Oh hello there, Nerd Girl Pinups. It's been awhile since the last time we've spoke. I apologize heartily, and hope you'll take me back into your loving arms.

Last night, I took a much-needed nerd break and attended a LAN party held by my friends. As I've been working my butt off with some other projects lately, it felt good to just kick back and do some gaming, stress-free. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a LAN party is a gathering where people connect their computers together to play video games over a Local Area Network.

It works a little bit better than playing online, as playing over a LAN eliminates most of the network troubles that can sometimes plague your party. Also, it just feels better to have everyone playing in the same room; it's definitely a little more social.

In my hometown, I've played the same game of road hockey with my friends for years; this was a way to have some fun on our neighborhood street while exorcising the aggression that little boys need to get out as they grow up. As I grew older, hockey became less of a fixture; it's a rare occurence that we play it at all, anymore.

But with this different group of friends, the LAN is the road hockey rink. We grab our computers, stuff ourselves into a basement and shout obscenities at each other while playing an assortment of games. Pizza is ordered, alcohol is consumed and usually we all manage to have a pretty good time.

Usually something will go wrong at some point in the night, like finding out that we've plugged six computers into a daisy chain of power bars (blowing the breaker on the house) or (like last night) finding we plugged the device that manages all the different computers into itself, not giving us Internet.

Gaming-wise, we'll usually stick to an old (and stable) favourite, Call of Duty 4. The game is sharing-friendly enough to not be an issue on different computers while light on the specifications to allow people without beastly computers to play. There aren't many "house rules": auto-assign teams when you join the game, and that's pretty much it. The randomized teams are usually quite horribly unbalanced, but sometimes you'll find a pleasant balance that leads to nail-bitingly-close games.

While there are some people that are ludicrously good at it, I, unfortunately, am not one of them. I like to make my own fun by throwing around smoke grenades onto the major objective points of the map, causing havoc and dystopia in my wake. It usually leads the better players cursing my existence, but hey, it's my fun too.

However, last night, me and three other friends found something that will make certain literary nerds excited: a complete Left 4 Dead 2 conversion of Helm's Deep from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

It was kind of a "you got chocolate in my peanut butter!" moment when we first booted it up; it's very important to mute the regular Left 4 Dead music in order to get the full effect of the soundtrack. I know this gets thrown around a lot, but there was only one word to describe defending the Helm's Deep walls with giant machine guns and chainsaws: epic.

This is where the LAN environment truly began to shine: instead of relying on in-voice communications, we found ourselves yelling bloody murder at each other, barking out orders and giving sit-reps as to the deaths off the "special" zombies. The fight for survival in one of my favourite movie environments (in one of my favourite movie scenarios) just made the experience all the more better. I'd recommend it for anyone who wants a unique co-op experience.

So let's hear it, NGP: what are some of your favourite LAN party stories? What games to you play? What systems do you use? Are there any house rules? Favourite party snacks? Let's hear em'!

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Matt Demers is a Toronto columnist and has been writing for Nerd Girl Pinups since 2008. You can follow him on Twitter or Tumblr.