For game night this week read game day and whilst it was technically last week following the update I’m still using it for this waffle. Plus it takes me into the new world of computer gaming as opposed table top gaming, although it did put my beer on a table so as far as I’m concerned that counts. Things didn’t quite go to plan however as the originally we were going to try out the multi-crew function in the new Elite Dangerous Beta. But as often happens with these things when the Beta came out the multi-crew didn’t work. So instead I spent an afternoon in VR learning to fly and fight all manner of different space ships. Docking was certainly a challenge and I’m not great at navigation. There’s just so much to take in that kept flying past the systems I was trying to fly into. Then having to turn around only to miss it for a second time. But I got there in the end.
As someone who hasn’t really played video games since the 80’s, with the exception of the Lego games on the X-Box playing a game in VR is was something of a revelation. I was surprised at just how immersive the whole experience was and a bit like hobby skills, it was easy to pick up the basics but it will take a lot of practice to get good. I was ok at the basic flight side of things but then bring in flying and trying to bring up different systems to either fight or communicate with a station you are trying to dock at and it all started to go a bit pair shaped.
Having said that after a couple of hours I had the basics down and left the training missions and joined the proper online game. Pete kindly game me a tank of a ship so I wasn’t likely to get killed, as long as remembered I could run away. And we went pirate hunting. Remember I said I wasn’t the best at navigation, well we ended up in a different location to the one Pete had picked but it was easier for him to join me than for me to getting things wrong.
We ended up flying through a ring system full of miners with me trying to keep track of everything that was going on. More through luck than skill I killed a couple of pirate ships before Pete, in one of his smaller ships decided to crash into me, and caused himself massive damage. He tried to say it was my fault but I’m not having that. I just slammed the breaks on so he could fly by. After that it was a trip back to the space station and the out for beer. The beer wasn’t virtual though and it rounded off a really good day of, albeit different, gaming.
On the hobby front I’m making slow but steady progress on my Smoke and Mirrors crew. Colette is now finished and I’m reasonably happy with how she has turned out. I went for a red and black as the main colours as opposed to the black pinstripe on the box art. There was no way I could do the pinstripes. She’s on the same stage type base as I’ve used for the others although I don’t think it’s just as good as the one I did for the mannequin.
That’s been it for this week. Lots more travel for work next week but I might try and pack a few models I’ve got lined up for future projects and try and some of them cleaned up and built. Not very exciting and it doesn’t make for great content but it does start to line things up for future content. Have a good weekend and hope to catch you all again next week.
