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.

So, now I’ve got them both here, but I’ve been afraid to commit to the PS3 version. Mrs. G has been busting my agates overtime about spending money, and even I question the value of having another set.

So, with that said, what do you guys think? Is it worth it to have two rooms going? Will they both be full? If there was only one, will there be a line?

Let me know what you think in the comments. I will probably have to RMA this soon.

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.

So, why “rant”?

Because the whole “band” setup is about as idiotically cumbersome as anything could ever be. Here, you can’t have a band without each member having their own Live login. Even if you did have that, starting the game with the right people on the right instruments with the right “rocker” avatar takes a frickin PhD.

I was seriously jonesing for the pure simplicity of Guitar Hero I, where you just put in yr dumb name, and then started your career. You picked a character and played the damn song, with nothing more to it. I am sick of all this personalization crap, just let me play the game!

I guarantee this is going to be a major cluster when we start playing at the Bunker Parties. It was nigh impossible starting a game at the MTV Rock Band Tour Bus, and that was being run by Rock Band professionals. How is it going to be at a BP where the collective IQ is about 14?

Oh well, I guess I better spend the next two weeks trying to figure it out.

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:

2) A number of house cards equal to the player count are drawn and laid out on the table for auction. (There are eight in the picture below to give you an idea of what the cards are like.) The number on the house card defines it’s relative value. There are 30 houses, with the values 1 – 30. 

Players bid on the highest valued house in the auction. Bidding continues until a player passes. At this point that player takes the lowest value house left, and throws half of the bid amount (rounded down) to the bank. The winner of the bid takes the final, and thus highest valued house. This entire bid amount is thrown to the bank. The winner of the bid draws another set of houses and is given the first bid. Play continues this way until the house deck is depleted.

3) A number of Check cards are drawn equal to the player count and laid out on the table. There are 30 check cards valued from 0 (Void) – $15,000. There are two of each amount.

In this phase, each player picks one of their houses and lays it face down on the table. When all players have put down their house, they are revealed simultaneously. The player with the highest valued house gets the highest valued check. Next highest house gets next highest check, and so on. As you can see from the checks above, the highest valued house in this set would get $15,000, and the lowest valued house would get absolutely nothing.

Play continues as with the house cards, stopping when the check deck is depleted.

4) Finally, the check amounts are tallied and and added with any coins the player may have left from the auction phase. The player with the most money wins.

I must admit, I remember very little about playing, other than I lost… badly. Z, the new Boardgame Lord won handily. I barely kept up, and half of the time couldn’t figure out who was getting what cards. I just let everyone else take over.

I like this game for it’s speed and ease. Theoretically it will be a good opener. I don’t know if it really sparked anything with the group though. (Possibly due to the fact that I ambushed them with it in the first place.) 🙂 Will I play it again? Definitely! Will anyone else? Not so sure about that one.

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:

1) Take one of the three “Market Stalls”

2) Build something from the quarry (that pile of stuff on the right):

To build things, you assemble resources that you acquired from the market stalls on previous turns. For example, to build a Column Wall you need 1 Artisan, 1 Wood, and 1 Stone.

There are two versions of each kind of resource, clean and “corrupted”.

Here are the two versions of the Lapis Lazuli resource. The one on the left is clean, the one on the right is corrupted.

For every corrupted resource you use, you acquire a Corruption Amulet.

Corruption Amulets are immediately deposited in your “Pyramid of Corruption”.

As you build pieces of Cleopatra’s temple, you are awarded Talents.

Each piece has a standard Talent payout, as well as modifiers. For example, when you build a doorway segment, you get an extra talent for each Column Wall connected to that doorway. These modifications force you to think carefully about which segment you build, and where you should place it.

As each type of piece is completed, Cleopatra moves closer to the temple. On the fifth completed type, Cleopatra reaches the door, and the game ends.

At this time, each player’s corruption is revealed and tallied.

The player or players with the most corruption, is fed to Cleopatra’s Crocodile, and immediately loses!

From there, the player with the most Talents is named the winner.

In our game, VitaminZ, who had spent the day bragging about how corrupt he was going to be, was squeaky clean. He made it through several rounds of building without any corruption cost at all. Then, he went on a rampage, getting about 20 corruption in the course of two turns. The rest of us played it cool, not really revealing how much we had collected. In fact, I was totally surprised by each player’s tally.

The only rules problem we had was related to the Column Walls. There are only nine, but the temple looks like it needs eleven to be completed. What we found was that the two spots on each side of the doorways do not, in fact, can not be built. Scoring modifiers start on each side of the temple.

In the end, Marcus had as much corruption as Z, and both were fed to the crocodile, even though they had tons of Talents. (Hee hee hee!) I came next, but was safe.

Unfortunately, sneaky bastard Red 5, had amassed a ton of Talents of his own. and won the game by four or so.

I didn’t mind losing… at least it was fair and square, unlike other sessions that I am still bitter about.  

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

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf2-ekPaMgE]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TzCFrhzbu0]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrHvPGosVaw]

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:

And… I’m still wondering what to do with Pottse’s blood. Yeah yeah, eww gross, etc.

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.

While all of this excitement was going on, Pottse sat and played Portal from his stopping point of Level 15. He finished in time for some Taiko Drum master. I was very glad to get it out there.

Amazingly, there does exist someone on the North American continent who can finish a song in Beatmania. These guys ended up shredding songs on hard mode. I have finished 1.5 songs on easy.

Zertz was played. I have no idea what happened. I coerced them into playing and ran. This is the type of game for me to get hella pwned on.

Then Dystopia really started in earnest. I managed to sit down for about two 10 minute sessions before getting up to do something or other. When I came back, my seat was always gone. Time to expand the lan!

Once Singstar kicked in, it didn’t stop. Since Pottse left early, Reebs had to stand in as attention whore of the night. The highlight of the Singstar festival was Reba and CW’s rendition of “Fallin'” by Alicia Keys. This was stored digitally, and will be deployed at a politically opportune time.

Vitaminz and CW

Finally, the Dystopia game broke, and the players oozed into the theater to watch the continuing Singstar saga in a glazed-over zombie stupor.

At 4am, I did the unthinkable, and actually had to shut down the party. I hated doing it, but I knew there would be kids running around in the early AM, and Mrs. G, who never made it down to the Bunker for whatever reason would be in a vindictive mood.

Now, we wait for Rock Band, and then all hell breaks loose!

Check out the slideshow for more excitement.