jstout

I'm playing some matches with this guy I've played with a billion times, except this time I'm in a party chat with him and his "girlfriend," who sounds about 60 and gave her throat to the Marlboro Man years ago. It's easily one of my most surreal gaming experiences ever. I am both dying to know what this chick looks like and absolutely petrified she would turn me to stone if I ever found out. And oh yeah, there's a German dude. Later on we were joined by Freight Train of $5 Wrestling fame. We failed the last game I played with them because the cloaker (dude with the girlfriend) forgot he had to do something besides shoot and he completely whiffed a devices wave. In his defense, he was stoned.

Spoken like a bitter man who couldn't handle the rigors of Andromeda and ran off to Uranus instead.

Facebook is ate up with GIFs these days. Drives me insane. So we can probably blame it, like everything else, on Facebook.

Mangy was such a pleasant surprise during that Platinum. I was already warning everyone that we weren't gonna make it 'cause I thought he would die literally 1,000 times. Instead, I think he saw what we were doing (staying invisible, throwing sticky bombs) and said "I can do that." Then he joined us at 7 in our cowardly strolls around the map. Great stuff.

These two were totally Spike and Chester. It was kinda charming.

Surprisingly good fourth in Paradox platinum today: the Asari Adept. I was feeding shield boosts, so that may have helped, but between the annihilation field and those zappy attacks, anything that got into the cave got dead quickly. Dude had an APEX of 3,200 or so, and betweem that and the Adept not being XX-20, I was fearing the worst, but he was fine. Later, me and a guy I've played with 2 million times were trying to get a Platinum going when we were joined by two guys, both with APEXs under 1,000. I think me and my boy was playing chicken on who would start first until I handed him the win by backing out.

What tickled me about Twitch boy was that his APEX was over 50,000, but he deferred everything to his little buddy, who was at 32,000. After I was splitting for the night, little buddy made it sound like I had passed the audition and thus could be on their team again, and I wanted to scream MY APEX IS 9,000 HIGHER THAN YOURS, CHIEF. Apparently, he missed the memo with the news that we've got this shit. Gotta love the Internet.

Cracked me up. You went from pretty damn lucid straight to much drunkern in one moment. It was hilarious. More from our soon-to-be loyal viewers: "Who's that guy? I didn't even know he was on here. Oh shit, he's been passed-out drunk for two hours with his headset on?" This is how we get famous, dalmit.

Melraz on commentary = big money. I'd think a couple of people would watch after finding it strictly due to the "listen to these redneck dimwits playing this game. Couple of 'em won't quit talking about Dollywood" factor. "Is that supposed to be Foghorn Leghorn?" "That one of 'em is druuuunnnnk." "You mean they're not all drunk? Holy shit."

Just got done playing some Platinums with a crew I'd ran some with before, but didn't remember it until I saw their tactics. I think I wrote about this here before the first time - on Paradox, they jammed that back cave instead of the smaller thing up front, and we just got punished. The only thing it's good for is making it easier to do the hacks and uploads that pop up at the front of the map, because all the enemies are in back. If you're in the back, though, it's boundless chaos. We then did the Platinum APEX, and one of the guys livestreamed it on his Twitch and YouTube channel, complete with the whole spiel at the end of the game about liking and commenting and subscribing and blah, blah, blah. It was comical. I dunno why anybody would wanna watch us (or anyone else, for that matter) play, because we sucked - about 2,500 revives, we barely made it out alive, etc. I don't really get Twitch/livestreaming, but I'm an old man. It's amazing that for how tactical they were, everything was a complete struggle. They would've taken the joy out of the game if I'd cared, but I just kinda went with it and got a good chuckle out of it. The Paradox thing is especially puzzling - that little cave works great regardless of the composition of your team. It's difficult to get overwhelmed. It's fairly easy money even if you're not using the Nova method. Why struggle more than you have to?

Welp, N7 day didn't exactly pick up business on the multiplayer front. And Robert, I must confess I now get it - damn, I love the Piranha. If you need to put eight shotgun shells in something with a quickness, there's your gun. So effective doing Nova Platinum.

All of my guys are either day-glow yellow or day-glow green. It's been a personal pet peeve of mine when someone dresses up their character to look too much like an enemy (usually Outlaw). Anyone who dresses a Krogan in red needs to ponder their choices a bit more. I like the outlandish colors because I don't confuse teammates for enemies. It's weird - I don't see any reason to put much thought into how my guys look, yet I used to go absolutely insane in GTA Online until I got the car I was tinkering with looking perfect. I realize this is completely personal preference, but I hate that backlash power. It's cute, but I never can get anything working with it. The Salarian's non-shield-boosting powers are just mean. Need mean, not cute. I know I played the backlash one, but haven't played the other guy yet, and I think they're up to XII by now.

Actually, the Celebratory pack is the one with one guaranteed ultra-rare, two guaranteed rares and five XP booster IVs. The mission that wins it seems to (seems to - I wanna see what you guys think) open up a tiny new bit of the Remnant "dungeon" level. I read at one point that they were gonna make that level pickable by players - I hope that's the case, it's great. Apparently they've tweaked some guns, at least: http://blog.bioware.com/mass-effect-andromeda-multiplayer-updates/

There's a neato Silver APEX that I had to play just to see what its deal was - it lists no modifiers (first APEX I've ever seen that has no modifiers like dampened weapons, etc.). It also gives you no extra money or XP, apparently. It's a seven-wave battle on Derelict with activities on 2, 4 and 6 like in Platinum. Also like Platinum - the mission is listed as against Kett, but it''s a greatest hits like Platinum is - some kett, some outlaw, some remnant. The Ascendants start coming out at wave 2. Wave 7 started as an insane dogpile of bad guys, but all we had to do was move. I could hear some guy over the TV cussing constantly, but I dunno what for - game was never that bad. Apparently, the bronze APEX gives one of those "celebratory" packs upon completion, which last time was like a Premium pack, if I recall correctly. Remnant, remnant bunker, weakened assault team, no replacements in ammo boxes. I seem to remember this one being trickier than usual last time.

Two new characters are out - both rares. There appear to be no new guns.

Hell, at least you weren't napping instead of giving out shield boosts.

He was an idiot. I had to explain to him earlier via messages how to get weapon variants. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and lost. Today, we had 3 Avengers in a room for Platinum. A Kroguard joins as a fourth. I figure we got the Avenger market cornered, so I switch to the Salarian so I can shield boost and feed the Krogard's nova, right? Guy proceeded to nova ONCE the entire game. I just kept shield boosting and shooting like a madman. We made it.

Every time I try to read anything on Meltzer's site on my android phone, it causes a pop-up spyware avalanche. Usually they're trying to sell me an app to make it stop. Anyone else get this? Gotta try an anti-adware app I downloaded earlier again, I guess.

Had some Platinum winners today: 1. This chick I played with a few days ago was going to be the shield-boosting Salarian, so I loaded up the Kroglad. She, however was giving no shield boosts and wandered away from me as soon as wave 1 started. So, Krogan with no Nova = huge target with no way to fight back. We made it, somehow, but I had to be revived at least 30 times. 2. Guy with a low Apex is the cloaking Turian. Someone's a Krogan, so I switch from Avenger to Salarian, thinking the Turian was gonna try to do the cloaking stuff. Nope, he stayed put, leaving me to try to do retrievals with a non-cloaking character. No fun. Didn't go well.

I think the bad random teammates I used to have to carry through Gold matches have now followed me over to Platinum. I was the only one of the four of us to extract during a match last night (first time I can remember that happening), and I had to leap into extraction to make it myself. The doctor was going insane running triage after teammates' dubious decisions.

"We can't wait to see what the future holds." Hilarious. Do you think the person who wrote that said "this'll get them"? Got all the ultra-rare characters up to XX. Lately, I find myself in teams with the same two or three guys no matter when I'm playing.

I'm old and set in my ways. If it ain't one of about three characters, I don't wanna know. Old dogs and such.

Good God, what a mauling. That poor wimpy took an assbeating. Cyrus was absolutely perfect on commentary. I really like him in NJPW, but admittedly, the bar was pretty low.

Got the dalm Avenger up to XX-20. Now lack one more of the Human Kineticist to have all the ultra rares at XX. Don't care about her, so I'm buying arsenal packs. Finally got the harpoon gun. Don't really care.

If you're doing the Nova method, the Salarian and any Krogans are joined at the hip. I'd say the shield booster is the most important member of the team.