Sleeping Through Means Games

You might think the challenges of having a baby are greatest in those first few weeks, and that after you’ve figured out how to keep a small person alive, you’ll be able to go straight back to your previous routines.  Nope.  Do you hear that crazed laughter?  Yeah, that was me.

New challenges continually present themselves.  Keeping baby entertained, or calming him when he gets mad.. such as when his hardest efforts to crawl only result in him moving backwards across the carpet.   Keeping baby contained.. not only out of danger, but out of the cat food too!

I thought I would be back to the whole gaming and blogging thing fairly quickly.  I wasn’t prepared for how much of my world my little guy would take up, and continue to take up (though I wouldn’t have it any other way <3 ).  There’s also something about spending too much time on Facebook and Reddit.. easy to drop in and out of, especially towards the end of the day, but after a while the diminishing returns leave me even more drained.

However, there are two magical phrases that have relevance here: “getting in a routine” and “sleeping through”.

We’ve achieved the first in terms of bedtime, freeing up some time in the evenings, and had partial success with the second, which means I have a bit more energy and enthusiasm to do something instead of waiting till a socially acceptable time to go to bed!  Sleeping through means games 🙂

In the last week I’ve completed Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, run through some Adventure mode and Rifts with friends, and re-subbed to WoW ahead of the latest patch.  Oh, and started writing again.. we’ll see if I can keep it up, shall we?

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 🙂

Battle for Mount Hyjal

After completing Black Temple a couple of days back, we decided Mount Hyjal would be next..

Part of the Caverns of Time, this area exists in a kind of bubble in time, with Archimonde trying to steal power from the World Tree.  I’m told this ties in a little with the Warcraft III storyline.. which I have yet to complete.  I need a bubble in time!

In the first stage, we found ourselves in an Alliance camp, with Lady Jaina Proudmoore waiting for us and plenty of Alliance troops standing around.  Talking to her set off the event.. and the first wave of zombies appeared.  Once we killed them the next wave appeared.. and in turn they were followed by more waves, including Crypt Fiends and Abominations which I imagine would have been harder if we were lower level.

There was only just enough time in between rounds to loot.. hoping for random interesting drops 😉

After eight waves, the first boss appeared: the lich Rage Winterchill..

Our tactics here were just simply “hit him”.  That was fine until he started freezing us in place and putting down a painful Death and Decay!  Once we know about that those of us who could, kept out of range.

Following his defeat, we had more waves of zombies, and I switched to using mind sear as there really wasn’t any healing to be done, and I wanted to help kill.  As before there were several waves, which were easy for our little group 🙂

The boss after this wave was the massive demon Anetheron.. we had pulled back into the town so the Alliance guards would help us.  Just as well we did.. his attacks involved putting us to sleep and then summoning Towering Infernals.. I quite honestly spent more time asleep than awake!

One of the group decided to switch to his Warlock, as he wanted to grab some of the gear drops.

While he was away, we went looking around the demon area.. after getting rid of the Abominations on the way in, of course.

I love the buildings.. especially the Slaughterhouse with the spikes on the upper ring 🙂

We made a few friends when we got too close, but fled on the bike rather than take them all on!

The next stage involved the camp being over-run with demons.. Jaina teleported away with all her Alliance troops, leaving us all to run away up the mountain.  At the top of the mountain was a Horde encampment, with Thrall waiting for us..

As with the previous area, waves of zombies started to enter the camp.. however this time, some of the waves brought gargoyles from different directions, which made it a little tricky since there were only four of us.. and then three as one of the group temporarily disconnected!

Following the ‘trash’ waves, Kaz’rogal appeared.. a massive guy with a massive sword..
Our Orc Warrior, Vorlak, looks like a mini-pet standing in front of him 😉

This boss took a while to kill as he had a lot of health.. but otherwise he wasn’t hard to fight.. no putting us to sleep, or silencing the mage or myself.

Our Warlock went to bed as it was getting late, but we decided to carry on with the next waves of trash mobs, as the raid was going to reset by the following evening.  The gargoyles and frost wyrms were no problem, but when it came time for the boss, it was a different story.

The fourth boss was Azgalor..

We didn’t last very long.. although otherwise manageable, he applies Doom, a debuff which kills a player and spawns a demon in their place.  This debuff is unavoidable.. which means we need to kill him before he casts it on each player.. clearly we weren’t going to be able to do it with only three of us, so we decided to call it a night there.