Minecraft

With the exception of my anniversary post (which I couldn’t miss) I’ve been pretty silent here lately, and it’s not because I don’t have things I want to say, or that my home life or work life have been busy. It’s because all of my leisure time, as well as a large portion of time I should have spent sleeping, has been spent playing Minecraft.

My obsession with this game is a complete surprise to me. I’ve never been much for playing older games because of the dated graphics. Even though I lived through the 8bit era, I’ve never felt nostalgic for old graphics. So, when I saw Minecraft mentioned on Penny Arcade, I looked at some screen shots of the game and decided not-for-me. I didn’t consider the game-play at all since, in the past, it’s never been enough to get me to forget about the graphics.

I didn’t give Minecraft another though until I sat down on Saturday night (this story takes place back on September 18th) to catch up on my RSS feeds and write a couple of blog posts. Arkenor was the first entry in my game blogs folder and I clicked through to watch a video he’d put together. Even though I wasn’t interested in Minecraft, I knew he’d be entertaining to watch. He had three or four videos posted at the time and I watched the first two before deciding that I had to play it. I downloaded the client and fired up the game while watching the other two videos. This was around 8 or 9 pm. At 3 am, I decided I really should go to bed, even though I was still enthralled with the game (which didn’t even have sound at the time because of server issues).

So what changed my mind? Did the graphics didn’t magically improve? Seeing Minecraft’s world in motion makes the blockiness and low-res textures look more consistent. Having the whole world is built on blocks, including the sun, moon, and clouds, makes the game seem less like it has bad graphics and more like it was as intentional design choice.

Aside from the graphics, the game-play is just excellent. It is simple to learn, yet fairly deep (for the alpha state it’s in). It’s a complete sandbox game, an open world ready for you to explore and build in, but with a survival aspect that gives it just enough structure to keep from getting boring.

That’s something I should really highlight: the game is in alpha. That means that features are still being added and changed. The game has a basic free mode, but the survival mode requires you to buy the game, which is €9.95 or around $14. The cool part is your purchase get’s you all future updates and the current prices is half of the €20 it will cost on release. The survival mode can be played single player or multi-player. The single player mode is pretty solid, where as the multi-player mode is much rougher, but still very fun.

Besides Arkenor’s series (which includes some excellent Skeletor impressions), there’s a ton of videos on Youtube as well: X’s Adventures, Seananners, and an amazing fan-made trailer (see below).

Second Anniversary!

Today’s the big day! I now have two years of blogging under my keyboard. That’s 158 (counting this one) posts written with 800 comments (likely half of them mine).

Last year I had one goal: post more. I barely managed 50 posts during my first year, so for my second year what I really wanted to do was double that and write 100 posts. I’m pretty happy that I managed that and a few more, I started pretty strong in January with 15 and did pretty well most months.

Even better than meeting my posting goal, has been the new connections I’ve with readers and other bloggers this year. I’ve had some good discussions in blog comments, on Twitter, and in game chats. I have to say that the new friends I’ve made has been the best thing to come out of blogging for me.

Since, I mentioned stats last year I figured I should again. I hadn’t been paying much attention to them this year and there were some surprises to me. Hopefully none of these come off as bragging. I’m know that there are other blogs get a lot more traffic, but for someone like me who is sporadically productive (if improving), I feel pretty good about them.

  • Traffic jumped right at the start: 537 in December to 1,449 in January (I imagine because I was fairly regular about posting for a change)
  • Monthly hits for the year haven’t gone below 1,000 (except for February at 943)
  • June was the biggest month ever with 2,005 hits (due to the LotRO free to play announcement)
  • Three most popular posts (both this year and all time): LotRO F2P?!? at 1,246, Red Dead Redemption at 1,246, and LotRO, Cosmetic Gear, and the Wardrobe at 366.
  • The total hits for 2009 were 2,504. Year-to-date for 2010 is 12,284 (um what?).

I can’t think of anything else to add at the moment (and the twin siren calls of Civ5 and Minecraft are getting a bit too enticing), so here’s to two years passed and more to come.

Thanks for reading.

Game Tie-in Books

I finished two game tie-in books, recently. I know it seems like tie-ins are the only thing I read, first there were the Burn Notice novels, and now Mass Effect’s third novel and the Elemental novel. I do read more than that, but usually my non-game/TV related reading are trilogies or series and those are much harder for me to write about.

Mass Effect: Retribution

Let’s start with the sci-fi book. Like the previous two  novels, Retribution is written by Drew Karpyshyn who also writes the dialog for the games and it shows in the quality of both. Set sometime after the second game, Retribution picks up with most of the same characters from Ascension but puts them into a conflict that picks up from the end of the game.

Side note: I don’t think this is a prequel for Mass Effect 3. I can’t be sure but Ascension was not directly related to Mass Effect 2, except for the fact that it featured Cerberus, so I’m guessing it’s not.

As the books opens, we find that Cerberus has acquired Reaper technology and plans to test it on humans. The Illusive Man has a particular human in mind, Paul Grayson, who’s on the run for betraying Cerberus and the Illusive Man. During the course of the book, Kahlee Sanders finds out that Paul’s been abducted and enlists David Anderson to help find him and possibly take down Cerberus.

These books are a bit different from more game tie-ins that I familiar with, because they don’t involve the main protagonist from the game or ever do more than peripherally reference events in the game. Instead these books are more about filling on more of the background of the Mass Effect universe and developing some of the ancillary characters. This is nice since, if you have read them, then the world in the game is that much more alive and there are some oblique references to book events, but they’re not required reading by any means.

Destiny’s Embers

Leaving aside all of the drama around the game it’s tied to (you can Google it), I thought that Destiny’s Embers was a fun book. It’s written by Brad Wardell, whose the programmer for the game Elemental and the CEO of Stardock. So while it’s not a great book; it isn’t an awful book either. It was a fun read that kept me interested enough in the characters and plot to overlook any rough edges, and that’s not something I can say about every fantasy book I’ve picked up recently.

I would caution anyone who’s grammar sensitive that you’ll probably not enjoy this book as Brad’s style includes a frequent use of commas. This is not something that bothered me, but it is something to keep in mind. If you’re curious but not sure, then check out the except on Amazon’s site (or get the Kindle sample).

The plot itself is fairly standard epic fantasy: good versus evil. Most of the characters are either good or bad with few shades of gray. There’s a hero’s journey in search of a mythical item, a big battle scene at the climax, and an ending that sets up the game.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man

Does whatever a spider can.

Watching the reruns of the 1967 animated series in the 80’s was my first exposure to Spider-Man, and the theme song from the show is usually the first thing that pops into my head when I think of the character. He was my favorite superhero as a kid, more than either Superman or Batman (although Batman was a close second). So when I saw a preview of the new game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions as few months ago, I preordered it from Amazon.

It showed up on Tuesday this week and I’ve played about four hours so far. My initial impression is: great game, I’m having a lot of  fun, but I’m a little disappointed.

The graphics are absolutely amazing. The game looks very very good, both the world and the animations. Beenox has really managed to make the comic book art-style come alive. Playing in the game is like being in a comic book, but it looks and feels like a real world. What’s more, each of the four universes: Amazing, Ultimate, Noir, and 2099; have their own recognizable style both in graphics and dialog.


click for a larger image

Besides the graphics, the voice acting is also very well done. Neil Patrick Harris does the voice for Amazing Spider-Man (he did the voice for Spider-Man in the New Animated Series). Christopher Barnes does voices Spider-Man Noir and originally worked on the original animated series from 1994. Josh Keaton is the voice for Ultimate Spider-man (he did Spider-Man in the 2008 Spectacular Spider-Man show), and Dan Gilvezan voices Spider-Man 2099 (he did Spider-Man in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends from the 80’s). Of the four, Neil is my most favorite and Gilvezan is my least. They all do a quality job and have good dialog, but something about Gilvezan’s voice bothers me (while I wrote that part after the tutorial, after the first 2099 mission his voice is starting to grow on me). Oh yeah, and Stan Lee narratives, and it totally fits.

Beyond the sights and sounds, the action is fun but linear. The game opens with a tutorial mission that sets up the conflict of the story and introduces you to each of the four Spider-Men. Once that’s completed the first four stages are unlocked, one for each universe. When you pick a stage you select a difficulty level (easy, normal, hard). When you finish the stage, the game rates you on speed, use of combos, and how many collectibles you found. All completed stages are marked with which difficulties you’ve completed (so if you finish a stage on normal, then easy and normal are filled in). Each stage also has a dozen or so challenges that you can complete for bonus points (which are used for combat and character upgrades). The stages/ so far, are linear starting with an encounter with a villain and progressing through a series of areas to a final boss battle. Re-playability is limited to playing again on a higher difficulty or playing to finish a challenge that was missed (some of them are optional and some aren’t).

I’ve finished the first four stages (all on normal), which completes Act 1 and unlocks a cut-scene and the next four stages.

While I’ve really enjoyed the game so far, the disappointment I mentioned above is in the linearity. This is completely a problem of my own expectations. After I preordered the game I put it on my media black-out list. My assumption was that like most (all?) of the recent Spider-Man games it would have an open explorable world to web-swing through and include a series of story-line missions. If I’d thought it through, I would’ve realized this isn’t really possible considering there are four different universes to populate, which have been a ton of work I’m sure.

So my disappointment with the game has nothing to do with the game itself, but is just from a mismatch between reality and assumption.

I’ll write a follow-up, once I finish the game.

Busy Week

It’s going to be an exciting week!

Star Trek Online has really hit it’s stride recently with their weekly episodes, so I’m very much looking forward to the third episode of the Deferi-Breen arc on Saturday.

Lord of the Rings Online free-to-play (or free-to-try as I like to think of it) launch starts on Friday, the 10th, but I’ll be in headstart on the 8th, which is for current subscribers and F2P beta players. While, I’m looking forward to getting into the new zone, I’m still ambivalent about the store and LUA changes. Still, the sooner the changes launch, the sooner we’ll see how it impacts the Landroval server community.

My Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions preorder is in the mail. Of all of the super heroes in the Marvel and DC universes, Spider-Man has always been my favorite, and I’m really hoping that this game will be more like Spider-Man 2 and not Web of Shadows.

I finally finished all of the available Mass Effect 2 DLC last week, just in time to pickup and play the Lair of the Shadow Broker which should release today. Like I mentioned last week, my excitement level tripled when I saw the trailer for the new content, it looks epic.

As if all of the gaming stuff wasn’t enough, I got an email from Amazon promising that my Kindle should arrive this week. I’m looking forward to spending some time with it and see if this whole ebook thing is for me or not.

Wish List: Cover System

If you could have one thing added to or changed about the MMO(s) that you play, what would it be? I’ve been playing some of the DLC in Mass Effect 2 and some ground missions in Star Trek Online, and this has really made me wish that Cryptic would implement a cover mechanic.

I don’t remember it being a problem at earlier ranks, but at Vice Admiral, I’m finding that I often have to constantly stay in motion (often running backwards) because of melee opponents rushing me. While this does make ground combat more exciting, it also gives combat a bit of a Benny Hill feeling. This might just be because I’m playing a science officer, but that really just impacts which kits I can use (which affects which abilities I have access to) not what kinds of shields and armor I can equip.

A cover system would lead to battles that look more like what I’m used to seeing the the television series and movies, where people are shooting around corners or from behind rocks. The game’s current aim, sprint, and roll mechanics would still be useful and maybe actually more so than now. The major change would be the impact to melee NPCs and tactical officers.

By adjusting the cover available on maps and the stats on the sprint mechanic, I think there’s a way to balance between the current system which leads to enemies sprinting right up to you and then beating you senseless and keeping everyone pinned down behind crates for ten minute phaser battles.

ME2 Lair of the Shadow Broker

I’ve been looking forward to the upcoming Mass Effect 2 DLC, Lair of the Shadow Broker, ever since it was announced. Now that I’ve seen the video for it, I’m very very excited. It looks really good. I can’t wait for the 7th, although it would’ve been nice to have it for the holiday weekend.

Of course the burning question now is: what will happen with my Sheppard’s romances? He was with Liara in the first game, but now he’s with Tali.

Help Wanted

Questions?Making a new hero in Champions Online usually happens for me in one of two ways: either I have an idea for a name and then build a costume and powers around it, or I have a costume in mind that suggests a certain power build and a name.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about a new hero, but so far I’ve not been able to come up with either a name or a costume that I like. His powers will be primarily from the Archery but with some Supernatural additions, so far including Command Animals and Soul Mesmerism. I’ve gone through the character creator several times hoping that something would click for me, but no luck.

If I can come up with a good name then the costume should come to be pretty easy. So, I’m crowd sourcing my imagination. If you have any ideas, please leave it in the comments.

Champions Free for a Week

Champions Online is one year old, and Cryptic is running a special event this week to celebrate.

From September 1st (today!) through the 7th you can play Champions Online for free. You don’t even have to have purchased a boxed copy, you just have to register an account on their site.

This is even better than the normal demo because it is unrestricted. This means you’re not locked to the Qularr invasion crisis, but can experience the full game or as much as you can fit into seven days.

If you decide to try it out and have any questions about how to play, feel free to ask me in-game, here, or on Twitter.