Category Archives: Gaming

Minecraft Update

Let’s talk about Minecraft.

To be entirely honest with you, I haven’t quite had the time to play lately. I recently joined the business club at UO, I had an exhausting spring term, and I flat out didn’t have the time to play any Minecraft. From the business club, a rigorous academic schedule, a wonderful new girlfriend, and organizing the move from my apartment to a new house for next year, I was extraordinarily busy. Now that it’s summer, I think I’m going to have a bit more time to play. So let’s talk about Minecraft then.

First things first, I ended up “leasing” a server. I pay http://www.servercraft.co/ $15 a month, and they run a fantastic server. I’ve had almost no problems with it. The server is always up, it reboots and resets instantly, and their support staff has been very timely the one or two times I needed them. I’ve had a few errors with connecting, (I get some crazy errors, server time out issues, etc), but when you’re playing a beta version of a game on a fairly unsteady internet connection, you can’t be sure if it’s on my side or the server. So I will give them the benefit of the doubt there.

There’s been quite a few updates lately. We got wolves, booster tracks, dispensers, weather, etc. Again, I haven’t played in a while. I haven’t tamed a wolf yet, haven’t built a booster track, and I still haven’t seen rain. I remember snow from the old days, but I haven’t seen it yet. I’m looking forward to playing more in the upcoming weeks, and I’ll post a few times on what I find.

 

Cheers

A Dedicated Minecraft Server?

So, in recent posts, I’ve discussed the breadth and severity of my Minecraft addiction. Quite simply, I just can’t stop. It’s mostly been single player, but since HT got into it, I’ve been considering purchasing a multiplayer server on a month-to-month price plan. It would only support us two players, and it would be a private server. No griefers messing anything up. It runs for $15 a month, so I’m not exactly breaking the bank, but its enough to make me think about it. The site I’ve been looking into is http://www.servercraft.co/. I haven’t made up my mind, there’s gonna be an H Squad meeting on it first. Just a little something to think about. The reason I write about it, because obviously no one that would ever read this would really care besides HT, is I’d definitely be updating this blog with what’s going on in the server. You shall witness what we create!

Good stuff.

What I Played – 2010

So, I’ve been posting a bit today and I really felt like writing up a yearly wrap-up to the gaming world. Now, I’ve got an Xbox 360 and Macbook Pro, so unfortunately, you won’t see any PS3 or Windows stuff on here. I do have a Wii, but it is embarrassingly under-utilized. I’ll work on that for the new year, I promise. Obviously, I can only review the games I played, so I will do that to the best of my ability.

Game of the Year: Without a doubt, it has to be the indie game that took the planet by storm. Minecraft. It’s a sandbox game, built around 16×16 blocks. The developer, Notch, did a few truly innovative things with the development of this game. Instead of working on it in Alpha, bug testing and limited release in Beta, and then eventually releasing the final product, he sold the game in Alpha status, and promised early adopters they would receive all future updates for free. He sold the game to Alpha purchasers, (myself included), for 10 Euros, or roughly $13. Now, this game was a huge success on Reddit, my favorite online community/site/aggregation device. The game just went Beta, and now retails for 15 Euros, I believe. I suppose his second innovation is a tie-in with the first… He listened to the community. He’s sold almost a million copies of the game, and many of those purchasers were active on twitter, reddit, or his website. They told him what they wanted, and for the most part he listened! They wanted texture support, they got it. Leaf decay bothered everyone, he fixed it. The game itself is immeasurably addictive. Minecraft features cross platform support, Windows, Mac, and Linux. You have to play it to understand. If you click one of the four options underneath the “Buy Now!” button on the website, you can get a little taste. But you don’t fully understand the depth of the possible obsession until you have built your own winter cabin or built a private resort.

XBOX 360 Game of the Year: I struggled with this one. I really, really did. In the end, I’ve got to go with Red Dead Redemption. The story was superb, beyond anything I’ve seen from Rockstar. I played GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas, but this is the first sandbox-esque, (I say that because even though this game is somewhat like GTA: Old West, it really isn’t), game from Rockstar that really pulled me in and kept me there. The characters are real. They’re funny. The dialogue is believable. The story is gripping at times and hilarious at others. The game play is excellent. It controls exactly how it should, and it lets you do everything you want to do, without forcing you to do anything you don’t. The ending is better than almost any game I’ve ever played. I don’t want to give anything up, but I will say that it has affected how I play the game now, even after the story ended. If you haven’t played it, you need to.

Sports Game of the Year: Fifa ’11. I had to decide between Fifa ’11 and NCAA ’11, but it was never really a competition. NCAA was fun, don’t doubt that. It’s a must have for college football fans, absolutely. But if you enjoy soccer, there has never been a video game made that is as much fun to play, or as real as Fifa ’11. Even when I bought Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, I still spent the majority of my gaming time playing Fifa. It’s that good. Arsenal till I die!

Others Worth Mentioning: I don’t want to sit here and bore you, but I did play plenty of other games, and I’d like to give a brief round-up. Osmos on the Mac is pretty addictive. I haven’t played it on the iPad so I can’t vouch for that version. Civilization IV is on sale on Steam for under $7, with all three expansion packs included. It’s my first Civ game, and it’s a ton of fun. It’s worth a shot for anyone, at only 6 bucks. Basically, skip a trip to McDonalds and buy that game instead! Darksiders didn’t impress me. It wasn’t boring, but I got 3/5 of the way done with the game, and I just stopped playing… If you find it cheap, knock yourself out, but I really didn’t enjoy it that much. Assassins Creed: Brotherhood is awesome. If you enjoyed the first 2, especially the second, you have to check this game out. It’s everything you love about the second game, but better. The kills are better, the weapons are cooler, the game play is as solid as ever, and it’s a ton of fun. And I haven’t checked out multiplayer yet, but I’ve only heard good things. Bioshock 2 really disappointed me… I was addicted to the first. I couldn’t do anything until I beat it… But the second doesn’t live up to it at all. It’s just not fun. I wish it was, because Bioshock was one of the best games I’ve ever played.

That’s all for now! Maybe I’ll do a part 2 later.