Top Gun

Yay, a Mini-Pretzel! Congrats DJP!

GM

If I'm not in a massive turkey coma tomorrow, which is likely, I might be up for it. Definitely on Friday at some point.

Mother of God...

Okay mentlegen, we apparently have a bunch of MvM to get going on (also Snakewater is the new officialized community map). Release the hounds!

Well what's all this then?

IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE And hey, I'm usually up for a round if I get an invite, unless it's one of those rare occasions that I'm being productive. So pretty much whenever.

Wow, this is crazy. The original is a nice little piece of 80s pop, too.

And...it's over, apparently! (I guess "through Nov. 11" translates to "through the early morning hours of Nov. 11.") I joined a bit later than I wanted to last night, but I'm glad we got one more night in. Big thanks to Necro for those extra transmogrifiers that took care of my remaining dupes. Here's something interesting: I was on Helltower a bit earlier before I knew that the event was over, and while the gifts obviously don't drop, and the Manns (sadly) don't say their lines anymore, you can still pick up and use spells...they just don't appear on your HUD. And the achievement for winning a round still increments, so I'd assume that the rest of them still work too.

I haven't seen many people playing over the past week, and we only have a couple of days left before Helloween ends, so how's about a night or two of fun to send it off? (Also if you have any spare Transmogrifiers you don't want, send them my way, since I have a few extra items.)

I keep meaning to mention this, and now it's getting closer to the home stretch: Cyan, developers of the legendary adventure games Myst and Riven, have a project going for a brand-new game, Obduction. It'll be a first-person adventure in a similar vein to their previous titles, but rendered in real-time using Unreal Engine 4. Myst was one of the first games I ever loved, and I've been a fan of Cyan ever since; this is basically their first new IP in almost two decades. They still have nine days to make about $300k, and Oculus Rift support is promised as the first stretch goals, so take a look if this piques your interest.

Aww. So I just found the unicorn hat. All of my yes.

Delete them? Sell them? Close your eyes and pretend they don't exist? (for the love of God please) I'm glad we were able to get things hopping tonight. Many spells were cast.

Did the update actually take on the server? I'm getting an error saying it's an older version when I try to join.

It's happeniiiiiiinnnnng... So just based on the server population so far, we may want to throw up a password for the time being so that we can keep the pubs out.

Lawyer Soldier is best Soldier.

Holy crap how do you get all of those.

I don't even have any game badges completed, beyond the Summer Sale one, and I only got that to the first level. I know there was a thread around these parts for card trading; maybe I should go revive that. And even if Valve wasn't planning on releasing whatever the new Halloween stuff is yet, I kind of wish they'd at least turned on the holiday mode already, so we could play around in the older maps. At this rate it'll be Halloween itself before we even get things going.

I kind of feel like I've been bailing on a few invites recently, but my rationale is that I know I'm going to have my ass parked in the game for who knows how many nights straight as soon as Halloween drops, so it's probably better to take a break now while I can. Also read this thingy, because it's actually pretty darn good for a fan comic.

Wait, didn't they already? I know I've had my ass blown up by them before. And man that Sticky Jumper update is completely anti-fun.

Mother of God...

Sounds about right. And holy crap super-long new comic.

The Black Kat event is fun enough. There's a chance for any normal Kat in T2/3 levels to be replaced by a Black Kat, which is a bigger monster that spawns curse zombies. Killing one of those nets you a few page tokens. There's also a daily Prestige mission that gives you a few tokens as a reward. You can use the tokens at a merchant in Moorcroft Manor to buy one of three special helms (each with a bonus for a different weapon type), and the special material needed to craft their upgrades. At least the last time the event ran, there was also a very rare chance that a Black Kat would drop a special book, which you could give to the Konjuring Kat in Moorcroft to unlock a special boss fight. I haven't found one myself, but I'd definitely love to.

Mega-ultra-probably-futile bump for great justice. The game received a pretty massive update a few weeks ago, probably more significant than even the missions system, and I've been playing a lot more frequently as a result. First off is the addition of Battle Sprites, these Pokemon-esque little critters that have cool combat abilities and that you can level up. Even more importantly, Mist Energy is now gone, and elevators don't cost anything, so you can finally play as long as you like in a single session. Reviving someone with your own health is gone: everyone gets one free revive per level, then after that you use Sparks of Life, these special items that you can find randomly or buy with Energy. The crafting system no longer requires any Energy at all, instead using Orbs of Alchemy, which drop rarely and can also be purchased at about the same Energy rate as the old crafting system. The system for leveling up your weapons is now called the Forge, and involves spending Fire Crystals that you can collect/purchase. It winds up slowing the leveling system down, but considering how much easier it is to craft stuff now, I consider it a fair trade-off. So yeah, if this is something you played once upon a time and haven't touched for ages, I think it's worth logging on and giving it a try again. And if you haven't tried it before, there's really nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

Shockingly enough, there are people that actually enjoy Arena. I think increasing the recently-played limitation significantly would definitely be a good move, since it enforces some level of diversity by default. I don't want to see every single custom map tossed out, because there are things like Cashworks and MegaMan that are fun maps most people seem to enjoy. But yeah, lose all the cosmetic variant versions, and the one-note gimmicky maps. (RIP, Pacman. ) For what it's worth, I only saw that all-Badwater vote happen once, but it was done as a gag, and the real Badwater won easily anyway.