Bunker Project Log

The dizzle was set to start at 5, and I should have been turning things on, but was instead framing and hanging the pictures that Mrs. G had composed and printed as 18?x24? posters a year before. She had given me a rage-saturated earful about the fact that I hadn?t done anything with them since I first attempted to put them up.

What Mrs. G wants, Mrs. G gets, so they were displayed in all their glory, with about 5 minutes to spare.

Stub arrived first and waited for me to sync all my controllers to the new 360. Ingenious of me to forget that part. Within minutes Papergirl (who has been gallivanting in Redmond so long that I forgot her old nerd handle) arrived with her sister. Somehow I got those sweet innocent things to play a completely sociopathic round of Pain. The new movie studio environment didn’t seem to be a hit, although the Hoff model was semi-interesting.

By now everything was working and more dorks were arriving. It was decided that it was time to fire up Left 4 Dead.

As Pottse remarked, “This Bunker Party was weird”. What he meant by this was, there was very little Rock Band, no SingStar at all, and although the LAN got play, the showcase this time was the Analog room.

First up was a lot of San Juan. I had tried this out for the first time earlier this week, so was glad to introduce it to a few new players.

Of course Pandemic was played all through the day, with even Mrs. G playing. There was at least one win, but I don’t know what the final tally was. (I am aware of some flagrant rules violations, but the offenders will receive their karmic punishment eventually.)

As usual, I spent most of my time in the Analog room, but from my brief glimpses into the Lan room, here’s what went on:

Prey – I started things out with Prey Multiplayer running on each machine. I don’t know if more than three people ever played simultaneously. If anyone knows, speak up on the comments!

Tron – Pottse was clever enough to dig this up while I tried to get Team Fortress 2 running. From what I could tell, the game was full with 4 teams of 2 players each. What sucked was, the game isn’t smart enough to point the player away from the wall when the game starts, so the few games I played, I was constantly spawning in an alcove facing the back wall!

Boom Blox drew a constant crowd:

As people trickled in around 3pm, the easiest thing to do was start with Boom Blox. For those that don’t know, this is Spielberg’s first real entry into the video game space. Whether or not Spielberg was intimately involved in the creation of the game, I can’t say. What I can say is, this game is awesome!

Here is the official trailer:

Basically, Boom Blox boils down to three types of game play: Throwing stuff, Pulling Stuff, and Shooting stuff.

I spent so much time playing board games that I never got any pictures. Thus, I was only able to capture the aftermath.

Beer:

The third game of Pandemic in a row (in which we got our asses kicked):

Besides the fact that there were a few people from BP’s of yore, there was the usual. Plenty of Blokus, but totally innuendo free (not enough drunk girls playing… just mature manly men.) There was some Singstar, but? I missed it. Lots of Rock Band. A screwed up game of Shadows Over Camelot (I lost 2 of the loyalty cards, which messed things up, and there was NO TRAITOR!)

There is a LAN for old men. Or, at least there is when the game is XMP, and the old men are myself, DangerKitty and Junior.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love XMP. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it is the most perfectly balanced multi-player game ever made.

The only problem with it is, it takes a lot to learn, and it is even harder to get anyone to play it.

Unless of course you challenge a whole LAN worth of young bucks to a three on seven game. (They took the bait.)

This one was big, and I was all over the place, so I really don’t know what happened. Here are a few things I do know:

Rock Band was constant, although somehow the PS2 version got booted from the DDR room. I don’t know if it even got played past some n00b training.

Pandemic claimed another victim with the Blue disease outbreaking all over the place. I didn’t get the feeling the game was as well received by this group.

Don’t get me wrong. I <3 Rock Band, a lot. I might even <4 or <5 it. I <3 it that much.

However, I think it is a way different tone than Singstar, which we usually end the BP with. (This could also be due to the hopefully temporary loss of Dirty and the Reebs, who were dearly missed.)

Not from the last BP… boo-hoody-hoody

So, what do you guys think? There certainly wasn’t the same level of hilarity and energy. It was more just… cool generation X detachment. But… maybe that’s just how I felt that night.

OMG… the Lan was packed. JayJian brought his lappy, which took us to 9. Had my server not crapped out a night before (!!!) I would have had my laptop out there, and possibly got us online. But I’ll have to leave that for another day.

I was very hesitant to get TF2, because I was sure 8 machines were not enough to be fun. I think I was wrong, but I’d be interested in what those of you who played at the BP, or those of you who regularly play 8-player TF2 games think.