The Friday gaming has been picking up the pace lately. The catalyst seems to have been a discussion about lurkers, or rather less frequent forumites, and anything we could do to be more inclusive. This led to a few mid-week games which have had a pretty good turn out, and although I can’t see a direct link it seems to be bringing out some old faces. The other side of that is that with more people, something like thirteen at one point, we struggle to find games everyone can play. Either someone doesn’t have it, or some don’t want to play it, or there’s too many for it. It’s a relatively good problem to have though, and there’s nothing stopping us splitting between several games.
*Article contains no actual bad music.
It was an early start last night but we seemed to quickly attract a crowd. Bali was struggling with his headphones, which by his description seemed to have somehow eaten itself. We came to the conclusion that they were some kind of four-dimensional ourobophones, a non-euclidean phonoportal which would be summoning demons to Bali’s room. Before we started getting into metaphysics we decided it was best we started playing something. For want of a better option, and since we’ve had a few good games in recent weeks, we decided to start off with some Counterstrike Source.
We started off with a good long run of gun game. For anyone who hasn’t played, that’s where every time you get a kill you get a different weapon. We haven’t worked out if it’s supposed to be better or worse, but it’s kind of fun because it’s fast and chaotic. The server we were playing on had some very peculiar maps, which all helped along with the general ridiculousness of it all, as did the obligatory spray tag competition. Another thing which was apparently outrageous, but that I didn’t experience because I’ve configured CS:S not to, is the music the server was playing. One person described it as so terrible he wanted to pull his testicles off. Em suggested that it wouldn’t be a very effective solution as you’d still be able to hear, and that maybe by stuffing your testicles in your ears you would be spared. Seems pretty logical.
A convenient cross section of 5punky spray tags. Mine’s the wombat.
There’s an observation we’ve made about Counterstrike. If ever we played it, Prof appears. I’ve mentioned before that it’s his big thing, so we were expecting him. Since we were expecting him, and because we were having quite a busy night, everyone who joined since that revelation was declared as Prof. Until the real Prof turned up at least. We were also fortunate enough to be joined by old school 5punker-turned-consoletard Chickenz, and site owner FatherJack by the time we got tired of the manic shootery and switched to normal CS:S. The game became a little more sedate, the spray tags became a little sillier, and we decided to move on.
Earlier in the week some of the guys who hadn’t played before were introduced to our Game of the Year, Chivalry. Apparently it was a good game, so we found a low gravity server and gave it another spin. We barely need our own jokes in Chiv, it’s just hilarious on its own with the screaming and the team-killing and the jumping. We found a new mode too, capture the flag. That could have been quite entertaining, but it kind of killed the game because it was damn near impossible to kill the flag carrier with all the leaping about. At least not before someone swiped your own. We’d collected a few randoms by that point too and they were a bit too good. We had another round after that, a free for all where a lot of us seemed to decide fists were the way forward, but people had started to drift away.
Many crotches were punched.
There was some uncertainty as to what to play next as nothing really generated any enthusiasm. We almost went for Dota 2, which would probably have resulted in around half of us playing it, but in the end went for another Game of the Year, Burnout Paradise. Alas, and unusually, I couldn’t muster the energy for another bout of silly antics. I love Burnout, but after CS:S and Chiv I just had no energy for it. I listened in for a bit though, and the bad music theme seemed to reappear. Well, maybe not bad, but everyone’s sick of Paradise City if they’ve played any amount of Bumout.
So it ends on a bit of a bum note really, with me shambling off to bed relatively early. I think I’ve done pretty well sustaining the late gaming though, and with a whole seven hours sleep behind me – much more than I usually get at the weekend – I feel raring to go for Saturgames.