If you’ve read Shoe’s latest blog then you may now be under the impression that we rocked out with our socks out and showed those mangy editors what for.  I’m here to confirm the truth of our girly victory with a girly version of the recap.

We arrived at the EGM offices at the crack of 10am still rubbing sleep out of our eyes.  Our foes were met with cheeriness, though I have to admit that we were a bit intimidated by Shoe’s suddenly smashing style strategy.

He must have been trying to mess with our minds!  It didn’t work, though.  Instead, our Splinter Cell Chaos Theory team, Eekers and Jinx, got fired up.  While Shoe and Mark exercised their thumbs with the game itself, our veterans warmed up using a proven Hollywood technique: method acting.  They somehow managed to find a likely neck-break victim in the Ziff Davis complex.

To be very honest, our opponents knew what to expect in the Splinter Cell event.  They approached it with a lets-get-this-over-with attitude and our girls didn’t disappoint them.  Eekers and Jinx broke down Aquarius with cold, systematic precision while our journalistically inclined friends ran around like doomed souls who knew they were being (wo)manhandled, but didn’t know what to do about it.  Mark even indulged in a little screen peekage, but to no avail. 

The second map was our choice but in a fit of cruel generosity, Eekers voted to play Clubhouse, the only other map Shoe claimed to be familiar with.  For the record, our girls know some mean tricks on that map.  They even strategize and stuff. 

The bottom-line is that we won 4 of 4 games and this set us up nicely for the next round of competition.  Approaching this fateful Thursday, I will admit that we were uncertain about how we’d fare against EGM in Halo 2.  Everyone had been warning us about them for it seems their prowess is rather well known around Halo circles.  Afterall, they beat the snot out of Bungie twice and we haven’t had much luck against Bungie in our two encounters with them.

There’s no doubt that this match was still extremely tough for us; every game came down to the wire.  Well, except for Lockout Oddball but what kind of weirdos pick oddball on Lockout anyway?  That’s some sort of bizarre alien tactic for sure.  Nonetheless, we overcame every challenge they threw at us.  I got to watch the games on Seppuku’s screen (Valkyrie and Brookelyn were playing off-site through Live) and I’ve got to hand it to the girl:  more than 70% of her kills must have been ‘beat downs’.  There’s something insanely stylish about that.  I know from experience how humiliating it can be to have someone walk up and smack you dead while you try in vain to find their head in your reticle.  No wonder she was grinning.

The match finale was by far the most exciting Halo stand-off I’ve seen in a long while.  Our team held the sniper tower firmly despite some valiant sniping and grenading efforts.  I was gnawing at my fingernails while Brookelyn made expert use of the sword and Valkyrie staved off most of Shoe’s lone-wolf attacks.  Mark’s swan dives off the map weren’t helping EGM’s cause, however, and we resisted the urge to venture out of the safe haven we’d created.  Both team’s scores crept after reaching 40 and it was sheer patience and communication that got us to 50 first.  We wouldn’t have been so excited about winning if EGM weren’t such a good team.  Afterall, hardfought victories are always the sweetest. 

The rest of the games we played were, as I said in my rematch preview, just for funsies.  We’ll play any game you put in front of us and it doesn’t actually take much of an excuse for us to agree to spend a day playing video games.  All the games were fun even if we weren’t always winning.  Soul Calibur II was a button-mashing fest for us and we all enjoyed making fun of Kilik.  Mario Kart Double Dash is always great for pulling together a gaggle of gamers and, consequently, makes for excellent group photo-ops.

Bomberman is usually somewhat of a crapshoot and I don’t actually know anyone who sucks at Bomberman.  It’s definitely a fun game and I would highly recommend it for any multiplayer game collection. 

I’ll admit now that the inclusion of Lumines on the list of exhibition games was my idea.  This game has stolen my soul and turned it into a colorful, falling block.  Therefore I’m rather (proudly) competitive with it and I’ve been looking for a worthy opponent.  Unfortunately, most people I know don’t play the versus mode and this happened to be the case with EGM’s Lumines representative.  Jennifer has a higher single-player score than I do (she’s graduated to the 400k range), but she had never played against anyone before she and I warmed up against each other.  The strategies and pacing are different for versus so it’s not surprising that I bested her 3-0 in our match.  That said, I’m still looking for a good match-up.  If you’re a hardcore Lumines player, bring your game to E3.  I’ll be ready.

The moral to this long story is that we rock and we’re proud of it.  Thank you to the EGM guys for so graciously providing yet another opportunity for us to prove ourselves.  Anytime you guys want yet another rematch, let us know.  Maybe next time we’ll play some Rainbow.