Welcome, welcome to Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza headed by bs angel! Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deeply insightful to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

Ah, Valentine's Day. A day I have, in years past, derided as a bastion of insensitivity toward the lonely and relationship-disabled. I have since softened on my views, having been blessed to be lucky enough to find someone who can stand to be around me for more than a few minutes. It's something I'm still trying to grapple: my brain can't quite comprehend the madness that must be at work. Surely she must be suffering some fever that affects her perceptions and once it breaks she will be free from her stupor and run screaming at first chance. It's either that or the roofies I keep feeding her.

Being a rather low-maintenance couple, we had no fantastically romantic plans for Valentine's Day this year. Neither of us are opposed to a fancy dinner, but spending a weekend together at home in our cozy pajamas, lounging, is more our style. In fact, the only thing we really "planned" to do that weekend was maybe kick back, relax, and play some videogames. Together.

I'm lucky enough to have a gaming-enabled girlfriend. We actually spent part of our first or second date rocking out to Guitar Hero II. Fellas, if you are single, music games are a great date option. You can each play at your own difficulty, so it's fun for both, and you can show her what a patient guy you are by teaching her how to play (if she doesn't know already). As you get warmed up, you can really ham it up for her and bust out the stage antics of a true rock performer. You may look like a jackass, but hopefully she'll be laughing so hard she won't notice. If you really want to make things interesting, you can institute this house rule: Every time you two pass a song, you have to kiss. It's a great way to show her you're having fun, and hey, free kissing. You can thank me later when the game ends in a make-out session on the couch.

This year, Bungie, makers of the somewhat popular Halo series, made available a "Valentine's Day Massacre" playlist for the weekend for players who wanted to celebrate their love by blowing the ever-living-crap out of one another. Fittingly enough it was a two vs. two playlist. The girlfriend and I are no stranger to teaming up in Halo 3 and venturing out on Xbox Live together to wreak havoc as Team Awesome. Granted the kind of havoc we wreak usually involves accidentally blowing each other up and running around the map aimlessly looking for a weapon that we might possibly be able to get a kill with, but it's something to do. So, we jumped on the chance to have a little Valentine's fun. Nothing's more romantic than owning noobs, am I right?

In my naivety, I thought that we might have a decent chance to win this time. I mean, after all, it was the Valentine's Day playlist. Who would be playing other than devoted couples who wanted to take a break from the flower and candy and bring hot death to all comers. I thought we'd come across some charming couples that were as rusty as we are just looking to have some fun.

Apparently I've lost all ability to reason.

What I failed to comprehend was that the majority of people playing in this special holiday-themed brawl were not the adorable, fun-loving couples that I hoped them to be. No, the only kind of games these imaginary couples were playing were the kind that involved wine, chocolate body paint, and innocuous safe words. While they enjoyed their Valentine's bumping uglies, as it were, the girlfriend and I were pitted against all the lonely and socially inept masses that, out of some sense of perverse irony or perhaps self-loathing, joined together to make the world pay for their inability to establish meaningful relationships with another human being. Or at least make us pay.

Instead of some fun romp against a bunch of lovebirds, we found ourselves facing off against the usual crew of overly-competitive douche bags and the like that lurk in the depths of Xbox Live, dining on cheetos and fearing the sun, most completely unversed in the ways of fair play and sporstmanship. The girlfriend and I did... very poorly. Abyssmal, as it were.

As a side note, who over there at Bungie decided all the games should be Battle Rifle starts, huh? C'mon, give me at least a fighting chance. I love being spawn killed from the other side of the map repeatedly as much as the next guy, but couldn't we have at least had, I dunno, fiesta, or default weapon starts? Also, you guys gotta show me some time how this matchmaking system works. You can't tell me it's working just the way it is supposed to when it matches us up with two guys who combined have played over 8000 more games than us. Honestly, what the fuck, is there just a monkey at the server randomly putting players together in between bouts of poop flinging? I know matchmaking is hard, but sometimes I find it hard to believe there isn't a better match among the hundreds of thousands of people playing at any given moment. I'll wait the extra couple of seconds for a better match, honest.

The best match of the night (and I mean "best" in the most drippingly sarcastic manner possible) was the one in which we were practically shut out. A normal 2 versus 2 match goes to 25 points (one point per kill) and collectively I don't think the girl and I managed to even muster 5 kills. As unbalanced, and un-fun as that sounds, the other team had apparently been brought up by wolves or were perhaps from an alternate universe where it is totally okay to act like an ass to everyone you meet. Case in point: After every kill, without fail or hesitation, they chose to teabag our bodies. Uh, hello, assholes? Yea, we know you're beating us. We can see the scoreboard. Thanks for the reminder of your "greatness" though: You must be a really awesome player to be beating so handily a couple of people who only get to play Halo occassionally. Takes real skills there it does. Gee, I guess you must be some kind of super gamer. I'm envious. Have you joined MLG yet? I should add you to my friends list. You're really the kind of person I want to interact with regularly.

Oh and if you are unfamiliar or don't have the imagination to conjure what the term "teabag" means, it's the universally douche-baggy practice of standing over your opponent in a multiplayer game and repeatedly crouching so it looks like your character is humping their body. You know, like putting your testicles in their mouth: teabagging. Last time I checked though, didn't putting your balls in another guy's mouth kinda make you gay? Which is fine, I'm cool with that (though by your sexist/racist/homophobic taunts I suspect you are, in fact, not okay with it). Anyway, teabagging is about the lamest taunt ever, yet pre-pubescent kids and other equally simple-minded denizens of Xbox Live and elsewhere seem to think it's funny and the appropriate thing to do. To clarify: it's not. It doesn't make up for your small penis or failure as a human being. But whatever, keep doing it, I love reporting guys like you. LOVE IT.

I left the lobby as quickly as possible to avoid having to listen to these two cro-magnons taunt us any further, though the girlfriend narrowed her eyes at me and declared that she would have liked to hear what they had to say. But that's probably because she has, in the past, done her best to verbally bitch-slap our opponents.

It was frustrating, and not the way we wanted to spend our Valentine's gaming together. But then, gaming with your significant other doesn't always turn out the way you might want. But then, sometimes a moment comes along and you know why you bothered in the first place. We took a break after the disappointing session and decided to play again a couple days later. After some warming up, a better attitude, and some considerably better matchmaking, we got into a groove and played some good (and most importantly: fun) matches. I looked over at her, and her face was animated. She giggled infectiously, like a little girl, as she stuck an opponent with a plasma grenade and watched him explode in a beautiful blue ball of light.

And it is moments like these that remind me why I offered to share with her my controller, and my heart.

Other participants!
Gaming with my wife, You could be doubling alone, Next Gen Killed Our Gaming Relationship, Forced Perspective, Playing With My Toys, From Gaming Geek to Heroes Freak, My Lady and Gaming, Gaming with your significant other, Gaming Together, Maybe?, Girl Gamers = Hawt, Gaming with my significant other, Move Over Hott Boy, I Want to Play, Frag the Girlfriend!!, 'Til Mongoose Do Us Part