Tag: LAN

BURGER LAN 2023

We used to LAN a lot, like once a month. Now it’s once per year only BUT there are some advantages in comparison:

  1. There is more alcohol than everyone can consume during the weekend
  2. Food is in abundance beyond imagining
  3. Instead of a flop house style weekend with everyone sleeping on the floor under their computers, it’s in a real house with actual real rooms.
  4. Weed items are effectively legal and plentiful, but no one smokes
It’s fucking great to play with EVERYTHING painted for once. GODDAMIT!

We started out with some various board games, but when everyone was in attendance we threw down the 2nd annual 7-man Talisman game which was, again, EPIC. Last year I had taken tooooo many mg in gummies so I was fucked up and just wanted to lie on the couch hence was quite glad when my character was killed off. This year I was BEER fueled and tried to go for the win, but my only claim to fame was killing off the hated PROPHETESS before she could bust out onto the scene and become unstoppable.

In the end, the Vampiress racked up the kills and destroyed everyone. I’m not sure anyone even went to the middle region, let alone the center. This is a very fun way to play with lots of players who don’t mind getting eliminated (to go play other stuff together after). It is very random though, but buy the Talisman ticket, take the fucnk ride.

We didn’t get many other board games except a good round of Dungeon Degenerates which degenerated into a TOTAL PARTY KILL about half way through the adventure. We were up against 6 monsters and didn’t use some of the items that could have put us in the W column, totally underestimating the enemies and getting destroyed. Great game and one that should get some more plays. The psychedelic board is a world of wonders.

The LAN type games were again dominated by Counter Strike and CSGO as it should be. We had old ass laptops and that’s about all they could run, so we took advantage of having 7 of them and had a blast co-op vs the bots with bots added (manually) every time we won a round until it was a proverbial SWARM. I preferred the CSGo with the more refined weapons and physics (let alone the graphics). Even on these old laptops, that ran just fine.

We did play QUAKE which was eye-bleedingly awesome but my skills at least were real rusty compared to other people (if they had skills in the first place that is). My loss at Q3A though was real bad. The verdict was that I had played too much Virtua Fighter and not enough Quake over the last year. My issue is I have to keep my skills up for VF because I have punk kids that I play in that, not so much with Quake.

For console stuff, we got in some great sessions of Tobal 2, always an amazing game to play and re-learn. It still holds up after all these years and for me at least, blows Tekken away. In Virtua Fighter 5 though, as noted above, I ran the jewels on the other players just from often playing and having timing down. It’s the anti-button masher, so you have to know when it’s your turn and not your turn or you get transanaled. I’m not sure the other players had all that much fun getting beatdowns when I chose random characters… We did get some DOA for the fanservice boob bounces and while DOA 6 is fun, it’s just so much slop compared to VF. Next year I want to have some type of fighting game tournament with something just stupid nuts like My Hero One Justice or Brawlhalla.

Keneda brought some chicken fight game that could handle 4 players + but I think I was drunk when we started and just threw the controller down and yelled at the TV and left to go play Donkey Kong in the basement region. I got some folks to play Dragon’s Crown and you just really cannot appreciate the largest breasts in a video game without actually seeing them in motion. It’s a great game, but I’m not sure even those sweet lovin thighs or sorceress’s breasts could hold people’s attention away from Counterstrike.

Despite the fact that after a series of 60-70 degree days there was a massive snowstorm and only Matt and I got out of there in time, I believe in my heart it was a successful OLD PERSON LAN.

fubar

Xmas LAN of Quake 3 Gibbbes

The weekend before Xmas, we had the first LAN in a LONG ass time. It had all the yelling and crying out and gibbes of all the LANS that have come before and what we played, which was appropo on account of it’s 20th anniversary, was tons and tons of Quake 3. I think we hit all the maps at least once and several multiple times. Despite it’s age, the gameplay holds up COMPLETELY against anything else for FFA run and gun. While I love UT2k4 and UT3, nothing else comes close to Q3 after all these years, which is amazing if you think about it. I believe we are coming into a time where game design cannot be topped on certain genres or against certain titles. For example the best RTS is still Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 is not as good as the original and a fourth Warcraft would not be better than the third. Another perfect example is Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown. For 3d fighters, and even fighting games in general, nothing has come close. It’s entirely possible that because of the social and economic changes in the world, that these two games, along with Q3, may be the top games in their genre forever.

Rather than jag around with setting up a dedicated server on one of the machines, Maurice!Bastard got a Q3 server for about 8$ and had it running the entire time.

Other games of note were Vermintide (1) that is excellent fun but we had issues when there were more than 4 of us to play.

IT’s MCDEATH!!!!

I did scooter a few times in Attila Total War which is still my favorite TW game by far, but there was some constant cheesy tactics on my side like wardog spam and use of the silly units that go berserk and become unbreakable so three units can be fighting a single guy remaining from a unit….while the rest of the army is surrounded and crushed.

berserks.

Also of note was the $1.30 purchase of BLOODY GOOD TIME which is a strange FFA FPS where you score various points for kills based on the weapons you use. Using the same weapon over and over gives you less and less points as you go. While I sucked at it, it was well worth the buck or so to pick up for LANS.

The biggest miss is that we did NOT get to play with a group of players Red Faction Guerrilla Remastered. We played a bit with two players and while the shooting is stupid (aim cones) all the crazy power ups and totally destructable buildings would have made for an awesome LAN experience.

We tried to play PUBG a couple times, but it sucked. Everyone else is too serious and too good, so you land, get shot, game over. I think our time with that game is done. It was great fun while it lasted though.

While we didn’t have a ton of people in attendance, and some had to join virtually, it was a fantastic LAN and while everyone is an HPB now and no one needs to leave their house in order to play, you should STILL HAVE LANS. They get everyone together to yell and get drunk.

Spring 2018 LAN was goood

The weather this weekend was pure shit.  rain, then snow, then rain, then snow, then a lot of snow and all shit until late today.

We played all day Friday and Saturday and I think my eyes bled while I slept fitfully last night with the retinal burn.   Here’s what we got in on.

Zandorum Doom 2: both Free for All and vs the Monsters.  If you are an FPS player and haven’t played doom multiplayer to see just how fast an FPS can (and probably should) be, play Doom 2!  However, all the tricky giant maps with all the key searching was fucking annoying when playing with 5+ people.  Getting lost in Doom isn’t so bad because you rocket through the level, but when there’s a hidden door that leads to the other 50% of a level where everyone else is at, and you can’t find the fucking thing even with the map, it’s real annoying.

Quake Super8.  Maurice!Bastard got the multiplayer working with this excellent visual mod for Quake.  This one looks THE BEST and closest to my favorite Quake renderer:  Verite Quake, built specifically for the Verite video card.

Unreal Tournament 4:  This was the most balanced deathmatch that we played.  I had a ton of fun with this and it worked very well for the LAN, which is a rarity with new FPS games which are nearly all anti-LAN (Quake Champions for example) and take forever to get from one map to the next so players can get their ‘prizes for playing.’  This is most of a UT game, basically the team that was working on it went to go work on fortnight and it may never be worked on again.  Remember what happened to UT3 after Gears of War came out…

Quake 3: While far more balanced than Quake, I still like the original Quake better.  Q3 is super tight deathmatch though.

PUBG and the goddamn pubg event.  There was an event this weekend where you could drop into a small area of the first pubg map with a group of 10 players and fight until a certain number of kills were scored by a team.  While it gave a chance to use a bunch of weapons and constantly fight.  It was pretty frustrating most of the time.

Company of Heroes.  This was the only RTS we played and since people had seen me on steam playing PA:Titans, that was a no go.  People were OVER concerned at my skill at COH as well and it became obvious only after I was soundly beaten in a 3 vs 1 game.  This isn’t a super hardcore RTS and is pretty n00b friendly with the pacing and defensive nature of the game, so good for the LAN.  I really expected to be playing Dawn of War 3 instead of this but man– what happened to that game? Aesthetically awesome, but the gameplay was trash.

There was a mess of video captured during the proceedings, so I’ll get some posted as soon as possible for your viewing pleasure.  mraak.

Fall LAN of MRAAAK

We played a lot of Quake and zDOOM and, inevitably, we played some PUBG while all sitting in a room. Hilarity ensued as we found out just how bad, collectively, we are at military shooters.

There will be a bunch more videos posted by various sundry persons that attended the LAN, and I’ll place these here where applicable.

APRIL LAN

It’s the APRIL LAN. We played a lot of Quake last night and Starcraft (now free with the latest update) which ended in the only outcome that could have happened in a FFA: a zerg rush by scooter.

Today we got in some HELLDIVERS and Ultimate DOOM, which is one of the best FPS games ever STILL for gameplay.

Of course, it’s one of those rare nice April days where everyone in the city is outside: except us who are languishing in a basement for the next 12-14 hours.

 

 

THE LAN THE LAN THE LAN 2017

Last weekend was a LAN weekend. Man it’s been awhile, some suspect a decade or more. We did it up in the basement of scooter’s abode and it was gibbing madness. Some of these games I hadn’t played in a looooong time so here’s a run down of my feels here in 2017.

FPS
We played a mess of FPS games, originally thinking we would run the gauntlet of Doom all the way to new Doom.  We almost did, but there were games we skipped (and one we shoulda skipped!).

L4D2

Always a great time, but not great when you have more than four players as the monsters aren’t fun to play as. Interesting? Yes, but you end up looking at the respawn screen a lot more than if you are one of the survivors.

Vermintide

We gave this a try at the LAN and got pretty confused by the maps and environment.  This is one that is likely better not at a LAN and just in normal internet play.

The Bad Place

Quake

While unbalanced weapon-wise Quake is an amazing death match game STILL in 2017. We used the RUNE mod which has runes lying around that you can pick up that give you X2 damage, damage resistance, rapid fire (not my favorite) and regeneration. I would argue that Quake still has some of the best Death match maps ever made.

DOOM
We tried to get BRUTAL DOOM up and running and it desynched constantly. While we didn’t deathmatch this, it was fun for the hour or so we were able to actually play. Brutal DOOM is something to check out for sure.

Quake 3

The penultimate death-match FPS. While many have tried, nothing has come close to how good this game is for straight up death match. With the weapon balance that Quake lacks and some really awesome DM levels, I think we played this the most out of any of the FPS games over the weekend. It just shows that it’s not the graphics that make a good DM game at all.

Insurgency
I didn’t get on this, but people said it was a good time. We played this because we could not get Battlefield Bad Company 2 working for everyone, which was too bad.

this is the screen you LOVE to see in newDoom because it’s over and you can go on to any other FPS!

New DOOM

Playing Quake, Quake 3, UT3 and OG Doom just before trying newDoom showed how awful the death match for the New Doom really is. Great single player, amazing graphics still makes newDoom a fantastic game, but don’t bother at all with the death match. It feels like you are inside a robot suit slowly moving and turning around. It’s not even worth trying out to see how bad it is.

UT3
I got a single round of Vehicle CTF with maurice!Bastard and it was great. While UT3 is not a very good Death match game compared to nearly all other games (it’s still better than NewDoom), I’ve always found it’s Vehicle CTF to be absolutely superb. Totally insane vehicles, very fast movement speed across large maps and the whole bevy of weapons that UT brings to the table makes me wish I had the chance to play this more.

RTS

We played three RTS games and all three were enjoyed, though one for very different reasons for the other two.

Planetary Annihilation

This is on the cusp of being a good game, and certainly it’s fun for a bit.  However there is just so much going on and you are spread out over so many areas (planets and strategic layers) with your units and buildings that it makes it an unmanageable mess.  We got in a few games of this vs the bots and after winning easily on normal, we tried it on hard and it was comedy.   The bots ended up nuking our commanders on a planet we had total control over.   Overall, fun but the game devolves into ALL orbital combat after awhile.  There’s minutia and counters here, but it is all just a unit-flood steamroll of some sort in the end.

Warcraft 3

The best RTS had to get busted out.  We played coop again vs the bots and I forget that this has a very steep learning curve to it with the heroes and creeping and total disregard for the base-defense that other RTS games rely on.  I also forgot nearly everything I had known about the game and played terribly, but still, really fun game– especially the battles.

Total Annihilation

People begged to bust this out and..was a total joke.  We jumped into the game with 5 players and two of the commanders were D-cannon’ed within the first minute.  RTS games have come a long, long way.  While Starcraft, due to updates, stands the test of time with it’s controls and UI, Total Annihilation does not at all.  As compelling as it was in the 90’s it just is not any more.  Frankly if you want the TA feels, Supreme Commander is the way to go these days.

CRPG

We got in some Torchlight 2 both Hardcore Elite and non-Hardcore Veteran.  While the chance of permadeath is fun, the MASS hitpoints the enemies have in Elite multiplayer makes it slower than I really like in my TL2 madness.

So yes, we should do it again but bring some candles or votives or something for the rump gasping.  There’s only so much bad air a basement can hold before spontaneous human combustion sets in.