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.

SirKy arrived first at 5 o’clock sharp, which was good, because he found the football game. I had promised Timmah that the playoffs would be on, but what the hell do I know about pro football? I played two years in junior high, but that was enough for me.

Surprisingly, it filled up fast. Timmah appeared, and at some point Birry rolled in… which was a shocker. We are back to "Natting Out" because NatX Natted out. Suck that, NatX!

So now it was time for Tumblin’ Dice, which is hella fun. With the perfect mix of skill, luck, and smacktalk. Supposedly moneys changed hands, but I know nassink!

My fresh, and completely unplayed copy of Castle Panic made it to the table right away.

Luckily, I was not in charge of the rules, but we still made a game-losing mistake, by recycling the monsters back in to the monster bag. Unfortunately, killing all the monsters in the bag is the goal of the game, so we were quickly destroyed.

While this was going on, I convinced a newcomer, Belucci, and Bunker regular ?Ex-Intern? to play Risk Express. (I?m being pretty liberal with the nerd handles here, but they should know who they are. If I could ever get back on the LAN again, I would probably remember what Ex-Intern?s tag is!)

Castle Panic morphed into a quick game of Tsuro, which was perfect to draw in Very Metal and his very hip girly, who I will name? George, because I am hilarious.

I have to mention that hosting a board game party requires a certain amount of bullying. I swear, the average human would rather take a spike to the eyeball than play a boardgame.

Once the ladies finished Risk Express, they moved on to Monopoly Deal, which is a very fun card game. Just like Monopoly, it has major screwage, but it only takes fifteen minutes to play, so you don?t end up wanting your 3 hours back (and there are fewer broken bones.) Somehow Pottse managed to schmooze his way in.

Then Ticket to Ride appeared, for the first time in a year. I stumbled through the rules explanation and let them go. By the time I returned, another newcomer, Erica, had torn everyone up.

This led to a game of Quicksand, which I won for the very first time. (Probably because Mrs. G, the Queen of Deception, was nowhere to be seen.) Smink had a winning hand directly after me, but that just made him first loser. Burn!

As all this was going on, Jeng arrived bearing pizzas, and Jolli in tow. Jolli is a major Chess goon, so my crappy board game out. I think he won a lot, but I never got a final tally. All I know is, he didn?t play SirKy, which I desperately wanted to see.

  Then? tragedy struck. Twice. First was my ridiculous attempt at starting a ginormous game of Battlestar Galactica? at 11pm, knowing that it is 3 hours long? after having only played it once? and completely forgetting the rules. Second? Jolli spilled an entire glass of wine on the board.

I have no pictures, but the board seems fine now. All hope of playing the game was lost.

I tried to regroup with a lumbering game of Chinatown.

Jolli bailed halfway through with a ridiculous building layout (note the black tokens below). I don?t think he got it.

I tried to warn Smink and Jasper that Mrs. G is evil and was not to be trusted, but they wouldn?t believe me. She ended up totally sneaking up from behind and stealing the win from the crestfallen Jasper, and drained Smink?s resources down to last loser. (Now he knows how I feel.) I finished third.

By now it was 2, and for some reason we were compelled to play another game of Castle Panic. We won! But it was 3am at closing time, and the rodents were set to awake at their usually 7:30am, so I kicked everyone out.

The kids woke up at 6:45 by the way. D?oh.

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.

Left 4 Dead is a 4-player coop game, with an 8-player versus mode. In my infinite (and draconian) wisdom, I vetoed the versus mode and fell back to Pottse’s suggested L4D Race. The gist of this is, you start two coop games at the same time and see which team makes it through first.

While that was going on, Scene It was finally hitting the 360. I had bought it months on clearance at Target months ago (boo-yah!) but hadn’t found the right crowd to inflict it on.

In the Analog Room, I was trying to convince Red and Dirrty to play Yahtzee Free for All. Either it sucked, or it is impossible to enjoy playing anything other than Blokus with Dirrty. Thus… we played Blokus. I lost (for the very first time I think). Very Metal won. Innuendo permeated.

I have to mention that the Left 4 Dead screaming in the other room was hilarious, and gave us a new Bunker Party gem, spoken by the great Hman: “I need time to heal.”

(You had to be there.)

Next up was the long awaited first match of Star Wars Pocketmodels (pew pew). It was full of drama and suspense, and a massive amount of eye-rolling, bitching, and general sarcastic smuggery by Dirrty and BC (who could have just walked their asses home if they didn’t want to witness the event of the universe.) I lost. Barely (or maybe humiliatingly. Boo.)

By now, Rock Band 2 was back on the 360, Left 4 Dead was finishing, and Z was itching to be commander in Savage 2. This turned out to be quite fun. Game 1 was good (I was on the winning team.) Game 2 sucked (I was on the losing team.) Z and Seraphim played as the RTS mode commanders while the rest of us did their bidding.

Unbelievably, the DOTA plague appeared again, and I retreated to the Analog room for anything. I had hoped to start a game of BSG, but the fans in attendance were dropping like flies and… everybody had to go to work in the morning. Herein we find the real weakness of the Sunday BP.

Eventually, Mrs. G used her powers of telling me what to do and decided we would play Electronic Detective. (Acquired for her by me from eBay… awesomest husband evar.) This was her favorite game as a yute, and we were forced to enjoy it with her. It wasn’t bad, but very 70’s, and a little unintuitive. (It seems to have the processing power of a calculator, and definitely the display of one.) Mrs. G owned us all, and wore a gloaty face for the rest of the night. And week.

By now it was late (11pm… HA!) We decroded into a melange of Singstar Abba, Tsuro and a few lingering cursed games of DOTA. Guests were booted out the door at midnight. Unthinkable. 

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.)

Even Risk Express made an appearance! NatX is still awaiting his copy.

Galaxy Trucker was played for the third time, and really appreciated for the first. I have no pics, but here is a weird Youtube video of it showing the first phase of the game.

In a nutshell, you build your ship, then fly it through a card driven adventure, and try to make money from your journey. Probably better with alcohol.

I finally opened Blokus Trigon, and lost to Reebs. If I remember correctly, this is my first loss at any flavor of Blokus, boo. Regardless of my lack of victory, I think the game is less fun, since it inspires far fewer jokes, or perhaps we just haven’t figured them out yet.?

Citadels made it to the table, but I was too much of a spaz to finish it, as I needed to get to the Quake Wars game inside. Sorry Red and Reebs. Expect a full pictorial on this game later.

The highlight of the night was the Colosseum game that went long after the party was scheduled to end. I had a great time, but I had to wake up at 6 in the morning for some work stuff. Painful.

Reebs won… all by herself, with no help from anyone. Here’s her production of “Isis’ Revealed Secrets”.

… and the scoring track. I lost, by a lot (blue). Jester (green) was second biggest loser, and Pottse (red) was third. Seraphim (orange) came second. Notice that purple one all the way around the board at 104.

By the time we wrapped up, it was 1am. So much for this being a Daywalker BP.

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!

Surprisingly, everyone seemed to like this game, even with this massive fault.

Team Fortress 2 – Gold Rush

I was really looking forward to playing this, but I was deeply involved in a game of Risk Express with Red5 and Reebs. From what I heard, it was awesome.

Enemy Territory – Quake Wars

This one I demanded we play, even going so far as to shut down the currently running TF2 game. I love objective-based/assault/team games like this, and until Novalogic makes a successor to Joint Ops, this just might do.

Luckily, no one knew what they were doing, so we all equally sucked, but it started to come together by the third and final round. All I know is that Red 5 constantly used me as his personal spank totem for the last 15 minutes, and it hurt.

Here’s a decent video showing the full range of hardware:

I think everyone went away satisfied with the game play, and by now it was 9:45pm, 15 minutes before close. Or was it?

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.

In the basic throwing game, you have a tower of blocks, which you must knock down by throwing baseballs at it. You get points for each block you knock off.

In the Pulling type games, you have a tower, a la Jenga, which you dismantle piece by piece. You gain 5 points for removing a single piece, and lose a point for every other piece you knock out along the way.

A demo of pulling:

The shooting game amounts to target practice, and in my opinion should have been left out.

As I expected, Boom Blox was a hit, but I had no idea how popular it would be. Nothing else made it on the Wii that day (not even Mario Kart which Mrs. G lovingly donated to the cause, with a full set of four wheels!) Several people left saying that they had to buy it for their parents (the whole “adult” Wii thing is really cracking me up/freaking me out.)

For those looking for the game, both Circuit City and Target are giving away a $10 gift card with purchase this week. Buy it, you’ll love it!

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!)

So… yeah… that’s it. Another party that I missed. I’ve got to charge this deally up somehow. Look for excitement in 3-4 weeks.

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.)

I’ll spare you the gory details, because you don’t really care anyway, but the fogies won three of the four games.

I think DangerKitty got two or three of his lives back too. That game means that much to him.

Anyway, to the younguns: thanks for playing, it meant a lot. Special thanks to whomever it was who always found a way to be right in front of my raptor when I desperately needed a gutblow.

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.

Shadows Over Camelot made it to the table, and Stub was the Traitor. He also won over a team of five, all n00bs to the game save Mrs. G. I question the focus on the Grail quest, but who knows. I’ve lost every SOC game I’ve played.

Junior flubbed his chance to win the late night Ticket to Ride game, especially after all the smack talk. Luckily his buddy T took victory, and not Seraphim, who would have never let him live it down.

Blokus had a lot of play… but… there’s not much to say about it other than its amazing ability to engender sexual innuendo. (Particularly amongst the drunk.)

The night ended as all good BPs do, with Singstar. By then I was completely burnt, and probably sick, but Survivor with Reebs is always magic.

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.

In any case, it was extremely hard not to open up that second box upstairs. It’s still waiting to be sold on Craigslist, or put into service.

If I do ditch the PS3 version, the low-cost alternative is to buy the game-only PS2 version (which I have about 5 million guitars for, and about 3 million mics for) and hope for a decent and cheap aftermarket drum set. With that said, would it be fun with just guitars and the mic? I’d put it in the DDR room on the TV. It’s got three groovy wireless headsets for you guys to jam with in judgement free silence!?

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.

For my part, I saw a lot of JayJian’s demoman shrapnel… giggled every time I saw Tajrules as a heavy (always during my all too often death perspective)… and was happy when I scored a round winning capture, although I didn’t really realize that’s what was happening. Seraphim’s “but I had their intelligence (wah wah wah)” was pretty satisfying too. 🙂

On the technical side, did the maps ever start cycling? I must have spent an hour dicking around on Google trying to figure out why it wasn’t working, but went to Rock Band before I heard.

I must say, I still think Dystopia is better, and of course, I wish I could get you douchebags to play XMP, but whatev.