Ranty Goodness. · 4:12pm Jan 6th, 2015
Warning: Contains ranting, Destiny, insanity and nuts.
With that out of the way: SWEET CELESTIA ON A TRICYCLE!
So, anyone play Destiny? Yes? No? Just me? My parrot? Yes, I have a parrot. His name is Lorri. He's a lorrikeet. Funny story, but I'll get to him later. Promise.
See, I got Bungie's Destiny the other day, and have been enjoying it despite the occasional... hiccup. Australian internet; enough said.
Anywho, I'd just finished what I think is the last Story mission, and was feeling tough enough to take on the Weekly Strike. For you MMO players, that's like a Raid... I think. For non-gamers, it's a normal mission with the difficulty ramped up, every enemy has had its nuts flicked with a wet towel, and you are condemned to misery and suffering for daring try it without five of your mates to help you out.
Starts off well enough. My sweet new endgame gear does the job, brings down anything I run into on the way to the mission area. Then I actually get in there.
Normally, when you die, you can just respawn and go on with the funtimes. In a mission, though, you have to start from the last checkpoint. Again, not so bad. I'm good at pulling off headshots for quick kills, and the enemies didn't look like anything new, so I figured I was safe.
Boy, was I wrong.
About 15 minutes in, I emerge from a rough fight feeling pretty smug. I got through the base, I enter a hanger with some tanks ready to steal... and immediately get my backside shot off. I made like Lily and found something to cower behind, then peeked out to find a single enemy standing at the entrance to the hangar, hosing the place down with his minigun. Then, he shoots rockets at me. Heatseeking ones. Again, I channeled Lily and ran screaming around the room while the world exploded, eventually finding a wall with a two-inch gap in it to snipe the guy from. He starts up his minigun again... and shoots through the tiny gap.
Yep. That's fair. Sniper-accurate minigun that kills me in 4 hits and stunlocks me so I can't shoot back, plus heat-seeking missiles on demand. Oh, and he has shields. They recharge to full in a nanosecond if I stop shooting him, so I have to hit him until he's dead. Did I mention that I have a revolver, sniper rifle and rocket launcher? All weapons that are not known for holding large amounts of ammo. Finally, he has about 10,000 hp. My sniper rifle does like 600 on a headshot when his shields are down. Yep. Fair, isn't it? Almost forgot, he can fire his minigun for about 30 seconds straight before stopping. Then he shoots his missiles and starts minigunning again.
So, much screaming and cursing later, I finally bring him down and get out of the hanger, driving my shiny new tank I stole.
Then I explode again. There are about 10 guys waiting outside. Two of them have shields and grenade launchers, and by grenade launchers I mean "machine guns that fire grenades that stunlock the crap out of you so you can't move or get a shot in edgewise".
The tank, as it turns out, can't shoot anything directly in front of it, is slow and sluggish, and has no armor.
If I die, the checkpoint it takes me to is before I fought Minigun McJerkface. I got to know him very well.
Much time passes. I kill everything and go onwards. Twenty feet down the road, the first boss of the mission. He doesn't have a recharging shield, he has a big metal one that blocks literally everything I have. He's sitting in a tower, guarded by a small army. More grenade guys, more minigun guys.
I'll spare you the horror of my cursing. Littlepip would have been shocked if she heard it.
Much, much time and swearing later, I finally bring the boss down. The trigger on my controller is acting funny because I was hitting it so much. I take a moment to breathe... and get royally buggered because another two bosses and their pals dropped out of the sky and made me the guest of honor at their high-explosive gangbang. BACK TO THE CHECKPOINT I GO! HELLO, MINIGUN MCJERKFACE! HOW I MISSED YOU!
More time. More swearing. More than a little screaming. Eventually, I triumph. Bosses dead, new checkpoint so I never have to see Minigun McJerkface again. Back in my almost useless tank, drive down the road... next boss.
He has a tank. A proper tank, with armor and everything. And machine guns. And a minefield layer.
So, there I am, in my overgrown buggy of a wannabe tank, against a proper tank. Boom, dead, back to the checkpoint. Jump out, unload all my rockets, actually do some damage... die because even a glancing blow from the turret is instadeath. Something they never tell you about Destiny is that, when you die, you don't get your ammo back when you respawn. So, no rockets. Shoot the treads with my sniper rifle, die, no sniper ammo left. I lost track of time. I had nothing left, and resorted to throwing knives. I may have, at one point, ran screaming at it and tried to stab it in the exhaust.
I don't know how long it was, but I triumphed. I moved onwards, slaughtered everything between me and the final boss.
The final boss is a giant Minigun McJerkface. I almost cried.
Every death took me back to the room before the boss, with a bunch of enemies to fight through before I face him again, including a grenade guy. So much rage. So many deaths. I even started being cheap, staying in the entrance so I could duck back and heal if the boss got the better of me. Bad idea; doing that spawns almost killable enemies to push me towards the boss or kill me while trying.
I even tried the Whiskey Rose strategy, but running up and hitting it in the face just got me sent back to the checkpoint.
I ended up giving up. My absolute best run was my last one. Almost half the boss' health, gone. Then I ran completely out of ammo. Enemies spawned behind me, the boss was in front of me. I brought down one guy with my knife before they got the better of me. Then, I quit. I quit, I had a little sob, and I put down the controller.
How long was I playing? I don't know. The sun was up when I started. It's the next day now. My controller has bite marks on it, but I don't know how they got there. If you're going to get Destiny, have a spare controller or two handy, for if you try the DLC missions or the Weekly Strikes.
And now, as promised, the story of Lorri the Lorrikeet.
We found him in our yard the other day, cornered by our dog and fighting for his life. We think he was fleeing the bushfires around here, and came down for a drink. We put him in a spare cage with some food and water, and he's doing terrific.
He's such a happy little bird, and really friendly. Loves getting patted, and will eat apple puree right off my finger, chirping and talking to me the whole time. Then he gets mad when I take my finger away and screams at me.
Surprisingly, he's even made friends with the dog, despite their rocky start. Whenever the dog goes up to the cage, Lorri goes to him and starts chirping. The dog got his head through the cage door today, while I was changing the water; Lorri came up and started grooming him. No fear from the bird, no aggression from the dog, just the two of them bonding.
Adorable.
He's already become a beloved family member, and I look forward to teaching him to say "Poop".
So, that's what's happened lately. I hope you laughed, because I found it funny. I'm also really tired and not in my right mind, so it might just be funny to me.
Now I'm off to sleep, and then back to work on WB.
Ooh, you poor thing!
I've been through that sort of situation many times, though never been nearly as successful. Makes me almost glad I didn't jump on the Destiny bandwagon, I've heard great things, but I've also heard some bad things about the game. I think I'll stick with my last gen hardware and my somehow still functioning F3 GOTY and F:NV UE 
And I'm sure Lorri is just precious, my mother used to have a bird, a great big, white something or another. I can't remember the name 
These are two very different stories to put into a single blog post. :)
2704845 Cockatoo? Giant squawky buggers that'll take your finger off, they are. There's always massive flocks of them over here, and some of the wild ones learn to talk from tame ones that escape.
I always laugh when they're considered exotic birds in other countries.
2705372 It seemed like a good idea at the time. At the sleep-deprived, frustrated, mildly insane time.
2705412
Yes, he was a Cockatoo! Funny story behind him too, but it's about the way he left this earth, poor guy. Mother had him for years, loved the fella to death
Funny story. If this is the one I'm thinking of, my friend told me a story about him doing the exact same thing on that mission while yelling "SAXTOOOOON HAAAAAALE!".
2713290 It's the Meridian Bay, Mars mission; you have to kill Valus Ta'aurc. Also the current Weekly Heroic and Weekly Nightfall strike. Because it's not like the mission is already stupid hard; we need more enemies, more aggressive enemies, and more enemies with shields. That's the Heroic strike, btw. The Nightfall one?.. no. Just, no. That's so much Bad Thing, it's not funny.
Why is the Nightfall version so Bad thing? Here's the modifiers:
Epic: Heavily shielded and highly aggressive enemies appear in great numbers. (Because there wasn't enough crap to deal with already)
Nightfall: If all players die, the fireteam will be returned to orbit. (No checkpoints, folks! Everyone dies, back to the start!)
Lightswitch: Minions of the Darkness deal much more melee damage. (Get close, get killed. One hit, you're gone)
Angry: Minions of the Darkness won't flinch, even after massive damage. (That means no stunning enemies, not now, not ever. Hit them with a rocket? Walk it off, smash a player)
Juggler: No ammo drops for your equipped weapon. (Enough said. All my hate)
I beat the easiest version of the Strike once, just once. It took ages, and I was with two other guys. Forget the Heroic and Nightfall versions. Not happening.
2713294
Yep, that's the one.