I have always felt that I had made this previous post prematurely, as I was sure there was more Tribalfield to come after then as much as I wanted to go back to WoW, but this message came so suddenly. I had only got home from work and look oddly at the various posts on facebook before my suspicions were realized, there were suspicions about the server closing down in the past but they were shrugged off with the revamping to 1.8 but not long at all after that we were confronted with this message
I have to admit I wasn’t really sure how to react. I had nothing against NORC for this, he ran the server at his own expense, trying to make the experience better for us all, with a small amount of donations and help from a few of us over the time and I respect the decision his decision to shut down the server. Tribalfield had always been a great place from the good and the bad times there was always a very diverse bunch of people on there which each of us got to know sometimes quite well. But we all know that the number one factor that made tribalfield so great was the community (which we have facebook to thank for that since the loss of the forums) we all played on the server and we all discussed, shared and argued about both Tribalfield and Minecraft as well as anything else we wanted to bring up this kind of community wouldn't be possible without a medium to properly communicate or a player base that was overwhelmingly large, everyone knew everyone else, (well mostly) and it didn't take long for them to be added to the facebook group family.
As many of us have I have saved some screenshots of the 1.7 and 1.8 maps as a last testament to the Tribalfield server feel free to comment if some of these creations are yours. Also I apologize if I didn't get everything I couldn't really find much on the 1.7 map that wasn't griefed
1.7 Map
I didn't get much from here as I couldn't find that much and most of it had been severely griefed.
Awesomley large castle good job to whoever made this
1.8 Map
Cfelths & Themasses claim
Joro's Claim 1 (with my Zeppelin :D)
Joro's Claim2
Joro's Claim 3
Acal's house: Well done on this I really like the design, best house I'd seen on 1.8
Joro's Claim 4
Joro's Claim5
Random Plateau
Random square plateau
BattleArena near spawn
Cliff near Spawn
The area that was to be Melbourne...
Me, Bailey and Lupidoo's Kiwi Island
Gravelicious! XD
Not even NPC's are safe...
Random villiage
I swear this is WretchedGiraffe's dirt house
BIG Pyramid, good job whoever made this
Inside of pyramid
When you look at some of the things that were done, I wonder how one person could do it, but then I remember that It wasn't always just one person, it was sometimes lots of people co-operating and building, and that's how (pardon my french) shit gets done, that's how friendships are formed and to half quote Meatloaf: that's how Minecraft dreams come true.
Now for a bit of deja vu ...
So without further ado I'd like to again thank everyone I've met in my time on the tribalfield server or just on facebook, you've all helped to make mine and everyone Minecraft experience richer and I hope to see you all in the future from one server to the next.
With Thanks again to: (in order of appearance and apologies if I miss anyone)
And of course: kakashi, BaileydeBortoli (mib44), lupidoo, laver, WarpageHD, Atomic_Sandwich, Dickdatson and last but not least: NORC whose hard work and dedication made this server so great.
And to think that we did it all in a game that hasn't been fully released yet, needles to say there will be plenty more Minecraft to come.
Also Known As: Half-Life II, Half Life 2 Availiable on: PC, Mac, Xbox Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher: Vivendi Games Developer: Valve Release Date: November 16, 2004
Your probably all thinking to yourselves after seeing this post title: “Half-Life 2? everyone knows Half-Life 2 was awesome and we’re sick of hearing about how great it was”. And this is more or less correct, which is why this is probably going to be a shorter review than usual.
I’ve just finished going through Half-Life 2 for about the 4th time and I can fairly say that it’s still a good play, perhaps not as good as the very first or second times, the first time being that I didn’t know what to expect or really what I had to do in order to pass certain sections and spent a large amount of time looking around at certain crossroads and puzzles and going “hmmmmmmmm” a lot, the first time through everything was a learning experience and I must say took awhile. The second time through was probably the best in a way that you roughly knew what was going to happen and were able to experience it again without getting stuck too much while noticing new and exciting things on the way. The third and fourth time was basically a speed run, as I just wanted to have the experience again but was just slightly less patient but man did I get through it fast that time, it’s amazing how much quicker you go when you know what to do. Speaking of re-living the events Christopher C. Livingstondoes a remarkable job of adding a humerous charcter "Gordon Frohman" who goes through basically the whole game in a clumsy ill-fated and impossibly silly journey which is a huge hoot if you have played the game through before. Check it out here
Ahh gawd it's a fence! woe is me for I can only jump so high
What attracted me most to Half-Life 2 was the cleanliness of both the graphics and the interface, both Half-Life 2 and Counter-strike source have excellent visuals even by today’s standards in my opinion and second to that is the game interface itself, which when set on your monitors default resolution it looks incredibly slick and quite possibly my favourite and best looking game interface of all time. There’s something engaging about the lip synching and the way the ragdolls flail around when you land that headshot, the textures are spot on with that gritty feel to them, the way chairs and tables fall over as you push past them and also the interesting way of how you never actually picked up objects with your hand they just sort of hovered in midair in front of you. But that was ok it was all good. I enjoyed how there were some friendly aliens this time around like the vortigauntsand the semi-friendly antlions. I have to mention the Nova Prospekt chapter where you storm a converted combine jail with a swarm of antlions assisting you against your enemies, this is my favourite part of the game second only to the grim starting level which is the credits themselves. I love the way you spend most of your time finding new and innovative ways to slaughter zombies or the Combine'sOverwatch enemy forces using exploding barrels, heavy objects, automatic sentry guns or even getting them to fight each other.
The Half Life-2 menu screen: slick
Your personal anti-combine Antlion Army, aren't they cute?
I do now have to mention the atmosphere that Half-Life 2 creates, it is absolutely amazing, right from the start the way the flying ID photo bots (lookup name) or whatever their called constantly take your photo to identify you, and the hugely powerful combine force watching you and towering over you, literally in some cases, you really feel like you are quite small and oppressed, until you don your hazard suit and become the big bad science professor turned field combat and weapons expert Gordon Freeman who strangely does not speak a word throughout this game and the previous one as well. This isn’t really much of a problem in most FPS as there isn’t much interaction with other characters who would otherwise question you directly but with the amount of fame that Gordon Freeman has and him being probably the most talked about person in the entire game it does seem strange that you never get to hear him voice his own opinions, or maybe that’s either the whole point or a metaphor for something.
Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance: the conversation was fairly one-sided
The other characters in a large part make the whole experience better and more engaging for the player but I will have to take my hat off (not that I wear hats much but I’ll put one on in this case) to the infamous Dr.Breen who I regard as one of my favourite (if not my single most) villains of all time in all of the games, not to mention TV shows and movies I have played and watched. Dr Breen, who I first thought was called “Dr. Brain” is the overwhelmingly propraganda’ered administrator of City 17 (yes that’s what the cities are called now, just numbers) who is brilliantly voiced by (insert actor name here) which you hear throughout a large part of the game through screens and loudspeakers and eventually in person. One of my favourite speeches by Dr. Breen comes from when you have infiltrated a combine base and are able to listen to him scold his forces via radio for not being able to capture you.
The Combine, arresting and assaulting citizens since 2020
Dr. Breen, hats off to the master villian
To say the least Half-Life 2 gets my vote for best singleplayer First-Person shooter experience, the two expansions that came out were equally good as well and judging by the end of the last one we may not have seen the last of Half-Life either. Don’t get me wrong though, Doom, Quake and to a lesser extent the Vietcong series which I had played were both great examples of singleplayer first person shooter beauty but in the end, graphically, storyline, sound and gameplay-wise and overall experience Half-Life 2 wins.. for now
That’s got me wondering which is my FPS multiplayer product of most esteem.
Just a note on the new post title: The past and times of yore will refer to any post I make related to a topic that would be considered in any way old so in regards games that I review under this title be could be as far ranging as the 90’s shock horror!
This minor change to post titles comes from when I decided I would do reviews of my older games that I have come back and re-played which is a large part of my gaming experience. I think I played through Grand Theft Auto 3 about 6 times I was that infatuated with it, another of my favourites was Star Wars: Jedi Academy which as the only game I have played of the whole Jedi Knight series but for good reason, the gameplay features and storyline speak for themselves and not to mention the modifications you could download that made it that much more fun.
GTA3: a timeless classic
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: you're the new Jedi, go have some fun with lightsabres
I’ve never understood people who rush to beat a game then exchange it for another at the store, though I would suppose you could save a bit of money that way. I prefer to keep my games around whenever I might want to play them again, often multiple times as sort of a way of feeling I have got my money’s worth, though I digress that this is some games rather then others for example as much as I liked Driver 2 when I played it on the original Playstation. I’m not really able to play through it again partly because of the now quite pixelated graphics, partly because I have played it through one or two times before and partly because it’s a PS1 game that runs on a PS1 which is old and slower then newer consoles. The latter excuse can be forgiven as it was a very good PS1 game but the main thing is the graphics and graphical interface.
Driver 2: How was it for you?
There’s some imaginary threshold with console and PC game graphics over the years (on a side note I can’t talk for handheld devices cause I don’t use them and I don’t know whether I will in the future, I don’t travel far much at all and time on the train is usually spent with music, the newspaper or a book, I’m happy where I am and any handheld device would be an additional expenditure). It seems that I can accept one old games graphics but not the other. I think the reason for this is what type of game it is for example with Driver 2 or Metal Gear Solid, their games set in the (supposed) real world so back then we wowed at the realism of the graphics, but now it seems what we accepted or even praised before now makes us cringe with repulsion, however this is only true if the game is promoting realism such as a driving or shooting simulator, things that are set in a fantasy cartoony world change our view entirely.
Bomberman Ultra
The original Spyro the Dragon
Games such as Bomberman and Spyro the Dragon are both based firmly in fantasy not realism so our views the quality of for example an elemental water monster or a troll are not skeptical because these things don’t exist in real life, but this isn’t the only reason. In cartoon fantasy world we don’t expect water to look or behave correctly, we don’t expect human characters to have proper bone structures and move realistically and when we look at the level of detail of the environment and characters we accept that they may only be plain or pixelated textures because that is just the ‘look and feel’ of the game, I can remember when I thought “hey I should play Tenchu 2 again because I gave it so much love in the past”, but when I actually start it up and gaze upon it with my modern-computer-graphics-and-speed-appreciating eyes my brain (or emotions tell me that maybe I don’t want to after all , not counting the fact that there was Tenchu 3 on the PS2 at the time.
Tenchu 2: You can be a ninja, how could I resist?
This makes an interesting view that I have even more interesting. I still regard certain Super Nintendo games such as Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country as still having great graphics despite their considerable age, it’s probably because that particular Mario Bros. game (as well as the revamped older ones from Mario All-stars just looked so crisp and clean sure it was pixels but the pixels were great too look at compared to the pixellated human figures we saw on the Playstation 1 games. Not being an owner of a Nintendo 64 I can’t really speak for that side of things but it did take quite a different approach to the Playstation and most prominent being the 64-bit aspect giving a quite blocky feel to the whole thing but otherwise a cleaner way of putting the pixels out there.
Super Mario World, how do I love thee?
Donkey Kong Country: A gorilla riding a rhino? check
It’s hard to say that I prefer the graphics of some Super Nintendo games to ones that came years after its prime, but it’s just a matter of what looks good to our eyes. Doom and Quake were examples of PC games that just never get old, I have been playing them at home, school, tafe and LANs throughout most of my life it didn't matter that the graphics were outdated, the fact was that they were awesome, will always be awesome, they worked well, played well and most importantly were easy to copy and distribute much less to today's standards of copy protection thesame goes for Warcraft 3 a major player in the RTS genre which as well as it's Starcraft counterpart, held a brilliant storyline which made for a very enjoyable singleplayer not to mention multiplayer with not only an excellect basic multiplay but an incredibly versatile editor invoking the rise of custom maps which became very popular, namely tower defense, naval combat and Defence of the Ancients the single most popular Warcraft 3 custom map which spawned it's ownclones. Another prime example is Minecraft, some people who don’t play say they agree that it’s an awesome and somewhat original concept, but can’t get over the the pixellated graphics and blocky nature of the game whereas some are deterred by the graphics at first but then are reeled in once they start to play the game .
Doom and Quake, ultra playable classics for the PC
Warcraft 3: Great singleplayer, great multiplayer, great game
I feel that this is the major factor attributing whether I myself go back for another foray into one of my old games as I’ve stated before it could also be the amount of times I have played the game as you can only play it so much before losing interest, it could be that the game is mostly multiplayer and there’s a newer better version or not enough people playing which brings me to another topic. “Multiplayer” as it is most commonly known or the multiplayer aspect of a game most of the time, has a limited life, one of my friends is an avid fan of Battlefield 1942 (and the two world wars in general) and enjoyed playing on a certain 3FL server, but after six years of the game being released (which is quite a decent amount of time) the interest has eventually died off. With today’s latest and greatest special price indie steam etc games available and with more and more being churned out each month, there are plenty which have an online multiplayer aspect (which is almost mandatory these days). it often seems that unless a particular games multiplayer aspect is a major hit, it can die out after the initial buzz in quite a short time even after only a month or two or sometimes even less and you will have a smaller base of players to play with. But often this is of little worry cause these types of games akin to Motostorm and Magicka while not always having a strong singleplayer base, will still have legs to stand on with splitscreen and LAN based multiplayer.
Battlefield 1942: Oldschool FPS at it's multiplayer best
I will always be a supporter of playing old games, not just for the whole "get my money's worth" argument, a very wise friend said to me recently that you should never play a game out of spite neglecting the one you truly want to play for fun, as this was once the case for me with World of Warcaft and Minecraft (yes they both end with craft). I will also be reviewing my old games too maybe not being as skeptical as I would usually.
Well that was one longwinded post, so dust off those old games and machines and get playing not matter how old they may be, you might just have some old-school fun.
Well good day (or night) to all all of you out there I just wanted to clear things up before I get into this week's review, these reviews that I do are of games I have recently played, which could be anything from any platform it could be Battlefield Bad Company 2 one week and Spyro the Dragon the next. The games I review are mostly new though I am currently deciding whether to review games that I'm going back to re-play.I'll also be adding some extra info to the top of the post to give you an idea of what I played it on (PC/Console), when it was released, who made it etc.
Exclusively on: PlayStation 3 Genre: Racing Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Developer: Evolution Studios
Screenshots from IGN.com
Motion Blur!
Indeed yes Motorstorm: Pacific Rift is an offroad racing game and is the sequel to the PlayStation 3 launch title Motorstorm which was set in the real-life Monument Valley. I would have considered buying the first one as I had wanted it for awhile and it was relatively cheap now, but when I realised that it had no splitscreen multiplayer at all then that was the end of it. Pacific Rift is set inside the pacific ocean, no just kidding it is set as you would expect on a fictional remote pacific island with everything a remote pacific island has to offer, beaches, forests, mud, water, waterfalls, mountains, active volcanoes and lava in other words not quite a very safe environment for a race. The "plot" of Motorstorm: Pacific Rift much like the last game is the Motorstorm Festival where you enter different race and compete with cpu players for points, these races can either be Normal Race, Eliminator (every 15 seconds last placed vehicle will be eliminated) or Speed (single vehicle slalom through a pre-determined course). There is also a few factors that each race can have whether it be finish in the allotted time or a wreck limit where you can only completely fuff it 3 times both for extra points. A good feature that I like is that each race you are restricted to a single or up to 4 types of vehicles per race, making things interesting where one race I had to go the off-road bike only to find that every other cpu opponent was a monster truck.
Hmm traffic's bad today
The selection of vehicles is plentiful ranging from small: Bikes, ATV's, Buggies, medium: Rally Cars, Racing Trucks, Mudpluggers and big: Big Rigs, Monster Trucks. All have their strengths and weaknesses, terrain handling, speed, maneuverability etc and it often takes some though as to what would be best for the situation. Most of the time there's a variety of different vehicles in the race at once but the game tends to keep the size scale even, though sometimes you find yourself on a bike or ATV then end up mercilessly pounded into the dirt by a big rig or monster truck. There's a good amount of customization as you can choose between different models and paintjobs of each vehicle as well as different drivers. The vehicles handle reasonably well there's a bit of mid-air rotation to help set yourself up for the landing but and some vehicles are quite hard to turn any kind of corner which is sharper then 45 degrees and often you have to do a powerslide to face yourself in the right direction then use the boost button to catch up but it's all in learning I suppose.
Ironic that the track their about to race is not at all suited to trucks
The tracks and environments is where the game really shines, the singleplayer game is divided into 4 zones Earth, Air, Fire and Water each with it's own tracks based around that theme. I really enjoyed this feature and each zone did live up to it's name, you can be in a buggy zooming through mud in dense jungle or flying through the sky on an ATV after jumping off a mountain or working out how you're supposed to travel over an active volcano in a semi trailer or maybe even smashing through a river trampling everything in your path with a monster truck. Racing on the tracks themselves needles to say take a bit of getting used to, playing for the first time measures from hectic to insane especially with 12 other kinds of vehicles around you, and often you do find yourself wondering "where the hell am I supposed to go" primarily because of the many different routes each track offers.
Dangerous? of course not, all those insurance forms were just routine
There's some advice in the game though you should go on the track that best suits your vehicle i.e. motorbikes and ATV's go the high road with lots of jumps and mudpluggers and big rigs stay low on the flat track and power through the mud but this isn't always obvious and many a time I found myself crashing into a rock or a fence or falling off the track and getting respawned because I thought it was another route. I'd like to say these problems can be overcome with 'practice' but it's more often then not trial and error which makes things difficult for casual players or your friends joining in for multiplayer. I have to say though that Pacific Rift has some of the best looking and most exciting tracks I've seen in a racing game, if you can overcome the chaos of the other racers hindering you the track really reward the player for doing it right, landing that jump, activating that boost at the right time, or even taking out that other racer.
oh right, so you can't go that way after all
The multiplayer I would say is where the games really shines, there's nothing more fun than getting some friends together and having a bash with splitscreen, even if you're cruising around with your vast knowledge of what to do with each track and vehicle while their crashing every 10 seconds it's all in good humour. Online is ok if you're up for a challenge, the game isn't exactly a new title but there are still others playing, mostly from the US though, one particular person I was playing with had a voice which resembled a non-robotic "BonziBuddy" or "Sidney" from the Microsoft Speech API 4.0 One of the only things I don't like about the multiplayer is that you can modify the look of your driver and which type and paintjob your selected vehicle has but they can't as the selection of which type and paintjob of the rally car they select is randomized. The main problem I had with playing singleplayer is that it was immensely frustrating, you need to come in the top 3 in order to progress and in a game where there's about 20 different things that can go wrong and you can go from last to first or vice-versa within a matter of seconds you can understand why. I sometimes dreaded playing the game out of fear of what would happen but generally patience and dedication paid off.
Trouble brewing
Fun in a foursome
In conclusion Motorstorm Pacific Rift is a great affordable racing game for you and your friends, the singleplayer can be frustrating at times and the levels can be confusing, but the gameplay, visuals and the experience is worth the effort, and with the online aspect still reasonably active and a healthy amount of extras, unlockables and DLC packs this game is well worth it's cheap price.
This is a fairly long video but it showcases a lot what the game has to offer, I especially like the opening movie
Thas all for now, keep racing and keep your cool heh. And if you're into something slightly more post-apocalyptic Motorstorm: Apocalypse is now availiable.
If this was a real racing event I would be quite the fan.
