Bunker Project Log

The Guitar Hero games all had forgettable intro videos, and I had never really cared. But then… I saw the Rock Band flick, which is hella-radtaculor to the max! Enjoy!

Everyone knows that I love my 360, and abhor the PS3, but the whole wired guitar thing on the 360 was really chafing me. So, I hedged my bets and preordered both a 360 and a PS3 version of Rock Band, hoping that I would figure out which one I wanted, or eventually just assumed I could have one in each room, and let everyone get a chance to play what will most likely be one of the most popular Bunker games ever.

Okay, so I’ve been hyping Rock Band pretty hard around here. I even bought two… one for the 360 in the Theater, and one for the PS3 to be moved into the DDR Room, just to keep up with demand.

I ripped it open and played it non-stop from 8pm to Midnight with Z and Mrs. G. I got 100s on almost all of the vocals on medium, Z got 96s on lead guitar on expert (the first time around too!) and Mrs. G, who has never been on a drum set in her life, is now a committed drummer, and was in the high 80s by the end of the session.

Before Bunker Horror’s showing of The Host (which was 3/4 Cool, 1/2 boring, and one more 1/2 too Korean for us ugly Americans) I suckered the crew into playing “For Sale”, an Uberplay card game that comes highly rated on the Geek (I would have put a link here if those weiners weren’t currently down for maintenance.)

Gameplay is exceedingly simple:

1) Each player gets $14,000 in coins:

When I first got the Wii, I set it up in the living room, which has a crappy TV. This was mainly because component cables were impossible to find, and I didn’t want to sully the Bunker with composite output anything.

Then, I got my component cable, and moved it to the theater. The problem was, I never had time to play it anyway.

It didn’t really get used until I got smart and moved it to the DDR Room. It was perfect there. People play it at the parties, and there is enough room to swing your arms around for Wii Tennis and whatnot.

That was before Super Mario Galaxy. I am a huge Mario fan (stuff it, you Sonic-loving douchebags), so I knew I was going to be on it, and that meant it was time for the theater again. I dug out my second Nyko Wii Wireless Sensor Bar which I had been saving for just this occasion. I highly recommend this for anyone with a projector and a Wii.

Looks like I need to dust.

What I was really excited for was Co-Star mode. I had read comments from Miyamoto that he “finally got it right” with coop. I was intrigued.

So, Mrs. G and I sat down and tried it, and it was a blast! It literally turns the standard platformer on its head. You will spend a lot of time “upside down”. Gravity changes in different parts of certain maps, even the movement from area to area is awe-inspiring, launching you from end to end with the shake of the Wiimote.

What is so great about Co-star mode? Well, although Mrs. G likes FPSs and Dungeon crawlers like Baldur’s Gate, she hates platformers. Particularly jumping puzzles and anything requiring timing. In co-star mode, player 2 uses the Wiimote to aim a star cursor on the screen and loot star bits. (Mrs. G absolutely loves looting.) Once you get past that, Player 2 can freeze enemies by hovering the cursor over them, as well as fire star bits with the B trigger, thus making most kickable, like a de-shelled Koopa.

In short, co-star takes a platform game and removes all the frustrating stuff for the wife, or the itty bitty kid who still hasn’t mastered the complexity of jumping. It does this while giving them just enough power to make a difference in how the rest of the game is played.

Here is a Youtube video of Co-star mode in action   

If you have been looking for a good coop game to play with your non-platforming missus or pre-gamer kid, this is it!

I finally grew the stones to upgrade to Wordpress 2.3 (2.3.1 actually.) You’ve also probably noticed the new theme (unless you are one of the RSS reader types.)

With this, I’ve started on the long list of things that have been bugging me. I’ve put Tanga up on the left, because those ginormous Adsense ads aren’t doing jack for me anyway. I tried adjusting my permalinks, but that is causing me trouble, so I’m back to the old-school p=xxx crap.

Eventually I will get to fixing the navigation, and making it more readable and all that jazz, but… I’m only guessing at what to fix. Do any of my 2 loyal readers have suggestions?

This would be a great time to test my fancy new Subscribe to Comments plugin. (Special thanks to Dr. Faulken for making me aware of it!) Make sure you tick that checkbox when you comment, fellas! 

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I have a big wet one for Days of Wonder games, and I had been wanting Cleopatra and the Society of Architects particularly badly.

Luckily, Tanga decided to run it on the now infinite Tangathon so I snapped it up. Amazingly, on the day it arrived I was able to assemble a quorum of dorks (and Mrs. G) to come out and play.

And… upon explaining the rules, Mrs. G decided to run far far away. I know not why… they are easy:

On each turn, you either:

Here are some very dark videos of what a Bunker Party is like. I have the whole gamut here. Be prepared to squint.

As I mentioned in my Bunker Party 2007-11-09 writeup, I had to give everyone the boot at 4am. The u side effect of this was, there wasn’t the usual orderly cleanup that happens when we all collectively decide that it’s bed time.

The upshot is, I was able to capture the Bunker post-party. Here’s what it looks like:

The Wetbar

The Theater

Peripherals everywhere!

I’m not a drinker, so I may be square… but I found this on the lan this morning, and I just had to giggle:

The night started out with a lot of Guitar Hero III. I haven’t checked yet, but I have a feeling that quite a few gamerpoints were scored on my account. Yay for the new 360 wireless guitars!

I managed to wrangle a few suckers into playing Starfarers of Catan.

NatX and Stub dug through the Bunker Storage and managed to find “Ark of the Covenant”, a Carcassone variant that, according to them and Casper, was better than the original.