So yesterday was a public holiday for practically everyone. God bless those poor buggers that had to work, but if you had a day off, what did you get up to? Video games? Sitting around the house watching the tennis? The obligatory BBQ?
I had a pretty relaxing day. I spent a bunch of it playing catch up on certain video games. When my son is awake I can pretty much only play kid friendly games, so I played Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for a huge chunk of the day. My kid loves this game. He calls it “MONKEY” and beats his chest every time Donkey Kong runs into the level. Which is adorable.
I also finally finished off New Super Mario Bros. U. I started playing it again after abandoning it soon after the Wii U’s release, but I decided to give it another bash and, you know? That game is actually pretty spectacular. I unfairly dismissed it at a time when I was completely over 2D Mario games, but I thoroughly enjoyed it second time around.
So that was my Australia day, what did you guys and girls get up to?
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56 responses to “Off Topic: Australia Day”
Yesterday was the start of twitter operation Get @Blaghman A Tinder Date. Nothing else matters
*Shoots self in head*
Stayed at home by myself and hunted for a new home system in Elite. Then went for a climb. It was pretty great.
I got a wicked sunburn watching the wife and kids play on the beach.
Ouch. I’m guessing you weren’t in Sydney though. We had a trip to Morning Bay planned but due to the drizzle we ended up going to the aquatic centre at Sydney Olympic Park.
nah, way out on the west coast.
Urgh. Family. A gamer’s worst nightmare.
You get me, Mark.
I tried to program and watch cricket. Neither was particularly successful.
This sounds suspiciously like my day
I did end up with a script that checks the Club Nintendo site and DMs me on twitter if anything new is posted. Which is pretty cool, but it took me about 10 times longer than it actually should, due to a combination of malaise, badly documented libraries, radio on in my ear all day, and a little boy asking me questions about Smash Bros and pokemon trainers.
Lotsa tennis yesterday, and played some BF4 again.
Mark – are you feeling conflicted about tonight’s tennis match? Or are you a stalwart Murray supporter?
Its the battle of the two prats. I cant decide who I dislike least.
At home with my partner looking after our 2 week old son, trying to get some gaming in when he sleeps!
Already have a backlog of games to get through, I fear it is now only going to get longer as the months pass.
I have a 6 month old and I’ll tell you that you don’t need to worry about your backlog getting longer. With the amount of nappies and wipes and formula and furniture and clothes and toys and nappies and wipes and fruit and tupperware and nappies and wipes you buy there will be no money left over to buy new games.
I mean you aren’t going to complete any ones that you do have, but at least the pile isn’t getting bigger 😉
This.
Number 2 is on the way in April for us and already our fruit bowls (yeah, plural) are overflowing.
Upvote for this bit that I completely glossed over before. My theory was that most of the poo-pooing of it at the time was because of (the lacklustre?) NSMB2 leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouths. I hadn’t touched the series in ages and thought NSMBU was awesome. NSLU even moreso. Because green.
The thing I’ve found with recent Mario games is that the early levels are uninspired, and sometimes offputting to veterans. But by the time you reach the bonus worlds – which often need to be unlocked by acing through the boring levels – the devs go absolutely bonkers and produce some crazy, difficult, enjoyable levels. Hell, the end of Super Mario 3D World was like a new Super Mario Galaxy game!
NSMBU is the best 2D Mario game.
After SMA4.
Over World? Woh!
Went to the Australian Open, first timer, was awesome caught the 3hr match between Lopez and Raonic, would definitely go again.
Jealous. I haven’t been in a couple of years now but it was great when I did.
The Sydney tennis in the lead-up to the Aus Open just doesn’t compare.
how good is it. makes you appreciate the skills so much more. big fan of raonic. Looks like a 1940’s superman.
Yea seeing it live made me appreciate more that ballboy who caught one in the nuts a few days ago, Raonic does remind me of Superman actually, they were saying his hair has its own twitter account.
The obligatory BBQ, and working out how to play games with a housemate around. Safe to say I’ off to buy a gaming headset today
Saw Tak3n.
Also saw Gone Girl, for the second time. Really, I only wanted to see if I could catch that Affleck dong shot near the end of the movie. Oh yah!
Monopoly Junior & Jacky Chan
Which Chan? My favourites are probably the Police Story series, but I have a massive soft spot for Heart of Dragon. The Project A and Armour of God films are pretty awesome too.
I been going through watching stuff from the 80s & 90s I either hadn’t seen or hadn’t seen in years.
Watched Police Story part 2 & Accidental Spy(bit shit).
Watched gorgeous & Mr Nice guy for the first time the other day , quite good.
Watched WWE Royal Rumble, did podcast about it, started planning for my next video game review
BBQ and beers m8 straya.
Played a lot of super smash also.
Quintessential stuff mate. Can’t beat it!
I was one of those poor buggers that had to work 🙁
Wanted to play Saints Row 3 on the ‘Bone all day but couldn’t. Apparently if you buy it with the Gat out of Hell expansion on Live it won’t download.
So I played Diablo 3 and Super Mario 3D Land all day.
Went to Universal Studios Japan.
Meh moo moomimerma mooio mahmah.
*sigh*. I wanna go to Japan again. Been watching Destination Flavour: Japan recently and it’s so good. Thinking that I might have to check out the North next time I go.
in the morning i got to cuddle a 3 month old kangaroo, after that i just watched a couple of movies
I bought The Crew on sale off psn, then applied the extra 10% discount code Sony was giving away. Then Ubi decided to screw me by doing maintenance on the servers, so I was unable to play at all. I didn’t realise The Crew was online all the time DRM protected..
What a bugger! I used my 10% on the Drive Club season pass and the Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd Costume Club.
Spent the day playing Minecraft (the Dw20-1.7 modpack). Finally got a basic AE system up and running, fuelled by a lava pump in the nether (good lord, Extra Utilities and an Ender Tank make for a very compact setup – literally five blocks), built an igneous extruder to churn out cobblestone for base-building, and built an extra three rooms for my base; then realised I’d have to relocated them all up by 5-15 blocks to stick to my original design idea. *facepalm*
Jesus. I love Minecraft and have zero clue as to what any of that is.
Perhaps I’m being cobbled by playing it on PS3 / Vita?
Different strokes for different folks, really. If you enjoy Minecraft as is, all power to you. If you don’t particularly like the mining side, tho, or want to focus on something else… Check out some of the youtubers doing FTB series – Direwolf20’s pretty informative – see if it’s something you think you’d like.
I find vanilla Minecraft hard to enjoy, but I think that’s mostly because I stopped playing back when endgame was essentially “a diamond pick” – I haven’t played vanilla since the late days of 1.8b (aka the “adventure update”), before they added the End. A few months later, I heard about the Tekkit and Technic packs… and promptly lost months of sleep as I built a nuclear reactor and explored Industrialcraft and Buildcraft. 😛
Now, I get “the bug” to play again every six months or so, download a pack that sounds interesting, and pick a set of mods to focus on. This time, it’s Applied Energistics (a computer-based storage system for items, with facilities for autocrafting and logistics) and Thaumcraft (an Eldritch/Thaumaturgy mod – wands, auras, alchemy, classic magic stuff), two fairly mature mods I’ve explored in the past, but that have been significantly expanded since I last explored them.
Nowadays, I take my enjoyment from base design, figuring out ways to automate resource acquisition, and the logistics of sorting and storing those resources without breaking the aesthetics of the base (ie. hiding the redstone, wiring and pipes). The amount of time I’ve spent playing it, it’s the most I’ve ever got out of a $20 investment 😀
Ha ha, nice one. For me, Minecraft is about hoarding iron, redstone and gold, with the intent of (eventually) building a gigantic railway network. Vanilla is as far as I’ve got, but being able to take my world on the go on my Vita makes my daily commute disappear.
I enjoy the process of spelunking for materials, having evolved a system for mining which tells me exactly where I’ve been and what I’ve done. Being able to navigate caverns and mineshafts which were evil, unnavigable mazes when I first started out is a constant source of enjoyment.
I’m not sure what I’ll do with all the stuff I’ve dug up, but knowing that when I DO decide it’s all there ready to go satisfies the hoarder in me.
And that’s what I love about Minecraft – it’s anything you want it to be. $20 well spent, indeed.
Just layed in Bed All Day
I got up pretty early to go to the gym. At about 11 I went to an archery range with some friends. Afterward, we headed to a Chinese restaurant to have dumplings for lunch before playing a few tabletop games until about 5. Then I watched some tennis and played Hearthstone in the evening. Nothing particularly Australian about any of that lol but it was a great day nonetheless!
BBQ, Tennis, Beers, Miss Universe …………what? the wife wanted to watch it…..i am ok with that.
I stayed up til 6am playing video games thne slept in til 1pm and felt like I’d wasted the entire day. I then couldn’t get to sleep until 2am so when I woke up at 6am to get ready for work I felt like shit.
Work here. And it was so very busy.
Work for me too.
I work in a hospital ED… so many drunk people.
Ergh drunk people.. the bane of… everything in my life lol
My wife and (ergo) kids are indigenous soooo not really celebrating the first fleets arrival in our household lol.
Actually had an overall crappy day, was getting over food poisoning, had family drama, having issues with a family pet… what a long weekend! Didn’t even get to play any vidya games!
Went to the Darling Harbour in Sydney to see the fireworks at 9pm 😀 Long day but it was a great show to be there in person
I drove from Perth to walpole and spent a few days with the giants living down there 😀
I snowboarded all day at Shiga Kogen in Japan, where there wasn’t a single Aussie flag in sight and if people have even heard the word “mate”, it was in an Attenborough documentary.
It was excellent.
Myself and the 4yo got through a huge chunk of Lego Indiana Jones.