Interlude: Mass Effect

A little over three weeks, two playthroughs of Mass Effect, one playthrough of Mass Effect 2, a fat scholarship, and a college transfer application later, the future looks bright - also, I've provided you my brief reviews of the Mass Effect saga so far (rather late for most prospective players, I admit).

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Mass Effect 1 starts off slowly. You play as Captain Shepard (first name and gender are flexible), assigned to a top-secret vessel in the Alliance Navy, and are quickly launched into a galaxy-spanning tale of backstabbing, giant robotic monstrosities, sacrifice, redemption, and lots of sci-fi cliches. Humans are notably low in the political food chain of the galaxy, but you have the pleasure of being the first human assigned to the Spectres (basically, Jedi Knight/secret agent hybrids of a sort) to perform duly impressive missions for the Galactic Council. This being a Bioware title, much of your time is absorbed by sitting around chatting with your fully voiced teammates, most of whom are extraterrestrials.

The game's strong points are superb acting (although one major character's voice will be uncannily familiar if you've played Bioware's earlier title Knights of the Old Republic), ridiculously deep backstory, and very meaningful story decisions (more on this later).

Weak points include miserably repetitive and floaty vehicle-based surface exploration of planets, which is far duller than you might think - none of the planets have vegetation or actual terrain formations beyond different height elevations of the same two or three textures of ground. Regular squad combat is better, although still a bit shaky, due to nearly all weapons being slightly better versions of the same sniper rifle-assault rifle-shotgun-pistol set. Extensive inventory management is a must, but you won't see particularly dramatic results from your fiddling.

Rating: 8/10
Superb, genuinely emotional story (with blue alien romance!), slightly hampered by funky combat. Still worth playing, particularly for reasons you'll see below.

Mass Effect 2's story kicks in a couple of years after the events of Mass Effect 1, and your character has quite literally come back from the dead. Your lovely team is disbanded, and you've been resurrected by people you didn't particularly like in the first game. Combat in ME2 is even more like a cover-based shooter (augmented by visually impressive biotic and tech powers) than ME1's gunfights, and most inventory management is gone along with the obnoxious vehicle sections. The story is better than ever, though, due in no small part to the fact that you can (and definitely should) import your Mass Effect 1 character in their entirety into the game. Besides preserving their appearance (and attitude), virtually every sidequest and plot choice influence the events of Mass Effect 2, some more dramatically than others. The capacity for alien romance is a bit ludicrous in some ways, but character development is absolutely wonderful to experience, especially since most missions are focused on acquiring or helping a teammate. The suicide mission endgame is nerve-wracking, as any member of your crew (even your romantic partner or a friend from the first game) can easily meet their demise in the final hour of gameplay. There's no guarantee that even you will make it out alive, even if you do complete the mission successfully, so the tension is quite genuine.

Rating: 9.5/10
Glorious. Easily the best examples of meaningful role-playing I've seen, supported by fun gunfights and a vicious set of powers to experiment with. Bioware is at its finest with this title.

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More importantly (for you lovely readers) I'm back into Minecraft, and our multiplayer server is about to be reincarnated, which will mean more features from yours truly!

Next: More Minecraft, I hope.

Minecrafting: Fresh Start

As mentioned in the previous post, I'm starting a new world to take advantage of new resources in the game, as well as the seed feature. This way, anyone who's interested in a particular feature of the world can make their own with the same seed and check it out for themselves (as much as the world allows for).
In the interest of actually getting more done, with this world I'm going to focus less on the blow-by-blow account of the entire adventure, and more on overall progress. Exceptions to this will probably be crazy things that happen spontaneously, and cave exploration. Sound good?

So, without further ado -

Seed: Sandbox Empires

(Fun fact: Using the seed "Castles in the Sand" dropped me in a desert biome surrounded by ocean. Irony? I think so.)

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Day 1:
My initial reaction was "Mountains! Trees! Caves! Woohoo!" Further exploration confirms this - this world, conveniently enough, features some really awesome mountains, overhangs, and occasional flying bits of dirt.

Not far from the spawn point, I spot a large swath of bare, exposed rock. I mine some coal for good measure, and file this spot away as a future building site.

Night 1: I chisel into a mountainside and dig away a large patch of rock. I make some new tools and a sword, and even pull up some iron ore.

Day 2: I explore some more, and find some really sweet natural bridge formations. I collect a bunch more wood, as well as a couple of mushrooms and leather from hapless cows. I have a fatal encounter involving a creeper and a large cliff, but recover all of my stuff.

Night 2: Another random cliff face, and another night of chiseling stone and occasional ore out of the ground. I dig into a tiny cave system inhabited by a single zombie, who quickly meets his demise.

Day 3: I decide on the bare stone patch as the site of my future base. It's close to my spawn, open, and mostly level. For once, I'm not building on a mountain, so I decide to make this a more symmetrical structure than my previous castles, and a bigger one to boot. I mark out the corners of what I plan to be the main keep and wall, and it's a 39-meter square.

Unfortunately, night falls before I can get into much of the construction. I have plans to keep myself occupied, though . . .

Night 4: I know very well from previous experience just how much stone a giant castle takes, so if I ever want to get that thing started, I'd better get cracking harvesting some raw materials.
Serenaded by the moans of the zombies outside my dirt hovel, I begin carving myself a staircase deep into the cuboid bowels of the earth.

(Side note: Where else would I ever get to write a sentence quite like that one?)

Some distance in, I pop out into the inevitable cave. It doesn't look large at first, but crawling behind a gravel mound confirms my suspicions - there's actually a much larger lower level not immediately obvious when you enter. A few minutes of skeleton-smashing fun later, I realize that my time on a slightly laggy multiplayer server has turned me into a hardened caving verteran - nothing I encounter in the depths comes close to touching me, as I happily bounce through the tunnel system. While this cave isn't particularly remarkable overall, I do find a couple of cool sights, including an almost perfectly circular room . . .

. . . an impressive underground river . . .

. . . and a lavafall!

The one scare I do get in this cavern actually happens while I'm carefully climbing around said lavafall. About halfway up the slope, a zombie plummets from a darkened ledge onto the ground in front of me. I hastily backpedal, hoping for him to meet a quick end in the magma flow. Unfortunately, he only barely catches himself on fire, so I have to scoot quickly backwards for a few tense seconds before he drops.

At the bottom of the cave I manage to dig up a hefty supply of iron, and even a couple of gold deposits. Sweet!
I poke around a lava lake in the hopes of spotting some diamonds, but that's too much to hope for at this point.

I enjoy the view for a few minutes, then trudge back to the surface.

Day . . . 5? 6?: I've lost track of time while deep in the earth, but now I have a base of resources to work with. The daylight hours are spent working on the castle foundations, along with a few seconds building a bed to speed my nights along.

I go through several days fairly quickly with the aid of my handy new bed, and soon run out of cobblestone. Still, I have finished a substantial portion of my epic fortress foundations.

So . . . now what? More caving? More castle-building? Something else?

Hmmmmm.

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Next: I make a decision!

In other news . . .

Hey everyone -

I know I've been seriously lacking in new material for a few weeks now, and I do apologize for that. My original plan was to run a feature on some activities in our server (which, unfortunately, is inactive at the moment) but that never happened, thanks to the intervention of a great deal of real life excitement.

I've also been waiting on things to calm down a little with the new updates, and although the group server remains down, I'm planning on launching a new world to take advantage of the new resources and seed feature from the most recent update. With that in mind, I hope to have a new Minecrafting feature shortly.

Between the regular Minecrafting posts, I've tried several times now to finish the indie platformer Super Meat Boy - I remain stuck on the last level, and feel like I shouldn't be reviewing a game I can't finish. And so it sits.

Otherwise, when not doing something productive or fun in real life, I've been dabbling in the likes of Mass Effect (yes, I'm behind the times, and yes, it's really really really cool), Fallout: New Vegas (also nice, but I'm not so keen on the desert scenery), and a touch of Supreme Commander 2 (giant robots!). Good times.

Expect more soon (if it doesn't happen, poke me or something) -

~ Talos ~

Minecrafting: New Perspectives

In the last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to delve into an aspect of Minecraft which I had previously ignored, and one which I believe may hold the true key to the game's success: Multiplayer.

My previous experiences with multiplayer in Minecraft had been less than ideal: Early on, creative mode servers or incredibly buggy, combat-less Alpha servers were the only options available. With the arrival of the Minecraft Beta, however, there was now more reason to give multiplayer another shot. Unfortunately, public servers were often so overrun with players as to be shredded and lifeless, or else laggy to the point of being unplayable. I didn't know anyone with a private server until some real-life friends and their own acquaintances generously brought a new server into the equation. With this new virtual playground, our small group has begun to colonize the landscape like so many architecturally gifted ants.

With that in mind, I'll introduce you to the other locals . . .

~ kinxer ~

One of the server operators, kinxer, was among the very first to build in the server. His small fortress, comprised of a multi-layered wall of cobblestone, glass, obsidian, and lightstone, has been around for some time now, and is also the former residence of the server's other OP, Relondo.

Visitors to kinxer's abode will immediately notice the craggy canyon surrounding the fort, which was actually the site of an unfortunate landscaping misadventure. kinxer, along with Relondo and myself, dug a deep trench around the castle to fill with TNT, but early in the TNT-placing phase of our plans, kinxer set off the TNT and immolated me (and, presumably, Relondo). This, naturally, left a very lopsided crater on one side of the castle. Since then, the canyon has been completed and decorated with lightstone and assorted waterfalls, and several unexplored cave segments can also be seen to branch off into the darkness.

Inside the castle, kinxer's castle is garishly lit by an abundance of lightstone, as well as a large pool of lava under the glass courtyard. Evidence of possible dissension between kinxer and the now-absent Relondo can be seen next to their respective storage areas.

 

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It is also worth noting that above the castle, a hovering pig spawner rains pork onto any unwary pedestrians passing below.

~  Sunkendoughnut ~

Besides being my real-life friend, Sunkendoughnut is also my virtual neighbor. In fact, my front door gives me an excellent view of his organic-looking open-air dwelling, which is effectively built to mesh with the landscape around it.

He intends for the finished structure to be "natural and zen-like", and is using wood and natural stone instead of cobblestone for the exterior. There's something to be said for having an aesthetically conscious neighbor living next door.

~ Relondo ~

Relondo, the other server OP, recently moved away to a distant desert region. Since then, he's begun to colonize and terraform an impressive floating island. The rock, now given the curious name of Farwagon, has a small vegetable garden and an impressively tall waterfall descending from the island's center. This waterfall also doubles as an atypical method for entry, as evidenced by a number of boats littering the treetops below Farwagon.
The secret of Farwagon's location is, apparently, known only to Relondo, who teleports his guests directly to his island. So far, the only clue to where it could be found is that it hovers over a craggy mountain range bordered by desert.

~ LostSpider ~

This bewildered newcomer actually arrived in our world for the first time while I was in the midst of writing this post. We waited out the night together in a small hole, and I left a set of tools, coal, and wood for the aptly-named fellow to use when I left the next morning.

I later returned to see a small house being built in the hill, and labeled with the grandiose title "LostSpider Manor". A little hyperbole never hurts . . .

In the near future, I'll spotlight my some of my own work in the server. I'm also planning on leading an expedition to search for the new lapis lazuli ore in distant lands, so that ought to be . . . interesting, as well.

Cheers,
~ Talos ~

Minecrafting: Holiday Hindsight

The holidays, with all the time-consuming fun entailed, have successfully kept me very occupied for some time now, and obviously my posting habits have suffered. However, I am now pleased to inform you that I did, in fact, find some time over the holidays to celebrate Christmas in our Minecraft world, though it wasn't as easy as I had originally hoped.

Now, without further ado, I give you . . .


Part 5 of the ongoing adventure in the mysterious world of Minecraft . . .

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It's the Christmas season, and while there might not be any ornaments, stockings, or even appropriately blocky packages in Minecraft, I'm going to celebrate as best I can. In fact, Notch's stunt with adding a Christmas cape has given me an idea -

I'll build a Christmas tree!

With the world being as pixellated as it is, I decide to use Notch's own cape image as a rough guide to my final product. I have a feeling that this will turn out to be a bit less simple than it sounds, so I decide to construct test models out of dirt before I work on the final version. With this aim in mind, I trudge down into the valley, where a swarm of undead attempt to impede my construction.

They meet a swift end, after which I grab my not-inconsiderable pile of dirt blocks (with a couple of logs to use as a base) and get to work.

Christmas Tree Mk. I is . . . less than satisfactory.

I compare it to my saved picture of the cape. Nope, not even close. I build a new model.

This is embarrassing. Maybe my standards are too high, but that just doesn't look right at all. A pair of creepers take advantage of my distraction and try to sneak up on me, but I have little trouble dispatching them.

Once again, a new tree is erected.

Still weird-looking, but I'm doubting whether I could even build an ideal three-dimensional tree out of 1-meter cubes even under the best conditions. I load the second one with torches for a festive look, but it doesn't help much.

The sun has set, so it's time that I got back to my house.
Thanks to the thriving local population of creepers, I've got enough sulphur stockpiled to make TNT.

And so I do. Four sand is mixed with five sulphur, and now I have a block of incredible destructive power in my possession.
I spend the rest of the night building a new room, and adding an expansive window overlooking the valley where I plan to put the final Christmas tree.

The next morning, I venture out on top of the cliff I inhabit, and gaze down upon the lumpy dirt trees below me. Under the circumstances, I think I'm going to have to go with the second model I developed, since it's the most tree-like one of the bunch. As for the method, I think I'll start by checking to see if trimming a normal tree down to size could possibly work.

Unfortunately, I'm so caught up in my moment of contemplation that I lose my footing and fall off the cliff.
*splat*

After retrieving my scattered and damaged belongings, I plant a few saplings to experiment upon. Naturally, a wandering creeper blasts one of them into a smoking crater.

I pick a tree to modify, and once again set to chopping. Once satisfied, I switch to Fast Graphics mode to turn the leaves opaque, then load it with festive torches.
With that final touch . . . it's done!

Well hey, I guess it's not that bad.

A belated Happy New Year, everyone!

Next: Cliff Dwelling 2.0

Minecrafting: Deck the Halls

Part 4 of the ongoing adventure in the mysterious world of Minecraft . . .

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As I squint nervously into the darkness around me, I realize that I was probably asking for something like this to happen when I decided to explore such a large cave. What's done is done, though, and I'm going to have to work fast if I want to survive for any great length of time. The tunnels around me stretch into darkness in several directions, and I can distinctly hear growls and clattering bones from a short distance outside of my torchlight.

Thinking fast, I slap down a quick barricade of dirt - it's not enough to deter any skeleton archers out there, but at least the spiders and zombies won't be able to get to me.

Next, I start building a dirt staircase to the hole I entered from. It's ugly, but fast, and it does the trick. I scramble up the makeshift stairs, expecting arrows to come hurtling out of the darkness at any moment. Fortunately nothing bites me, and I pop out of the hole and back into the tunnel where I'd originally fallen through.

This cave is still mostly unexplored, and after that scare I'm inclined to cut my losses and get out while I still have a large stockpile of iron. There's no telling when something nasty is going to come charging out of the darkness to eat me . . . and with my luck, it'll probably happen sooner than later.

I poke my head down yet another dead-end passage, and nervously dig up yet another iron vein.

"GRRRrrrrrrrr!"

I nearly jump out of my skin, but the owner of the gargling growl is nowhere to be seen. I take this as a sign and sprint back to the surface, where I can see faint rays of sunlight filtering through the clouds above me. I also notice even MORE iron, which I had somehow missed during my frenzied early exploration of the cave system.

This cave has TONS of iron. Did I mention that?

Now burdened with a hefty load of ore, I happily trot back to my cliff dwelling, which looks quite homey after my recent work. The sun's setting, so it's as good a time as any to settle in and do more crafting. Besides, it's Christmas, and I'm feeling like getting into the spirit of the occasion.

Back inside, I load the ore into my furnace, only to realize that I'm completely out of coal, and that in my zeal to grab every piece of iron I could find, I somehow completely neglected to mine any of the plentiful coal deposits. Well, darn it.
For lack of anything else to do, I switch to third-person view to check out my newly modified skin (partly of my own doing, and partly based on a downloaded model), complete with a sinister gas mask. In so doing, I notice something curious about my back:

Is that . . . a Christmas tree? I've never seen a cape on my character before . . . I guess Notch decided to be festive.
In an attempt to pass the time productively, I dig a side tunnel from my WIP giant staircase/mine. Several minutes of fruitless digging later, the rock in front of me suddenly gives way to a blast of water. The sudden wave tosses me back down the shaft, and I lose ground for a few seconds until I orient myself and manage to splash back to the hole. I seal it with a handy piece of cobblestone, while a spider on the other side of the gap voices its indignation (presumably at the sudden riptide I've caused).

At first, I think I've dug into the lake near the surface, but digging around the edge of the water gives me a clear look at what is in fact a long, low cavern just over the surface of an underground pool. A skeleton takes a couple of shots at me, but I duck behind a dirt block and deftly slice his shins.

The cavern is attractive, albeit small and lacking in resources. Strangely, the spider I heard earlier appears not to be inside, but I can hear him - and he's very close by. Noting that the ceiling is entirely dirt, I begin to suspect that the surface may in fact be just above me. One short staircase later, and I pop out on the sunny surface, only to be greeted by everyone's favorite green-skinned, armless kamikaze critter.

Ow.

Another creeper leaps down a nearby hill towards me, but he and his comrade (hiding behind a nearby tree) are safely dispatched. The spider, noisy though he is, doesn't bat an eye, so I leave him to his wanderings.

I trundle back to the ore cave and mine up a hefty load of coal. Seriously, how did I forget all this?

I also spot a new underwater cavern . . . a good site for future adventures, perhaps?

Now well-stocked with coal, I set my furnace blazing. With this task finally done, I grab a few ingots, make a bucket, and continue my ongoing side project of building my indoor farm - once finished, I'll have a renewable food source.
I make a hoe and scrape away at the grass outside. A few seeds pop up, and I tote my bucket down the hill and fill it at a nearby lake. I empty the bucket into a hole in my new alcove, and till up the soil around it.

Then I add the seeds. With the water nearby, the soil will turn dark and rich, and my plants will grow happily in the torchlight.

Now, at last, I can put some energy into something suitably Christmas-y . . . but what, exactly?

Next: Christmas 'Crafting!