Magicka: Why I never liked it, and now even less

 

A little while ago I was persuaded to  buy and download the action rpg game Magicka  which I was told was a great game and fun to play with friends, but after doing that, and a bit of singleplayer as well I was still relatively unimpressed and found it hard to explain why.

For those of who who don't know about Magicka here's a little idea from the Steam description which has a few videos and pictures

Magicka is a satirical action-adventure game set in a rich fantasy world based on Norse mythology. The player assumes the role of a wizard from a sacred order tasked with stopping an evil sorcerer who has thrown the world into turmoil, his foul creations besieging the forces of good.

Players will be able to combine the elements to cast spells, wreaking havoc and devastation on the minions of darkness. They will also be able to team up with friends and fight their way through the campaign, or test their skills in the magickal arts through other challenging modes.

In Magicka, up to four players take on a grand adventure to save their world from certain doom using a fully dynamic spell system. The adventure mode takes the players across three different levels, ranging from the lush forests of mountain valleys to the frozen halls of the Mountain King where wits and creative thinking are the keys to victory.

Now all this seemed to be well and good but the main problem I had was that we were ALL wizards and we could all do the same thing, I've grown to like the idea of parties or groups where every member is different and can do different things i.e the warrior, the healer, the long rang archer etc it's just disheartening that everyone could do the exact same things as me and always better in some way of course which took out what I feel makes me different, also It just feels so hectic and linear it's what ruined the Spyro series with the introduction of round based combat, go there fight these guys off, go to another place but i guess some games are the same that way. The other thing was you actually know all the spells from the beginning so it's a fairly steep learning curve and you can't sort of play in favor of whats coming.

All in all Magicka is a rather small game and fun in it's own right it's just not my cup of tea. 

That said though there's a new DLC thats kind of lessened my respect for the game even more

 

 

Ah Magicka Vietnam indeed, complete with the Trashmen - Surfin Bird remix, I mean I know this game is satirical but this is just ridiculous in my opinion there's just some genres you don't mix with one another.

I'm a cow, I'm a cow, I'm a Magicow

JD.

Minecraft Creations: The Grey Tower, The League HQ

Hello again folks, well we've all been pretty busy on the tribalfield server, I've finally finished my new home aka the Grey Tower and also Laver and I have been created different things for our tribe the League, my peice was a tribe HQ which I'll go into details about later.

The Grey Tower

This is my 'house' in the new Tribalfield server created in Skyreach. As soon as you see this you probly have the idea that I had Lord of the Rings in mind but really it's only the name, I was racking my brain for ideas then had the thought of making a pillar like structure, except I wanted it to start from deep in the ground, The tower actually goes roughly level 47 right up to 125 making it quite a tall tower! though you cant really see the lower part because of all the lava, interior was a bit of a challenge because of the small space, but I put the rooms one different levels with each having a different function so it wasnt too hard, I do quite like the Nether area down the bottom with the portal and the flowing lava out the windows sides.

 

And this is the cave i mined out getting most of the cobble

 

The League HQ

While I was in the League I was asked (quite spontaneously) to create a HQ for the League Tribe, it needed to have a meeting room, a library and a reception. The design was quite out there but i think I pulled it off ok, I went for a smooth stone structure base which the bottom level would be the reception and league gallery (members and ranks dsiplay on signs, something like that) and the top would be the library. After that I enclosed a large area above the library in glass and placed floating smooth stone blocks where the tribe members would stand for a meeting and make some steps out of smooth stone and glass top get there. I think it worked quite ell allthough most of the time I didnt have a solid idea what I was doing, ah well.

Grand Theft Auto 4 Episodes from Liberty City, The Ballad of Gay Tony Skydiving

This is old news but I purchased myself a copy of Episodes from Liberty City which included the two smaller "spinoff" games which are tied to the original GTA4 similar to the "Vice City Stories":The Lost and the Damned & the Ballad of Gay Tony. The Lost and the Damned is about a motorcycle gang which featured in GTA4 where you play as a veteran member of the Gang, it was fun and also quite tame compared to the ludicrousness that is the latter.

In the The Ballad of Gay Tony, you play as Luis Lopez who is an assistant to the nightclub owner Gay Tony which seems that this is also some some small time hoodlum bashing, drug getting, gang fighting fun etc but it soon becomes apparent that TBOGT aims to bring back in all the high flying, terror instigating, action film style antics from the previous installment of GTA San Andreas that was missing from GTA4 I've barely got halfway through the game and already I've shot SWAT police off of the empire state building with an automatic shotgun full of exploding rounds then base jumped off the top, butchered a large group of arms smugglers and hookers and blew up a giant yacht with a hail of machine gun and rocket fire while piloting an armed helicopter, and also shot down a police SWAT tank which was being airlifted by a skycrane, to say this game was action packed just doesn't do it justice.

 But the thing I was most excited about was the re-introduction of parachuting/base jumping which I had always loved from the many games of skydive into the pool from San Andreas and with the addition of multiplayer, this makes it no less exciting.

 

And I... fly through the sky so high... with pie.

JD.

Minecraft Creations, Fortress and Brik Howze Singleplayer rebuilds

Just a quick update finished rebuilding my old fortress in singleplayer. This was possibly the hardest rebuild I had done mainly because of the unusual land layout and basis of construction which just were too hard to mimic, but I think I did a good enough job anyway, the building had a few chnages, especially with the lower level of the inside which is apparent when you look at the old pictures, the texture pack as always is a nice chnage too.

Fortress rebuild, from previous post

Brik Howze

The Brik Howze in stark contrast didnt go through much chnages as i'd hoped to keep it the same, only major differences was the terrace on the top level and the different colour carpet on the bottom level. I've included the two similar screenshots to compare.

Brik Howze rebuild, from previous post

Original (which is still on AEF server I might add)

Tribalfield Minecraft Server back up, Business as usual

Well it seems that my old favorite Tribalfield server is back up and running and has led to all the regulars returning (as well as some new ones). There's a few new addition, chests now cost money to place (which i assume they are now protected? and Netherworld is also active. My good friend Laver and I had previously joined the League Spirit Tribe and laver together with TheFiendish set us up at a rather interesting looking place which laver has now called Skyreach.

The Skyreach plateau

Laver's more recently built floating castle

 This place was unfortunately largely overshadowed by the spot that Tribalfield Moderator Jason1211 has found, which looked spectacular to say the least.

TheFiendish then went to set up "Fiendfield" (this was actually named by the tribe leader Mystic Duck for some reason) the LEague HQ just a bit north of Skyreach and it's doing quite well as per the below picture.

One thing Fiendfield does is have some huge borders the town border actually engulfs skyreach and is as high as the height limit. As you can also see from the picture the buildings all have some sort of order to them, this is the way Fiendish and Mystic Duck like to work as with the famous Waveham from the server a while back with rules and restrictions on what others can build in the town.

Although Laver and I are part of the League this is the reason I don't like to set up my home in organised towns as I don't like to be restricted in what I build,  you can probably see this from some of my previous creations many of which featured flowing lava that i've claimed are my "houses". I can only speak for myself but I'm pretty sure Laver feels this way too, we like to build what we want and if we have to tear up half a landmass to create a monolithic fortress that breaches the cloudline then so be it, lol.

And as such, here is a sneak peak at my latest creation, there's still a bit of work to be done though

Some ass stole my pork and my bed, same old unseen enemies

JD.

What is Minecraft? Re: Pleasant Productions Blog post from Dave J

Thanks to Dave from Pleasant Productions Blog for this post 

I suppose for the sake of the unenlightened I should explain what Minecraft (i.e. the main focus of my blog) is.The following is from the wikipedia page which I think does a good enough job in explaining, as well as a video.

Minecraft is a sandbox building^[1][2] indie video game written in Java originally by creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. The game is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. The game has two variants – free Classic and paid Beta – where Classic is focused entirely on construction with unlimited material supply, while Beta requires players to acquire resources themselves, and contains mobs, player health, and additional features and items. The gameplay is inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and Infiniminer.^[3][4]

The game is currently in development and Beta is the only continuously updated version of the game. Minecraft^[5][6] less than a month after reaching Beta. was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011,

 Basically I started playing as a referral from a friend and have been ever since. I think some of the best multiplayer fun you can have is playing together and making a community in mutliplayer. I think the most life changing thing about this game is that it was part of the reason I've stopped playing World of Warcraft which I assume everyone knows what is, also the fact that after three and a half years of playing things do get a bit stale. I've been focusing at the moment on rebuilding in singleplayer creations i've lost in multiplayer to server map resets and the like, but I do feel like going back to multiplayer sometime again.

To all those who's first impression of Minecraft is that "the graphics look terrible" believe me they are like that for a reason and all I ask is to try the game to see for yourself. I won't lie it's true that this can can be very addictive but only if you let it get like that, if you maintain a job and a social life then your not addicted, after all I was able to stop playing WoW all of a sudden after playing it for so long.

So thats a brief overview, I encourage everyone to at least try the game and purchase it if they do like it after all it's going cheap while still in beta at $20 and thats all u need to pay. The only thing that worries me is that once Minecraft becomes a full release we'll all be sick of it.

Minecraft Creations, Singleplayer, March/April 2011, Housefort & Treehouse, Plane & Statue re-creations

Hello all I've decided to post some shots from my singleplayer map where I've been re-creating most of my lost multiplayer creations, I've also included some screens of the original house/fort I created with a lava moat among other things.


House Fort

This was probably my very first proper house, which has been there for quite a while now, as you can probably guess from the pictures it was once all made of wood but I suppose you can guess what happened and now i've replaced most of the structure with cobble. The moat was once water but i decided lava would look a bit better especially with Misa's realistic texture pack The house also features 2 minecart tracks going down to 2 huge mines.

This my Nether portal Altar, you can see the exit in one of the Statue pictures

Multiplayer Re-creations

I decided to re-create all of my houses/creations that I've lost in the past in multiplayer to server map resets/hackers etc though they always come out a bit different then before as building ooff my screenshots is quite challenging lol. I mainly did this so I could have one main map where i could showcase all my creations in the one area rather then just relying on screenshots, it was also fun to see what the older creations look like with the realitic texture pack.

Treehouse, from previous post

Statue of JD, from previous post

Private Jet

This is a re-creation but I have not recorded it in the earlier posts as when I took the screenshots when I had first made the plane it wasn't quite finished so I decided to only include shots of the re-created finished version.