Homefront Multiplayer
I’ve played a few hours on Homefront’s multiplayer tonight, using the Ground Control playlist. Ground Control is about taking control of three areas on the map and holding onto them.. after a short while the fight moves along the map with another three spots to fight over.
As none of my friends own the game, this meant playing with randoms.. and well.. there really wasn’t much team-work to be found. Many players seemed to either find themselves a nice camping spot or just run straight into trouble, ignoring enemy drones which really need to be taken out if they’re not going to be used to mark up the whole team.
After some unsuccessful runs with the basic Assault loadout, I switched to the Sniper.
When playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with friends a while ago, I found sniping to be fairly successful on larger maps.. and Homefront’s maps are all a decent size. The risk of sniping, of course, is that you get accused of camping if you sit around for longer than a few kills.. add that to my general impatience for sitting still, and I found myself best off taking a few kills and creeping forward.. hoping the enemy weren’t able to just run around the back of me.
My favourite map is possibly Suburbs, as there are plenty of buildings to hide in, although it does mean plenty of routes for the enemy to sneak along too. I just wish I had friends in the game, so we could do more damage! After this weekend I suspect I won’t be returning to Homefront, instead going to Battlefield because my friends are there.
Muckbreath
A friend told me that Crocolisks in the City was up again, so I went to do the task and see if I could get anything interesting..
Muckbreath’s Bucket turned up in the Bag of Fishing Treasures!
Muckbreath is a little darker than Toothy, who I picked up recently 😀
Spring Rabbit
One hundred chocolates later..
There’s also an achievement for having your Spring Rabbit do what rabbits do.. this also spawns Baby Bunnies nearby 😉
i-42
Where i-40 was cold and windy, especially in the temporary structure we were seated in, i-42 was sunny and hot almost the whole way through.. 😀
I drove half the way down, with a death-grip on the steering wheel (I’ve not done very much motorway driving), past a ridiculous number of lorries and one place where an accident on the other side of the road caused our side to slow to around 10mph. Tim took the last part of the driving.. we were hoping to catch up with another friend at this point, as text messages had shown we were only 5 minutes behind, but with a stop-off at Sainsbury’s we were never going to make it. 😀
Check-in was again nice and quick thanks to arriving early, and instead of waiting around to take our PCs in at 6, we headed to the pub for food and drinks first.
All in all this was far better than the cold and wet start to i40 last year.. we hadn’t been able to go into the site as the internet hadn’t been set up for our temporary structure! Our group were seated in B1 this time, away from the loud and annoying people who think roaring for every reload is ‘atmosphere’. Although it was still hot, there was a balcony to escape to, and it was a lot quieter and nothing was being thrown around.. definitely going to be pushing for this spot next event.
One of the first games I played here was the awesome Portal 2, which I had started earlier but lacked the time to finish. Plenty of other people were playing, with some on co-op, so I had to get a move on to avoid being spoiled..
I loved GlaDOS’ malicious comments in the earlier part of the game, though I wondered how I was going to end up making a break for it as she seemed happy to test me endlessly. Wheatley was quite funny up until his change, which I think I should have spotted.. but I was rather gleeful when he turned GLaDOS into a potato even if he did still have me trapped.
The different coloured gels were a lot of fun. On my first encounter with the white goop though, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do and ended up covering as many surfaces as I could in frustration, before spotting the little ledge I was meant to go to. I loved evil Wheatley, especially when he tried to kill me in stupidly obvious ways.. 🙂
The second day of LAN involved a barbeque with the rest of our group.. we had the weather for it this time at least. I’m not sure if we’re technically allowed to have BBQs on-site, but no security turned up, so no matter 😉
We also took a look through the exhibition hall, where we tried out a few games on the Nintendo 3DS, including Dead or Alive: Dimensions, Kid Icarus: Uprising, and a Zelda game which made me feel quite ill trying to focus on the screen while moving it around to aim the catapult. While I love the idea, I’m going to be staying away from the 3DS.. if I feel bad after a few minutes use, it’s just not for me.
Aside from this, the only other real point of interest for me was the Demon stand, where they had an amazing car simulator running DIRT 2. The fastest lap was to be rewarded with a year’s free internet, and of course I came nowhere near the quickest time though I loved the experience. The seat, pedals and wheel come to some crazy price.. I think £24,000 was mentioned..
Elsewhere in the hall it was surprisingly quiet.. no freebies, and very little attempts by staff to draw people in to the various stands either. There were people playing on what might have been some kind of tournament, but with no real interaction, we wandered through and back out again.
There are usually a number of flyers on the desks, and this time there was a 50% discount for the EA Store. After trying out Bulletstorm on a friend’s PC, I bought both that and Crysis 2.. so much for not buying any more games.. 🙂
I made a start on Crysis 2.. but there were too many distractions to concentrate on it during the day and I was playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent when it got late. There were a few changes to the sections I’d seen in the demo, with a bit more puzzle in the form of the chemicals I needed to find and mix. The part where I had to avoid an invisible enemy in the water made me just as jumpy as when I’d originally seen it, which was probably amusing for those near me in our row.
Other games which saw some action were Beat Hazard on a friend’s computer while he played GRID on mine, some Killing Floor, an attempt at League of Legends (seriously out of practise) and a round or two of Unreal Tournament 3. I had also brought along my Xbox 360, so there was a quick look at Stacking, and a bit of the co-op Zombie Mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops, as well as an all-too-brief look at Homefront for a friend who hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe next time!
Tim made some use of his 30 day trial of WoW, though it was hard to tell if he was enjoying it or putting up with it for the sake of saying he’d had a go. I also managed to get a little bit of time in WoW, and started off collecting bits for the Noblegarden Easter Event.. there were plenty of bunnies hopping around, including a pet.. 😉
I also pestered a friend to show me where to get the rather interesting Venomhide mount.. a pet which turns into a mount!
Unlike my Warrior friend, I had no trouble in being poisoned the required number of times.. he had to take off all his gear and use the most useless weapon he could find, whereas I just hit the Ravasaur with the basket I was collecting eggs in 😉
Eventually I had been poisoned enough and I was given my own Hatchling to take care of..
Our last night of LAN included some non-gaming hijinks as one friend started falling asleep in his chair.. this meant he got plastic cups balanced on his head :>
There was no chance of an all-nighter this time either.. all too tired, maybe from the heat, and we headed back to the tents at around 4.30am.
The last day didn’t include the usual CFMN vs inv TF2 match; instead we had a big game of L4d2 versus.. for which I had to switch to Tim’s PC as my copy of L4d2 had managed to corrupt itself. Awesome game.. will have to make sure that we get more of this played from home too 🙂
The Crocolisk and the Fawn
A friend tipped me off that a pet was available, so I made a quick trip to Outland tonight to complete a Fishing daily.. which was a simple task of fishing in my home city for a baby crocolisk.. 😉
On my return, I was given a Bag of Fishing Treasures.. inside which was Toothy’s Bucket! 😉
This was my 75th pet, and so I got the achievement (Lil’ Game Hunter) and a present in the mail! 🙂
Seeking Potatoes – Defense Grid and Killing Floor
Defense Grid: The Awakening has a “Portal” Level.. the Aperture Science Center for Human Annihilation Studies! With two different core locations, this was a rather hard level.. the aliens very quickly took all the cores from my first base, then swarmed the second with a flood of tiny aliens which I was unable to stop.
My second attempt failed as I was beaten by the Crasher alien on the last wave.. in the end I took a friend’s advice and sold the towers which only overlooked the first, dead, run, so I could afford upgrades for the towers on the flat area.
After beating this level, I joined the guys for some Killing Floor.
We were killed off quickly in our first attempts, and I felt like I wasn’t helping at all, having not checked it out on single-player first. Areas out in the open seemed the worst, with zombies coming from anywhere, though in the enclosed areas they had the cover of darkness.
I started out with the Commando class, as it was recommended as the easiest all-rounder, but noticed that I was filling the xp bar for the Sharpshooter class mostly, so switched class. We turned the difficulty down, in the belief that the difficulty scales with the number of people playing, and after that things were a lot better.
As this is part of the Potato Sack Pack it has a slight modification adding GLaDOS to the game as the trader, with a few choice comments here and there 🙂
My first visits to the shop were a hurried glance at the screen before the timer ran out, so it took a few visits before I’d seen enough of the interface to know what I was doing and to start trying out new weapons. I should possibly be banned from the grenade launchers in this game as I managed to blow myself up twice.. I also tried out the crossbow.. I loved it when the enemies were at range, but once the zombies were in the room with me it was just too slow.
It was fast enough to take out the Patriarch in the second of our full games though.. very lucky as I was the last alive and had only 3 health! 🙂
Portal 2 ARG and Defense Grid: The Awakening
Portal 2 was supposed to be released on the 19th April.. however, an earlier release date was suggested over the last week, as a pile of clues have been discovered by fans dedicated enough to go looking for them.
I am not one of those people; while I love the fact they’ve done it, I don’t have the time or knowledge required to root around with codes, convert random numbers to images and access encrypted files. Seriously.. even if I had the time I wouldn’t even know where to start, nor whether I was even going in the right direction. Instead, I’m content to keep an eye on the Valve ARG wiki..
The Potato Sack Pack appeared on Steam last week, and I just took it as an opportunity to grab a few more cheap games, but it was another part of this rather clever play by Valve! The info gathered so far points to Portal 2 being unlocked when an unspecified amount of play-time has been reached on the various games in the pack.
There is also a potato-collecting mechanic involved, with collectible potatoes hidden in the games and elsewhere: one can be collected simply by joining the ‘nelipot’ Steam group. The ARG Wiki people have discovered that more potatoes increase the rate that the GLaDOS@Home bars fill up.. so really, the aim of this game is now: collect potatoes and play indie games 🙂
I won’t be idling in any games overnight, though.. while it’s mentioned on the Wiki as a way of adding the the cause, I consider it to be too close to cheating when the ‘aim’ is to play. I have similar reservations about using the login details posted for collection of potatoes as well.. I’m just going to play the games.
I was gifted Defense Grid: The Awakening on Friday: a tower defense game with a twist.. when the invading aliens reach your base that’s not it.. they steal a power core and attempt to leave the base with it.
Killing the alien results in the core being dropped.. it will try to make its way back to base but can be grabbed by another alien en-route.
The Meteor tower is my current favourite.. long-range, great damage when it hits.. though I like the laser too, especially when upgraded. 🙂
Hatchlings!
I was given another two pets today.. the Ravasaur Hatchling and the Darting Hatchling! 🙂
The Darting Hatchling runs away rather like the Mulgore Hatchling does, with a little cloud of dust at his feet!
Vorlak found these pets while fighting dinosaurs in the nude, as he tells me.. he is currently collecting mounts and now has over 70!
Numberswise.. I am now one away from the 75 mark, where I’ll get the Lil’ Game Hunter achievement and the Little Fawn’s Salt Lick reward 😉
Obsidian Sanctum
Tonight’s raid of choice was Obsidian Sanctum.. this was a return visit as we’ve previously been unable to beat Sartharion..
We’re chasing achievements as well as mounts and other loot, so again we started by killing the trash but leaving the drakes alive.
As in previous attempts, we were wiped out when Tenebron joined in as he hit our Paladin way too hard. In the end our Warrior went back into his tanking spec.. he was more able to take a beating to the face and we finally killed Sartharion and his friends off!
One of the prizes here was the Reins of the Black Drake, which was won by Vorlak to add another mount to his growing collection.
I won the Dragon Hide Bag, which means I have more room in my bags for random stuff 😉
After this success we headed back to Serpentshrine Cavern, to try and complete what we were unable to finish yesterday.
With an extra person in the team, the second phase of the fight with Lady Vashj was much easier.. we had less interference when passing the Tainted Cores between us and switched off Lady Vashj’s shield generators fairly quickly. Killing her after that was no problem 🙂
I also grabbed the Helm of the Vanquished Defender, bringing my collection of Tier 5 Priest Gear to Helm, Gloves and Leggings..