GameBlast 16 featuring Mike, The Reid and Baz

Last year myself, forum favourite @Baz and our old pal The Reid took part in GameBlast15 and made £257 for charity. Not to bad, even if I do say so myself.

We just stayed up for 24 hours playing videogames, being indecisive over what to order to eat and having a long list of friends come visit for a bit. All streamed live on twitch for like 4 people to look at.
This year we plan on doing it again and are looking for some recommendations of games to play. Co-op stuff mainly.

Heres a list of stuff we're playing so far..
Chariot
Destruction Derby
HELLDIVERS
Monaco: What's Yours is Mine
Risk Of Rain
Rugby League Live 3
Tennis Elbow 2013
A Virus Named TOM
Grim Fandango
Journey
Athens 2004
Pro Evolution Soccer 2016
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
The Yawhg
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Gang Beasts
Duck Game
Mount your Friends
The Jackbox Party Pack
Kerbal
Punch Club

If you would like to donate, you can do so here: https://give.everydayhero.com/uk/akehurst-trio

Best of luck, guys. I'll be tuning in on the 27th for it.

Best part is you can watch me be awesome for the whole lot. It'll all be live streamed here: http://www.twitch.tv/mikeakehurst/ :baz:

If you haven't finalised the games list yet.

I'd recommend Jackbox 2.

Some of the games you can share the room code with people on twitch and they can join in as a voting audience for your answers.

Oh and Bomb Corp will test your teamwork.

Micro machines, surely?

Good luck guys, love Hazza and Henry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mahow

If you haven't finalised the games list yet.

I'd recommend Jackbox 2.

Some of the games you can share the room code with people on twitch and they can join in as a voting audience for your answers.

Oh and Bomb Corp will test your teamwork.

We have the first Jackbox and planned on playing it. Is there enough new stuff to justify it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike

We have the first Jackbox and planned on playing it. Is there enough new stuff to justify it?

Personally I think so.

Bidiots is a different spin on the drawing game, Earwax is a great, Bomb Corp will test your teamwork, Quiplash is alright (however it looks better on Youtube when a broadcaster is taking advantage of audience voting) and Fibbage is the awesomeness that is Fibbage but with more questions I believe (although I've never seen any repeated on Fibbage before).

I think the second is better for a Twitch audience because they're able to login to your game view and interact by voting for their favourite answers in Quiplash.

Cool, I'd Drawful back? That was our fav last year.

No, replacing it is Bidiots.

You draw art and then it's a bidding war style event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UFHlh1kzvs

I don't understand the game from that video, although I did skip bits.

I don't think anything will top Drawful.

This is tomorrow, lads. :drool:

Pit Fighter had been added to the roster, along with Gran Turismo 2.

Who's gon watch?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mahow

No, replacing it is Bidiots.

You draw art and then it's a bidding war style event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UFHlh1kzvs

I second this. What a game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baz

This is tomorrow, lads. :drool:

Pit Fighter had been added to the roster, along with Gran Turismo 2.

Who's gon watch?

I wish you well. Good cause.

Bidiots is really a lot of fun.

Earwax is fun but sometimes you don't get very good options.

Bomb Corp is fucking MADNESS but makes for a lot of laughs.

Quiplash is good if you have a lot of people but otherwise not really my favorite. Sometimes it's devolved into people just answering "hairy cunt!" for things non-related and it gets a bit dumb.

Fibbage is lots of fun though. End up playing that more than most anything else if I'm honest.

I'll pop in for a while, it better be good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bruhnaldo

Bidiots is really a lot of fun.

Earwax is fun but sometimes you don't get very good options.

Bomb Corp is fucking MADNESS but makes for a lot of laughs.

Quiplash is good if you have a lot of people but otherwise not really my favorite. Sometimes it's devolved into people just answering "hairy cunt!" for things non-related and it gets a bit dumb.

Fibbage is lots of fun though. End up playing that more than most anything else if I'm honest.

I'm not a fan of quiplash but I imagine that if you use the audience feature it's quite good.

Fibbage is my favourite because I'm fucking amazing at it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mahow

Fibbage is my favourite because I'm fucking amazing at it.

lmao yes me too. i was going to post "maybe it's lots of fun because i tend to win" but thought i ought be modest ;)

WE ARE LIVE!!

Enjoy ;)

http://www.twitch.tv/mikeakehurst

https://give.everydayhero.com/uk/Akehurst-Trio

How you holding up lads?

Just tuned in and it appears Mike and the Reid have brutally murdered Baz and are eating his flesh.

I saw a bomb being attempted to be diffused and heard scouse accents. I feared the worst.

I never knew I'd be seeing as much of Baz's knees as I have.

Good knees though, right?

£121 so far.

Thank you @Foe for the donation. :D

What's the stream quality like?

The audio is overloading the mic and making it unwatchable. Been good other than that. :D

Ehhh just turn it down a bit and lip read . :rosebud:

Is it laggy or pretty constant?

We're about to play YAWHG

"Seen Missy Elliott recently?"

Think we need a proper mic really. It's just a cheap webcam mic

Yeah when the game volume is too high it's just blowing, everything else is fine.

Pretty tired now.

Playing an old PS2 favourite - G1 Jockey. We've completely forgot how to do well though, so it's not much fun anymore.

A little over an hour to go and we've cracked open FM16.

2am till 6am was the worst!

How much did you make? I watched a bit.

£157 so far :)
What were you unlucky enough to tune into?

Well we managed to make it through the 24 hours but it was definitely harder than I remember towards the end. Between 03:00 and 06:00 was probably the real killer, as that was a point when our friends had all gone home and we’d played the games really we wanted to play. Like I said though, we powered through and made it to the end.

It started off as just me and Mike and we decided to play through the remastered Grim Fandango. We had it as kids but it used to always crash really early on so we’d never really played it. Turns out it’s quite a hard game so he had a walkthrough up to guide me if I got completely stuck. Safe to say I wouldn’t have got very far without it! I didn’t really enjoy the game though – most likely because I’d read such positive things about it over the years and always wanted to play it, so my expectations were very high. Sure it’s funny and the idea is ace, but it’s pretty complicated and just not really as immersive as other adventure games I know and love, like the Monkey Island and Broken Sword series.

Our mate AB turned up after about two hours so we sacked it off and tried to play a game he’d requested: Everybody’s Golf. After no joy with PlayStation or PS2 emulators, with EG1 or 2 (or Hotshots golf) we ended up playing a crazy golf game called Toy Golf Extreme. I looked up some cheat codes to unlock all the courses and, stupidly in hindsight, opted for the last course – the attic. Turns out it was last for a reason; it was very very hard. It was kind of fun, and very close in the end as AB won by 1 stroke.

Another mate turned up towards the last few holes, and then The Reid arrived. Sure he wouldn’t be playing games for 24 hours like me and my brother, but he had to go to work in the morning!

I played Pit Fighter for a bit, as it was one of the few beat ‘em ups I’ve ever enjoyed, and it was as good as I remember. For some reason I ended up playing an emulated Portuguese version, which just added to it really. Then we had KFC, while my mate played Eswat and then X-Men 2, both emulated Sega Megadrive/Genesis games. I returned from the dining table to have a game of mixed doubles on Pete Sampras Tennis 96 but The Reid and I got absolutely slaughtered so it didn’t last longer than one match.

Two more mates arrived after that, and we decided to play some of the Jackbox Party Games. First up was everyone’s favourite, Drawful, and as ever it led to some very funny drawings and some even funnier guesses. It really is a top game and definitely one I’d recommend to anyone thinking of doing a similar gaming marathon with friends. We also played Fibbage and It was just as funny. The Jackbox games really are great to play in groups of friends. If you haven’t played them, especially the two we played, you definitely should.

After that we played in-house favourite Mount Your Friends which never fails to entertain and amuse everyone. I’m not sure what other games modes there are but we always play the same one, where each person takes turns to climb up a tower of bodies with a goat at the bottom, having to go further every time, within sixty seconds, or else you’re out. With eight players it was hilarious. Another great game, which I’d recommend to anyone planning a gaming session with their mates.

One of my mates went at this point so we were down to seven, and decided it would be a good time to play Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. What a game! What an absolute belter of a multiplayer co-op game. The premise is one of you sits in front of the computer screen, where you have a bomb in front of you. Parts of the bomb are sectioned off into different compartments and the rest of the players aren’t allowed to see it. Instead, they are somewhere out of sight but within earshot, with a bomb defusal manual, and the player with the bomb has to communicate with them to try and defuse the bomb before the given time limit. On paper it either sounds lame or complicated, but in actual fact it’s proper boss. Sometimes it goes smooth and everyone crowding round the manual gives each other pats on the back, and other times communication breaks down and inevitably the bomb goes off and arguments follow. All in the name of fun though. AB took charge and dished out various pages of the manual to the six defusers and it wasn’t long before everyone had mastered their given duty. Shoutout to Rob for nailing the wires instructions from the off, and then to AB for storming it when things got complicated and a Ven diagram got involved. It really is an awesome game, and probably the one we’ll talk about most as time goes on. I’m also very glad the whole stream was recorded because it’ll be funny watching back some of the arguments that went on over the Morse-code instructions.

Two more left after that but we still had five and plenty of games to go at. We loaded up The YAWHG which we didn’t really know much about, and my thirty-second YouTube-learned description of it’s a bit like a board game, where we each get a character and take a turn and decide where we want to go and what we want to do. So like you can go the kitchen and either cook or eat, or go the pub and either collect glasses or drink beer didn’t exactly enthuse everyone. We played it though (two of us shared a character because it’s four player) and, well, it was rubbish. Finished it in about ten minutes and didn’t really understand why that was the end, plus everything went bad. So we tried it again and picked better choices, but it still ended really quickly, albeit with a nicer ending to read. Ehh, not one to ever play again or to recommend, sadly.

After that we gave MONACO: What’s Yours Is Mine a go. It was better received than the previous game and got us all trying to function as a team, which is what we were after. It was fun to play for about half an hour, but again it’s not one we’ll ever go back to.

Next up we gave Gang Beasts a go. After the initial laughs at the drunken looking funny characters running around the screen, it soon lost its charm and was just a rubbish game really. Mike says it’s not actually a fully-complete game yet, and the foundations were there for a fun multiplayer game, but it’s just not any good at the moment.

The last two visitors went home, and we were down to the original three, just as our curry arrived. I had a quick look at Rugby League Team Manager 2015 and started a game with Saints. As an avid Football Manager fan, everything seemed familiar and I was impressed with the amount of detail, regardless of it being last seasons teams. I picked a team and then The Reid oversaw a 40-0 demolishing of Batley Bulldogs while I ate my bhuna. We never intended to play it for a long time, but I actually thought it looked like a decent game.

We decided it was as good a time as any to give HELLDIVERS a go on the PS4. I’d suggested it a while ago because I’d read it was a good couch co-op game, and then it was one of the free monthly PSN games, which surely was some kind of omen, right? Last year when we did this, we played Gauntlet and completed it in one sitting. It got a bit repetitive but there was enough variation to keep us playing. The ending was terrible, but overall we enjoyed it. We were hoping HELLDIVERS would fill a similar hole – long playtime, couch co-op, PS4 so no problems setting up control pads. The first thing we noticed is all three of us had the same character, which was basically a man with a gun. Well, I went female, but it was still no different. As we progressed we unlocked new guns and outfits and perks, but there was very little variation. Another criticism of HELLDIVERS is everyone gets the same rewards – so we all got the same XP after a mission, regardless of how many kills/deaths we had, and we all got the same new guns. This really limited the enjoyment we got from it, as one of the most fun aspects of Gauntlet was us scrambling to steal all the loot and then being able to use our rewards to unlock different things to shape our characters – plus we were all different classes to start off with, rather than just three army men. After a few missions of doing exactly the same thing – get dropped off at the place we need to capture, kill everyone and then leave – we realised it wasn’t for us and turned it off. I’m glad we didn’t pay for it. The only real positive to be taken from the hour or so here, was that Carl Frampton won his boxing match, and I won a bet on it.

We were then at a bit of a loss, because we were hoping HELLDIVERS would kill a few hours and it just didn’t. Thankfully we had a mouth-watering game to turn to. You may remember a Nike advert from over 15 years ago, where an impressive selection of footballers did various tricks and fancy flicks. Well, when it game out there was also a PlayStation game in the same ilk, called The Mission. The Reid bought it and we played it almost non-stop for about two weeks, and thought it was awesome. We decided to play it again. Unfortunately the ROM for it didn’t bloody work, so we couldn’t!

So we thought back to other games The Reid and I had played together and one stuck out, because it was a completely unexpected gem that I’m not even sure why I ever had in the first place. G1 Jockey 4 on the PS2. That’s right, a horse-riding game, and a bloody awesome one at that. When we originally played it we did the campaign mode and took turns doing the races, until we developed affinities with certain horses and then we always rode the same ones. We played it a lot, so we had a lot of horses to choose by the end. Shoutout to his favourite, Don Antonio, and my best, Sapphire Dress, while I’m at it. Thankfully, this game did work and we went straight into campaign mode (as Chico Fassbender, a name which had previously been used as a lie in Fibbage – who knew that was Grumpy Cat’s real name?) to pick up where we’d left off eight years ago. Well, it’s safe to say we’ve lost the knack. After various last-place finishes, and re-reading the same tutorial over and over, it was looking bleak. The Reid had a few races in a row while I sulked and ate Space Raiders, and seemed to recall a bit of his skill. At this point we decided to turn it off and try something else, but I had one more week of [four] races first. After two disappointing ones, I finally got to grips with the dodgy analogue stick controls and managed two second-place finishes in a row. Alas, we’d already decided to call it quits, so we never got a win (much to The Reid’s frustration, ”HE KNOWS WHAT HE’S DOING! One more week and he’ll win one.”) but it was fun to revisit.

We tried to play Athens 2004, another in-house favourite, but it wouldn’t work so we stuck on WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 and, after messing about to get the pads working, we had a money in the bank match. I was John Cena who bugged badly and had a chair permanently in his hand. The five knuckle shuffle signature move that he does (Mike told me it’s called that) is pretty top when it’s delivered with a steel chair. After a long, and I mean a really goddamn long, time we let the computer-controlled Randy Orton win just so it could be over and done with. The best part about it was The Reid’s controller hadn’t been assigned a triangle button at first, so he couldn’t do his finisher. Mike fixed it for him after about five non-existent Sweet Chin Musics, but it was funny while it lasted.

We also played Duck Game which started off looking a bit rubbish but it wasn’t long before we were all way into it and had great fun playing it. Definitely one (sadly, of the few) games we played that I’d recommend to anyone looking for some couch co-op gaming fun. It’s just a quick little platformer where each player has to pick up various weapons to kill the others with and the last duck standing wins the round. Seems to have plenty of different maps to avoid it becoming repetitive, and the different weapons and outfits are fun to play around with.

Then we played Ultimate Chicken Horse, which was awesome. It’s a game where you start at one point and have to reach another, but you place one object down each at a time. Some are to help you reach the goal, such as a plank of wood to jump onto, and some are items that will prevent you from reaching the goal by killing you. As expected, due to previously playing Little Big Planet with him, The Reid did his best to make the majority of the levels impossible, but after a while even he started to remove the killers (crossbows are the worst) and try to make the level more doable. It’s hard to really picture from my description but it’s definitely one I’d recommend.

By this point I was beginning to worry we’d played so many bad or unenjoyable games that even slightly good ones seemed amazing in comparison, such as the glowing reviews for the two previous games, but in hindsight they really were fun games to play as a group.

By this point tiredness had very much set in, but we continued and gave A Virus Named TOM a whirl. After three games, it was evident that we were far too tired to be solving puzzles like that, so sacked it off. It looked alright, but not really the type of game we look for during GameBlast.

And, with that, we loaded up Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 to try to kick us back into life. It worked for me because on our masterleague I control everyone like normal so have to stay alert. However, those two play as fixed on Gerrard and Heskey, so spent a lot of the time stood still with their eyes closed. We managed to win the Community Shield against Chelsea, but maybe that was because it was the first game we played. I went away (for a poo, if you must know) for about 20 minutes and when I came back, Mike was zoned out staring into space and The Reid was dozing. Apparently he’d even been snoring. We played one more game, where Heskey was mostly stood still offside, and then decided it was silly to get the league off to a bad start due to tiredness so decided to play something else.

While Mike was setting it up, I had another blast of Pit Fighter (this time in English) and obliterated my previous two attempts where I’d got stuck at Chainman Eddie, and actually got as far as Match 9. Having read up on it, the next one would have been against two Chainman Eddie’s, which I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it would be. Although I also always play as Kato, who is apparently the worst of the three characters, so maybe I could have beaten him had I been Buzz or the pyjama-clad Ty. Maybe next year.

With that, The Reid was now as awake as he was going to be thanks to a dose of chocolate, and we set about playing Football Manager 2016. Along with PES, we always play this – two nights a week, so it was nothing new or exciting. Plus we were all pretty tired by this point (about 08:00) so mostly just sat in silence while we progressed. I did manage to beat The Reid 1-0 though, which was great.

Then one of our mates from before, who actually lives with Mike, turned up after his night out and had a quick go on the game he’d previously requested, Streets Of Rage. By this point we weren’t bothered what was going on on the screen, apart from the bottom right corner – as the clock changed from 08:59 to 09:00 it was our cue to get the hell out of there. Man, I couldn’t wait to go to sleep.

Overall it was a fun way to spend 24 hours, helped MASSIVELY by more friends turning up to keep things entertaining. The best game of the day was undoubtedly Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, but there were a few other good ones hid amongst the tedious. I’m sure there are other games we played that I’ve forgot about (I’ve had four hours sleep) or just not mentioned – for example AB was playing Stick Golfa lot, and all of us were almost constantly playing Disc Drivin’, both on our iPhones.

At the time of posting this we have currently made £157.79 (plus £30.19 GiftAid) so are just £42.21 off our £200 target. If you would like to donate you can still do so at https://give.everydayhero.com/uk/akehurst-trio

Thanks to those of you who have already donated, either this year or last, as it really is for a good cause and 24 hours does become a bit gruelling towards the end so we really do appreciate seeing something good come from it. No doubt we’ll be back again next year for GameBlast 17, but hopefully we can reach our target this year too.

Pretty much watched from 9am until gone 12am. Feel like I was there in spirit. Good job guys though I'm disappointed at the lack of MK action.