Grand Thumb Auto XVI: The 'Blix is Back

[miffy495]

This is surely a momentous occasion! Our own chairman of blowing things up and shooting bitches now once more has an xbox! All are welcome. I'll be on from 2 until 4:30-ish this week (2100 to 2330-ish GMT) and am psyched to play for a while. Have a massive paper worth half my mark in a course due about an hour and a half before game time, so expect me to have a bit of aggression and stress to vent. See you folks then!

[toblix]

I will fuck you up.

[Wrestlevania]

Up where/what?

I really need to get some sleep.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Lol, great threat title

[Wrestlevania]

"Rollin' with the 'blix" is fast-becoming a regular Grand Thumb Auto sub-event.

[Nachimir]

Should be there.

[James]

Hans?

[n0wak]

I might show up again for once myself! I've had a nasty flu since Saturday morning and I'm working from home today so I might have some time to spare (except for the flu part, that's )

[miffy495]

Where the crap is everyone?

[toblix]

Well, that was fun! Funny story: After dinner yesterday, I inadvertently fell asleep due to exhaustion and was awakened by my mother calling me about something. By then it was forty minutes past, which is why I was so late.

And also why I sucked (my mouth tasted like old dinner). After playing I just fell back asleep. The new game modes seemed interesting. Hopefully we'll try them more next time. It's great that we're more people now. I remember back in the old days, where we'd be like three guys playing. Imagine that, three.

[James]

It was fun. I just wish the bikes stealing mission in the co-op mode didn't take so long. It's a shame to spend such a large portion of that mode all separated out rather than riding around together like it feels like it ought to be. Because that seems cool.

[Wrestlevania]

Agreed, but I also wish it wouldn't flake like it did either. Having the game constantly flip-flop between "get the last bike" and "return to base" - when the bike in question is on the very opposite side of the city - got really annoying.

I think it took me just under 15 minutes to finally track it down and bring it all the way back again. And in a 20 minute limit game, that's not really acceptable. In fairness, though, this didn't happen the last couple of times we played this mode. So might have just been an annoying spawn coupled with a conditional glitch/bug.

Such a shame, as the co-op-like stuff is really good fun -- especially riding pillion on another player's bike and causing lots of gun-related mayhem as you travel around the city.

[James]

It definitely doesn't always happen, but I'm pretty sure it happened last time, too, albeit to a lesser extent. Might it be a function of how many people are playing? Does it spread things out more because of some sort of slightly buggered difficulty scaling? Or perhaps there are just more bikes, increasing the probability that one's stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere. Or were we just unlucky?

[Wrestlevania]

Could be one bike spawned per player. Can't imagine Rockstar would make it a fixed number of bikes -- either too many or too few just wouldn't make sense either way.

I think you're right; slightly dodgy scaling/spawning algorithm, possibly.

[miffy495]

Sounds like the fun continued after I left. On the plus side, I saw Watchmen, which was excellent. Kinda too bad it took an hour to get started, but I had a good time once we'd passed that point.

[James]

What did you think of the giant blue wang physics?

[miffy495]

Honestly, I only noticed when my girlfriend started giggling at it. If I hadn't known it was there in advance, it probably wouldn't have even registered in my mind. I know opinions are divided on this one, but put me in the "pro-Watchmen" camp. The changes that they made are things that worked in the book but probably wouldn't have in the movie. The characters were perfectly cast. Jackie Earl Haley's performance was excellent. There was some cheesy dialogue, but in many cases is was quoted verbatim from the book, so I don't know if I can hold that against it. The costumes for the original team were fantastic, looking sufficiently homemade and old-timey. Really the only problem that I was was that they all seemed to have super strength when they're supposed to be regular people. That, and that they have My Chemical Romance covering Bob Dylan over the end credits.

[James]

For a while I assumed they'd just given him a blank crotch, but eventually I noticed that there was, indeed, a wang. A magic blue wang.

Anyway, I liked it with reservations. One of which was the sex scene. I thought that was pretty bad.

[n0wak]

Sounds like the fun continued after I left. On the plus side, I saw Watchmen, which was excellent. Kinda too bad it took an hour to get started, but I had a good time once we'd passed that point.

You do know that not everyone in the world is on Daylight Savings Time now, right?

[miffy495]

Oooooh shit. I'm dumb. Forgot that was this week. That would explain a few things. So are games now starting at 3:00 my time? That would mean I can actually get there when they start, rather than 15 minutes late!