Scotts Birthday Weekend just passed and it was exhausting. The entire premise of the weekend was for Scotts 25th, we'd go to his place and just play various games to suit the moods. Naturally, we hit some snags.It all started Friday Night. I got home after work, had a shave because my beard was getting wild, a shower, and then made sure I had everything packed while I wait for Aaron to come pick me up so we could go to Scotts and we'd just stay the weekend.
So we hit our first snag. It got to about 8pm and Aaron hadn't turned up. Aaron expected to be at Scotts and prepared by 8pm, so we were getting worried. Turns out, Aaron was first on the scene to a Car accident at the end of his street. So he was held up and said he may not worry about coming around tonight.
Scotty organised with his parents to come pick me up, which was really nice of them to go a out of their way for me and Scotty. We packed up my stuff and off we went to his place to set up my stuff which included:
- Xbox 360
- Monitor
- Wargaming Miniatures, including Warmachine and Dystopian Wars
- Clothes
- A greenbag of Games and Gadgets
- Castle Ravenloft D&D Board Game
That was when we traded players. Richard went off to bed, and Aaron arrived with Mcdonalds in hand. We talked for a little while about the car crash as he set up his Xbox and TV/Monitor so we could play Halo Multiplayer.
Snag 2. Just that afternoon, I had picked up a copy of Halo Anniversary so that I could play Halo Reach Multiplayer with everyone. I knew we would play it at least once during the weekend, because Halo is Scotts favourite game EVER, and Halo Anniversary Multiplayer is supposed to be compatible with Halo Reach Multiplayer, as they both use the same system. It's designed to be that way.
But that's not entirely the case. If you are playing Halo Anniversary and your friend has Halo Reach, you can only play multiplayer with each other if A: Your friend has the Anniversary Map Pack for Halo Reach, so that you can play on the limited list of Anniversary Maps, or B: The player with Anniversary BUYS Halo Reach. An option available is for download at a price of just under $100.
That's a big snag. We tried a couple of different things, such as Installing Halo Reach to the console, swapping games between consoles, etc etc etc, and we got nowhere.
The other problem we had was Xbox Live Logins. At any one time, between three consoles, two Xbox Live accounts were logged in, which caused no end of frustration. Eventually we gave up and left it for Gavin to figure out, since he's the one who basically set up the Network within Scotts house. Turns out it was actually a router problem and Gavin solved it. The only thing he was worried about was lag, which I think I was the only person to actually experience it.
So I moved over to Aaron's console and we would just do splitscreen. Three Xbox Live Accounts were logged in, but it was just 2 consoles so it got through without hassle... if it weren't for the Matchmaking. We sat there for about a half hour getting three other people, then one, then none, then five, then none. No idea what was happening, but we gave up to play Ratchet and Clank All 4 One. Scott was apprehensive only because he thought the game was Splitscreen. That is not the case, I told him. It's a single camera that players all interact on.
So Scotty unwrapped the unplayed game, as he had been waiting to play it with someone (i.e. Me) and slid the game in. We waited until it finished installing, preparing trophies, loading the game, and then had a wonderful hour or two of Ratchet (Scott), President Captain Copernicus Qwark (Me), and Doctor Nefarious (Aaron) running around throwing out wonderful lines such as
"Ammo. Stuff to kill stuff with." - QwarkAnd
"The Doctor is in... AND HE HATES YOU" - Doctor NefariousTwas a hilarious time fighting for Bolts and trying to shoot each other across chasms, and eventually we retired to the mattresses left on the floor.
Come Saturday Morning, Aaron and I started off the day by driving down to his place and looking for his copy of Gears of War 3. It took us about 45-60 minutes each way between his place and Scotts, then we spent a half hour looking around the upstairs of his house searching for the game only to come downstairs and find it there.
When we got back, Scott Aaron and I began playing a Dystopian Wars game. Three way game, 1500 points each, Federated States of America (me) versus Prussian Empire (Aaron) versus Covenant of Antarctica (Scott). With the positioning, and our poor starting locations on a 6x4 ft table, Scott felt compelled to fight Aaron first. Aaron approached him very quickly as the closest target, sending off only a handful of things my way which took a bit longer to kill than they should.
I spread my forces out a little, having one Enterprise Dreadnought and the Independance Battleship head straight up the guts towards the middle of the Islands, firing off at whatever was in range. The other Enterprise Dreadnought came up around the other side to flank Scott. The proble with that plan is that they're very slow. 6" across a 6ft board takes time, even if I'm only aiming to get halfway across it, and there's only a handful of ways to increase it's speed.
So we started on Saturday Morning and ended Sunday afternoon. Scott came out best thanks to his really good rolls. The cheeky son of a bitch complained about my own rolls after seeing I had a really impressive attack roll against his Dreadnought, a critical hit. Which he turned around and rolled shields against it, and ended up negating the entire attack.
At the start of our final turn, I declared a forfeit. Scott had a rather badly beaten up Prometheus Dreadnought after what seemed like a lifetime of turns, much longer than I really wish it was since he was Squaring off against my Enterprise Dreadnought, and a Submerged (Not sunk) Battleship which had gotten in the way of the reversing Enterprise Dreadnought, who sunk after the collision and dealt 1 point of damage to the battleship leaving him on 1.
What I had remaining was a highly damaged dreadnought on the far side of the map (4/10 health left) and an untouched battleship. But with Scotts rolls, and the amount of dice that Scott was pulling out of his arse, I wasn't going to bother. I kinda wanted it to end. Aaron had already left with a bitter taste in his mouth after his Blucher Dreadnought killed 1 Frigate in the entire game. That's fair.
Back to Saturday, Gavin got the Router Fixed and we began our games of Halo Reach, six of us including Myself, Scott, Aaron, Gavin, Richard and Chase, until we eventually tired and moved back to Gears of War again. Because there were six of us and Horde 2.0 only allows 5 players, I stepped out because I was feeling a bit drained and my back was kiling me from leaning against my Warmachine/Hordes bag on top of the mattresses. It's not good back support.
Skipping back through to the next day, we finished off the Dystopian Wars game, and had afternoon tea which we elected as Red Rooster. Something different from Pizza or Mcdonalds. We won't be going to the Red Rooster at Strathpine again. They have the worst prepared Burgers and Rooster Rolls I have ever seen. I was lucky to get a Wrap.
Lastly, before we ended the night and Aaron dropped me off to pick up Caryl from the Airport, we played another hour of Ratchet and Clank.
That was my weekend at Scotts. Happy Birthday Scott and Gavin (They're 4 years apart, but born the same day).
No comments:
Post a Comment