiny (well, new at least) and I didn't yet have a headset.

I was the one with the phone on speaker trying to coordinate with my friends in Halo 3. My buddy was relating my quips and comments to the team through a double phone/headset combo... I can only imagine he looked similarly confused.
 
MisterDeeth at 03:54 AM on 10.8.2009
I'm sorry, I have to do this

Cool story, bro.
 
smurphster at 05:27 AM on 10.8.2009

i'll second that... if you need help w/ DD-WRT, let me know.

nice story. i was playing w/ my three brothers & my wife & a future sister-in-law a few weekends ago. one of my brothers (the one w/ the fiancé) couldn't get his headset to work so he called me for help. so i had my other two brothers chattering over the headset giving suggestions on how to fix it, his fiancé laughing because she could hear him echoing over my headset which was picking him up over the phone, and my wife repeating what everyone was saying because she didn't think i was hearing anything over my headset. plus every time i said something, multiple people would answer because they weren't sure who i was talking to. talk about confusion!
 


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