My Usual Spiel: Max Payne 3, another round of gun-slingin' mass-murderin' depressed-narraratin' action

Not time for hostage rescue, time however, for whiskey

Release Date: June 1, 2012
Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar Studios
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Players: 1 and Online Multiplayer
Classifcation: MA


Depression, it affects all of us at some point in our lives, but none other than our good friend Max Payne, I never really imagined how the story would continue after this but it looks like it has, and after watching my brother play through the game, I had to have a go myself.

As in all Max Payne games the story starts with a flash-forward of one of the last scenes in the game, the we go back to how Max got there. This is a very different setting for Max Payne as to critical fan review most of the game is mostly set in Sao Paulo Brazil which is a Far Cry from the gloominess of Noir York. It's been eight years since the events of the second game, Max has been fired from the NYPD for collaborating with Mona Sax, a wanted criminal and is now working as a bodyguard with his police academy buddy Raul Passos for a rich Brazilian family: the Branco’s. I won’t spoil the story but important people get kidnapped, other people die, shit generally hits the fan and Max and Passos have to murder a lot of bad guys.

"I don't like the looks of this place"

We do actually find out how Max got to be in Brazil through playable flashbacks where Max meets up with Passos in Hoboken, New York where they end up killing a mob bosses son then have to flee for their lives. Max, who is now more of an alcoholic and pill-popper then ever is his usual depressed melancholy self and narrarates the story accordingly. I do agree with Yahtzee’s ranting that Max Payne should just cheer up a little but it’s not exactly his fault that nothing good has happened to him ever since the tragedy with his family (well almost nothing) he could almost be the most depressed protagonist in gaming history.

His shirt may be having fun but the rest of him is just as downhearted-killer as usual

A couple of things I was disappointed to see gone were the comic strip scenes and Max’s nightmares from the first two games. Seeing as Max Payne 3 actually had a comic made for itself I found it strange why it didn’t feature in the game, though this time the game wasn’t exactly set in “Film Noir” style so I suppose it made sense. One of my brother and I’s favourite parts of the first two games were being able to play out Max’s nightmares about previous traumatic experiences (family murdered etc) but I suppose he may have gotten over them by now, but seriously couldn’t he have a nightmare about something else? Anyway I could rant on all day about it butit's been awhile so I suppose things can;t be the same all the time.

The graphic-novel style storytelling and being able to play Max's nightmares in the previous games were a favorite of mine, sadly they are no more in Max Payne 3

I loved the previous two Max Payne games as there was something crazy fun about being Max and going on a violent gun rampages while slow-mo flying through the air and massacring hundreds and hundreds of (supposed) criminals. Though I knew eventually that as the series wore on it was going to get more serious, gameplay wise that is. There was not much humour in the first Max Payne storyline and it has pretty much stayed that way all the way through but the way you ran and jumped around with bullets and bodies flying everywhere just seemed comical. This was made even worse by the introduction ragdoll physics for Max Payne 2 where you were deliberately shooting enemies in certain angles and using explosives at just the right time to make both their death and where their body ended up after all that more spectacular and hilarious in stark contrast to the dark and gritty story.

I wear one of these headsets for work though it isn't quite like whats pictured and also no I'm not a telemarketer.

As I suspected Max moves a lot more realistically this time around, gone are the days where you effortlessly pivoted all over the place while running then did a suicide dive in the middle of a group of enemies and took them all out someway with only a shotgun, you are now constrained by (semi) normal human anatomy which is evident the way Max grunts when he performs a shootdodge and grunts as he hits the floor though this could just be old age. Strangely enough while I was flying crazy in the last two games the new realism basically deterred me from shoot dodging and I didn’t do it much at all throughout the entire campaign. Max is now able to aim and use cover, so with the combination of these two and bullet-time I had much more fun ducking in and out of cover and popping off the bad guys through timing and strategy. I found myself not bothering to use bullet time as much either it made things a bit too easy in some areas as unlike the cover-based shooting in GTA4 there is no crosshair when you are behind cover, and rightfully so as it was kind of silly in GTA the way you could line up your target and then headshot an enemy with a single blind fire, but in Max Payne 3 (and most other cover based shooters) it only appears when you duck out of cover so you have to be ready, especially without bullet-time and your aim has to be hard.

Ahh good'ol third person games, where you can peer around corners without your character even moving, none of that mirror-on-a-stick stuff

The weapons (and weapons system) in Max Payne 3 have undergone some big changes, unlike the previous games in the franchise, Max Payne 3 will limit the number of weapons the player can carry. The limit is two handguns and one larger gun. Max is able to carry up to two single handed weapons that can be mixed for dual-wielding, and one two-handed weapon; a total of three weapons at a time. Similar to Rockstar's other title Red Dead Redemption, Max's arsenal is accessible quickly via a weapon-wheel. If the player switches to a single handed weapon, Max will hold the long arm weapon with the other hand. However, if the player opts to dual wield, the long arm weapon will be dropped. There is a wide array of dangerous weaponry inc Handguns, SMGs, Shotguns, Assault and Sniper Rifles as well as the grenade-launcher type guns. What’s more is that in the cutscenes Max is holding whatever guns he had while playing (finally!).

The new weapon wheel, very useful as it's a staple of many other shooters. Also I really like this screenshot

As you can probably guess since the last Max Payne was released in 2003 this is the most realistic and bloodiest one yet, when you pump bullets into enemies their bodies flail and jerk around in the right ways. With every last enemy shot in the room you are treated with a slow mo kill-cam which you can slow down even more with the click of a button, this really lets you see the minor details put in this time such as the blood splatters, bullet holes and exit wounds. Needless to say the game is quite violent as well there’s some pretty disturbing scenes of graphic murders and executions which sometimes involve women.

A pretty nice gore montage for the game, this guy has quite a different playing style to my 'cautious duck-and-cover ammo-conserving' style though I suppose it's a bit more epic.

There is also the introduction of “scripted” bullet time events where the game automatically slows down at a critical juncture where Max is sliding down rooftops or swinging from cranes so that you can pull off that critical shot on the kidnapper or floor a room of baddies which hopefully you successfully do as you can’t feel any stupider when you take that cool slow-mo dive then end up on the floor with no bullets left and just hope the enemies with their guns pointed at you will hold off until you can get up and reload. The graphics themselves are awesome looking, the character models are excellent, the environment looks great and reacts when you hit things, of course most of this is just expected nowadays, it isn’t really as groundbreaking as Max Payne 2 when most of us first encountered realistic objects physics and ragdoll and went crazy with it.

Scripted Bullet time: "Hang in there Max" "Hey guys just thought I'd swing by" oh there's a million of em

I unfortunately haven't played much of the multiplayer due to my brother owning the game not me though I must say it's pretty fun, especially the gang wars where you go through a story-like series of challenges such as a band of corrupt UFE cops trying to escape the town and being attacked by the local Comando Sombra street gang, and don't worry there's deathmatch, team deathmatch and 'capture the bag' modes too. I spose you might be screaming out the question "How does bullet-time work in multiplayer this article by Kotaku's Stephen Totillo should tell you all you need to know and he explains it much better then I could it's a great article that says why Max Payne 3's multiplayer is such a good move by Rockstar.

There's the bag, but is it safe to collect? also someone doesn't seem to like Yoss

Though with the singleplayer, I had a ball playing it, right up to the end the story keeps you so engaged, this probably wasn’t my favourite Max Payne though it was mainly the player-made modifications for them that were the source of much fun for me though I highly doubt that this game will allow that as modifications of new games go, maybe sometime in the future I guess. Bottom line, if you are a fan of the previous Max Payne games or a fan of third-person shooter in general, chances are you’ll like this it’s a great mix of story and action and although Max is a bit of a depressive bastard you can’t deny he’s an absolute bad-ass as well.

JD

The sad, sad hero

My Usual Spiel: Driver San Francisco, Story-driven, action driving at it’s finest

As I said in my previous post I do apologise for the lack of blogging, I just need to get on with it now it’s a bit quieter.

Release Date: September 1, 2011  
Genre: Driving/Racing
Publisher: Ubisoft  
Developer: Reflections
Platform: PC, PS3, XBOX360, Wii
Players: 1-2 Splitscreen and Online

It’s been awhile since I’ve played a Driver game, a long while. In fact the last time I did was Driver 2, I think back then it was before I got a Playstation 2 and was able to play Grand Theft Auto that I quit driver entirely. My experience with Driver 2 was fairly bland, it didn’t look too good even back then being on PS1, wasn’t too exciting and was quite hard in some parts. It wasn’t until my good friend Brok who is a huge fan of the driver series and I went to the Mana Bar on a Wednesday night for the Driver San Francisco launch party, well there wasn’t too much party but there was a lot of driver, we got there at 3pm and didn’t leave until 11pm though we mostly played the multiplayer which included split screen multiplayer for the first time in the series. I saw a bit of the singleplayer which looked quite fun and funny at the same time.

Driver SF is indeed intense

So then according to the chronology Driver San Francisco would be the 5th one in the series (disregarding the portable gaming device ones) I wasn’t really interested in most of them having played Driver 2 on the PS1 one of the main reasons for that was we didn’t have a PS2 and therefore couldn’t play GTA3 so after we did get a PS2 it was Grand Theft Auto all the way and I never really paid much heed to the Driver games after that. They were sort of a mix between the crazy driving of GTA and the (slightly) more civilised driving of Need for Speed and Test Drive Unlimited but when Driver San Francisco came out it looked good, it looked really good, it was possibly the most hyped of all the games since Driver 2 and was at least a once play. So when I finally got round to it I was excited to start the singleplayer and it sure as hell delivered, it did the usual driver thing which switched between game world and digitally animated cinema style and the whole thing went off with a bang. But almost immediately after doing the semi-playable opening sequences I ran into quite a big hurdle.

"Hey Jones, what's that huge yellow and black beacon in the sky?"

I found that after much fuffing around I couldn’t actually use my Logitech PS2 style controller for the PC the same way I did in a lot of other games namely Test Drive Unlimited, I couldn’t seem to use one stick to steer and the other to accelerate brake no matter what I tried, this was largely due to the game being a console port which being a mostly PC user, constantly filled me with rage. I knew what I had to do, I bought a Logitech PS3 style controller for PC which has the ‘bumper’ L2 and R2 buttons which are used to Accelerate and brake, wasn’t all that bad since I needed one anyway though with some dismay I realized after purchasing that only the wireless version of the controller had force feedback which I found incredibly stupid since if you were buying the wired version why wouldn’t you want the force feedback as it wouldn’t use up battery power. I could have used a wireless controller had I have known though the benefit of having no cord to mess around with might not have outweighed the annoyance of needing batteries all the time, well It’s a matter of how often you used it I guess.

The key/button controls are annoyingly hard to work with and also have no  secondary option.

But anyway once I had my controller sorted I launched into the game and I gotta admit it was entertaining the way the story panned out. Basically Jericho (the arch-nemesis of the game) has escaped from prison (possibly again) and it’s up to the hero cops John Tanner and Tobias Jones have to stop him, cue the one of many hectic car chases and Tanner and Jones car is smashed into by a truck. After this Tanner realizes that he has an ability to sort of move his consciousness into another person aka “shifting” and is able to take control of their vehicles, this leads to quite a few funny situations i.e. Tanner shifting into an Ambulance and a Learner driver on his test, I did laugh though when Jones made the comment about shifting into a woman’s body. The mechanic is very useful and fun to use though it’s obviously required throughout the whole game as you have to repeatedly shift around in order to damage/stop other vehicles, get back in the race/chase after crashing, perform stunts and just basically make things easier for yourself, it does make some interesting technical holes for example they don’t really explain what Jones does while Tanner is out of his body, apparently Tanner’s body just drives the car automatically, but I suppose there’s a lot of things overlooked for the sake of a fun game mechanic.

Flyin' like Superman

Oooh yes that looks very nice

The story mode consists your usual open-city driving game romp through quite a large area of San Francisco with you hovering above the city as Tanner’s disembodied “spirit” where you can pick from various missions dotted around the city. Which include the storyline missions and the “required to continue the storyline” side missions  which involve things like street racing to protecting a Security van by smashing into the bad guy attackers using any vehicle available with trucks and buses obviously doing more damage so your consistently hunting for them if you need to stop anyone. Even in some of the street races you need to come both first and second which requires you to constantly shift between two cars. All of the main story missions and “main” side missions involve you shifting into someone else’s body and the ensuing dialogue between you and the passenger is hilarious. There are also other missions where you can random stunts and dares for money and "willpower" which allow you to purchase more cars and abilities. In these missions you drive a car that isn’t the famous Dodge Challenger, this part was fairly interesting as you have the main story car, then you have some other car that you purchase from different garages around the city for doing stunts/dare’s and other non required side missions. Apparently for the first time ever a Driver game has licensed cars to buy/drive and thus they are all lined up in brand order on your car select screen. I found it fun using the older slower cars then upgrading to some newer, quicker ones and seeing the difference when doing the challenges.

Most of the side missions involve breaking the law in as many ways as possible for material and personal gain,  nothing new I spose.

The story is pretty much what you’d expect, the game is largely as all Driver game are a detective mystery storyline with those great “last time, on Driver San Francisco” parts, it  goes through pretty much every possible way Tanner can use his newfound ability, posing as gang members and other cops in order to stop Jericho. I won’t reveal anything more about the story you’ll just have to play it.

"No Jones that's just wrong, besides it'll be me inside her"

I’ve already explain my difficulty with the gaming controls but after you get over that hurdle it’s easy enough though the Driver games as you’d probably know by now have one of the most aggressive police forces out there and sometimes it is seriously hard to evade them, you’re just tearing down a straight or round corners as fast as possible and sometimes it’s really frustrating to be just about to lose them then crash into something. The controls are still quite arcadey more then so Test Drive Unlimited but slightly less so then say the Need for Speed series, but their ok once you get used to them and you have heaps of fun simulating movie car chase scenes, powersliding and crashing all over the place which is where the movie editor mode really shines. I can’t tell you how many good scenes my friend Brok has done in this game but I’ll give you a hint which everyone will know by now anyway. Get the Delorean to 80mph and you’re in for a surprise. One of the few things that irked me though was that the way all the pedestrians just happened to get out of the way right at the last second which I suppose this isn’t GTA but I kind of missed mowing them down but that’s more then made up for with you being able to crash through most things on the street including bus shelters.

Dem cops be hard to lose, this is also a 70's style mission, where you have no  boost, ram or other special powers.  All the other cars in the mission are 70's too which is pretty awesome.

The story mode some great animation, the characters look very real and it’s great the way it changes in and out of the game world to the cinematic. Driver San Francisco’s graphics have got mixed reviews or so I’ve heard,  I’m not the best at judging graphics I’d gladly lower them in order to play more smoothly but the game isn’t exactly a rival for Crysis 3 so I don’t really need to bother (well not anymore with my current PC) I think the graphics look fine, the cars look great, the city looks great, the cinematics look great too even if it does look at bit weird when it transitions from them to the game world but meh it looks good enough and the atmospheric effects especially the sun glare look good too.

Using the in-car mode you are able to look around and there's full interior detail for almost every vehicle and when you do a sharp turn you actually see your self spinning the wheel all the way doing the hands-over thing which is pretty impressive.

The multiplayer, which includes 19 different games modes such as competitive tag and trailblazer was especially fun when playing at the Mana Bar with friends I didn’t do any online multiplayer myself but I suppose it could be fun for a while. There’s a real sense of fun playing someone else split screen as you hurtle and jostle along trying to keep in the slipstream of the player controlled car. I don’t really have much else to say, I wasn’t particularly interested in the multiplayer after that marathon session just wanted to finish off the singleplayer.

Trailblazer: Don't let him get to 80mph!

I would recommend Driver San Francisco to anyone, it’s obviously a must play for fans of driving games. Having not played the series for a while it felt refreshing to see what Driver had come up with and it was good, I usually like car games where you create your own character and start as a nobody with a shitty car then work up to being greatest racer in the country/world/universe etc though this was almost like acting out a car-themed movie which is awesome fun. This ain’t no cutting edge physics and graphical driving simulator, and it shouldn’t be this is a story-driven Action/Adventure driving game at its best.

JD


The road less travelled is fun for a while

Hiatus of Blogging

Apologies that there has not been an update for awhile, due to work being the busiest time of year and my colleague Joseph being away. I keep most of my spare time for actual gaming, once it gets quiet again though I will definitely be back posting.

Some games I've played which are up for review:

Driver San Francisco
Dear Esther
May Payne 3
Sub Rosa

And also some more commentary for Star Wars the old Republic, Minecraft and possibly Battlefield 3

In the meantime, let me serenade you with this little ditty I can't get out of my head.



JD

E 'difficile essere un uomo squadra

Hustlin' through the Old Republic: Exclusive Membership Benefits

And once more unto the breach (or whatever that saying is) I hadn’t been on SWTOR for awhile with other things to play inc a some PS3 games inc Way of the Samurai 4 and Motorstorm Apocalypse which was a change. I came back finally determined to work out what the hell these Cartel Coins are about, and it turns out there’s a lot about them I should know. I’ve just barely keeping up with what’s happening in the game updates and patches though apart from the introduction of the Cartel Market, there has been a new warzone and new heroic space missions new grade 7 starship upgrades, plus the “Life Day” celebratory stuff.

And of course free-to-play is now enabled and basically looking at the restrictions there seems very little point in playing for free though I think the main reason for the free to play option is for people to see whether they like the game and then sign up for subscription if they do. As being a subscriber both now and in the past I had been given free cartel coins! That’s right as a subscriber I am given monthly rewards of cartel coins plus bonuses from my subscription in the past so that added up to 1850 coins! And I rightly knew where to use them, that’s right no more paying credits for speeder piloting or inventory space for me. As well as having, gear, upgrade and cosmetic items the Cartel Market lets you purchase in-game unlockables which are mostly abilities that subscribers already have access but some which I previously had to pay credits for in the past I can get with cartel coins.

The Cartel Market as it appears in-game

I’ve now purchased Speeder Piloting III for Jxan, Piloting II for Kxan and an extra inventory slot for all current and new characters I create. These Speeder piloting perks allow you to use different speeders at lower than normal ranks for example you can get speeder piloting 3 at level 35, I’m pretty sure you do have to get all the speeder piloting in order so I’m thinking if Kxan is level 30 now I’ll just use the same speeder until I can get piloting 3 and a much faster one. Another thing I bought was an additional cargo bay for all my characters, Now that they all have more room I won’t need any more inventory space whatsoever and could possibly keep a large amount of extra resources on the one character if nothing it just keeps it clean as your able to separate all your crafting resources to the one tab.

Aratech Lancer bitch, that's right, though compared to the movies even the fastest speeders are still goddamn slow

 Regarding Space combat I’ve actually hit a rut as got up to the Drexel Sweep Republic space mission then stopped because it was getting too hard, might see if I can get some level 7 ship upgrades from the cartel market and try it again though most of it’s going to be for my alts speeder piloting skill. Our guild leader Nefash has brought out a Pilot Training School which is a site dedicated to Space Combat in SWTOR with movie guides on how to complete each mission which would be very helpful when I could be bothered trying them again. I do like them but dayum there’s stuff shooting at me all over the place I barely have time to scratch my bum with the force and it’s just getting too hectic though once I get some decent upgrades and learn how to use the ones with functionality I should be fine, I just don’t know how many Cartel Coins I’ll have to spare.

Drexel Sweep Republic Space Mission, done by Nefash

Well I’ve finished off both Belsavis and Voss and got my Guardian to 50! First level 50 wooo! Anyway I really enjoyed questing in Voss it had such beautiful scenery sort of like a world in permanent autumn I also liked the questline too, the Voss are some pretty interesting people. The Belsavis quests were pretty bland though I liked the idea of a jailbreak especially with ancient jails containing god knows what. I found once I was 50 there was an utter explosion of more quests to do on the fleet station including all the new space missions on your ship, all of a sudden you have all these extra heroic quests for flashpoints and world bosses and operations. And to my annoyance you could only have 25 of them at the one time, this is especially annoying as these are the kind of quests are the types you want to just leave in your log for when you might happen to do them, for example the Nightmare pilgrim as you might forget to have the quest with you. I managed to make enough space by taking out all the other quest chains that I guess were there similar to the bonus series’ for level 50’s to do once their 50. So all in all there doesn’t seem to be any lack of things to do once you’re 50 but I’ll get on to that later.

Voss, the land of Autumn

I’ve got Synthweaving and Underworld trading to 400 as well, though I am waiting till I get some higher level archaeology items before I can make the level 50 gear, speaking of level 50 gear, when I reached level 50 I immediately got 99 Tionese Commendations which I used to purchase a full set of Tionese Epic DPS Gear. I went DPS because I suspect that’s what I’ll still be doing the majority of the time I’m playing, as back when I wanted to be a tank and went defence spec I did shit all damage and I don’t want to be stuck in that rut again like everyone was before WoW introduced dual spec trying to farm and do daily quests all while in tanking or healing spec. And with the large amount of bonus quests and level 50 bonus series’ SWTOR seems to have I won’t have a lack of normal quests to do. I haven’t really done any raids or “operations” as their called in SWTOR, I haven’t really thought about what I’d do as it’d usually be with guild and If I think back to my WoW days my guild would have to be pretty desperate to use me as a tank. Partially why I healed on my Paladin instead of tanking.

My epic Tionese gear with epic Lightsabre (yes I know I'm supposed to have blue)

Anyway my New Epic Gear made pretty much any DPS gear I got on Voss and probably any other story missions to come pretty much obsolete, since I got DPS gear I’ve been trying to upgrade my tank gear as much as possible but Voss just didn’t seem to have the right gear or upgrades as the planet commendations change what kind of gear or modifications you get all the time in the later levels as it’s not just better then the last ones. It’s just the trouble that comes with having an ongoing storyline. In WoW I used to start in one area and would choose a different zone depending on what level I was when I finished that area but unfortunately with the class story missions I don’t have that luxury and there’s those times where you can either go to the planet where the quest is green or yellow but you have to do the story for both anyway which is very linear and I don’t know how I’m going to create a different experience between characters though I guess that just comes with the class storylines. Speaking of which I now understand the Jedi Knight storyline sort of, I’m currently battle and saving (or killing) the Jedi who accompanied me to Fight the Emperor at the end of chapter 2, I’m itchin’ to find out what happens in the end which really keeps me goin, I’ve got to do Corelia yet then possibly Ilum before I’m finish and I’m freakin' already 50, sigh.. hope it works out better with the way I’m pacing the levelling on my Assassin.

Our very stealthy party of Sith Assassins, why we all ran in stealth halfway across the map to get to the quest was anyone's guess.

I’ve got a lot to say about companions (as I usually do) I’ve been using T7-01 as my companion for awhile now I’m on about 6 and a half thousand affection and have had a lot of ‘conversation’ style companion quests with him but still don’t seem to have his character quest which is about one of his many previous owners or cohorts, being 200 years old I spose he would have a few, damn they make things to last in this Galaxy don’t they? I had a bit of decision whether to use T7 or Doc but to be honest I like T7 better though he doesn’t speak but I like the way he jumps around and zaps enemies and makes beeping and chirping noises, and he’s perfect choice for my good-guy playing style which continues to plague my Inquisitor. On Kxan I’ve sort of decided to use Khem Val until I get Ashara Zavros even though A. He’s an evil bastard and I’m not and B. I’ve got Andronikos Revel but I can’t help liking good old Khem, though once I get Ashara everything should be ok at least until I get her to 1000 affection.

T7 and I share a golden moment.

Speaking of evil bastards look at the two most powerful companions I have with their likes and dislikes two characters I have who are both on the Light Side of the force.

Khem Val

Likes: Killing Force users, displays of strength, making foolish people unhappy

Dislikes: Weakness in any form, not killing Force users

Lord Scourge

Likes: Using power against the weak, power, anger, revenge and spite

Dislikes: Greed, acts of mercy, Jedi and Republic authorities

I made some gear for Lorg Scourge, which being Jedi gear looks rather weird for him since he's a Sith, the combination of that and the odd-looking headgear gives him and interesting look indeed.

Wow what a friendly duo though I think Lord Scourge takes the cake for being the most evil, how am I supposed to be a good guy with these two? Bah I might even look forward to going all Dark though as a Jedi Consular as there are a couple of Companions in there which would work well with a Dark Jedi. But first I must at least try a non-Jedi class for couple of reasons 1. I can’t go straight for playing an Inquisitor to a Consular their too alike even if I’m being a Sage and using Telekinetics rather than being an Assassin and Lightsabering it up, their abilities (and first companion for that matter) are just too similar and 2. I’ve already been two Force-using classes and I might actually like the blaster users. The other decision that comes with that is what non-force class to do but that’s a decision for another time.

SWTOR classes: I like the Imperial Agent in this pic, lookin particularly gangsta'

 I’m currently doing Alderaan on Kxan and am already 32 so hopefully I can finish it off quickly before I gain too much experience. I’ve been forcing myself to wear or show this damn helmet that I have on now for realism’s sake, I look like freakin Darth Iron man or something it’s almost as bad as my Jedi-goggles but I can't have it hidden as it sounds really strange when your voice is crackly like it’s coming through the helmet speaker when you don’t have it on, which is another thing about companions that irks me, sometimes you get helmets for them or yourself where it obviously isn't blocking their mouth but their voice comes out through the "helmet radio" anyway,  ahh it’s all a struggle isn’t it?

Spot the Sith Iron Man

 Cya next time! in the galaxy y’know….

JD

Our money for your money

Minecraft Creations: The Brick Mansion Chapter 3, Less think more work

Just a little note, I've been thinking for awhile of going back to .jpeg format for my images, this may not be best format but it means I can have my screenshots at the normal resolution without being the very large .png files that Minecraft creates.Coupled with how I like to use 256x256 texture packs it makes for very big image files some of which I have are over 4meg! I've found this nice little program called Sagethumbs which lets you convert image files just by selecting them all and right clicking in a snap, similar to the image resizer addon I have which I won't be needing anymore hah! so I hope you enjoy downloading my new much smaller file size images.

“Well that’s two thirds of it done” I thought to myself as I started at the huge brick and wood laden structure that is by far the biggest house I’ve ever attempted to build , though I had done pretty well, I really need to take more shots of the stages I’ve got to but meh I usually just take them at the end anyway I have a few though as this is and I’ve really gotta push myself to get this thing done.

The house as it stands now: Entrance and Rooftop of lobby

Dining/Dancefloor area

Resource room

Relaxtion pool/spa/sauna area

There’s been a lot going on with the version releases though I’ve only been concentrating on things that are relevant to building my house. Beacons are on example which I have installed as a feature in the lobby, also I’ve made two lines of Anvils next to each other like some kind of multi-anvil and finally I’ve made good use of Item frames which make great wall features. Another great feature that has been added recently is that stairs now connect to other stairs to form corner stairs on edges which makes all uses of stairs (seating, decoration and actually stairs) look much nicer.

An Anvil

Using item frames as a wall feature

Some uses for corner stairs.

I’ve made a lot and I mean a lot of progress since the last adventures of JD post, basically I was waiting for a long period of time one of my favorite mods SingleplayerCommands to be updated so I could continue building. The main reason for this was I’d started the map in Survival mode and needed the mod basically for the commands (not just the one that changed the world mode) Though after this lengthy period I actually found that another of the mods that I use TooManyItemshad some pretty useful buttons on the top of the inventory screen that controlled, the day night cycle, the weather and most importantly whether the map was in creative or survival mode so needless to say after a lot of wasted time I quickly got to work.

TooManyItems mod adds lots of extra tools to the inventory screen, notice the very useful game mode, weather and monster options along the top left.

 After I’d left last time I’d cleared out the hill, carved out some rooms and made some roofs/floors, created the alchemy room and the indoor soccer pitch. I’d made a basic floor plan and decided to stick to it (roughly). The alchemy room I had finished first and added the potion item frames in recently as some sort of potion chart. It ended up looking pretty good with the stone brick and the mossy cobblestone, of course I’ve never actually done any potion making before so I’m not really sure what’s involved apart from needing water. The soccer pitch was reasonably ok though I had to remove the pool on the other side of the wall so the room with the soccer pitch could be properly square (or rectangle) as having that part of the field right next to the wall with the walkway on top really didn’t work or look good for that matter. Once I had made the new wall and added some more seating it looked much better. I also decided to colour the area around the pitch in blue as to get a more indoor feel.

Alchemy room with potions in item frames.

New and improved indoor soccer pitch.

 After a bit of haphazard TNT clearing work and cleaning up I started work on the club, cause every house needs its own club yo. The “Snub” Club turned out great, I love the way in the Faerielight texture pack the yellow wool really resembles carpet. I took a  lot of inspiration from the Minecraft Furniture site and server which is a delight to look around in I highly recommend checking it out if you’re looking for ideas to decorate your home.

Main room with dancefloor, bar and VIP area.

VIP area.

I liked using oak wood planks for the back of the bar and a feature wall for the VIP area as well as jungle wood planks for the pool room as there’s just too much brick around. The note and juke boxes work well as speakers and I even decorated the doorways in them, the different level for the VIP and the pool room worked well too.

Sitting area with stairs down to pool room.

Pool room.

One of the entrances to the club

 After I had finished the club I made another door in the section connecting the atrium and the soccer pitch and made a door from the pool hall part of the club into the soccer pitch as well. I had carved out the atrium but hadn’t done anything with it yet as I wanted to leave it until I finished the other areas before I planted the plants and grew the trees in the basement which technically wasn’t that much of a basement as some areas could of even had windows as they were.

The forge mining area was pretty tricky, cleared the area with TNT and decided to do the walls in stone brick instead of just stone as it looks nicer and the floor in cobble as I couldn’t really think of anything else to use. I had to build around the entrance to my diamond strip mine but it worked pretty well the new cobblestone walls look pretty cool though I wish you could make them with all kinds of stone. I created my usual lava/forge area with lots of furnaces next to it  and then made the cooling/water area with the multi-anvils next to it, though now I think about it, from what I’ve seen in Skyrim you actually have the fire and water in the same place i.e. the metal comes out of the fire, you bang it around on the anvil then cool it in the water so I may change it at some point. The rest of the area I just put chests and signs to store all the items, I managed to work around the stairway to the mine being in the middle of one part of the room as there was enough room around it to build boxes around it.

For the entrance to the forge and the wall of the atrium it occupies I built in stone brick with holes for barred windows and made some pyres outside the entrance for decoration all of which looked pretty cool when done.

One other room I had to do was the Nether room, or basically where the nether portal would go, this is one of my favorite rooms to create as with the addition of nether bricks and stairs you can construct a pretty cool looking altar. I didn’t really have anywhere appropriate to put the entrance so I just made a doorway of netherbrick with iron doors, it isn’t exactly epic but it’s the inside that’s epic and besides it’s supposed to be a house, this is just the portal to the nether for resource and possibly adventuring purposes. I just managed to fit the stairwell within the confines of the house as I don’t know whether I’m going to continue the outer wall around that side. I named the stairway down to the nether portal “The Crimson Hall” as with the Faerielight texture pack it certainly is crimson, or maybe dark red. Anyway the walls I did with netherack and made holes in the wall for fire, I put the portal on an altar and decorated it with lava and fire.

Entrance to the "Crimson Hall"

Stairway to the portal

The ominous Nether Portal room, every house should have one.

So the club, the forge/storage, the nether room and the atrium had all been done which finished off the lower level. It went pretty well, without much hassle had to change things round a bit but that was ok. I left out a few things that weren’t really needed such as changerooms for the soccer pitch though I was thinking of putting toilets in the club, but you don’t go to the toilet in Minecraft but then again you can’t play soccer either so I don’t know, I’d just rather keep it practical making sure I include all the things you can actually do in Minecraft inc rooms for crafting, forging , alchemy, enchanting and a natural water area for fishing I’d suppose.

With the lower level pretty much finished I started mapping out the lobby. I chose a certain height for the wall, then bricked it all up with tall windows and in wooden frames to counteract all the brick.

Front of house with lobby walls and windows put up.

I also fixed up the entryway which I had created earlier (6 doors was enough) and also added some more brick to the stairs. I also have a secret entrance underneath the main one in the water, this leads to what I call the “undersurface” where you can see the untouched natural ground underneath the floor.

Main entrance.

With the lobby I wanted to do sort of a entryway sitting room with a beacon feature in the middle.

An early shot of the middle level and lobby where you can see the first build of the beacon feature and sauna.

I only recently worked out how beacons worked but all I really needed to know was how to make them project light into the air and all I need for that was a certain number of iron, gold, emerald or diamond blocks and in creative that was not a problem. Getting a beacon that works is a pretty big effort in survival mode as it involved travelling to Nether fortresses for Wither Skeleton skulls  and summoning and killing a Wither not to mention getting enough blocks of the appropriate resource to get the maximum effect of the beacon pyramid my house has. After completing the beacon feature for the middle I created some seating and nature features with trees, plants and mushrooms as well as waterfall features for the stairs.

Lobby left side

Lobby right side

Lobby right side

Mushroom feature of lobby

To complete the lower atrium I planted jungle trees and ferns as well as bushes and other plants in the lower atrium and it worked out pretty well when I added a gravel path, I also planted vines wherever I could to get that more jungley feel as now they’ve grown long enough to go over the entrances to the other rooms. I then built two sets of stairs leading down to the lower level, one main set of stairs and another small set going over the entrance to the soccer pitch. Which does remind me know actually that I have pretty much finished the middle level I sort of forgot to leave room for stairs up to the top level, oh well I’m sure there will be room somewhere.

The Atrium

The first thing I made on the top level was the dining area which consisted of a long table, wooden chairs and two more complex chairs at the end. I really wish Mojang would introduce wool stairs and slabs or the ability to cover slabs and stairs with wool as it makes it hard to make a wool chair because you have to make a slab floor beforehand which sits lower than normal floors.

Dining table

Anyway so I created the table and chairs but decided I should make this little square bit that was jutting out of the main house into a kitchen, and I did, got some quick inspiration from the Minecraft Furniture server but it was pretty easy anyway. Used a variety of materials to make the kitchen including blocks of iron, furnaces, trapdoors pinewood, buttons, cauldrons and stone brick, and it’s looks pretty bitchin’ so much so that’s what I decided to call it. I added a bar next to the kitchen too.

Bitchin.

 Behind the dining table I made a  dancefloor with DJ table and speakers and a potplant feature on the wall, the reason I didn’t use the actual Flower Pots that are in the game is that you couldn’t actually stick them to the wall and they were a bit small anyway.

Dancefloor with DJ table.

 The next room was to be the resource room, I found thought to myself though the initial concept to this room as fairly bland as all I was thinking of it was just a room with lots of organized and named chests and readily available crafting tables, I then had an ingenious idea to make it a bit more like an industrial processing and storage centre, and right way I knew this room was going to take a lot longer due to that idea. It’s hard to explain in words but basically what I wanted to do was create a minecart tracks for minecarts with chests to run along from one area to another sort of like a supply line, there would be minecart tracks going to 3 different places, a mine, the surface outside the house and the forge inside the house. But of course to do this I needed a mine and one that was close by so I scouted out an area with my x-ray mod. Finding one I decided that the best thing to do would be to blast a huge hole and bore into the ground with TNT until I found a cave system (yes that’s right) which I did without too much trouble and even found an underground crevasse pretty close by.

The minecart ramp to the mine and the surface.

The 4 tracks down to the mineshaft

The mine processing area

Entrance to the main mine and underground crevasse.

I then built a huge ramp wide enough for four minecart tracks, a walkway and fences on the side which led from inside the house all the way down to where I’d stopped and turned the bottom into a sort of underground processing and storage area to go back up to house. I made a similar thing on the ground outside the house then finally dug out a tunnel for another two tracks to go to the Forge and back, I then made racks to put the double chests on and signs to mark what was in each of them and crafting tables around the general area. I decided to use the item frames as decoration again and made a large feature on two walls, funny thing was I used the toomanyitems mod to pick the order to display so I ended up having moving water and lava on a frame, hah oh well something surprising anyway.

The finished resource/storage room

Chest racks with signs and crafting tables (I can make them higher if needed)

Minecart tunnel to the forge area

The last part of the middle level was the relaxation/pool area, this was the biggest area as I’d cut the resource room off short so I could fit a large spa, a pool and a sauna, which I did. The spa worked pretty well, made in a desert theme with cacti, dead bushes and sand brick.

Desert-themed Spa

 The sauna I made with birch wood and cracked stone brick which looked pretty good with the colour of the birch wood in this texture pack.

 I love the way the pool turned out, basically I was filling it up but in order to fill a large space of water to more than one level you need to make it smaller first, so I ended up making these rows around the edges to get the water the right level. When I’d finished though I actually though the end result looked really cool as it looked like there were lap swimming lanes around the edge and a main pool in the middle, so I did that and made the middle just a bit deeper. I then added some lights to the bottom and worked on a  few nature features included a desert taiga and mushroom biome feature and a window. I’m still deciding what I’m going to do with that large wall space, whether I extend the pool via waterfall to the outside though I would have to close up the entire room but I’ll see how I go.

A very oddly-built pool.

Underwater building, only slightly slower

 The last thing to do until I had another break from this huge time investment I had to make the lobby roof, yes a roof for the lobby was needed as it is lower than the rest of the house. Basically I just wanted to make a basic dome shape with some sort of feature on the top for the beacon to shoot through so I made a small pyramid at the peak with a hole in the middle out of stone brick, I think stone brick is becoming my favorite block to use for structure other than red brick of course. I extended the stone brick pyramid out to the sides of the roof for support and put some lightstone in there as well. I was going to do a bit of overhang with the roof but then decided against it as it looked sort of messy, will definitely do it for the roof of the upper level though as that will have some balconies, I’m actually thinking of having some balconies for the middle level too. I didn’t really have any idea how I was going to do the roof so I just sort of stacked on the wood in levels which looked kind of messy in parts but mostly worked. I’m thinking it does need a bit more natural light coming in so I’ll make some holes in the stone for skylights.

Roof from afar

Rooftop (the pyramid at the top is actually bigger now)

View from inside

So that’s basically it, there’s a bit to clean up and work on but I needed a break after that effort, I’m even thinking of going back to play survival which tried out a bit of on the Mikeland survival, but on looking at their revamped website it appears they have a PvE server now!, hell why didn’t I see that before. Anyway I’ll be back here again to finish off my house, then get started on the outside I suppose, will it ever end? probably not, well I guess it isn’t supposed to, I mean what am I going to do afterwards, build a whole self-sustaining farm? complete all the achievements? kill the Wither and/or the Ender Dragon? After all there is a way to “finish” the game as the Survival page says, but whether I’ll still want to play by myself when this is all finished is yet to be seen.

JD
 
With my own two hands... and a limitless supply of resources, and flight