Kill your mates on a LAN gaming network (From Hillingdon Times)

Kill your mates on a LAN gaming network

3:26pm Wednesday 7th December 2005

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Any gamer worth their salt will know that the ultimate gaming experience involves shooting at, racing against or beating up your mates.

There's nothing better than pulling one over a good friend with a new trick, tactic or passing manoeuvre.

To get the experience of playing PC games against multiple real players, most people need to go online, lacking the hardware to arrange more than a couple of players at home. But there is a company who can come to your house, and provide everything you need to get all of your friends involved in a big, private shootout.

Plan B Gaming set up a couple of years ago, and is the most experienced of all the companies who can offer a full LAN gaming experience at home.

With very little notice, they can set up 12 excellent quality flat screens (set up time is between 30 to 60 minutes), even providing chairs and tables for you. If you've got that many friends who want to injure you, give them some warning and they can get equipment for up to 100 game players.

The range of games is impressive they can offer anything from simple driving and first person shoot-em-ups to the most complex role playing and real time strategy games. There is a list of available games on their website.

Andrew Keyne of Plan B Gaming says: "We have had customers who play over a whole weekend on one game, and they almost play non-stop for 48 hours. But if you want to set it up for a birthday party for a few hours, it is equally suitable. We only need two power points and we can set up in different rooms, so you can have two teams in separate rooms."

He is always on hand to help with set-up screens, or to coach an inexperienced person through a new game.

They are bound to have games you don't know, so there is always a new challenge available, or you can set up all your mates on your own favourite game and give them a damn good thrashing.

We played Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty 2 and Race Driver 2, and each of these worked extremely well.

The gameplay was smooth and without glitches, something relatively unfamiliar to me from my online gaming experiences. The microphones on the headsets allowed us to rub salt into pixellated wounds, or just shout favourite war film quotes like "Stop calling me Barbara."

An hour on these machines flew by and eight people with a range of experience all had good fun with the games, thanks to the help of the Plan B guys shepherding us through.

It was easy to get into it and would be perfect at parties for children aged 12 up to adults. But for more experienced players, there are complex games, top quality graphics, and enough consoles to get a really good fix of your best game and your (soon to be ex) friends over Christmas.

They also do corporate days, and team-building exercises too. Yeah right. FIRE AT WILL.

Telephone: Andy Keyne at Plan B Gaming on 07736 298961. www.planbgaming.co.uk

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