Aight, now that my parental weekend is done and much Zzzz's have been recuperated, it's time to get back in the cockpit/pod/FPSguy and frag stuff and/or go obscenely fast. I must admit that being away from EVE for a bit gives me a much better appreciation of it when I come back, especially now that I'm in a region where I can just go out and kill stuff... and I ain't talking rats! But my two young tornadoes are also just enough video game aficionados (if their mom reads this I'm dead!) to ask me to play "this" or "that", and sometimes I find myself surprised at how much I've missed those games, or disappointed when something doesn't go according to plan. Let's take a closer look:
Quake Live: according to my player profile I hadn't logged into QL for 6 months... yikes! A quick update later, and a short warm-up in Q3 CPMA as I waited, I found a nicely populated free-for-all server and did my best to prove that you can't teach an old monkey to make faces. I didn't do too bad for being 6 months rusty, always placing in the higher half of the player list, even finishing 3rd on 12 on one occasion. Why I didn't place higher? I have an aggressive play style and often manage to blow myself up with point-blank rockets :)) It was great fun and I had missed Quake; it's like riding a bike... once you know how to do it you never forget!
World of Padman: I got this stand-alone Q3 mod to show my boys the fun of deathmatching without the blood, gore and satanic references found in Quake. Replace weapons with water guns, balloon launchers and paint guns, add cartoonish player models that get stars over their heads when they "die" and you get WoP. Quite funny :)
Flight Simulator 2004: when my youngest boy told me to "put on the planes" I was looking forward to it because I hadn't flown since before I packed the computer for my move. But I was disappointed that something is still funky with my USB connectors. I have a Saitek X52 which doesn't need any calibrating when installed, and now for some unknown reason the LCD screen on the throttle wouldn't light up (yet it was displaying information) and the controls were beyond all wrong. Something tells me my computer didn't like moving...
Mech4Mercs: it's pretty much inevitable that when my boys are with me one of 'em will ask me to "put on the robots!" and being a Battletech fan this is pretty much twisting my rubber arm. Because they want to see me pilot a huge range of 'mechs in a very short time I just go into Instant Action, turn off heat, ammo usage and damage, and just go nuts in 'mechs that would normally overheat in 2-3 shots! A few examples: a Supernova with 8x Large X-Pulse lasers, a Uziel with 2x assault lasers, 1 heavy rocket launcher and 2 heavy machine guns thrown in for good measure, and a Daishi with enough alpha-strike to insta-pwn some heavy 'mechs. Yep, munchkinism at its greatest!
EVE Online: yes, even though I tend to take a break from EVE when the boys are at my place, once in a while one of 'em wants to see the internet spaceships. The problem is that the feeling doesn't last long because to them, everything in EVE happens much too slow, and anything remotely interesting requires all my attention and when they decide they've had enough, I have to unplug "yesterday"; even mission running is hard because no one wants to leave a mission, or take a standings hit for quitting one, etc. I keep on saying it, EVE and kids just do not mix, even if the kids are big on science-fiction. Which is a shame I think.
So tonight I clone-jump back to the Crazy Place™ and will most likely find a gang to go find some trouble with. I have too many ships anyway, let's lose a few :))
Safe or dangerous, just fly dammit!
o7
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