So I mentioned Laserforce to Rob the other week, after I went, and suggested he should try it. He agreed, and we finally made it down there on Saturday night. Jess & Kate came as well, all in the same car (Jess’). They were going to play, or at least that was the impression they gave to Rob & I. Anyway, on Friday & Saturday I messaged everyone online at the time about it. I was surprised at the response, actually – some people actually said yes! And later on, on Saturday it might have been, I got an SMS from Kim asking about details. Bizarre. I guess I’ve finally found something, other than Guild Wars, which the Ben group has an interest in. :D
Anyway, in the end Alco & Sverre came up, and Angela dropped by as well. No others, sadly, but it was great nonetheless. We had intended to play only three games, which we did initially. But at the end of the first game, Rob found out (presumably via SMS) that Jess & Kate, whom had decided not to play after all, had gone to Chadstone to watch a movie. A movie that finished at 11:30. Sidetracked closes at 10:30. Hmmm.
Anyway, we hung around, played two more games for a total of five, and then got a lift to Chadstone from Ange. The last two games were perhaps a bit much – I was already really tired before we even got there – and I was getting a bit lazy, which was causing me to lose, which was annoying. But then the last game, just a Standard, had some funny moments and lifted my spirit. Perhaps the funniest thing was when I ran into a wall… there’s a corridor in there with a white floodlight at the end, which comes on randomly (and rarely, so you don’t normally see it). ‘course, it happened to come on as I was running past, blinding me completely, causing me to hit the door frame. Luckily all the door frames have the plastic garden pipe stuff over them, and it hit the pack on my shoulder more than anything, but it made a colossal smack. Everyone heard it; I think it was Sverre who yelled out from the other side of the maze if I was okay, to which I laughed and yelled back yes. So much for being sneaky. :D
I was certainly done by the end, physically. I’m reasonably happy though, in that I’m now 2nd level. Laserforce has seven levels; if you have played the required number of Standard games for each level (3 for level two) and have an average score above a certain threshold (1,500 for level two) you automagically advance. Each level makes you weaker, meaning you have to hit lower level players more than once to kill them, and higher level players have an easier time against you. But you get better power-ups – the advances you get for some number of consecutive kills without yourself dying. Level one’s get rapid fire, level two’s get invulnerability. And so forth.
There was also a moment in that last game where I had invulnerability. I hadn’t realised that team games counted as Standard games, so I was already level two going into that game. I only found out while in a fire-fight with Sverre, when he yelled out “you’ve got invulnerability!”. I said back that I didn’t – I hadn’t picked it up that I knew of – and he noted that my pack lights were full on. I looked at my shoulder and found that yes indeed, my lights were no longer flashing. And just as I did that, my pack said “Invulnerability deactivated”. D’oh! I ran away before he could womp me, but I think he’d gone off to kill everyone else first anyway. :)
I actually do surprisingly well in many games; when we played Shadows (where you can turn your pack lights off, but then can only missile) I was actually coming first at one point. And then Sverre obviously decided to start playing properly, and promptly scored more than the rest of us combined. :D
Sverre is #2 though, on the leader board, even though he’s only played half a dozen games in the last four years. He’s played 302 Standard games in his many years. His membership card is so old that the guy running the games was actually enthralled by it. :) So Sverre always wins, regardless, but #2 is anyone’s. :D
Anyway, invulnerability is cool, especially combined with rapid fire, so I think I’ll try to stick with level two if I can. :D
So after that Rob & I waited at Chadstone, outside the cafés near the cinemas, for Jess & Kate. I wasn’t all that bothered, really, with waiting; Rob & I just chatted about stuff, and I checked out everyone’s shoes as they went past. We were there for an hour maybe, and Rob bought popcorn, so it was all good. :D
[It’s become something a regular pastime, whenever I’m at Chadstone, checking out people’s shoes; the people there are usually nice looking, and all dressed up, but just have the worst taste in footwear anywhere short of Tanti/Frankston]
Anyway, I was simultaneously bemused and disturbed by three teen girls sitting nearby, who for half an hour did nothing other than take photos of each other and themselves in various states of hugging or kissing each other. It reminds me exactly of the MSN pictures that tend to associate with such girls, of those few in my IM list. Eventually they left spontaneously. Of all the things to do on a Saturday night, sitting in a half-empty, closed shopping centre taking photos of myself doesn’t rank up there.. bizarre.
By the time we got back to Rob’s place it was 12:30, so I finally made it home by about 1:20am. So yet another late night. I stayed up until about 2:15 finishing up a game called 1000AD I’ve been playing for a week or so. I started playing that because I started playing Ogame after seeing Travis & Aidan at it, but Ogame’s so damn slow that I had to find another game in the same vein to pass time inbetween actions in Ogame. Anyway, 1000AD wrapped up at 2:15am, and yesterday some random player had started attacking me, so of course I reciprocated. Long story short in the last twenty minutes I couldn’t do anything meaningful, and ended up finishing quite poorly. I had been on track to make the top 100 by the end (which I thought was reasonable given I’d only been playing for a week, not the full five weeks the game ran for), but that threw that out of the window. I don’t think I’ll bother with that game again; while it was okay, it was very monotonous right up until the end, which while interesting was extremely one-sided.
Anyway, I didn’t get up until about 12:30 today. Thus far today I’ve done very little; watched the new Stargate & Atlantis episodes, sorted out the remaining WWDC photos, and a few misc things. This weekend, while good fun, wasn’t very productive. :/ I’ll have a busy week ahead of me, I think; we’ve finally got our PCB arriving for project, hopefully on Monday, so we should be able to have that actually up and flying by next weekend. Fingers crossed.
