Extra Life 2012 - Zadrya

As I mentioned before, if you're here looking for another veterinary school post, tune back in a few days--today is the 24 hour gaming marathon that I'm participating in for the Extra Life drive put on by the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, especially the Boston Children's Hospital in my case.  Basically, we raised money for the last month and a half and are now just playing those 24 hours of games.  :P  (My personal page is also here, on that site, if you'd like to see it for whatever reason.)

9:25am:  A bit of a later start than I planned/anticipated... I wanted to be up at 8:30 so that I could make some breakfast, but I happened to just wake up at 8:50.  Oh well.  Breakfast can wait a bit--I'm not hungry anyway.  Fed the animals, woke up a bit, and grabbed the laptop to play some Cthulhu Saves the World as  I wake up.  It's a cute (albeit basic, both in the storyline and graphics) old-school RPG (think the original Final Fantasy, if you've also played some games), but it excels in the banter and comedy with its references to the dark lord himself.  For example, I'm fighting a raptor right now and his flavor text says "surprisingly adept at opening doors."  (If you get the humor in that statement, you are awesome.  :P)

10:54am:  Don't worry--you aren't missing out on much... I just kept dying... and replaying some fights... and dying... and re-playing some fights.  (One of the good features of this game is that you can select the option to get all your "random" fights out of the way before exploring a dungeon, so you don't keep getting distracted by the random encounters.)  I should be able to finally travel through this volcano though!

11:54am:  Stupid astral cave.  I'm a true "adventurer" in those types of games.  I'm told there an island and a town to the west of my starting point, but I had to go exploring first... came across this cave and keep dying 1-2 fights in... time for a shift to something a little less painful.  Plants Vs. Zombies it is!  I want to get my streak of 15 in the Vasebreaker mini-game...

1:26pm:  Still working on that streak... got up to 14 rounds, though.  :(

4:17pm:  FINALLY!  Got the "China Shop" achievement from 15 streaks on Vasebreaker Endless... let's see what other achievements I can do in this game.  :P

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5:17pm:  Giving the laptop a bit of a break from the whole gaming thing and switching over to XBox to play some Alice:  Madness Returns, a sequel to the American McGee's Alice game from the early 1990s.  Very dark twist on the "Alice in Wonderland" story--I love it!  Basically, it follows Alice into her own twisted psyche after the fire in her house from her childhood.  So, you basically fight to maintain your sanity.  This image isn't from the game itself, but it's some of the concept art used in the loading screens.  Just check out what they did to the Cheshire Cat, and you'll see what I mean.

6:20pm:  Greeted by Lolly and Kevin with Chinese food and Last Night on Earth, a zombie board game where someone plays as zombies trying to take over a town and the other people play various townsfolk.  :)  It's gaming, so I say it counts!  And for those of you who are skeptical of that idea, I'll play Solitare on the computer at the same time.  :P

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9:30pm:  That game took forever!  It was fun, despite playing Solitare the whole time too.  Now on to Arkham City to get a bit of action in... starting to get a little tired... but only 11 1/2 hours to go.  For those of you unfamiliar with the "Arkham" series, it's a Batman game where Bruce Wayne gets put into the asylum where all of Gotham's most violent criminals are incarcerated.  Excellent twist on the villains (Penguin, Joker, Harley Quinn, and Bane are the ones I've come across so far)... and a great action game.  I just tend to play it only in short bursts because I get so frustrated with some of the levels, especially the ones where you have to be all sneaky to pick guards off one at a time...

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12:23am:  Ended up switching to an XBox arcade game called From Dust about an hour ago, when I got stuck in Arkham City.  If you are familiar with games, it's kind of a Black and White style game.  If you are not quite as knowledgeable about video games, you play as a god and instruct your villagers to build cities while you manipulate the world around them to make this possible--by moving water, building lava walls, freezing the water, etc.  It's fun--can be quite challenging at times as well.  *yawns*  Getting tired... almost 2/3 of the way through this... just 8 1/2 hours to go!  And now off to play League of Legends with Tyler (and maybe his roommates).

2:31am:  6 1/2 hours... and I'm starting to lose steam, so it's time to get away from the games that require a lot of coordination and thought.  That means it's time for The Walking Dead. :)  Yes, a video game based off the TV series/graphic novels of a zombie apocalypse.

5:33 am:  Episode 1 complete... on to episode 2...

8:02 am:  Almost there!  The light at the end of the tunnel!  I'm dying for a shower and bed...

8:49 am:  And done!  Time for bed.  Goodnight all!