Mar 25, 7:23 pm
I awoke at 7am on a cold, snowy Saturday morning in the Tothill Travelodge. It was strange to think I wouldn’t be catching a wink of sleep for another 27 hours. Even stranger was the idea that i’d be spending the majority of those hours playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 at a LAN event attended by over 1,500 people, while trying to set the Guinness World Record for “Longest Continuous Play of an FPS.” It’s a strange life when you’re a Frag Doll, y’know.
We kicked off our day by having a slap up breakfast. Sarin - in typical Sarin-style - managed to consume roughly 80% of the Little Chef’s food supplies. Kitt was poorly, battling rather nasty cold.
We arrived at i33’s Newbury Racecourse venue at 9am to prepare ourselves for the hours ahead. As well as gaming, we needed to keep things above board with a record of our matches, who we’d played against, and when we’d taken toilet breaks. No nipping out for a cup of tea whenever we fancied. No slobbing around in a game lobby for half an hour at a time (we were allowed just 20 seconds to decide on our equipment and game modes.) And, most importantly, no sleep.
What followed was 24 very bizarre hours of gaming. As for how it felt, I can only offer my own personal experience ...
The first few hours were surreal. I know it sounds silly, but it hadn’t quite hit me what we were attempting to do. I played a few games, chatted to people on Xbox Live and glanced the odd smile at Kitt and Sarin. I made conversation with the general onlookers gathered around our booth, and those gaming with us in person. But then I looked at my watch and realised that only three hours had passed. THREE HOURS - an 8th of the record attempt! It was beginning to dawn on me that we were here for the long run.
I began to set myself little challenges to eat up the time, and I cannot stress enough how thankful I was to Vegas 2’s A.C.E.S. experience allocation system here. Watching the XP meter slowly crawl up was incredibly motivating for me. It was always there, always encouraging me (plus I kept taking sneaky glances at Kitt’s screen opposite me to see if I was beating her. Sad, I know.)
First I decided to try out the new modes - Team Leader and Demolition. Six hours passed.
Then I decided to complete all the terrorist hunts. On realistic. Nine hours.
There was an achievement for killing 25 terrorists whilst suspended from a rope? Great! Hour and a half.
At around 2am things started to get strange. Sarin had assured me that binging on energy drinks was the wrong way to go, so I’d been supping mineral water and the odd cup of tea. However, as the hours wore on, the more hyper I became. The drunken fallout from i-series legendary pub quiz and “boat race” began to gather around our booth, cheering us on, slagging us off, or simply looking for some company in the wee hours of the morning. Suddenly everything felt ridiculously easy. 24 hours? No problem.
5am crawled around. Even the hardened party-goers were leaving for bed, and our building’s main source of heat - the high-spec PCs with which it was filled - were now mostly switched off. As such, the temperature plummeted. My hands were freezing. I got stuck on the Nevada Desert in Co-Op Campaign on realistic, and thus had to abandon it. One of my contact lenses randomly popped out in the middle of a match. Playing the same levels over and over again was driving me crazy.
It was 7am. 3 hours left. 3 maddening hours.
Every time I felt myself sagging, I switched back to Import/Export on Terrorist Hunt. I don’t know why. It became my comfort zone, in a strange way. I must have played that map at least thirty or forty times. My constant gabbering on Xbox Live finally gave out. I was too tired to strain my ears to hear people over the constant background noise of the event. I didn’t want mineral water. Or energy drinks. I felt a bit sick.
Finally people began to count down the minutes, and as the Countdown think music was played over the racecourse tanoy system, I knew the end was near. Everyone let out out a cheer, and I found myself laughing with tiredness and relief. 210 crappy achievement points later (what’s that? 8.75 achievement points an hour?), I’d made it. We’d all made it.
This is my individual take on the event. It might not match Sarin’s or Kitt’s at all (i’m sure they’ll follow this with their own blogs). And, of course, we still need to have our log books and webcam feeds checked and adjudicated by Guinness before we know whether we hold the Record. But the one thing that ran constant throughout the entire 24 hours was my immense gratitude at the support from the gaming community. Wow. You were all amazing. From the moment I stepped online to the moment I said goodbye, you were there cheering me on. You helped keep me sane when my gaming abilities were failing, when I couldn’t score a headshot to save my life, and when all I was trying to do was to stop staring at the clock. From those who played with me for ten minutes, to those who played with me for the whole period. In person at the event or online. For those who couldn’t be there, but cheered me on through your support on our forum, our community sites or donating to Breakthrough Breast Cancer (£480 and counting! Wow!)
You know who you are. THANK YOU.
P.S. As always, you can check out more photos of the event in our gallery.
