/yawn /meh 'The emotes of the lazy'.
Archive for the 'Talking to myself.' Category
20
Feb
11
Procrastinate.
25
Dec
10
christmas! omfg exciting
Ahhh the smells of kitchen goings on and the crinkling of paper from 1000 gifts, Swedish women whining about how loud Star Wars is on the DvD while they are trying to sleep/wake up and nobody giving a shite. Oh it’s nice. So while the day is going to be busy and full of food, chocolate, presents and food there is always time for a bit of pre-emptive blogging to finish up the Christmas thing. It’s been quite fun keeping track of Christmas with the advent calender and the movie watching, I would have preferred not using my DS to take the pictures but it’s a DS so I can’t really complain about it’s picture quality.
The Deathstar POS gunner didn’t shoot the escape pod ruining the Empires chance at winning the entire movie allready and Vader’s just captured Leia.
Speaking of movies. The list of Christmas movies was nowhere near completed, I have so many movies and so little time and many many other distractions that it was suprisingly hard to fit them all in, at least though I have saved them for next year. So the list I managed from my collection is as follows:
Hook, Patton, Groundhog Day, Chrimson Tide, Oceans 11, You’ve got Mail, Willow, Final Fantasy 7, NAVY Seals, And today I have queued up Star Wars IV, The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard. 12 movies out of something like…30 but that’s not bad considering it is an average of 1 every 2 days. I think I did pretty well and I can watch the other half of my christmas movies next year.
Iconic pose while looking at your twin moons oooh deep music and oh shit R2 has fucking gone.
Door 23 yeilding the BEST of the entire box as it has the most parts and requires that you think about how to build it. The tree, iconic Christmas and awesome LEGO.
“Mos Eisley spaceport, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villianary. We must be cautious.” – Obi Wan.
The advent Calender of LEGO everyday was awesome really despite that it’s for kids and people who really like LEGO and then the rest of us mentally inept types. Some of it was shite, even by “it’s for kids” standards, the shower for example or the outdoor table and chair set. I don’t see how that stuff is Christmasy or fun. The rest of it was allright though….oh and weird naked Santa, I can do without that aswell. The Helicoptor, Fire truck, Crane, Airplane and Bulldozer are probably the most popular parts of the calender due to the toy factor, though wtf do I know?
The train is complete and the battle for Christmas was underway. Santa kidnapped the women of the family, dad tries to win her back with a daring sword duel.
Han shot first. It’s another example of why Lucas blows at making movies. Han shot first in the original and is badass as a result.
One of my nicest gifts this year was this homemade badge. I have no idea where she found it but it's really awesome and sits on my Penny Arcade hoody.
So there is lot’s of food to do and lot’s of fun to be had, movies to watch and goodies to make my belly regret everything. A great Christmas for blogging aswell, really good fun 
BOOM! Alderan is owned hard.
Taking pictures with the DS then mashing them up quickly in PS and posting them on here blog sometimes gets pushed to the back because game playing takes priority. Naturally. The calender over the weekend got a bit weird.
So a couch and a shower turn up.
Yea so household stuff and whatnot is all very good if you have built a LEGO town or house and want the extra wee things like this that could go into your build. And even though this advent is not directed at me, I would have thought that a sofa and a shower were not really that exciting.
Naked
Naked Santa? naked Santa ladies and gentlemen. He is at least wearing what on a LEGO person is a black thong. I assume he is to use the shower from the previous day but otherwise he is a naked LEGO man with a brush. What do you do with naked Santa? leave shower gel and shampoo out along with the milk and cookies incase he needs a wash mid present delivery? So your kid wakes up early, opens the advent and gets naked Santa. It’s funny at least to me and I am sure kids thought it hilarious but it’s just weird in general.
Excellent.
At last REAL LEGO. The Bulldozer is awesome, it goes with the crane from earlier on and it fits in with the small HUGE LEGO stuff like the plane and fire truck. I think it’s great.
And we have the first part of our train for the train track in the dioramma picture that I still have yet to take, I will do when it’s all finished I swear.
And to prove my theory correct...
…here is the second part of the train. A nice Yellow truck for the train.
Being tired, cold and a bit ill proves to be a motivation destroyer. An aborter of motivation would have those life sapping qualities and use them against you. All of this and I still want to knock out a wee blog post about this great game. G R E A T game.
Having played Machinarium and Braid before the last 3 games in Humble Indy Bumble pack were a mystery to me and despite my reading of Rock Paper Shotgun 10-10 times a day I failed to recognise any of them. One of the articles they did write named one game as a Desktop Tower Defence style game. I like DTD, infact everyone I know likes it, so the first game I would try was this Revenge of the Titans. It’s a small download and a fast install so I was playing it within 5 minutes. The title screen and the old school music made my interest level go from “merely curious” to “uh huh”.
Nice title screen is nice.
It’s a decent title screen right? I think it looks awesome anyway. The company that made this game have a nice logo incidently, here is the logo.
Puppies with red glowing eyes should never play with rabbits.
It’s such an easy game to get into, just like DTD, and just like DTD it is hard as hell to get right. Plants Vs Zombies eases you in and helps you make better decisions by not pushing you too hard and too fast with the different types of zombies right away. I didn’t get that from RotT at all. Instead of going for the campaign mode I went for the Hectic mode and that is probably why I felt like the game really wanted me dead. The regular titan monsters are fine, but the more advanced ones can be such assholes. One of them would just ignore my turret fire and keep on going, I had to restart my game as a result. Despite the trickyness, it’s hard to stop playing….again like DTD.
3 modes so the repetition doesn't feel so repetitious.
In DTD the objective is to not let the alien/monster race get through your barriers of towers and lose your life points. Each monster you let through, costs you a life and you have only 20 life so if you make a big mistake, you are going to die fast. RotT’s objective is to avoid having the titans walk up to your main base and start attacking it. It’s a sort of city/factory building which houses your command and people…fuck knows really but it’s what the titans are out to destroy.
In DTD you collect cash to build turrets and such to defend yourself by killing the baddies, each one is worth a certain amount of cash, kill nothing and earn no cash. RotT’s has you harvest up these crystals with refineries which then earns you cash to spend on defences. It’s a bit command and conquer-ish actually. Manually clicking on the refineries when they flash ‘collect’ puts the cash into your account, then you use the menu to select what you want to build and then you palce it. Easy.
Home sweet industrial home.
Though because your cash carries over from one level to the next you have to know when to spend it and on what, so just like DTD, efficiency is key. So while it is a DTD style game, it is more managerial and so has much more going for it, in my opinion. DTD has this endless cycle of baddies in swarms and swarms with no end in sight, and your towers must be correct or you just might aswell start over again. RotT’s gives you a restart option for that stage and it also records your process in a series of check points so you can go back to a previous one and try to improve your game a little.
Made a bad managerial decision? go back and change it and see different results! If only life was as easy.
Turret batteries and their supporting modules are key to figuring out early on.
The fight is clearly the main part of the game but the managerial stuff is quite cool. Picking different research and following the correct path to some new technology to improve your defences. Keeping an eye on your cash flow and worrying if you can afford a good set up in the next stage, can you afford that new tech just now or should you wait?
If you can manage the cash and what you are researching is affordable without crippling your next setup, then you only have to manage how to set yourself up. Which takes some doing as many titans do different things. There is one who is impervious to your regular ammo, one who bounces around quite a bit making gun placement a nightmare and then you have big nasty ones etc etc. Having the right setup is important.
"PEW PEW PEW!", and they were all like "oh no we're walking into a trap!", and I'm all, "PEW PEW!"
I have these small robots that come out of a factory every 9 seconds or so, and while they are entirely rubbish at killing the titans, they are awesome. I also like my Blaster cannons because I’ve researched cooling and ammo systems, so they not only shoot more often, they have more ammo AND they reload themselves. I’ve also just aquired a laser gun, but I’ve not tried it yet. So far the options for defence are pretty awesome and fun, and funawesome.
omg achievements!
Like all games these days, it feels the need to reward you with achievements. Some are pretty cool, like the Nuke ‘em from orbit one, though only because it’s an Aliens reference and Aliens is an amazing movie. Otherwise I quite like keeping track of the things I’ve done in a game, despite probably not remembering when or why it happened. Achievements are fine but the same ones keep turning up in our games so often that I don’t make the moment memorable in my brain anymore I guess, though these are quite nice grave markers for gaming moments.
Some games have things like, “kill x amount” or “deal x amount of damage with____” and these are fine, but the random ones that you can’t plan for…now THOSE I can get behind. See the Team Fortress 2 achievement lists for a decent idea as to what I mean.
The Robot here delivers your current statistics, for those of use who are addicted to statistics I am sure you will enjoy them.
This game has bags of character, I like the artwork, I like the game play, I like the length of the stages and I like the management side of an otherwise simple idea. It’s great and it’s the 4th reason to buy the Humble Indy Bumble. 1 – Braid, 2 – Machinarium, 3 – Giving to Charity, 4 – Revenge of the titans.
The weird dude from teh office comic...what's his name...DILBERT! this is his future son delivering research reports.
Last night was a bit of rush to finish up. First Valve make me buy the Killing Floor bundle and then the Humble Indy Bumble comes out and I have to buy that aswell, all of that while managing EvE (yes that EvE), explaining everything to my missus, trying to finish up to get to bed, getting a quick blog post out about the bundle, finishing up the pictures down hereVVVV. It was all so exciting, no wonder I didn’t get a decent nights sleep.
Soooooooooooo the last couple of days yeilded these in LEGO.
Woman on a Clementine. It's art, pay me lot's of money.
The last family member arrives in the form of the Mom with a baguette. At least I assume she is the last one as most typical families in this sort of thing are 2 males 2 females, a dog and/or a cat. The fire truck though is awesome because it’s honest and simple just like the airplane a few days ago and the crane all the way back at the start of December. A fire truck represents the staple of christmas presents if you have ever seen an old christmas book or a Disney christmas thing. There is always a fire truck. This calender is awesome but then we get things like todays.
IKEA furniture outdoors table and chairs with lamp.
Here we are given something to be used outside of the house amiright? It looks like an outdoors type of table becuase that malp really overtakes the table and no family is eating around that. Especially with only 2 chairs, and speaking of the chairs. They are on the ground, directly, so how the hell does anybody use the table? It would be at head height or at least the shoulders making it impossible to eat correctly. And the chairs are an awful colour.
What fucktastic piles of awesome have we here?
EVERYBODY should be buying this and here is why:
- It’s Christmas so if you are short on gift ideas, this works wonders. The gift option is at the bottom of the page, just check the box. If it’s even just an extra, like a digital Christmas stocking present.
- You can pay what you want and you can customise your payment so it goes to the developers, charities and Humble Indy Bumble system. So you have control!
- The methods of payments are universal and easy.
- Braid is by far one of the best games going so it’s worth paying what you want alone for this.
- I dunno who said it but in Home Alone 2 your boy Kevin is told that Miracles count for double at Christmas so do people in need of charity a favor and spend a few of your currency on this AWESOME deal that is practicaly free anyway.
Getting movies in can be quite the task especially if you are not wanting to concentrate on the TV whilst doing other things. However I have been very diligent and stricter with my viewing schedule this year, so that has helped. I’ve also managed to get a few more off of my list than I did in the previous year and we are only half way to Christmas. That is dedication to the cause.
6th – Crimson Tide, Oceans 11 (the George Clooney + Brad Pitt one), You’ve Got Mail. 3 in 1 day which is how I spent that day off. Crimson tide is a terrible movie and a poor mans lame imitation of The Hunt for Red October. You’ve Got Mail is great.
7th – Watched nothing because work got in the way.
8th – Willow.
9th – Final Fantasy VII : Advent Children. (The greatest video game movie ever from the 2nd best game of all time.)
10th – Again watched nothing because work likes to stop things like that.
11th – Navy SEALs. Terrible terrible movie but awesome.
There are some movies that I must watch but only at a certain time of the season, which means the last 4 days. I try to save them for that time but allready Willow has been seen because I couldn’t resist. It’s not even that great to be honest but its a kids adventure movie written by George “Jar-Jar Binks” Lucas afterall.
It's the log sled!
The log sled, cart, whatever it is, represents the thought I have been having for awhile now.
The 2nd door of this calender housed a boy with a sword, he even came with a backup sword to dual weild if he so wishes. Now we get this log cart which is just an excuse to put a fucking axe into the calender. It’s the LEGO representation of an American slasher Christmas movie isn’t it? This LEGO family are canibals who live in a cozy log cabin out in the woods and when LEGO people come to get warm, or require help for their car or whatever they kill and eat them. That is why the dog has 2 sausages! it’s LEGO person meat!
This theory might also explain the abundance of the emergency services on the box dioramma.
11
Dec
10
Everyday LEGO.
Christmas LEGO each morning doesn’t really get old. I’m not so bothered what is behind each door, nor am I really bothered what will happen to the toys after Christmas time but it’s more interesting to me to open a door and not know what’s behind it. Working for a living, paying bills and being a miserable cunt doesn’t really leave room for pleasant suprises, this calender gives me mine…it also let’s me know what day it is, handy. Getting a chocolate each morning as per normal advent calenders is allright but it’s now a bit old especially as the calenders here in Sweden have DISGUSTING chocolate. It’s not even real chocolate, fuck that.
Day 8 is vastly inferior to day 9.
So day 8 is a dog with sausage’s to eat. Everything I am getting is shaping up to be a christmas scene in a house I guess…but a few days back I got a woman with a cat, so, does the dog get sausages for christmas because he’s kept outside so as not to eat/kill the cat and the sausages are like…sympathy gifts? I dunno, I think about this a bit too much. And day 9 is an airplane, which is probably the first GOOD LEGO so far, simple in design and basic enough to just be fun.
The smaller man wishes he were as tall as the giant man.
Day 10 was what I assume is the father of this family I am collecting each day. He has brief case which is the toy symbol of his job, I like to think that he is anything but a care salesman, but with the extra hair you get in the small packet I can only assume it’s a toupee and his green jumper+tie combo can only mean bad taste so let’s just assume he is a car salesman but we are hoping for something else. And day 11 is a fireplace, because what is a Christmas scene without a fireplace?
09
Dec
10
Christmas in the old world!
Tis the season to go to your friends house’s and pretend you’re a god, a Chaos god infact. Revel in the destruction of helpless populations, the ruin of fertile lands and then kick back together with a warm mug of ‘Glögg’. There is never a better time to play Chaos in the Old World than right now, and why? because people play more board games at Christmas which is a fact and if you think differently you are very wrong indeed you failure. It’s cold outside incase you didn’t notice and likely you have snow up to your knees and icicles on your car and house so why bother going outside unless it’s to go and play games with your pals.
So Chaos in the Old World is the greatest board game made so far. It’s a 4 player game ideally but do what you want, we’ve played it with 2 players each taking 2 gods and we’ve played it with 3 players and left the extra god off the board. You could even have teams if you wanted, I don’t really care how many people you play it with but if you play it with 4 players it’s more fun and know this, it IS the greatest board game.
Khorne tests the waters of the Tzeentch stronghold in the Badlands
The lovely girls that I live with bought me CITOW for my last birthday, bless them. I’d watched a video review of it from a fellow Scottish guy called Robert Florence and as his accent is much stronger than mine and as it was quite funny I showed them the video. I probably went on about the game a few times…ok so I went on and on about how it looks amazing and the hints stuck with one of them at least, and thus I now own it.
I forget how many times we’ve played this, generally it’s the game people want to play if we are going to play games. It’s length doesn’t seem to bother them as most games take anywhere from 2 hours to 3 depending on anything such as rule explanations, advice and general chatter. Nobody has left saying, “It’s allright, could do with being simpler”, or just some plain old shite like, “That was the fucking worst game, 2 hours it took? I want them back”.
The first major battle takes place, Khorne sends in the Bloodthirster to start some shit with Nurgles Great Unclean one who had been stinking up the place.
The rules seemed a bit, daunting at first. You open the book and theres heaps of things to learn and then you realise that everyone essentially takes their turns at the same time and that a turn is like 6 phases long and you’ve got a great big checklist of things to look for on each one. The thing is, it’s actually very very simple and easy to explain and understand. The easy to explain part is vital to those who want others to play their board games as explaining some complex game mechanic is a fucking nightmare especially if you’re explaining it to people who are perhaps not exactly into it. Thankfully CITOW is not one of those games.
I’ve managed to explain the rules in English with broken Swedish thrown in, and done a decent enough job that we have 8 other people we can play the game with who perhaps only need a short revisement of the rules on the next time they play. So, not so scary afterall.
What is it with Khorne? He just starts fights on anything and anyone, doesn't give a shite about your plans or your feelings, no, just BAM! hits you in the face and takes your blood.
The 4 chaos gods were randomised for our game here, and in true chaotic fashion nobody got the one they wanted but strangely we got each others. That is…wait that makes no sense, I mean, of fucking COURSE we got each others…no I mean that I got my missus favourite god and she got mine, the dude’s whose house we were at got his wifes favourite god and she got his. Ok does that make sense…aye it does ok let’s move on.
Khorne places the first demon/cultist on the board and then everyone places theirs in turn but ultimately you stay the fuck away from Khorne to deny him victory conditions. So being Nurgle, the dude was positioned on the populous regions anyway because his victory conditions means he has to bring disease and plagues to the populations of the old world. The missus took one corner of the map but only because warp stones were abundant there which Tzeentch needs to perform evil magic, and I took the closed off (but also trapped) top corner to plot my perverted plans as the god Slaanesh.
The game pretty much looked like Khorne would win throughout the entire game. Running away from her viscious BLoodletter demons only helped the situation a little but we had to contend with your own victory conditions and various random effects from the Old World card deck, it’s not easy being a victim of blood letting. Khorne was infact on the very edge of winning 2 turns from the end and it all came down to a single die. 50% at winning the entire game and she only needed to roll a 4+ on a single dice (a single die? or a single dice? fuck it).
Awww Khorne doesn't like a roll of a 3 and so the game continues.
With the plan of an early win ruined byt he magnificant dice gods, every other player was back in the running for a victory. Infact as I saw it, every god could win on this turn…the very last turn of the game. The missus and her chaotic collection of Smurfs had the upper hand in several regions and had pretty much dominated the lower corner earning vast amounts of points each turn and getting more advancements on the chaos dial than anybody else baring Khornes seemingly easy 2 dial advancements per turn. In my head I saw Tzeentch winning, Tzeentch is great, the withholder of victory, the spoiler of plans, the ruiner of battle. She played it quite well, true to the way Tzeentch should be played. Employing lot’s of magic and using the many Acolytes to cover ground and corrupt the land.
Tzeentch flying ahead like some giant chaos bird with a great big head and beak..and staff...and, gangly like arms and stuff...aye.
Khorne was almost certainly going to win, during the battle phase she killed something and got the dial marker needed to push her to win. Nurgle could also have won but his “I’ll fight anything” brutish style of play got in the way of what he should have been doing which was spreading corruption to every corner of the world. He did infact in the last turn only need 1 more cultist in a region, 1 single cultist and he could have ruined it, claimed more victory points and gained a win but he finished on 48 points instead of the needed 50 to win. So close.
Despite my earlier confidence in a Tzeentch win, her only remaining chance at salvaging the game was to ruin everyone else’s chances. She did that by limiting Khornes attacks with protective magic and teleports, she removed her acolytes away from areas Nurgle needed more corruption to tip it into ruination. She lost some Acolytes that would have moved the dial a notch and gave her more points in the corruption phase but died fighting to the end. No victory would be had for Tzeentch today.
I managed to save my victory by having saved the higher point cards to last. The ‘ruined’ cards have a higher value on the latter ones, so the first region to be ruined has a lesser points value than the last one. In the last turn I put the toughened up Seductress’s out into 3 regions and claimed victory points for each one, including the highest values for 2. Slaanesh went from about 20-25 points to 55 points in a single turn and it was only from lying low and not being a pain in the arse to the other 3 players did I manage this. (Though it has to be said, I’m a terrible winner due to gloating).
z
The Old world looking a bit ruined.
After 2 and a half hours, a bottle of Coke and something like 2 Kilos of grapes later the game was over and thai take away food was ordered. And despite that nobody got the god they wanted, and had to adapt their playing style to a different set of rules and options, everyone enjoyed it and I think it was the best game we had yet. Playing with different people always gives you ideas on how you would do something or how they did it, and how they managed it. A different perspective in a game like this is valuable, with 4 very different gods it’s important to find other ways of using them. Creative ways and less obvious ways than you might find out for yourself.
Though, ruining a world and bringing its people to a grim and messy end is not exactly in the spirit of Christmas now is it?
07
Dec
10
Tis the season to make LEGO
Doors 5 through to 7. BAM! jsut like that.
Those are the last few days of LEGO advent. I’m starting to get used to these weird little things which is my brain rationalising my childish ways into something else. The Drum kit is quite cool, the small cat is quite cool and the piano is quite cool. Or Keyboard I guess to go with the Drum kit and god knows what else might be in the box. I’ll have to take a photo of the ‘in-house’ picture where you are supposed to lay all of the LEGO things out in your own dioramma, so that this all makes more sense. It has a train track on so I guess a LEGO train will be behind one or some of those doors.
Santa, helpless without his flying reindeer is caught by the police for breaking and entering. Or being drunk in a public place...say, a window ledge.
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