On Terraria and Minecraft

 

A few months ago, if you saw Terraria you might've thought it was a cash-in copy of Minecraft. But that's not really fair, nor is it accurate.

My friend also blogged about it on Tumblr and someone reblogged his post with a very adequate analogy. Minecraft is a mining game with RPG elements. Meanwhile, Terraria is an RPG with mining elements. Sheer. Brilliance. That is exactly how I feel about Terraria and it explains why it's so addictive. The RPG elements are much more pronounced in Terraria while mining is a secondary function that serves to enhance it.

Minecraft's Boo! Update Explored: The First 5 Minutes

My first clue that Minecraft's Boo! update had dropped is when I decided to hop on to harvest more obsidian only to find my .exe launcher failing to connect. Chances are, when new stuff is happening, people are flooding the servers.

So when I finally got Minecraft loaded up and found my launcher downloading updates, I got excited.

Yup. I built this before the update was even out in preparation.

Welcome to Minecraft: 6 Great Things About Getting Started

So you've seen people rave about this mysterious indie game and decided to take the $12 plunge. What is there to do and enjoy? Here are six things you'll eventually encounter that'll really get you to stick with the Minecraft experience.

Monday Night Combat Review: Monday! Monday! Monday!

Class based shooters are a dime a dozen these days. You get some characters who specialize in offense, defense, and support (which usually means they can heal). It doesn't help that the shooter market is saturated with competitors. But Uber Entertainment manages to stick out from the crowd by throwing in something almost everyone has played at some point or another: tower defense games.

A Week of Bad Company 2

About 4 months after Modern Warfare 2 released, I sold it to a friend of mine. This was about half the time I owned Call of Duty 4, and I simply sold that game for its age. I was sick and tired of the constant killstreaks in the air. Sure I can shoot them down with stinger missiles, but playing pick up with strangers and watching them act as kill fodder doesn't help things.

I was tired of chopper gunners, noob tubers, knife monkeys, and quick scopers.

Then I got Bad Company 2 as a reward for taking part in a play test for an EA game.

Afterthoughts on the Prince of Persia movie from a gamer

The movie is winding down and lights come back on. My friend, Irene, is still gushing about Jake Gyllenhaal's chest. I, on the other hand, am still drooling about Gemma Aterton. But more importantly, as I leave the theater, the last thought in my head about the Prince of Persia film was, “I remember that thing from the game!” followed by, “and it didn't suck!”

Super Street Fighter IV: relearning everything from scratch

I'm amazed at how my view of Street Fighter has become refreshed with Super Street Fighter IV. Nothing overly major was changed. What has changed are only smaller tweaks to the overall game, but it's amazing how different a character like Rufus, my main pick from the previous game, can be so different with just a different ultra move.

Fist bumps in the dark: A week with Splinter Cell Conviction

Playing through Conviction alone isn't enough to really get the experience. Since Pandora Tomorrow, the first sequel following Splinter Cell, Ubisoft has made multiplayer a blast in Splinter Cell. People expect the Tom Clancy, convoluted conspiracy theory-laden story at first, but multiplayer has always kept them coming back.

Review: Mass Effect 2

The first Mass Effect was a major turn off to me. Why was there so much hype around the sequel? In fact, the hype was so big, I decided to borrow my friend's copy of ME1 in order to have a save file ready to import to Mass Effect 2.

Mass Effect 2 continues the story of Alliance space marine, Commander Sheperd. In the first Mass Effect, he finds out that a race of hyper advance, sentient machines, The Reapers, will someday return from the void beyond the galaxy to wipe out all life as we know it. I steer away from mentioning story elements to spoil the game, but as soon as you boot the game up, Sheperd is killed in action five minutes into the opening cinematic. He's brought back to life however by the mysterious Cerberus group, a pro-human radical organization who truly believes in the threat of the Reapers unlike the majority of the population who dismiss them as a myth. Sheperd continues his quest under a tense truce with Cerberus knowing something bad is going down in the galaxy.

Scarred for Life: Weird Fighting F

Most college campuses are pretty big. And during a long day of classes, you're likely to unwind in a place that will become a regular stop. For me, one of those places is the study lounge, known as the cyber lounge by the regulars. Many of the regulars have laptops, and several of the friends I've made in there play a lot of games. But one day, one of them brings in a Japanese homebrewed fighting game which roughly translates into Weird Fighting F. Good luck finding any other information about it besides that link. As it's Japanese, it'll be hard to find more information as most searches (since I assume you're reading this in English) will turn up zero information.

Assassin's Creed II gets it right

The first Assassin's Creed got a lot of publicity from Ubisoft. It was a new IP building on the popularity of parkour, so everyone got excited. When it came out though, the opinions were divided right down the middle. Some people thought it was good citing its open ended, free running world, the interactive way the buttons are mapped to you body. Other thought it was a buzz kill because of it's long, drawn out pacing, repetitive mission structure, and lack of variety outside of the main story missions. After it ended, it was made obvious that this new franchise would be a trilogy, and everyone was left to wonder what to think of AC's future. Now the sequel is out and it literally follows in it's predecessor's foot steps. Big publicity, lots of positive buzz, and so forth. Unlike it's predecessor, it seems the folks at Ubisoft (Ubisoft Montreal specifically) heeded the gaming community's complaints and made the sequel everything we wanted AC to be without everything that dragged it down.

Brutal Legend is the most metal game this year

I received Brutal Legend in the mail a week ago from Jack's Big Rip Off sweepstakes. A month of eating at Jack's and I had a new game to show for it. I was skeptical after seeing reviews because of it's bait and switch tactics of showing off a beat'em up game and suddenly having an RTS game on our hands. However, this is a Tim Schafer game, so I wasn't about to walk away from it. I've played Psychonauts. I know was Tim Schafer is capable of.

Tearing myself away from Modern Warfare 2

This past week Modern Warfare 2 was released this past Tuesday. It's a common in-joke in the community that productivity would drop sharply as soon as the game was made available to the public. People attended the midnight releases, called in sick for work, and just sat themselves down to the sequel to one of 2007's most critically acclaimed games. Indeed, when one of my own classes was canceled due to furloughs on Thursday, I originally planned on going home to play it then come back for my campus club meeting in the evening. I ended up getting sucked into the game and stayed home.

Shadow Complex avoids 'Metroidvania' comparisons just barely

Shadow Complex has been available for quite some time, but the fun hasn't quite worn off yet. Many people tout it as a Metroidvania knock off. Others call it a Metroidvania homage. Either way, Shadow Complex can't escape this comparison of classic game design from Metroid and Castlevania. A lone player exploring a single, massive dungeon, slowly treading on new ground more and more by collecting upgrades and weapons. So is it blatant reliance on tired game design, or a game to add to the Metroidvania term?

Play as a celestial body in Solar

Courtesy of MTV Multiplayer's spotlight showcase of Solar, I managed to find out about an interesting indie game on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I'm a fan of games with quirky settings and back drops, and this game proved to be one of the quirkier. What other game let's you play as a star which, depending on how you play the game, is actually quite an asshole?

A hard game to spell correctly: I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1

In journalism, we have to get names right, and unfortunately, the exact name of this game is hard to remember exactly. I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1 (henceforth, A Game With Zombies, or just Zombies) is the kind of game you think up of when you're drunk, then proceed to make after the hangover. You're not drunk anymore that it impairs your ability to program, but when you thought of the concept, you had just downed three Jack Daniels and finished watching Shaun of the Dead.

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Zombies takes the classic gameplay of Robotron and pits you against not only zombies in a classic top down perspective, but also a bevy of seemingly belligerent abstract constructs. Some of them look like dust bunnies while other times they annoying, flashing gifs your grandmother sends you because she thinks they're amusing. And all of them want to kill you by brushing up against you.

You move around with your left stick and shoot with the right with pick up weapons spawning randomly around the map, from machine guns to shotguns to flamethrowers. All while enemies constantly spawn and try surrounding you. It can be played with three other friends, dramatically causing the game to spawn more enemies to match, and the game becomes an addictive survival testing to see how long you can live. There's just sheer joy to be had when you can shooting in any general direction and mow down 10 to 20 zombies a second and hundreds more are still there to replace them.

So at 80 points, roughly a buck, Zombies is a cheap, economically fun game for those bored and on Xbox Live. Just look for it under the indie games tag.

Splosion Man: everything you want as long as they're splosions

As someone who's into fight games, I tend to gravitate towards certain games. I'm obsessive about beating a game with everything I can collect or beat. 1998: Banjo-Kazooie and to this day I'm still collecting those damn jiggies on the Xbox Live version. Just last year I played Mega Man 9, while still infuriatingly hard, is easier then most other Mega Man games, and I loved how it took no prisoners. Now I'm at the end of summer and playing Splosion Man.

Splosion Man is about a man who splodes (presumably, exploding) his way through the scientific laboratory he was supposedly created in. He has no qualms against the men who created him. It's just that he can only do one thing, and do it well he does. He splodes.

All you need to do is get from point A to point B, start to finish. When you explode, it's usually to jump, which he can do two more times in mid air. He can also splode to wall jump, and course just to destroy everything around him.Only problem is that the levels get progressively harder and more complex to traverse with a variety of ways to die, often times simple one hit kill scenarios like falling acid or being crushed. Other times you'll encounter enemies who simply knock you around, and if they do it enough, you die.

I haven't even passed the first world yet, and I know the levels are gradually stacking the odds against me. As a gamer used to Japanese game design (difficult, relentless, heavy memorization) I take a certain amount of joy of try, try, and try again game play. Some will definitely get frustrated, but the game is rewarding beyond design. It has a wacky sense of humor that'll have you laughing all the way.

For 800 points, it's a nice game that won't break your wallet a whole lot. You get a meaty single player campaign, an enjoyable multiplayer campaign, and loads of rewards like gamerpics and bragging rights.

Slowing down time with Marvel Vs. Capcom 2

I've never been good at Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Before it's release to the Xbox Live Arcade, it was next to impossible to get a home version game. I didn't jump on the Dreamcast bandwagon when it was still alive and good luck finding PS2 or Xbox copies. This left me with the arcade version, which of course means I'll never get around to getting decent practice in it, let alone focus on my own unique team.

It's now available to play at home and even after a few hours of playing it, I can only admit my grasp of the game is "loose" at best.

Don't get me wrong. This game is nearly nine years old and it's community is still rampant as ever for a reason. Having a three person team consisting of various characters from Capcom and Marvel, duking it out in a frenzied, frenetic tag team match is fun against friends. But MvC2 is among one of the fastest fighting games on the competitive scene, and my brain can hardly keep up with the action. This coming from a person who plays Jin and Tager to a certain degree of mid tier skill.

Still, the game is as fun as ever as you'd expect the game to be when you see it in the arcade.

Everything is still the same, and I had the chance to play it online with my friend Ed (the best fight game player I know). The netcode seems nice enough as I experience zero lag in a normal match with a friend and my favorite part is the post game room, which summarizes the last five or so games with your opponent with each character and team you've played out with your win/lose results.

Well, there's nothing much more to say. If you've been playing this game for the past nine years, you can finally play it in the comfort of your own home with all it's quirks and perks.

To the stars and back: Fallout 3 and it's last DLC, Mothership Zeta

At long last, we've come to the end of Fallout 3's downloadable content. It's certainly been a long year, and the DLC's gone through it's bumps and hurdles, from the overall satisfaction to Operation: Anchorage to the bugs on the initial launch of The Pitt, but Mothership Zeta certainly feels like things are going out in a bang. Though it's not the best dlc for Fallout by a long shot (Point Lookout was the best, followed by Broken Steel), Zeta certainly has it's selling points that makes it one of my favorite.

Zeta's biggest fault is that it's linear, like Anchorage. Like Anchorage, there's only one main quest line and you can only deviate in the order of the objectives, so there's not a lot to do after or in between the main quest.

Unlike Anchorage however, or even the Pitt, you're free to use whatever weapons you bring along (with the exception to the opening of the mothership, where you make a prison break on nothing but your bare knuckles) and the new items the dlc introduces are an energy weapon enthusiast's dream. Admittedly, I only looked at this dlc at the chance at bringing alien technology back down to the Capital Wasteland, so let's take a look at the weapons and unique variants to find.
(italics are the unique variants to the weapon proceeding it)

Alien Atomizer
- Your basic laser pistol. About as effective as an assault rifle, but nothing compared to what you'll find later on

Atomic Pulverizer
- At first glance, it looks like an Atomizer with slightly more damage. Unknown to casual players, this weapon has twice the chance to crit then the Atomizer (x2 compared to x1) and has the lowest action point cost in the game, tied with the laughably weak ritual knife. This thing can turn packs of enemies into dust when pair with the Grim Reaper's Sprint perk.

Alien Disintegrator
- The alien rifle of your offworld invaders. This weapon is extremely accurate and boasts a nearly non-existant reload time, if it's even considered reloading. You merely tap the rifle and it reloads! This is what you use if you favor V.A.T.S. gameplay.

The Destabilizer
- Say hello to the only fully automatic energy weapon in the game and the base damage for this thing is crazy! But its' calculated for three round bursts, like the assault rifle since it's fully automatic, and yet it only shoots off single rounds in V.A.T.S. so it's pretty weak in there.

Shock Baton
- The first weapon you come across on the mothership. It's base damage is pretty mediocre, but it has added electric damage over time. Not much to say for this one but...

Electro-Suppressor
- This one lacks the electric damage over time and doesn't add much damage, but on critical knocks down your target. Considering players with high luck and crit chances, this weapon can even the playing field quickly on strong melee creatures like deathclaws. Even better, sneak attacks are always criticals, so it'll always induce knockdown.

Drone Cannon
- The heavy weapon introduced in the game, it lacks a certain usability because it fires single shots that don't explode on impact like frag grenades. The explosive radius is pretty big though, so those experienced in using Miss Launcher can get used to using it.

Drone Cannon Ex-B
- This is about the same, but much more useful as it explodes on impact. This combines the best aspects of Miss Launcher's power and the Missile Launcher's explosion on impact.

MPLX Novasurge
- A unique Enclave Plasma Pistol, this pistol is nearly three times as strong as a normal plasma pistol and has a crit multiplier of x3! Not only that, but the extra crit damage is nearly the same as the base damage (before the Better Criticals perk). This thing is pretty much Alien Blaster lite in terms of power and critical without the trouble with repairing it.

Captain's Sidearm
-Pretty much like the Metal Blaster, but of alien origin instead. Uses three ammo to shoot 6 shots though, which makes the damage to ammo ratio a bit steeper then the Metal Blaster.

Watching or playing, Ghostbusters the video game is cool

There were plenty of copies of Ghostbusters when I walked into Blockbuster. I was just returning Prototype when I remembered that Jonathan reminded me that this game was coming out. In it's early development I didn't care too much, but when it began taking shape with the help of Dan Akyroyd, Bill Murray, and the other who were apart of the Ghostbusters movies and it would essentially be Ghostbusters III, I immedietely knew it was only a question of how good this game would be.
You play as the nameless rookie who's joined the Ghostbusters team. The only reason they've hired you in the first place is to have a guniea pig to test out Egon's new experimental (and potentially explosive) gear. From then on, we have the perfect way to convey the game as the movie, Ghostbusters III, while still partaking in the story like Ghostbusters the video game. A new ghostly menace rears it's ugly head into New York City, starting with some familiar ghosts like Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, working it's way up into the culmination of a new enemy worthy of Gozer's fame.

The Good

• The story is top notch, the writing is like watching the original Ghostbusters, and the humor is exactly as you'd expect coming from Dan Akyroyd and Harold Ramis. I rented this as a game, but it's more like enjoying Ghostbusters III with you sharing an integral part of the story.
• On that note, everything retains their look and feel from the movies. The ghosts are hilarious caricatures of their human lives, the Stay Puft Man is still hilariously large, and the cast still whip out quotes like a blockbuster movie.
• This game can also be genuinely creepy on your first play through. This game is not a horror game, but walking down a dark hallway as the surroundings begin to reflect the sinister nature of the specter I'm tracking down, with her figure darting in and out in the distance. Ghostbusters was always more of a comedy/action movie to me, but this game has it's creepy moments too.
• Everything is destructible. Nearly everything can be blasted by your trusted proton stream or slime blaster and everything has a certain weight of physics. It feels so natural for this to be in place since the Ghostbusters were always accused of wanton destruction of public property, so just letting her rip for the saking of being a public nuisance if hilarious.
  

The Bad

• It feels like a bunch of things important to a game took a smal backseat ride to the narrative. They don't ruin the game entirely, but they're certainly annoying to the game overall.
• The game is a third person perspective "shooter". I put quotations on it because when I think of shooters, I think of squeezing off some bullets into a target and putting them down while I move on. It's different here though. You're not shooting a gun, but essentially a laser, and the the laser wears down the ghost's health until you can capture them. In a normal shooter, you put your crosshairs over and shoot. In here, you need to hold the crosshairs over the target and blast it with the proton stream, but it doesn't necessarily phase the ghost. It's kind of annoying as the ghost darts around the room while you try to hold your beam over them to weaken them.
• You'll sometimes get lost in the maps, even though they're usually linear, but you don't have a map to help getyour bearings.

Now it's certainly not the perfect game, but but as a sequel to Ghostbusters II, it's absolutely satisfying. The story might feel a little like a linear game story, but the voice acting and writing of the original Ghostbusters crew really puts the shine on this game.