“Anything you can do, I can do better, biatches.” This was the missive written by one of the Fragdolls, Valkyrie, in her November 26th blog when she began training for the Humpday against Bungie. To be fair it was in a post titled “Adios Xbox Live – Almost,” where Valkyrie is departing from Live to head off into the world of elves, orcs and Shatner – Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, but that’s secondary to her parting trash talk.
In order to imagine playing the Fragdolls, you must first imagine playing with Joe Tung. Then imagine if Joe Tung had a whole sea of Lemmings or Pikmin following him around parroting everything he says in matches ad infinitum, then take those voices, ratchet them up a few octaves and insert even more hilarious Language Violations. That’s playing the Fragdolls. Talking trash is something the Fragdolls do very well, but how well do they play Halo 3? A tale of personal discovery, triumph and tears begins now.
Bungie
Abe Froman SK – Luke Timmins, Engineer, greatest beard in Bungie History
New0001 – Joe Tung, Multiplayer Producer on Halo 3, loudest mouth in Bungie History
Thug Larz – Lars Bakken, Multiplayer Designer on Halo 3, most placid lake in Bungie History
TJ Scoot – Luke Smith, Worst sniper in Bungie History
The Fragdolls are an organization, collection and furious four-hit juggling combo of girl gamers, hired by Ubisoft to embarrass the inferior sex (mens) at videogames in addition to promoting Ubisoft products. In the interest of fairness we’ll paste a paragraph from the “About” section on the gal’s Web site:
“The Frag Dolls are a team of gamers recruited by Ubisoft to represent their video games and promote the presence of women in the game industry.” On this night they were present. They brought it.
Frag Dolls
Valkryie FD
Calyber FD
Mischief FD
Pyra FD
Game 1
Team Slayer on Isolation
Tone of Game: Where is My Mind?
Girl 1: “You guys can pick whatever you want, we’ll beat you on anything.”
“Did you guys want to play with MLG settings?”
Girl 2: “No, we practiced on regular modes because we figured that’s all you scrubby jerks would know how to play.”
“Alright, Team Slayer on Isolation, do your jobs.”
Girl 1: “Uh, they have jobs?”
I don’t remember if it was for a Humpday or just a random night of Matchmaking, but Froman talked about how people tended (erroneously) to play Isolation on the top of the map, camping the Forerunner structure and suppressing the concave down shaped green grass with Battle Rifles. So he decided that we’d be able to beat an occasional team by staying underneath, controlling the Rockets and holding court in an area I refer to as Sub Taint.
You know the place, the dark green spot at the bottom of Isolation underneath the Honey I Shrunk the Kids-style chute, except at the bottom of this tunnel there isn’t a big bowl of cereal but Froman with a Rocket Launcher and a crotch piece that is destined to leave a smear on your visor.
Our basic strategy, with tons of emphasis on basic, was to work in tandem underneath the caves, cycling regenerators and covering the three long hallways that connect at Sub Taint. It sort of worked, aside from Tung running around alone and somehow the spawning logic dumping Froman right in front of the gals on the top of the map.
As amusing as it was hearing their proximity chat calling us all manners of awful things for “camping” – we prefer “strategizing” – and using Regenerators (again, strategizing) underneath, the ladies would occasionally make insanely coordinated tactical strikes coming down the hallways and even if you’re standing directly in a Regenerator, two or even three people firing at you with a Battle Rifle is going to erase a player pretty quickly.
We got out to a huge lead a lead that made me wonder “How did we not steamroll these women?” and before I knew it, it was 30-28 on the film. They were figuring out ways to counter our “hide desperately and hope” strategy. We started to get split from the pack and the ‘Dolls picked us off, we were some slow, horned animal on the savanna and they hunted.
Final Score: 50-46 Frag Dolls Win
Download the film (TJ Scoot’s perspective)
Watch the Film Here
Game 2
Team Slayer on The Pit
Tone of Game: Bone Machine
When we’re not supposed to win (and let's face it, no one expects us to ever win), losing isn’t as frustrating. Let’s face it, these girls practiced, they were ready and we gave it our best effort in the first game on the only map where there was any sort of pre-baked easy-mode strategy involving hiding. Since we were still in charge of picking gametypes and maps we picked Team Slayer on The Pit, the impetus for this having something to do with pulling off a band-aid quickly and then maybe we could play Tower of Power in Game 3.
Like the game before, we got out to an improbable lead, only to see it whittled away like the girls were carving a boat out of balsa wood to send our dreams down a river. We led into the 30s and then faded, again. At 41-38, Frag Dolls advantage, it looked like we were going to let another one slip through our fingers. We’re holding too tight!
But improbably, inexplicably and maybe, just maybe, magically at 43-40 the tide started to turn. At 44-43 the Regenerator came back to haunt the Frag Dolls – great Regenerator? Or Greatest Regenerator? Lars got slapped in the fingercuffs in the Command Center and the score was 46-44, those-who-pee-sitting, with the lead. A magical grenade killed Calyber’s spree and the lead was just one. Immediately after New0001 killed Mischief to tie the game, Valkyrie’s ill-advised heroics against Froman and I (Pro-Tip: The odds are not in your favor in this situation, kind players) turned into a sickening death march. The tide had turned. 47-46. New0001 put the score to 48-46 us and the Frag Dolls had scored their last points in this round.
Final Score: 50-46 Bungie Wins
Download the film (TJ Scoot’s perspective)
Game 3
Team Slayer (Snipers Only) on Valhalla
Tone of Game: Wave of Mutilation
Measured risk or tactical mastery? New and Froman wanted to play Snipers on Valhalla, Lars and I wanted to play anything but snipers on Valhalla, and the girls didn’t seem to care as they recognized that Game 2 of the three game challenge was a complete and total anomaly and there was no way we would beat them in Game 3.
I was pretty spent after Game 2 and just wanted the Humpday to be over. After Game3, if Lars and I were kids on a message board we’d both have gone and made threads about “What’s wrong with the Sniper Rifle?” because we both stunk up the joint. Thankfully, Joe and Froman combined for 40 kills.
All we did was divide into two groups of two, with Joe controlling top-mid and rotating to downed Pelican and Froman and I covering Hot Gates and Big Rock in front of their base. Lars and I would poke our heads out, draw fire, return fire, likely die and then Froman and New mopped them up.
At one point in the match, Froman had 15 kills, New had 10, Lars three and I had two. Pretty evenly balanced! You can watch from both New0001’s and Froman’s perspective below. Watch Lars and I fling ourselves into harm’s way!
Final Score: 50-30
Watch the Film (New’s perspective)
Check out the last time we played the Frag Dolls.