Minecraft - The Next Project

Okay, so I just can't stay away from this game for long!

I started a new world on the Xbox using the seed "yolo" and in this world, I only play Survival with monsters on. It really makes it a whole new game and experience doing this. Before I 'officially' started playing this world, I explored it in creative and I must say it is going to be an interesting place to explore once I really get started. There are lots of villages and ravines, abandoned mineshafts and at least one stronghold. I don't remember where any of them are, but they're out there somewhere. (I deleted the creative world and started again with the survival one) I spawned near a desert village to the far south and that place has become my home base. So far, I've been fortifying it and building up supplies. I have managed to find a little bit of iron for a few tools, but not much yet. It's still a ton of fun except those darn Endermen keep taking my blocks...

Back in my first world, I have began yet another massive project. Or at least it's turning out to be massive. I didn't think it through just how big it would get when I started. I went to the very center of my map at 0,0 and created a 3x3 hole 1 deep where the center of the hole is the exact center of the world. From here, I proceeded to dig down and create an underground pyramid so each layer down gets bigger by one. At first, it didn't seem to bad, but I'm about 25 layers down and each new dig is taking more and more time to do. Thankfully, I have a ton of TNT stored up. In the very center, I left a pillar and have a ladder going all the way up to the top as my only entrance.

When I'm down at the bottom looking up and what I've done, it truly is an amazing view and I can't wait to see what it looks like when I hit bedrock.

So far, I have been pretty lucky in that I've only hit one water block and a few caverns. I predict that luck will run out soon when I get deeper as this region of my map has a ton of lava in it. Luckily I now have a ton of gravel to get rid of it all. I'm also running out of room in my store room for cobblestone. I'm working on filling chest number 17 with cobblestone and I have a long ways to go.

Borderlands 2

As annoyed as I am with the Black Thursday Friday sales, I did get a new game for my collection at an amazing price. Thanks to an awesome stranger who grabbed the copy for me, I now have Borderlands 2 on the Xbox for $25.

I had played it a bit split screen with my brother-in-law before, but this was my first opportunity to play it solo and full screen. Needless to say, I had a blast! I played it about an hour or so by myself before a great friend jumped in soon followed by my brother-in-law. The three of us played co-op together until the wee hours of the morning. We ended with us arriving in Sanctuary and taking care of a few things there.

This game is so much fun to play, especially with others. I'm just glad that I get experience for their kills as they are all several levels over me and were tending to kill everything that moved before I had a chance to join the fight... Oh well, still fun.

I also like the graphical style of the game and the massive size of the levels. Being a big fan of large world and loot games (Diablo, Fallout, Oblivion), I have also been enjoying exploring the world, opening as many containers as I see and finding as many guns as possible. I just wish I had more backpack space.

Right now, I've been working on an Assassin character and am almost level 11. I'm looking forward to trying out the other classes as well and eventually getting the DLC, probably via the season pass. I can tell you right now, this game is probably going to take up a lot of my gaming time now and is a welcomed break from Minecraft. 

Update: I guess I'm a 'bad blogger'. Here is yet another blog I've had drafted for well over a week and haven't posted yet. I'm now a level 12 Assassin and still loving the game. I just met the Firehawk when I left off.

New Game Acquisitions and Playing

Yes, I do play other games than Minecraft. I know it's a little hard to believe, but that is the truth.

In fact, I've almost finished the first Ratchet & Clank game in the Ratchet & Clank Collection. I'm to the point where I'm battling Chairman Drek, but I've been going back bolt collecting to buy the RYNO. This game is still a ton of fun, but I want to finish it off as much as possible first before moving on to the next games in the trilogy which I enjoy more.

I have also had a chance to play some Borderlands 2 on the Xbox 360. That was a ton of fun and I love the humor and style of it. This is definitely a game I will be getting in the future, but probably after Christmas unless someone buys it for me as a Christmas gift *cough*blackfriday*cough*...

In the meantime, a good friend of mine lent me his copy of the first Borderlands game on the Xbox 360, so I do have something Borderlands to keep me occupied. I know the very general story from what my brother has said, but am still looking forward to experiencing it myself.

While said friend was over, he brought his newly acquired copy of Halo 4 with him and we played co-op through the campaign. I have been playing Halo games for a while now, but this one just blew me away with its beauty. We were watching the opening cutscene and it took me a long time to realize it was CG and not live-action. I knew they had done a lot of live-action promotional videos and thought they had continued it into the game. Amazingly beautiful. I'm really liking the new enemies and characters too. It mixes it up a little and brings some new life into the game. He left before we could finish the campaign, so now I'm left hanging until I can get it myself. Unfortunately, that's probably going to be sometime next year.

For my latest acquisition, which just happened this week, I finally picked up a copy of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for the PS3. I'm looking forward to our first Friday Game Night to get into the game and play. So far, all I've done is download the update and do the data install.

In Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, the 1.8.2 bug fix update just came out and added several new fixes, the best of which is the option to turn the void fog off. I miss the particle effects, but am glad it's gone! It's nice to be able to see my creations once again. Since the patch, I have also expanded my underground wheat garden to a second room with pumpkins growing in it. I now have an unlimited supply of Jack-o-Lanterns.

I also created a new world and have been playing it from scratch on Easy. Luckily, there was a village nearby so the first night's shelter was taken care of. It's a desert village that is almost secure from monsters. There are still a few dark corners that they can come from, but that will be taken care of once I find more coal. I secured my village by surrounding it by a wall of Cacti all the way around it. It's a much larger challenge to start off with monsters on and get a base setup than I thought. I'm enjoying the challenge though. Once I get my base secure, it's off to the mines in hunt of diamond and other resources.

So that's what's been going on recently. Lots of fun and more to come.

Minecraft: Kakariko Village Completed

I think I burnt myself out with creating Kakariko Village. It finally came down to forcing myself to return to it in order to finish off the last few details so that I could get it off my plate. Don't get me wrong, I think it looks great, but I'm glad it's done. I'm ready to move on to more useable spaces that don't necessarily follow a blueprint or preexisting design. But before I do, I need to post the last few screenshots from Kakariko.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition Update Has Landed

(NOTE: I drafted this blog the week after the update was released, but just now got around to finishing it and posting it. Oops...) The latest update for the Xbox 360 Edition of Minecraft has hit the network for release and I finally downloaded it over the weekend. I had been holding off in order to finish filling my chest of ill-gotten resources before the furnace duplication "feature" was removed. With plenty of diamond, iron, gold, TNT and other resources safely tucked away, I decided it was time and I let the update download. I really like some things, and really dislike others.

Minecraft - Kakariko Village Part 3

My Minecraft recreation of The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past's Kakariko Village continues as I finish up the main buildings and get ready to begin working on the Blacksmith's house. Overall, this project is moving along very quickly, much faster than Hyrule Castle.

Minecraft - Kakariko Village Continued and Other Projects

Work has been continuing on my recreation of Kakariko Village as well as a few other side-projects within my Minecraft world. I have also been spending some time on Minecraft PC, but I'm not finding it nearly as fun as I thought I would. I guess I'm too used to the Xbox version. Anyways, lets get into it and I'll show you what I've been working on.

Minecraft - Kakariko Village

After completing the entire castle from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, I decided to continue on with another Hyrulian build. I had always planned on building a small village for NPCs to live in (once that update comes) and that easily transitioned into creating Kakariko Village from A Link to the Past as well. And that is what I'm working on next.

Minecraft - Fun with TNT

Since the Xbox 360 Edition of Minecraft does not have Creative Mode (yet), everything we build is much more special because we have to harvest the raw materials one block at a time. If you want a cobblestone house, you need to dig the stone out of the world. That of course changes when you discover glitches, or "features" as I call them, that allow you to do things you shouldn't be able to do. In this case, it's a duplication "feature" that allowed us to duplicate any block we wanted, and we had a blast doing so.

Minecraft - The Escape Route

After months of working on the Link to the Past Castle and other areas of my world, an update was finally released that added Pistons (among other things) to the Xbox 360 Edition of Minecraft. With these in hand, it was time to move onto the next phase of my build and create a hidden exit out of the throne room and into the Sewers. But first, I would have to find some slimes.

Minecraft - Agahnim's Tower

Play time was over now. I had a nifty train depot build and my recreation of Hyrule Castle's main floors, dungeon and throne room completed. Next step was to move on and build Agahnim's Tower, all eight floors of it.

Minecraft - I Gave In

I finally gave in. Last night, I acquired a copy of Minecraft on the PC. It was actually a gift from a friend who owed me a birthday present, but I still have it now. I didn't really create anything in my initial time with the game. I didn't even make a shelter or mine anything out. Instead, I spent my time in Creative mode flying around the world exploring, and quickly realizing my computer sucks.

The machine is about 8 years old, and the video card isn't very good anymore (64MB AGP NVidia card). I bought more memory and a newer video card for it, but the power supply wasn't beefy enough to run the newer video card. Worst part is, it's a proprietary power supply, so there is no upgrading it without modifying the case. Annoying...

Don't get me wrong, the game is still very much playable. I just have to turn down the render distance, turn off clouds and set the particle effects to "reduced". Then it plays fairly well. I also can't play it maximized.

Like I said, I didn't really do much. I spawned in a jungle biome and my jaw dropped. It was amazing to finally see one in person. The trees in the jungle were probably taller than the Xbox 360 Edition's world height! I explored around some more and found a ravine. Massive and beautiful. A little more exploring and I stumbled upon an abandoned mine. I was giddy by this point and can't wait to start actually playing.

There is one more thing I had to do in my first world. I dug a hole from the surface to bedrock, then filled that hole with TNT, ignited it and watched. Creative mode is so much fun! :) If I have time tonight, I'll probably delete this world and create a new one to actually start playing in. I'm thinking I'd really rather not have to start again from square one, so I may start in creative mode and build a small shelter and supplies. Then I'll switch to survival and start really playing.

I'm worried that having creative mode at my fingertips might actually ruin it for me. I love to create structures and places like in my Xbox world, but it was really fun because everything was legit. Every resource was mined by hand and I take pride in that. (Yes, I took advantage of a duplication "feature" to get a ton of diamond, but everything else is legit). I don't know if I'll be able to take that same pride knowing I just did it with creative mode. We'll see as time passes.

Minecraft - I Think I Can... I Think I Can...

Double Post Sunday! Okay, so I actually had this post already drafted up, but had to wait to get screenshots of the Throne Room to add to the other post first. Gotta keep everything as close to in order as possible.

Anyways, I had previously experimented a bit with rail tracks and had created a short track from under my old base to my new house basically going from one basement to the other. I had also created a second track that went from under my house around the big shaft from top to bottom. I decided to add a third one to go to the bottom of my Hyrule Castle, but I didn't want it to be the same old thing. I wanted to create something different and better. After spending some time on minecraftwiki.net, I found a tutorial on creating an automated train station. It sounded like fun, so off I went creating it on the second level of the shaft under my house.

Minecraft - Fit for a King

The building of my Link to the Past Castle was moving along very nicely. I had completed most of the first floor and had a roof over everything. Next it was time to move onto the Throne Room and Dungeon levels, each of which posed their own unique challenges from heights to dealing with the natural cave.

Minecraft - Hyrule Castle Photo Tour

Last night, I took some time and got a ton of photos of my castle. If I had the PC Adapter to record video on my computer, I would do a video walk-through since even the photos don't do it justice. Unfortunately, I don't have one at the moment, so these will have to suffice. Even in still photos, it is impressive if I do say so myself. ;)

Minecraft - You Wanna Build What?

According to Raptr, I was about 40 or 50 hours into the game by this point in time. I only recently finished this project I was about to start, and now Raptr is telling me I'm at over 200 hours of game play. That should give you an indication of the size and scope of the project I tackled. Without further ado, my big project is...

Minecraft - Hole in One

Let's run this down. House? Check. Lots of chests? Check. Diamond Tools? Check. Nether Portal? Check. Lots of material? Nope. So, what's a nice easy way to get a lot of materials that is both useful and cool? You dig a huge hole in the ground!

Minecraft - Through the Portal

Several days after I had finished my house in Minecraft, I was showing it off to my brother-in-law who was quite impressed with my creation. I believe he said he was having a deja-vu moment since he had just helped us move in not that long before. We were messing around in my world a little, so I grabbed some Obsidian and a Flint-and-Steel, and together we ventured off into the Nether for the first time.

Minecraft - The Building Phase Begins

By this point in time, I was pretty familiar with the basic functionality of Minecraft and began to have a good understanding of how the world worked. I also had a nice pile of resources sitting in chests under my water covered base. It was time to start doing something with them, so I tackled what was at the time my biggest project. I began to recreate my real life house in Minecraft.

Minecraft - In The Beginning

I need to join a support group... Hello, my name is Ebi and I am an addict. It all started in May when I was at my brother-in-law's house visiting family. He had been telling me about this game called Minecraft that had just came out on the Xbox 360 and the fun he was having with it. I had heard about it a bit online, so I knew the basics of it already, but was still interested in seeing it myself. Well, I had an opportunity to play it some, so I created my own world on his system and started to explore a bit. About an hour later, I was hooked. I had created my first house and a fairly decent tunnel. I had built a few paths through the side of the mountain I was on and a bridge to an island across the water. It was so much fun.

When we returned home that night, I had to have it. I pulled out my credit card, bought some Microsoft Points and downloaded the game on my own system. With the basic knowledge of how Minecraft works now under my belt, I took off into my own world like a runner off the starting block.

Ratchet & Clank Collection so far

Since the game came out this past Tuesday, I've been playing the Ratchet & Clank Collection on the Playstation 3. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I already have these three original games on the Playstation 2, so why would I want them again? Three reasons. First, it's in High Definition. Second, it now has trophies. Third, they're awesome games!

Obligatory First Post: About Me

I guess I should start out with the basic post you see on almost every other blog in the world, the "About Me" post. For the record, I hate talking about myself, but I do love talking about games. With that said, this is more of an "About my Gaming History" than about me. So here we go.

I'm a child of the 1980's. I grew up in the decline of Atari and the rise of Nintendo and the boom of home entertainment. But my first gaming system was actually neither of those. I started my gaming with Pong on a 15" Color TV. High class there. But it got me interested in it and I spent lots of time playing that simple game.

A little later on, when one of my older sisters was at college, she left her Atari at home. That blew me away compared to the simplistic Pong. I remember jumping over crocodile infested ponds in Pitfall and gobbling up endless dots and ghosts in Pac-Man. So much fun, and I wish she hadn't taken it back after she graduated.

So there I was without a console to play on when my neighbor got this thing called a "Nintendo". I had a hard time playing that thing at first. It had two whole buttons on it! lol. But I was enthralled with Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and begged my parents to buy me one. They eventually gave in and sometime in the late 1980's (I don't remember exactly when) they bought it for me. I was in love with gaming from that point forward. I spent a majority of my free time in front of the TV, which had been upgraded to a whopping 19", playing the original Super Mario Brothers games, the Legend of Zelda, Captain Skyhawk, Tetris, Adventures of Kirby and so many more. I was addicted and loved it!

After playing the NES for a good long time, my next big upgrade was to the Super Nintendo in 1994. It made all those 8bit games look like kiddie games. I sunk even deeper into the gaming world through Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Donkey Kong Country, F-Zero, Final Fantasy II, Super Mario RPG and so many more. I played these games so much, I'm surprised they didn't wear out. In fact, I still have the vast majority of Link to the Past memorized, and I'll talk about what that means in today's time in a later post...

At this point in time, I was definitely a Nintendo Fanboy, even if I didn't realize it. I knew there was a Sega Genesis out there, but couldn't care less about it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing Sonic the Hedgehog at a friends house, but give me Link and Mario any day. So, sticking with that fanboyism, I moved on to the Nintendo 64 in 2008. I honestly didn't even consider a Sega Dreamcast or Sonly Playstation at that point in time.

Once again, I was blown away by the awesome graphics of Super Mario 64 and the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This was about the time when I started making good friends, many of whom I still have today, and we started gaming together on the N64. We'd race in Mario Kart 64, shoot the tar out of each other in Goldeneye 007 and eventually Perfect Dark. We would race Extreme G or Cruisn' USA and even try our hand at some Turok: Rage Wars multiplayer. It was at this stage when gaming started to become social and a whole new world of enjoyment opened up.

I also have a lot of great memories from the N64's single player games. I loved the destruction of Blast Corps and the scope and feel of Jet Force Gemini. I had a blast with Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. I also can't rave enough for Paper Mario and Donkey Kong 64. Last year I began experimenting with emulation again and I was able to play a few of these on the big screen using a laptop and PS3 controller. Didn't even have to dig out the old console and games. But back to the timeline...

It was also during these years in the late 1990's when I started gaming on the PC as well. I played games such as The 7th Guest and 11th Hour. I loved solving the puzzles in the Myst series and blasting enemies in Descent. I had fun with Black & White and built huge metropolises in Sim City. I also got hooked on StarCraft and Diablo. On top of all that, me, with my little Dial-up Internet connection, ventured online for the first time. So much fun. But, consoles still took up most of my time and I played them the most.

In 2002, not long after it had been released, I took the next console leap and moved to the Nintendo Gamecube. 3D got a whole lot better looking, but I wasn't blown away as much as I was from the SNES to N64 jump. Still, I enjoyed Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and even Pikmin. But to be honest, there wasn't a whole lot about the Gamecube that I remember playing. Not as many memorable moments I guess. It was here that I began to slip away from Nintendo as my "only" console. I started playing more on the PC and even fired up the N64 more often. That of course changed with the release of Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure. I had to go out and buy a Gameboy Advanced with GCN Cable just to play this game with a friend. Now that was fun.

But all gaming eras come to an end. I believe it was in 2005 for my birthday when my wife bought me something I never expected. She bought me a Playstation 2, my first non-Nintendo console. Talk about a whole new world of gaming! I suddenly found myself with access to a wealth of great games to discover, some of which quickly became new favorites. There was Final Fantasy X and X-2, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, the Sly Cooper Trilogy, Ratchet & Clank series, Jak and Daxter and so many more. Plus, for the first time, I was able to play Playstation 1 games. I never really bought that many of them, but I did get a copy of Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX. I also picked up Chrono Cross and the original Gran Turismo.

This put me in a conundrum when the current generation of consoles started coming out. I didn't know which way to go. A Playstation 3 was insanely expensive at the time and all I heard about the Xbox 360 was how frequently it Red Ringed. So there was Nintendo with it's non-HD, limited online Wii for a price point that was affordable. On top of all that, it was also Nintendo so I naturally I went with it first.

Super Mario Galaxy and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a blast. I still get chills thinking about the final battle in Twilight Princess. That was so much fun. I also discovered the Rayman Raving Rabbids series and found the comedy hilarious. Those games played host to a couple of group parties, including a Halloween one. There's something fun about shooting rabbids with a plunger while dressed up in costume yourself. ;)

After a while, I stopped playing the Wii and instead played the PS2 more often, all while saving up money to buy a Playstation 3. I'm not sure why exactly I stopped and never went back. I guess you can only waggle a controller so many times before it gets old and developers didn't seem to want to innovate enough for me. So I moved on, or rather back. I might pick up a copy of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and play it again one day.

Eventually, I had saved up enough cash to buy a Playstation 3. I also happened to catch a clearance sale at Toys-R-Us and got a 40GB model for $299 as they were being discontinued. And thus, I entered into the realm of modern HD Gaming. At this point in time, many of my co-workers had PS3s and were playing online every Friday night. The game of choice at the time: SOCOM: Confrontation. By the time I jumped in, most of the game-breaking bugs were fixed and I had a blast playing it with the guys. We've also spent countless hours playing Call of Duty: World at War and Black Ops as well as racing in DiRT 2 and Gran Turismo 5. Currently, we're split between some of us playing Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and others (myself included) playing Resistance 2 or Uncharted 3 while we wait for the price to drop on Future Solider.

Solo play, I played the entire Ratchet & Clank: Future trilogy and loved it. I also have played all the Uncharted games, Portal 2 and Final Fantasy XIII. There are others too, of course, but those are some of my favorites

Not too long after I got my PS3, a friend of mine wanted to upgrade his Xbox 360 to a newer one that wasn't prone to the Red Ring of Death and he sold me his old one relatively cheap. With that, my collection of current-gen consoles was complete. I had a Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360. Finally, I was able to play the Halo games at my own house and not just at a friends. I also played Fable, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Half-Life 2 and Portal (via the Orange Box) and several others.

Alas, all good things must come to an end and my Xbox finally Red Ringed on me. It was sad, but I eventually saved enough money to buy the Arcade Version and I moved my hard drive over from the dead system and kept on going.

That short novel is a basic recap of my gaming history from Pong to the current generation. As for what I'm currently playing, I'm going back and forth between the Ratchet & Clank Collection on the Playstation 3 and Minecraft on the Xbox 360. Minecraft has become a little bit of an obsession here recently. According to Raptr, I've played well over 200 hours. Love it! More to come on my in-game creations soon...

And as for all those old consoles, I never got rid of a single one. I still have every console and almost every game I ever owned for them. As far as I know, they all still work too. Eventually, I'll get a full game-list online of every game I own.

And with that, I'd like to say: Hello, my name is Ebi Furya, and I am a gamer. Now let's go play something!