Bulletstorm

I picked Bulletstorm up back in April, at i-42 after playing the first section on a friend’s PC, where Grayson and his group of ex-assassin-turned-pirates try to ram the General’s ship, the Ulysses.. and fail, crash landing on a planet filled with crazed gangs..

I finally got around to playing properly over the last few days, repeating the first section and then moving on to the planet where I came across the awesome Energy Leash!

I came to love this weapon when I found how easy it was to grab enemies from behind cover, dragging them to me and impaling them on nearby objects.  This also earned me Skillshots such as Pricked and Voodoo Doll.. and when I’d earned enough points, I discovered the Thumper upgrade, allowing me to fling all the enemies into the air.. this was more awesome still, and came in really handy when I found myself over-run 🙂

The Flail-Gun was also amazing fun, if a little sadistic a weapon.. two explosives tied together by a short chain, which easily wrap themselves around the targetted enemy for you to detonate at your leisure.. preferably near his friends to take them out too.  Normally I don’t really focus so much on guns, to the amusement and/or despair of those I’m with, but it seems the guns in this game are all rather fun.  Next up was the Boneduster, an insanely powerful gun up-close.. I discovered this just prior to heading into a miniature city in the Worst Family Fun Vacation Ever section, which meant all my enemies were up close!  Those who didn’t get shot by the Boneduster were kicked or whipped into surfaces which electrocuted them :>

I recently tried out the Duke Nukem Forever demo, and was disappointed by the fact you could only have two guns at a time, only changing them if you came across another on the ground.  Bulletstorm allows you to carry three, including the standard weapon, or four if you include the leash, with changes available at the Drop Pods.  So far, I’ve not felt that I’ve been limited.. maybe because the guns  are more fun to use, maybe because there are more enemies coming at you.. though I wouldn’t object to the Shrink Ray in here too 🙂

After escaping the miniature city, I got hold of the best weapon so far.. the MechaTon, aka “Waggleton P. Tallylicker”, a remote-controlled robot dinosaur which fired lasers from its eyes!

This section lasted longer than I’d expected.. many games don’t really let you play with the biggest weapons for very long, but this level let me kill lots of enemies and destroy rather a lot of buildings 🙂

i40, a little bit late

This post was supposed to make an appearance one week ago, after returning from i40.
However, we still have no internet at home (it’s coming up on four weeks now), and some personal stuff too which meant I wanted to spend the week curled in a small ball, not interacting with anything.

Enough of that, though – i40!

We arrived just before the rain.. a fantastic start to a weekend where the sleeping is mostly done outside 😉

That wasn’t the end of the ‘fantastic start’, however, as we were then excluded from taking our machines in till way after 6pm because the temporary structure wasn’t ready.. and then when we were finally able to get in, there was no internet.  With no internet, there was also no Steam..

The first game played, then, was Warcraft III, as it was one of the few games available which didn’t need an internet connection or updates.

In amongst those games was a go at the “Run, Kitty, Run” map: you have to run along a spiral path to the centre, avoiding the ‘dogs’ which kill you on touch.  It gets harder as you progress, as the paths are narrower, until there’s barely room to get past.. for the first time in many, many attempts, we actually managed to get to the end, where it seems the reward for success is.. to start again with even more dogs on the paths!

I was also introduced to Beat Hazard, thanks to another friend.  This takes any music track you own and turns it into a simple space shooter, very like Geometry Wars.. and it makes very bright, pretty colours.. *gazes*

You start off with space-trash to shoot, but as the track progresses you face stronger enemies which shoot back.  Fortunately, you collect power-ups as you go, which makes your weapons a little more useful.. as well as more colourful.. and there are also power-ups which increase the volume of the track too.

It’s another ‘unblinking’ game which probably shouldn’t be played in a dark room at LAN 😉

After playing this, Audiosurf made another appearance, and with it, a little competition going on in terms of the scoreboard.

Minecraft became a slight obsession for one friend..  this is a 3D sandbox crafting game, with a variety of types of block: wood, coal, etc, and strange blocky life-forms, the most interesting being zombies!  I had a brief go at the game a while back, but after spending two day cycles building, and two night cycles hiding in my buildings from the zombies, I then found my trial of the game didn’t have zombies.. durrrp!
It was admittedly quite fun watching huge piles of TNT go up, though, especially when it resulted in framerates of 1 or 2, or crashed the PC :3

In the run-up to i40, we picked up Borderlands, thanks to another Steam offer.  Oh, Steam.. what would I do with all my money if not for you?

Borderlands has 4 player co-op, which is great as I do like playing with friends.. but I have to say that I found myself confused by the weapons, as per usual in this type of game.   Having to pick up ammo for the weapon I was using, while leaving other ammo for my team just added another layer of trouble.. if I don’t know the guns, I’m really not going to know what ammo they use.

Despite this, I love the game, though I want to complete the game in single-player so I know what I’m doing, and don’t feel like I’m holding my friends back next time.

We also got a couple of games of Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising in.. trying out the Free-For-All mode which I really enjoyed, especially with high resources allowing me to just pump out units.  I think I’m improving on my tactics now, using the Techmarine to fit with my defensive playstyle.  FFA made a nice change, but I think co-op is still going to remain my favourite.

The last night of i40 turned into an all-nighter, with a foxy puppet, fits of giggles, a brief foray onto the rather disappointing Omegle, and later fits of shivers.. the temporary structure really wasn’t draught-proof and by 4am I was glad of fleecy blankets and two friends to hide between for warmth.  Next time I think I’ll be voting for a warmer and quieter hall, maybe in with the WoW players.. lalala 😉

LAN wouldn’t be LAN without a massive TF2 battle between CantFitMyN and Crazy/Inv, and so on the last morning we duly had our game, though there was no victory for CFMN this time.  Next time, maybe! 🙂