On February 22, 2008,we attended the Video Games Live extravaganza at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco, CA.  This was the third year that VGL had wrapped up the Game Developer’s Conference in the city, which began February 18, 2008 and ran through the 22nd.

The show,promoted by VGL, WonderCon and Expressions College for Digital Artists, was a visual and aural celebration of video game culture,more specifically a celebration of the music that makes the games so memorable.  Musical arrangements performed by the Skywalker Symphony and Choir, laser-light shows synchronized with video game footage, guest speakers and solo performances by people such as Martin Leung, the video-game pianist made famous on you-tube ,made the evening an unforgettable one.

The show is co-produced by Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall; the latter also served as the conductor of Skywalker.  Jack Wall is a composer and producer famous in the interactive entertainment world for his musical scores for Mass Effect, Jade Empire, MystIV: Revelation, Splinter Cell and UnReal II.  Tommy Tallarico is a video-game music composer who also serves as the host for VGL.  He has won over twenty-five industry awards for his work in audio for such games as Terminator  v Robocop and Messiah MDK. There will be at least forty VGL shows world-wide in 2008, including such locations as Italy, France, Germany, Taiwan and Mexico.

There was a small pre-show festival in the lobby of the Masonic Hall.  We encountered many people showing off their Guitar Hero skills (a competition that was ongoing throghout the event) , while others waited in line for food and beverages, checked out the booth of Expressions College for Digital Artists, or participated in a Space Invaders contest on a customized Dream Authentics arcade game.  The people who were entering the costume contest -                                         - entrants included replicas of characters from Zelda, Mario Brothers and other games - were striking poses and having their picture taken by onlookers. On a side note I was pelted by a fire ball/bomb by the famously posed mario brother which was extremely funny to my wife. Even Yoda was there to help the festivities along. (The audience later chose their favorite costume by applause level. This Gamer was the winner of the contest).  Jonathan Mann of the Mario Opera  was strolling through the crowd singing his Nintendo Folk Songs, and the HTS team was lucky enough to participate in his new song about the Wii. This was loads of fun, hopefully we’ll be in one of his videos.

The show itself started with video footage of Pong.  Many in the audience recognized the plunk sound effect from the old-school game.  There was a lengthy musical salute to historic games from past to present which included effects and cuts from scores from such games as Mario World,,               Civilizations,              Zelda,Donkey Kong, Tetris, Lair,Centipede, Dragon’s Lair, Bioshock,StarCraft,

Halo and                   World of Warcraft.

Even Tommy Tallarico got into the fun as he wielded his weapon/guitar during the HALO3 performance.

Everyone enjoyed the Ms. Pac-Man tribute which consisted of a video of life-sized Pac characters recreating the game through the streets of a busy city which featured music from the Go! Team.  Other musical passages saluted Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts, Metroid, Mass Effect, Sonic, Chrono Cross and OutRun.  VGL also featured the debut of StarCraft II.

There were several special guests as well, including film composer John Debney, who made his VGL debut conducting a special arrangement of his work from Lair.  A group of gentlemen from Square Enix, a Japanese video-game company, who brought us Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts and the Final Fantasy series, were also honored.  Martin Leung, the video-game pianist performed a soothing medley of songs from Final Fantasy as well as recreating his famous you-tube video in which he performs the Mario Brothers theme, blind-folded, at speeds varying from normal to hyper-fast.  The crowd went crazy for him whenever he performed, and at the end of his blind-folded feat, a rabid fan dressed as an MB character gave him a giant plush mushroom as a gesture of appreciation.

Three lucky audience members were chosen at random to come onstage to try their hand at Frogger and Space Invaders.  Their games were projected onto a giant screen so the audience could cheer them on or share in their agonies.  The pressure was on, and all three people who participated walked away with varying amounts of arcade games and mp3s. 

VGL ran for about three hours with a twenty minute intermission.  The Skywalker Symphony and Choir was top-notch and it was very exciting to hear the musical arrangements while watching the footage of familiar video games spanning the past twenty-five years accented by the colorful light-shows.  The audience consisted of everyone from young families to teenagers to people in their thirties, forties and fifties.  The evening was filled with nostalgia but also excitement for the future of interactive media.

There was a post-show meet and greet with thirty-plus top talents in video game music composition including Halo composer Marty O’Donnell and Bioshock composer Garry Schyman.  This event was free to all ticket-holders and was a valuable resource for those interested in the industry.

Video Games Live was an awesome event and HTS highly recommends trying to catch a show in your area.  Please check the VGL website for upcoming tour dates.  VGL proves how important video games have become in international pop culture, and also serves to illustrate how the future will only bring further appreciation of their importance.

review by the HTS crew 2/25/2008

 

OPERATION FALCON SWOOP

Just wanted to do a very brief AAR on the last Mike Force game in the hills near Scotts Valley at a spot called Brownie Camp — which, in reality is an abandoned Girl Scout/Brownie camp complete with dilapidated cottages, old metal cots and a dry creek which runs through most of the area.

Hill of the Skull members attended this event and with pride, I must say that all of our members served with distinction. The Brownie Camp AO is extremely rough terrain and the traverse into and out of the area was a challenge that was met by all the players that day.

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Brief AAR:

Phase1

1. Americans group strength was 30% over Red Star forces.
2. Red Star inserted into Brownie camp area first and deployed their forces to defend at the bottom of the hill.
3. Americans inserted from the top of Brownie Camp ridge and faced Red Star upon landing at the bottom of valley.
4. Americans pushed forward and gained control of 3 key cabins and controlled area on one side of the dry creek (or gulley).
5. Americans captured Doc King and security at the end of the 1st half and recovered suitcase of plans.

LUNCH

Phase2

1. Americans re-inserted into previously gained area and a large force of American Rangers pushed very fiercely, wave after wave of troop against Red Star to continously push them to their rear and gain ground.
2. America Recondo and Stryker teams flanked wide right and quietly to recon the area for the objective — a colonel and his staff.
3. Recondo and Stryker teams discovered the bunker/command center and began to deploy forces to engage.
4. Red Star snipers were overlooking the approach to the bunker and covered the area with deadly fire which stalled the Recondo advance.
5. Recondo and Strykers, in time, managed to clear the tree line and eventually assaulted the bunker. Note, prior to this time and as the Recondos were stalled, at least two waves of American Forces attempted to assault the bunker from the West. Both waves were put down. Recondos and Strykers finally assaulted the bunker prior to the arrival of the third wave.
6. Recondo,Strykers and combined American Force breached the bunker (dramatically!!) and captured the Red Star Colonel/trainer, his staff and recovered bomb-making stuff.
7. Recondo then double-timed it back to come-alive area. A small recondo detail remained behind as rear security to delay/repel advancing Red Star (who by this time was hella pissed the Americans got their crew).

GAME OVER WHISTLE BLEW — end game.

• TRAVERSAL OF HILL BACK TO PARKING AREA
• BRIEF AAR BY RED STAR AND AMERICAN FORCES
• AWARD OF RECONDO PATCHES TO GRADUATING CLASS 11.07 (congratulations, boys)
• AWARD OF AEX CONTRIBUTED AWARD (full WOOD, AK-47M)
• AWARD OF 50/50 RAFFLE MONEY to Red Star Captain S. Prosterman

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I must say that Mike Force really has the mil-sim aspect of airsoft down to a science. I doubt if anyone felt as if that pace, tempo and intensity of the game (except for lunch break, of course, a decidedly non-milsim attritubte of airsoft) wavered throughout the day.

Kudos once again to Mike Force staff for organizing the event and keeping everyone together. One question posed by some of the players: Why $5 for a red hanky?

In any case, we all had a great time and will be looking to attend these games with much anticipation and vigour in the future.

BTW: WE HAVE CREATED A VIDEO OF THIS EVENT AND IT IS POSTED AT THE GALLERY SECTION!

If you attended this event, you might log on and watch yourself in action. It’s pretty good and LONG (28MINS!!)

Hooah!

One of our HTS staff went down to the Team Tactical Workshop down in Arroyo Grande earlier this month and filed this report.

Arroyo Grande, CA — Team Tactical Workshop

This workshop was co-sponsored the Mike Force Tactical Airsoft Club and the OPFOR Stars. Mike Force is one of the oldest airsoft clubs on the West Coast and OPFOR Stars is a team located in the Five Cities area on the lower Central Coast of California. The objective of the day is to have teams come down to run a few drills that are tied to authentic military squad tactics. The field instructor for this day is Dr. Stephen King, the owner of Mike Force Airsoft and the field was provided by OPFOR Stars, who have permission from the land conservancy of San Louis Obispo County to play airsoft there a few times a month. This last bit is an interesting thing because they have to share the field with ATV hobbyists, riders on horseback and the odd nature walks/tours. Sometimes you have all three on the same day, which is what I saw happen on this day (more on this later).

The day was set up in phases, where the teams would learn tactics and maneuvering from the field instructor in phase 1 and later, in phase 2, square off with each other to apply what they have learned in a real skirmish. Phase 1 consisted of a course that was divided into 7 waypoints located all over the beautiful Arroyo Grande forest area. The terrain was primarily tall trees and California type brush (I’m not a nature guy and I don’t know what any of them are called). There were rolling hills, a small ’swamp’ area, trails cut into the woods and all this literally less than 2 miles away from the beach. This was a very, very beautiful place that if it wasn’t for airsoft, would be an otherwise nice place to hike, ATV or ride horseback. As a matter of fact, a nature walk happened upon our class and asked if we had permission to use this area. We assured them that we were playing a version of paintball called airsoft and we indeed had permission to use the land. After this, the guide went back to describe the rugged and beautiful flora of the region with a few cheery senior citizens rapt in pleasant attention….

Only 12 people showed up for this inaugural tactical workshop and were divided into 3 fire teams of 4 members each. This day we would cover the following:

• squad formation
• squad positions
• fire zone per squad member
• patrolling in formation, in wedge formation
• how to respond to contact
• cover fire - flanking
• triangulation flanking
• ambushes
• assault on a bunker

The small class meant that there was tremendous opportunity for detail checking by the instructor and other participants. It would’ve been nice to have a few more people at the class, but in hindsight, having more people would have made it difficult to control, overly long and we would have lost out on some of the detail given to us by the field instructor.

The exercises were set up so that two of the three teams would square off in a maneuver with the third team looking on. I must say, that you learn a whole lot just by watching a maneuver unfold before you. The maneuvers that I have been doing for a long time seemed so clear and obvious to me now that I saw them in motion, clearly and with an eye towards assessing my own performance. I got a lot out of seeing Mike Force 1 execute the cover fire and flank maneuver (this is where the fire team receives contact and one element fires at the target while one or more teams flank on either side to try and gain tactical advantage). The one thing I learned from Mike Force 1’s flank maneuver is that they don’t stop until they’ve knocked out their target. In other words, when the flank begins, you cannot stop unless you get killed or you get to your target and have neutralized it.

The mistake I saw the less experienced teams make is that on a flank, some of the members stopped and returned fire and did not continue. This turned the flank into a fixed return fire position which made the flank useless. Mike Force 1 is one of the better teams in Northern California (possibly all of California) and have had plenty of experience playing together. It seemed to me that to execute a proper flank, the team members have to trust each other knowing that when someone moves, the other guy will cover. All this without saying a word. I saw this in full effect on that training day and is a level of play that other teams should strive for.

One of the coolest things during Phase 1 was the assault on the bunker. This is was a cover flank maneuver on a bunker that OPFOR Stars have built on the land conservancy forest. It’s located on a small foothill and provided 180 degree coverage of the area. The hole was about 5 feet deep and was reinforced by sandbags and topped off with a roof. There were 3 slits on this bunker which provided firing areas for all the guys in it. This exercise had one team patrolling along and then contact with the bunker is made. The point man of the patrol calls for a flank and the assault begins. The other team would be defending the bunker by having a couple of guys in it firing out and two more positions outside of it cover the right and left flanks. If the flanking maneuver is executed properly, the guys on the outside would be shot out first and then the advance toward the bunker would come at nearly 180 degrees to each other. This worked sometimes, but not all the time. The times it did work was when the flanking teams didn’t stop and cover fire was constant. This is because the guys in the bunker would have a hard time returning fire and indexing the guys who are flanking. Constant movement is the key to any flanking maneuver.

The teams went at this for about three hous and covered all of the waypoints on the map. We had a brief lunch where a few of the teams took advantage of the BOAR OF ARROYO GRANDE .

Phase 2 was three teams sent off on waypoint missions. The idea is for each of the teams to traverse the area and find the waypoints where there would be coordinates printed on a sheet of paper inside of a folder. Each team would note the coordinates and move on to find all seven during the second half of the day without being killed. The theme of the this phase is that if the teams made contact, we would practice the cover and flank maneuver. The team that I was assigned to, pretty much didn’t have much contact that day. We made it a point to get to our waypoint, get the coordinates and move very quickly to the next one. What helped us navigate the area was the intel from one of the players who played at the Arroyo Grande forest frequently. He looked at the map and pretty much knew where it was and how to get there. This is no easy task because the map was literally a black and white printout from Google maps. It was one of those satellite shots that look down on a sea of, well…grey. Tiny squares had been graphically superimposed on it to give the players a sense of where it was. Most of the guns on this team are from the SF Bay Area and had only the slightest clue on how to traverse the area. In any case, this was a good tactical decision, to use the local player as a scout because he got us to every single one of the waypoints quickly.

Among the highlights of this phase (briefly, because a lot happened but I don’t want to make this blog hella long): going to ALL of the waypoints but only finding FIVE of them, waiting to enter a waypoint so that a couple with their ATV’s could pass, one guy on the fire team jumping into a ravine (not quite that dramatic, but he did jump into a pile of sand on the way down) to find an injured pilot (dummy) with the folder and coordinates, getting to a couple of waypoints but not finding anything and leaving after being frustrated that they didn’t find anything, a spooky sniper that fired on the team as they were making their way to the last waypoint. Very cool, spooky stuff and stuff that you don’t see at your typical capture the flag, force on force type airsoft game. This game made you think and tried to make you alert. What was a three hour operation literally felt like 30 minutes because you were concentrating on your fate the whole time.

At the end of the phase (which was marked by a lone whistle going off in the woods and ‘GAME OVER!’), the teams got together and had a brief After Action Report. Apparently, this is Mike Force custom (which is taken directly from military exercise custom) that at the end of every event, they would asses the day’s activities as a way to get a sense of what worked/didn’t work for people. It’s also a great way to see where the other teams were coming from and a way to compare notes on technique. During this AAR, most of the teams moved extremely well in the forest with all of the teams getting at least five of the objectives. Mike Force 1 team got 6 of the 7 and beat my fire team by 1 objective, although we DID cover the whole forest but couldn’t find two of them. My team had very little contact with the other teams — mainly snipers that were playing independently of the teams to ‘irritate’ us; everyone and one strange event where a member of OPFOR engaged one of the guys on my team down at the ravine. My guy only had a pistol and as he was writing down the coordinates from the folder, he fired a round every few seconds at the OPFOR guy who was about 10 feet away behind a log. Amazing that he got out the way he did.

Finally, it was a great day for all the teams and Mike Force and OPFOR stars promised to have another one of these in the future at the same location. This would be a good thing because the Arroyo Grande/Pismo Beach area is a very beautiful place with lots of good terrain for airsofters. OPFOR Stars are one of the only true organized outfits in that area that try to put on airsoft games that make use of the terrain. Organized events such as this help to spread the word about the fun and challenge of airsoft. I do hope another event takes place in Arroyo Grande because it is such a great area to play. I learned a lot and am dying to try this new stuff out at the next skirmish!

Peace!

–brandX

check out the PIG PIXX!!!

Well…what can I say?

Thanks for dropping by and checking out what we got to say at this blog.
We FINALLY got this site going and we’ll be here to service the entire worldwide first-person shooter and airsoft communities. And this blog is meant to talk about…well anything from those worlds.

Upcoming topics in the very NEAR future includes:

• Mike Force Workshop Training — someone from HTS staff will attend this innovative workshop for airsofters. It’s actually this weekend and we hope to get a pretty good report on the events of that day, complete with pictures.
• A blog series meant for beginning airsofters and will include subjects that range from the cost of starting the hobby, basic equipment to get you going and common misconceptions about the sport.

On the video game side of things, we will bring reports about the latest and greatest games including reviews on a few games (with pics of course) and news from the vidgame rumour mill.

In any case…it will be fun writing about this stuff and hopefully you will all find some value in it.

Thanks once again for stopping by and keep tuning in.

–HTS Editorial staff