The Glint In My Eye

The White Glint was a legend amongst Lynx. The NEXT that tore through whole armies all in defence of Line Ark. It was said that its pilot sometimes showed mercy to troops, giving them an opportunity to escape if they agreed never to return to Line Ark.

Some said it was because its pilot was tired of war and only killed because of some higher duty. Others said its pilot only enjoyed killing worthy opponents. It would explain why any NEXT that had come up against it had not returned. I wonder how many NEXTs and Normals lay sunken beneath the waves of the sea surrounding Line Ark's headquarters.

I wasn't that bothered. I didn't believe in myths. No Lynx, and especially no NEXT, was invincible.

Omer insisted that I take along a pilot that they would recommend. I was a bit irritated by that, after all, I work alone and had not had any trouble so far with the jobs I had undertaken.

After waiting around a bit in the Omer base near the remains of Lagostown, a lynx walked in. It was Otsdarva. Hmph. Looks like Omer was serious about eliminating the White Glint. Well, that's if the stories I had heard about Otsdarva were true anyway.

We head out for Line Ark at dawn and got there about thirty minutes later. We were greeted by the White Glint's operator. Turns out Otsdarva knows her - Fiona Jarnefeldt. He also made some reference about her being responsible for the fall of Anatolia.

That was interesting...

We made it clear that we were not backing down. Otsdarva had already activated his overboost and headed straight for the White Glint. I was still expecting some sort of reinforcements from Line Ark, but none came. Not that I wasn't grateful though, the White Glint's pilot, whoever he/she was, was a beast.

I tried getting Otsdarva to slow down so we could plan properly and limit the White Glint's mobility. Maybe get it into the structure we were fighting around, it seemed like it was geared around aerial maneuverability. But no, he insisted on chasing the NEXT every which way it went, playing to its pilot's tune. It was obvious this was personal for him, as the number 1 rated lynx in Collared, he probably felt threatened by the White Glint, whose pilot was officially rated 9th and yet still more feared than he was. Knowing this, I was even more annoyed that Omer sent him along with me.

My HUD told me that I was running low on AS missiles. I switched to my right arm weapon settling in for the long haul with my rifle. Missiles were too expensive to waste trying to hit the White Glint anyway. Better to rely on my plasma cannon and the rifle.
Initially, the White Glint focused almost exclusively on Otsdarva, throwing a few missiles and shots my way whenever I got too involved in their dance.

I quick boosted out of the way again as the White Glint sent a few missiles my way once more. As I shot down the remaining missiles chasing me, I noticed Otsdarva moving erratically. What was he doing?

I then saw what was wrong, his main generator had been destroyed. Looks like the pilot of the Glint had crippled him completely. He fell out of the sky towards the sea. I thought about going to try and catch him, but the White Glint sent more missiles my way and forced me to dodge some more. Moving further away from Otsdarva.

The Glint then activated its overboost and disappeared behind some buildings. I hovered over the water warily watching the direction the White Glint went in and scanning for any sign of Otsdarva. Maybe he would be able to escape in time.

I heard his voice over the comm, he was congratulating the pilot of the Glint!

"Get out of there man!" I yelled into my mic. I got static in response.

Dammit.

Kasumi came in over the comm-link confirming that Otsdarva was dead. She also let me know it was just me and Glint left to duel. Not that I was expecting any backup at this stage in the fight.

I gripped my controls and began to scan the skies for the NEXT. My NEXT's cameras were not the best available unfortunately, even though they had served me well in the past. I vowed to upgrade my headpiece if I got out of this alive.

I saw a flash of white to the right. It was the White Glint. I opened fire as soon as my auto-targeting system picked it up and began boosting towards it. Maybe if I could get in close I could damage its boosters, give me an edge and maybe deliver some sort of karmic justice for Otsdarva.

I sent a cloud of missiles to its left and came in hard from the right, machine gun fire wailing over the sound of explosions. I fired flares, expecting a retaliatory salvo from the Glint, and I wasn't disappointed. I had gotten in close enough to hit the main boosters when suddenly I noticed it's engines glowing brightly and the unmistakable halo showing the discharge of kojima particles. My heart got caught in my chest. The NEXT was getting ready to release its assault armour attack. I quick boosted and flew into the air to get out of its area of effect. I watched as the field of deadly energy came towards me as I ascended. A stray thought passed through my head as I pushed my engines to their limits, In this moment, I was truly in a place reserved for a few. This feeling of riding the edge of death at over 200 km/hr, it was one of a kind. The zone.

I made it. I didn't get away completely unscathed though, the attack ripped right through my primal armour and damaged my armour plating directly. It wasn't enough to put my readout in the red though.

I had to act fast. The White Glint purging its assault armour gave me a window of opportunity, its primal armour would have been depleted and it would take a few seconds for it to recharge. Now was the time to strike.

I turned around quickly, targeting the White Glint and letting rip with my plasma cannon and rail gun. With no primal armour to defend the NEXT, it didn't take long. A couple more shots and it was over.

I could hear Fiona, the White Glint's operator over the comm. She spoke to me and said something about me being as good as she feared I would be. I didn't know what to think about that. How could I? I had just beaten the White Glint.

I got an S-rank for that mission from the match ranking computer. I stared at it for a while wondering how much luck played a factor in what just happened. After a few seconds I realised it didn't matter. Luck was always a factor in battle.

I had a few job requests waiting for me when I got back to base, the one that caught my eye was to bring down two of Algebra's lynx's, the pilots of Red Rum and Starka.

Before I accepted the mission, I thought about why I kept on taking these jobs from faceless corporations, adding destruction to an already blasted earth. A lot of people think that lynxes were insane or just desperate to justify their training and the amount of money spent on keeping our NEXTs in working order. I think it was more than that, but I didn't know why.

Part of the answer came to me as I managed to complete the battle against the two NEXTs, Red Rum's four-legged NEXT shorting out in front of me. The planning, the preparation of the NEXT for battle, the high speed ballet filled with the thud of bullets, the crackle of plasma and the sighing of missiles through the air.

I continued fighting in this war because it was something I was good at and my NEXT allowed me to do. Not that the loss of life was something that pleased me, but there was something, something that caught the eye in-between pushing the side-boosters to their limit as one weaved to dodge a missile barrage, something that captured the imagination as I soared through the skies watching the subtle electric crackle of kojima particles in the dead of a snowstorm.

I am sure the pilot of the White Glint understood that and that was why even as he/she sank, they didn't say a word. They didn't need to. We had already said everything there was to say.

The Lagos Gaming Scene

I realise that I haven't really gone into what the gaming scene is like in Nigeria at all. Beyond a bit of a rant regarding prices of software over here, nothing else has been highlighted. I am going to attempt to address that in a series of posts.

Most of the gamers I know can be split up into two groups. The current-gen gamers and the last-gen gamers.

The current-gen gamers I interact with regularly own Xbox 360s. If anything, I would say that it is their console of choice for all things game related. Very few of them have ps3s and even fewer have Wiis.

Oddly enough, most of the media/general stores here stock PS3 and Wii games and very few Xbox 360 games. The playstation and Nintendo brand names are really stuck in the heads of most of the buyers for these stores, and they do not really consider the 360 relevant as such. Most of them do not even realise that the 360 can also play dvds and act as a media center. It is just in some limbo space as far as they are concerned. A strictly gaming machine with games they do not understand. The playstation has grand theft auto and pro evolution. Even though these games are also available on the 360 they do not really register this as far as being a reason to buy more 360 games. Why would anyone want to buy a 360 anyway? The PS3 is obviously better.

This makes gamers resort to a place called Alaba Market, an area in Lagos that is known as the center of Igbo traders in the state and also the HQ of anything to do with electronics.


These guys get everything, and if they haven't gotten it yet, they can get it for you. Plasma/LCD High Definition TVs at the cheapest price you are likely to get in the country as well as all sorts of gadgets, music etc. They are also the center of the pirating scene for videogames, music and movies. But, anyway, even though Alaba Market has a lot more choice for the 360 and any other system owner, it is still quite limited.

I just recently got on the current-gen train so I am still wading through all the options available to me in Lagos, but from what I gather from them, it is essentially a sort of pot luck for games, and most people simply wait until a friend of theirs, or they are travelling abroad and get their games that way.

Apart from the current-gen gamers, there are the last-gen gamers who mainly play on the ps2 and xbox. Most of their games are pirated. A pirated game for either of these consoles goes for as little as N1500 (roughly $12) if you are in the right place, and I have never heard of them passing N3000 (roughly $25). This is well within the budget of most people who are still in university or secondary school. It also makes them focus on a few games at a time in order to eke out as much as possible from it. Most of the people that are in this group almost never buy original games. In the stores here, an original Playstation 2 game goes for about N9,000 (about $75) a pop, and the choice is still quite limited. Mainly football and AAA titles like GTA, Pro Evolution, FIFA and Tomb Raider. You occasionally find non-big name titles like Rez or Panzer Dragoon Orta for relatively cheaper (N6000 which is about $50), but these are very few and far between.

Personally, I have never bought a pirated game before, and I don't think I ever will, but it is not hard to understand why most gamers in this country do buy them. There is no official distribution network for our country and no support for any of our consoles or games, so we are very easy prey for the sharks that travel to the states or the uk, pick up games at retail price (most likely bargain bins) and bring them back with their profit, flight ticket, and other expenses tacked on to them. They buy a brand new PS2 game for at worst $40 and sell it to us for $75. What can one do about that? If there was a way for them to buy the games at the dealer prices, we would have a much better deal and it would hopefully give people more of an incentive to pick up original titles. I am not going to hold my breath for that to happen though.

Another thing that struck me when I came back was how much stuff you have to get in order to support your console lifestyle. A stabiliser is a must as is a UPS if you don't want our beloved PHCN (Power Holding Company Nigeria Limited) to mess you up in the middle of a dungeon or mission. I still haven't gotten a UPS for my consoles and I feel the pinch every time I have to replay an entire section because the the 'light went'. It's made me hate games with poorly placed save- and checkpoints even more now, and I really do appreciate my DS.

Actually, this brings me to another topic, that of portable gaming. You would think that in a country with an unstable power supply, over-priced games and not much disposable income that portable gaming would have taken off dramatically. Unfortunately, this doesn;t seem to be the case, admittedly this is based purely on my own limited experience, but I rarely meet people outside the current-gen set that own portable consoles, and even when they do, it is a PSP and it is being used as a very big iPod and storage device. Odd that. I think this has to do with the perception that portable gaming isn't as good as home console/PC gaming simply because the graphics they are capable of are not that great compared to the home consoles, and they are mainly filled with 'kiddy' games like pokemon and patapon. Then again, it could also be because getting pirated games onto a PSP is a lot easier than doing the same with a DS. Hell, I once went into a game store in the complex where my office is and saw a friend of mine downloading games from the store's laptop onto his memory stick for his PSP. I do not know whether they were charging for this service or they were just giving him free games though.

I am hoping to help try and change the perception of portable gaming being limited by organising some gaming get-togethers focused around more than just home console gaming. Will update on the site once I see how that goes.

This brings me neatly to the end of this topic. Hopefully, I will be able to write about our Halo gaming days. I will also try and take some pictures of the next one (if it happens) and if we play some Halo 3, maybe even some videos!

EDIT: Made some grammatical changes and tweaks here and there.