Escapism '09 II: A Labyrinth's Tale 3 Pages 1 2 3 NEXT | |
Looks like fun was had. I wish I could go to these, but it's a bit economically difficult for me to whizz off to Sydney on a whim. Maybe one day in the distant future when I have money. | |
NO! NO! NO! | |
Actually, Simon could've passed off as 15 by my guess. Ahahaha. I've finally hit 5k posts. Dear lord it's been a long slog. Who the hell gets that many in a few months anyway? Kids these days | |
Nope, I am extremely undersized for my age. I've been guessed for a Year 5 and I'm in Year 8. It's a bit sad. I also have a twin brother. NO-ONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT ME, cause I'm so tricky. | |
That could get fun. Never underestimate the discovery powers of a Ninja. We can be remarkably resourceful. Whahahaha! | |
He hid in my Science class once for 40 minutes. The teacher didn't notice. | |
Haha.. Ipod Addicted aye? | |
I want to come sometime... | |
I'll eat your soul. | |
*hides under the bed* | |
Pffft. By my calculations, were I to attend one of these events (in the hypothetical situation that Montreal and Sydney were significantly closer) I would have eaten your soul already in a discussion involving figure drawing alone (letting alone drawing in other forms). | |
You forget, I have no soul. I will however take you on at Pool. | |
It was a pretty fun day. The Caesar Salad I ate for lunch was alright but for some reason they put Blueberries it it, who the hell does that? And the croûtons were just bread sticks with no crumbing, it left much to be desired. Laser Tag was fun and I was surprised that Junglist had turned up. I remember going into the thing saying to Simon that "He looks like the guy from Good Game but I don't think it's him" when under pretty good lighting while in the dark and foggy laser tag arena trying my hardest not to look at the enemy for too long I realised just who he was, the guy off the TV. Laser Tag was a lot like the ending of Star Wars VI whick I (I think) mentioned. We were the few rebel forces trying to take out the shield generator, Australian Gamer the Imperials and those little things that ran up to us and wouldn't go away the Ewoks. I could have sworn that one of them was an Ewok. There was even a Walker in the maze, that's how similar it was! At the second arcade all I seem to remember is completely owning you guys at Daytona USA. How many times did I win that thing, like 5? Every time was a final seconds position steal, and every time was pure awesome. I was the chosen one and I blasted such a hole in the Racial Memory of all Escapists that they will never stand near a Daytona USA machine without cowering from the fear of defeat and shame I brought upon their ancestors, and I had never played before! You don't fuck with the red car. To be fair though I had lost in the Pod Racing game before because of a fatal error in turning on the last turn. While I had saved up all my face-boost for the last lap I had also saved up all my fail. Some of these people (and by that I mean all) are insanely aggressive at Air Hockey. While I usually win with my controversial 'don't hold the thing the way you should' maneuverer, I still ended up losing. But yeah, it was a great day. To anyone who decided not to go this Escapism or has an Escapism turn up near them, go to it. You will not be disappointed. | |
Insanely good at air hockey? Perhaps. I prefer to think of myself as passably badass. What amused me was Jason from Aus. Gamer asking after laser tag if we wanted to go along to a pub. I pointed out that two of us were underage, and that it was Insert Comedy here and me. He looked aghast. Apparently I was 25 until that point. Edit: It just occurred to me that aside from location, it was a pretty good demonstration of Escapist demographics. Mean age around 18, 1 in 10 female. | |
My name is Marq | |
You should be headbanging! Makes for an even better hang over. | |
Wow, I fit neither of those statistics. In fact, I'm the darn opposite of both. (Except gender. How could I not be opposite/not opposite?) | |
Caimekaze got a haircut! Amazing! I was just thinking about how he taught me about Dance Dance Revolution the other day, ahh good times. I'm so annoyed I couldn't make this one, nor am I likely to make any other one seeing as I now have permanent part time work on Saturday, Sunday. At least this time with the laser tag it wasn't ruined by a bunch of stupid kids! | |
Also Lab, stop using the same picture of yourself every time you do this! | |
LaCoil will eat your soul, evilJoe will consume your flesh... This is how they act when they look after us on the forums. | |
At least my mind will be okay! | |
Eyes already bloodshooted. At LAN, still drinking. Have banged the table with my head several times already. Still managing Dota skills somehow. Must sleep soon. | |
Indigo Dingo was there? How is he? We haven't heard of him since he got banned. | |
But I'm the one -behind- the camera. There aren't pictures of me.
Sleep!? WEAK! Also, sounds like one hell of a good time. | |
Cough cough on the stupid kids part. | |
Would someone please tell me again why there can't be cool Escapist meet-ups like this in the Seattle area...? I want to rub elbows with famous Escapist luminaries & glitterati too! | |
Awwww! That sounds like fun! More so even than trying to shoot Lord Krunk and being shot by some stupid little kid with the green lasers! Did you go to the same place? Because thirty people in that room would be VERY crowded. | |
And we miss things like us skipping down the street, arm in arm. Why did we not capture that on film last time? | |
For the same reason that I was not caught frolicking across Darling Harbour's edge. No film camera. | |
Nice to know you guys had an awesome time. | |
Damn! We'll have to remember that for next time! So many good moments lost, like... icecream tower, and Indigo threatening to throw Lord Krunk in the harbour. Ahhhh. | |
Yet again, looks like everyone had a blast. Indigo_Dingo and Caimekaze don't looks like I expected them to, though... which is really weird in Caime's case, because I see a (rather tiny) photo of him all the time on Twitter... | |
I'll fix that... X.x ____ Looked awesome! xD and Laby has a nice hat *jealousy* Although you guys had 2 fantastic trips this year, our UK one next year will be your biggest competitor >:D | |
Pfft. My hat contains all the awesome necessary to beat you sorry Brits. At the next one both Ultrajoe and Ultrajosephine intend to attend. Ultrajoe and I have organised an Epic Battle. We even want to make it Steampunk themed. If nothing else, I'll just toss Ultrajoe into the harbour. | |
| Pages 1 2 3 NEXT | |
And here we are again, with slightly smaller boots.
A note to anyone quoting this post. Snip it, spoiler it, don't bother, whatever. Just don't let it sit there in all its picturific and long-winded glory to clog up the thread.
Ohh boy, where to begin. Well on the basis that I hadn't slept the night prior to Escapism boring people with a recount of the previous day would be unfair. Let's snap to the action instead.
The train ride, like all my train rides it seems, consisted of entertaining notions of slaughter while a screaming child sat a few seats back with its overly vocal mother and her equally vocal friends. Maybe they were just yelling to further upset the kid rather than quietening it down or maybe they genuinely thought getting me to move carriage (to where a slightly less unhappy baby was just gurgling) was a good idea. They could at least have glued its jaw shut with some toffee or something. I can only hope it grows up to be like me as revenge.
After answering the call of nature I spotted Fire Daemon's curls from across the foyer and made a bee-line for him. He, Inconsistencies Arise and Indigo Dingo had claimed us a table. I was thankful as standing around and hoping people who claim tables will combust as I glare at them is a pain in the backside.
Azmael Silverlance found us soon after I turned up to brighten the day with a little bit of insanity. Made for fun times all around. Marq, being metal, stood nonchalantly to one side of the area we were sitting in while he tried to work out if we were the strange people off the internet he had come to see. Or maybe it was the sunglasses talking to him. They increased his intimidation by 20% according to Simon (or Archiael) who'd turned up just before him.
Caimekaze was fashionably late, as he is of habit to be. Of course we teased him about it. As no-one else seemed forthcoming we headed out to toddle towards Darling Harbour. Being punctual in this case meant turning up about an hour before hand so instead of standing around like lemmings we decided to hit the food court. Nourishment +3 and all that. Not all of us partook.
The gelato was godly. I recommend it to any intergalactic travellers who decide to drop by Sydney. And to local ones as well, though I figure they all know about it anyway.
It took a bit to work out exactly what we were doing for the bowling. Insert Comedy Here and his older brother turned up as we were just sorting it out and we wound up with two lanes and ridiculous shoes. The depressing state of my score shall not be accurately recalled (it was my second ever game dammit) while others did shockingly well, with two scores of 139 between our lanes.
There being an arcade on the same floor as bowling and laser tag we were able to kill more time before the people from Australian Gamer turned up and we could kick their arses. I played Caime at pool while strolled around shooting things and making loud "DING!" noises on air hockey. Tried that too for a while. I'm proud to say that my lack of experience at bowling was made up for by lightning fast reflexes and violence on the table. After beating Dingo I proceeded to waltz through games with Azmael, losing one out of 5 or so total.
Then Caime found an odd variation on DDR consisting of four corner pads and a central one. And lag. Ohhhh the lag. We almost died laughing while he stared slack-jawed at a screen which twitched every several seconds. Having picked a metal song, he was able to work up some decent combinations by enacting double-kick with random pads. Starwars Podracer was right next to it which found much hilarity with people as well. You truly do need Jedi reflexes to play that thing.
However, not even these could offer the kind of entertainment we wanted for long, so it was off to the waiting lounge to hang around and wait for other people to show. Marq started drinking when I told him it was 1pm with a combination of Vodka and Redbull. Smelt like something out of a chem lab to me. There was more pool and eventually the guys from Australian Gamer turned up.
After a little while of "Hi! We're from the internet!" we decided that all the people who were going to turn up had, so went to hit the Tag Pit. Escaparinos were in green, Aus Gamer in blue, and for our first game there was this bunch of small people running around in pink too. We had instructions to play nice with them. Maybe.
Lasers flew like over long rods of death. I now regret not taking a kaleidoscope to produce a short-range shotgun effect. Thanks to Ultrajoe, I know what to do next time. It was a game similar to capture the flag but as no team really knew where their base was it became a team deathmatch. I spent a lot of time storming the Blues or just hunting them down. Proved very effective actually, as I came third overall in point score. For that round anyway.
The second saw tactics more employed than the chaos of before. We grouped up and stomped around together. Working out our base helped. Several people stayed back to defend against this rounds group of people half our size. I think I annoyed a few of the Aus. Gamer people. They were reduced to having three people just standing there shooting me constantly and screaming "Outoutout!" to try and stop me killing them.
Despite some truly epic moves, Escaparinos won again. There was much celebration amongst us while the others scowled a little and vowed to each other to do better next time.
The final game was epic. Despite the presence of small annoyances we glared at each other and made battle like would-be Italian tyrants. There was not an organisation of attack squads as there was us yelling and charging through to their base, guns blazing. Australian Gamers were cornered out behind their base and cursing while we tried to work out how to shoot the bloody thing. No matter the angle or the aim it just wouldn't make the "Base is taking damage!" calls we so desperately wanted. Alas, we were evicted from that to make a second attempt later. I stuck around for some easy points until they used the same method as last time to swamp me with laser fire.
The bastards. I think they beat us that time too, by 500 points or so. We didn't stick around to find out the final score and instead hit the bar for drinks. I let the round of water be on me having spent most of my money already.
Our growling stomachs saw us farewelling the opposing force after handshakes and calls of "Good game" all around. We progressed back downstairs to get lunch. The Thai take away was of a similar standard to the gelato. A truly spectacular way to refill after running around for an hour and a half.
From food, we went to the traditional home of Escapism Sydney: Galaxy World. The games were a siren call to us, dragged by the inner ear, tempted by the pixels. Tradition also demanded that we introduce all those who did not know of it to Let's Go Jungle: LITIOS. I suspect that Marq will be forced to have a go next time as well.
There was more air hockey played. I won again (Oh yeahhhhhh...) And again. Etc. I paused a moment after winning to contemplate the people who were not there. Bastards the lot of them! Then it was on to House Of The Dead 4 for me. I got surprisingly far with only one life. Racing games occupied some time along with more profanity than an episode of Zero Punctuation and just as much ill will.
Then, alas, it was time to depart.
Caimekaze had disappeared off after some laser tag, while I can only assume that Insert Comedy Here and his brother were taken by The Ether for Gord-knows what. Dingo made his way off and the rest of us, Marq, Daemon, Azmael, Inconsistencies Arise and myself returned to Central station. I'm not sure what they did for a train stole Daemon and I away within a few minutes. I can't even recount what happened on the way back as, being exhausted, I slept. Journalistic apologies to all.
It was an epic day. There were lots of giggles. There was Epic, and arse-kicking. We Must Do This Again. Around Easter next year perhaps.
Be there or be a quadrilateral thing-um-y.