live tweets from arkham city from December

This post was meant to be an ongoing thing where I would tweet about Arkham City while I played it over time. Problem is I played it a couple of times and then traded it in for Saints Row the third and forgot all about these tweets. Well here they are 3 months later.

how bout i live tweet #arkhamcity instead of playing #mw3 you say. why who am i to deny a request

just getting a feel for #arkhamcitybefore i go to work seems like a dirty one button assasin's creed at the beginning

got my batman suit after the intro. Shame I kinda liked kicking ass in a pinstripe suit#Arkhamcity

i can already tell the chunky cartoony characters on this unreal engine are going to annoy me#Arkhamcity

love the simplified controls of#Arkhamcity just mash x then if a guy gets lightning bolts mash y and repeat makes combat very smooth

downloading the add on pack to use catwoman #arkhamcity. Still wish they would let me use the pin stripe suit

in case you need a combo move cheat sheet for #arkhamcity it's x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

since you've probably already heard aaaaaaaallll about #Arkhamcity i'll play as catwoman and tweet about that instead

so when you play as catwoman you replay the beggining as batman? #arkhamcity

damn twoface looks awesome #arkhamcity

ooooooh use detective mode to figure out who's shooting me #arkhamcity never played #arkamasylum

great another riddler question mark that i have absolutely no idea what to do with #arkhamcity

wait bane is a goodguy? won't this kind of ruin that movie coming out#arkhamcity

fell in lava... yeah apparently there wasn't enough death in #ArkhamCity so i had to dive down a chimney to get to some molten hot death

mr. hammer is easily the best bad guy in the game so far #ArkamCity

that's about 12 fails at this riddler test i'd say about 37 more before i rage quit #ArkhamCity

well it only took half a thousand tries but i finally shot my remote batarang down the broken airduct to hit the riddler button #ArkhamCity

awesome now all the bad guys have guns and i can't stop dying #arkhamcity

this game is in dire dire need of quick travel #arkhamcity or at least put me back out on the street after i complete a mission

this old dilapidated city in the sewers is totally awesome #ArkhamCity

MW3 fiiiinally

It's inevitable I write about Modern Warfare 3. I'm not saying this begrudgingly the Call of Duty franchise has become a stable in the Game industry. A flag pole every November that fans can look forward to. When Modern Warefare 1 came out it took the industry by storm and every FPS has been using the franchise as a ruler since. Whether you like it or hate it if your gamer your well aware of it's presence when it's on the horizon. That all said this is the fifth installment since the game got it's revitalizing injection and I've bought over iteration happily.

The reason this inevitable blog is so late is because I originally wanted to play the single player before i wrote any kind of review on the game. I didn't want to be the asshole who only talks about the multi-player of the game and thereby ignoring all those people who buy these FPS for the single player story.

Well I played the single player for about two hours and it's like all the other Call of Duty games, AWESOME. I've only played for what i hope is a fraction of the campaign but it doesn't take Nostradamus to know that your in for good story, good shootin and occasional chance to hop on a giant gun a rip shit up. Which is more than enough to keep my trigger finger satiated.

Back to the multi-player. There is nothing drastically new from the other iterations of the modern warfare series which is a good thing. Too often games get caught up in the "making stuff new" trend and they throwaway all the good parts you loved from the last installment. I'm sure Infinitward is well aware of this because they have supplied everything you love... they just give it to you a bit differently which is just enough feeling of that new and improved thing developers are obsessed with.

The biggest difference is the unlocking system for weapons. Instead of attachments being unlocked as you level up your character they are unlocked as you level up each gun seperately. This is was a wise choice on the developer's behalf because now each weapon has even further uniqueness with since they have only changed the attachment unlocks from weapon to weapon but even the order they are unlocked. Ie for an assault rifle you'll unlock a silencer and then an underbarrel mounted grenade launcher whereas the light machine guns will be a grip instead of the launcher.

Another big change is the killstreak rewards. There are now three different sets of said rewards. There's the assault type which is the old killstreak system you know and love. You simply set up your order go kill some chaps and make it rain explosions and all manner of great murder. What's new though are the two new additions, Support and Specialist.

These two new streak rewards are set up just like the Assault but each on offers a slight twist on the old mechanic.

Support keeps your streak going after you've died instead of resetting it. The only thing is all the rewards are beneficial for you team and not so much you. That said there are some damn fine rewards including a remote sentry and a care package drop that has an osprey helicopter to defend the area so those pesky enemies don't run up and get their hands on your glorious prizes. The best package is a booby-trapped airdrop crate that appears to enemies as a care package but when they go to steal it it blows up in their face and kills them. The jokey smurf exploding present aspect of the whole ordeal is not lost on me and is in fact quite hilarious. Hilarious untill you yourself fall for it a few dozen times... then it's just annoying.

The third strike package is called specialist and this is the most original of the three by far. Instead of unlocking air strikes or getting to man the guns of various bitchin' aircraft you unlock extra perks. It sounds a bit wankish to unlock an extra perk at two kill intervals but it could actually turn out to be just what you needed. If you have a hard time deciding on which perks to assign your created class this is your answer. At six kills you could be working with six perks instead of the, at one time adequate but now paultry, three. Of course this package is only optimal once you in the higher levels and actually have unlocked most of your kill streaks... I've never used it.

With the newly added theatre mode MW3 is finally up to date with that certain other FPS game. You can watch old matches you've been in and take screen shots and make little movies. Sure a certain other title had these capabilities 6 years ago but we're not talking about Halo 3 now are we. Even though with Halo 3 the online support and heat maps and award tracking is free instead of subscription based were still not talking about it.

I only have minimal dabbling in the theatre mode having made only one screen shot and one kill clip but i can already tell space is a problem. You have ten slots to save either your screen shots or you movies that you have cut yourself. The slots doesn't seem like it will be a problem for me because I can't see myself really caring too much about making cinematic opuses but for a person who gets right into it I could see how this would appear disastrous. I mean if you're getting right in there doing some matrix camera cuts on the kill shot and really get some good Bayhem then i would imagine your going to need about a thousand slots and not just ten. Which brings us back to the subscription based Elite service I image they'll give you more slots there... FOR A PRICE.

Now that I've spoken of mostly the icing I can tell you the cake is the same you've grown to love and or need. If you're like me and have developed a strong addiction to these games over the last six years you've got nothing in store but about a zillion hours of gameplay ahead of you. The levels are just a complex and awesome as you would expect. There's ones you'll hate and ones you'll love. Those likes and dislikes will change as you get better at the game. So far my favorite is the France map because it makes me feel classy to head shot some mother effers there. amongst the little cafe tables of cobblestone streets

One last thing the G36C is back which is the best news ever because it is far and away the best gun of MW1 and was missing in MW2. I had to settle for the Aug which i thought i loved but now that I have my baby back it was a shallow false love.

Skyrim

I finally finished Dead Island

I finally finished Dead Island using the character Sam B. As you can tell, since the game came out roughly two months ago, it took me quite some time. 24h 46m 04s to be exact. Actually that's not quite exact since I died a billion and two times and I am almost convinced that your game clock doesn't ding you for the multitude of times you play for two minutes from your save just to get punched in the face and genitals by a grandma zombie and loose your pocket wad. (The game dings you a random amount of money every time you die.) Since there is no way to tell how much time I wasted falling of cliffs and getting brain punched by Thug zombies we will just go with the aforementioned amount of gorey hours.

After playing through the game I would recommend it to anyone who's got some time to burn and hankering for carving up some zombays as my co-op player Anthony Whittrock affectionately called them--right before I blew him up... A lot.

While I'm on it the co-op in this game is great for farting around, blowing up propane tanks to close to each other, driving off cliffs while your friends are in the passenger seat and once in a while even accomplishing some meaning full tasks. In fact the game is near impossible to finish without the help of another person wildly swinging weapons in your close proximity. Which conveniently is what I will blame the large chunk of my deaths because I was alone for most of my playthrough.

Don't get me wrong it's nobody's fault but my own since there is an endless amount of faceless zombie destroyers waiting to team up with you online. The drop in and out co-op makes this painless. I didn't want to use it, though, because I like to play games while I watch TV and find all manner of ways to get distracted and forget that some poor sod halfway across the world is getting angrier and angrier at me because I am in the kitchen burning a pizza and not going through a door that would progress the story line of the game. That said I also dislike the thought of loosing and precious treasures while I am afk.. or afcontroller more appropriately. I need my preciouses, all of them.

I am a giant loot hoor. I care about loot and I care about it a lot. This is another reason why Dead Island is fun to play--there's literally shit lying everywhere. Well not literally shit more like a vast array of weapons and ingredients tucked into every nook and cranny of the island. That's right I did say ingredients there and you can make your own weapons. You know what's cooler than slashing a zombie's arm off with a machete? Well when you cut it's arm off and then the zombie gets electrocuted, or poisoned, or starts on fire, that's what. Well in Dead Island you get to take ordinary weapons and then you bad ass em up a bit. You can wrap barbed wire around a sledgehammer, there's the classic nails in a baseball bat and even make poison bullets--somehow you can poison something that's dead. Don't ask just shoot because your gun doesn't get damaged like your melee weapons.

Going into Dead Island I thought the weapons getting damaged mechanic was going to be a game killer for me. After all I famously rage quit Fall Out 3 after my launch anything weapon broke after a mere hour of shooting flaming teddy bears. but I digress. It's true your weapons do get damaged at a speed which is highly unrealistic. Shouldn't your weapons suffer less damage since zombies are so soft and pulpy? More annoying though is you can't upgrade or modify a damaged weapon so you have to constantly repair your bent knifes and broken sticks. This would be a giant pain in the ass if the developers didn't graciously litter the landscape with workbenches, at which you can repair your wares for a nominal fee.

If you're like me and you can't help your self from rooting in every zombies pockets and bikini bottoms, then you'll have no shortage of cash flow to make it rain on your favorite baseball bat that you turned into a spiked morning star (yes it's gloriously true those exist in this game). There are also traders littered around every human base. So, if the corpse robbing you've been doing isn't up to snuff for your needs of tools of destruction, you can also sell your bent hammer that you don't feel like fixing again. You might as well sell your hammers since the blunt weapons don't progress as high in damage output as the sharper stabbier ones.

The fall of blunt weapons bothered me since I was playing with Sam B, the expert in blunt weaponry. Since I juiced his skill tree to favor blunt weapons I was sorely disappointing that I had to abandon them later on in the game and have a lot of wasted skill points. Oh yeah there's skill trees in this game now pick your jaw up off the floor and put your genitals back in your pants. I know it's pretty ridiculously awesome that this hack and slash has all the right parts of an RPG and not to much of the sleep inducing forever-long conversations. Knowing what I know now though about the skill trees I would highly recommend playing as Xian since she specializes in sharp weaponry.

The good thing about each character is that even though they have specialties they are still customizable because each character has three skill trees you can plunk a point into every level your character progresses. You can choose everything from lock picking to zombie head stomping. I would have said corpse there instead of overusing the word zombie but that would be misleading because there are human enemies you have to fight in this game and you cannot stomp on their heads when they become corpses, sadly.

That's right this game is not exempt from that annoying zombie premise that makes you have to fight humans because "we're the real monsters". Which is even lamer because aren't the zombies just resurrected dead us's anyway? As much as I hate this cliched turn of events you don't have to worry about it too much because any pea shooter you happen to be packin will pop the human eggshell heads in a single shot. If however you don't blast them in the face and choose rather to get in close to mele range you'll just die because they can take a severe beating. True to the annoying overused sub plot of humans vs humans it is you in these situations that is always the pulpy tender victim.

That should pretty much cover everything about this game besides the plot. I don't want to ruin it for you so I'll leave that out. You'll just have to find out for yourself. They say the real enjoyment is in the journey, which is even more enjoyable when your committing zombie genocide everywhere from a beach to a jungle to a prison.

Live tweets from Deus Ex Pt:3

#DeusEx is about to loose me if i have to do one more conversation tree before I get to shoot things again

of course I forgot #DeusEx is an RPG and of course that means I get lost in the world and can't figure out how to get to the next objective

I would really like to not be running around like a lost asshole right now #DeusEx

And now I'm in some random hoble because I went up a fire escape and climbed through a window. Found some ammo dealer... still lost #DeusEx

- MattyDorf @superdalebot a couple guys I work with have been talking about that game. Sounds like it's great, but hard.

@MattyDorf ugh tell me about it I've either been lost or talking for two hours I need to shoot something #DeusEx

As much as I love the slick design, I keep getting hung up on the wardrobe. It's like a NuMetal fan Raped 80's futuristic anime #DeusEx

Oh sweet i found the police station. Time for some hot action? NO ANOTHER CONVERSATION TREE. Oh joy non-consequential back story #DeusEx

- iamanth @superdalebot How far are you now?

@iamanth just got to the police station sooooo still the beginning

Oh nice you do an inventory search on a corpse and pull out his hacker brain chip. They called it a wet drive. Silly #DeusEx

- iamanth @superdalebot I'm just pass that. I haven't played since Thursday. Are you playing it on the 360 or on the PC?

@iamanth 360

@iamanth i havent shot anything in hours

- iamanth @superdalebot Taking the stealth route, huh? Did you save the hostages? I didn't... I feel so awful :(

I am not taking the stealth route just got lost and then too much talking. i did save the hostages I thought I had to #DeusEx

-iamanth @superdalebot I completely forgot about it. :( How did you get into the police station?

@iamanth that riveting conversation with the knob police officer who shot the kid when we were partners. I HATE the conversations #DeusEx

-iamanth @superdalebot Ah... I wasn't able to talk him into letting me in since I don't have that social augmentation. So I went in through the roof.

@iamanth I have no augmentations yet. Haven't figured that out. Roof would have been faster than talking #DeusEx

- iamanth @superdalebot I stacked crate after crate to get in over the fence lol

@iamanth haha Nice i never even thought about doing something like that

When do i get to kill something again. Snoooze #DeusEx

Sweet I didn't get lost enough in the street might as well head into the sewer I can't see this going badly #DeusEx

Of course there's electrified water in the sewer because if it wasn't i wouldn't die when i fell in #DeusEx

Finally in a gunfight. Made it about as far through gang territory as i could by stealth... 20ft #DeusEx

When it rains it pours with #DeusEx directly from one firefight into 4 more. This game has serious pacing issues

From talking for 2 hours to death 12 times in a row fighting mercs #DeusEx #RAGEQUIT

Live tweets from Deus Ex Pt:2

It's nice of the loading screen to have short synopsis that you can catch up on the story so far while you wait for the game to load #DeusEx

in the future paint cans are hexagon shaped cylinders #DeusEx

In #DeusEx as I play i am turning on all the taps throughout the levels A) because I can B) because I want to be a water bandit

Live tweets from Deus Ex

I decided I would Live tweet my experience while playing Deus Ex. Here are those tweets.

So far deus ex is a goodlooking game but the combat is kind of annoying since your so weak you need to use cover from which shooting sucks

It's a good thing there's no ammo in this game since it takes about a full clip to hit a guy once

the terrible aim cover shooting is especially frustrating since as soon as you step out of cover your pretty much dead

MattyDorf @superdalebot my friend Brad just got that and said it was hard as hell

@MattyDorf yeah this game is lucky it looks so slick and I have beer because it's pretty damn frustrating

pretty cheeky of #DeusEx to not allow me to make the iron sights a LS click instead of left trigger

I'm live tweeting a game I rented on a friday night. You can pretty much extrapolate what type of person I am from that sentence #deusEx

- iamanth @superdalebot Or you just suck.. I'm getting headshots with the pistol... ;-p

@iamanth ha i don't even have the pistol yet. I'm at the very beginning #DeusEx

- MattDorf @superdalebot yeah he said that just when he got good at sneaking up on and killing people they threw robots at him and that was done.

@MattyDorf obviously I was premature with my redicule because I was just playing the prologue before the credits

When they decide to use CGI instead of in game graphics for the cutscenes with the yellow wash, that's when the magic happens #DeusEx

I get beaten and shot by bad guys. I get cyborg parts to help me live then I fight crime. I'mgoing to pretend I'm future robocop #DeusEx

The stealth moves are pretty sweet and the baraka sword arm lethal take downs are awesome but i really just want to run and gun #DeusEx

I wasted my time and money on Brink

I should have known it would be just alright. That's what Brink is, middle of the road, luke warm and all the various other terms that mean some good and some bad.

Sure the customization is good and I can pick the outfit I wanted for my character to wear but by the time I can get anything really interesting I'm already done the game. Sure I can play the game online to further unlock more shiny bobbles by grinding out experience but I really just don't want to. I can't bring myself to deal with the frustration of getting my ass kicked by fifteen year old cocky pricks like I'm playing a clunky cartoony shooter akin to Quake. And all just so I can finally get some pants that are badass.

If the game didn't have the shitty weaponry and terrible shot registry I would be more inclined to put some hours into it. More specifically what I mean by shitty shot registry is it seems, that even with the strongest weapons it is still annoyingly hard to kill the enemy. I find myself peppering bodies with a giant light machine gun and on the rare occasion when my bullets don't miss they seemed to have no effect. This ineffectiveness has me convinced that it doesn't matter which weapon I chose because I they all feel like nerf guns.

Further more Brink uses that god awful engine they made for Doom 3. Instead of feeling like a bad ass sniping soldier of carnage I am turned into a child who is trying to paint skinny bodies with my fingers. With out delving too much into my fanaticism about 3rd person shooter engines I'll just say that I like when my gun shoots where I aim it and not in a random pattern around where my cross-hairs lay.

When it comes to engine consideration all designer should realize the true reason that the Call of Duty series does so well: your gun shoots precise powerful bullets.

With the aforementioned shortcomings to the game-play you now understand why I would not want to spend time grinding in this game. I don't want to farm xp by playing through levels where the main frustration is the shit you're shooting at isn't dying.

The worst part of the non-delivery of this game is the promise and potential it has. The different classes and abilities to provide you team mates with buffs is a fresh a cool aspect to employ in an FPS. Picking from three different weight classes that have different weapon and mobility options can really split levels into different experiences. The heavy guys get the most weapons but the skinny guys can climb onto rooftops that no-one else can reach. The middle guys are a marriage of both aspects lessened respectively.

This could have save the game if, when you actually did get on the rooftop, you weren't using the crappy guns that aren't proficient at killing. The same goes for the heavy characters there's not much use taking a big machine gun and walking slow just so you can spray bullets all over you enemies if you actually are just missing and shooting the wall behind said enemy because your bullets are too inaccurate.

In the end Brink is all icing and not enough cake.

RIP poffo

"Macho Man" Randy Savage is dead. As one of the greatest wrestlers OF ALL TIME had a heart attack at the wheel of his jeep and crossed over a cement meridian and through on coming traffic to hit a tree more than just a legend was leaving us. A piece of my child hood went away with that man.

His real name was Randy Poffo and before he was the most electrifying man in sports entertainment he was a decorated baseball player. In the position of catcher went as far as getting signed to the St. Louis Cardinals.

With his many years in the WWE and WCW he won 20 titles. But by far his greatest accomplishment in life was playing Bonesaw in Spiderman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHU7NolJuZ8&feature=related.

Thank you Mr. Poffo you will immortalized in the grandest way possible... in my minecraft world

Me and Mike watching a minecraft video and talking about it

After tweeting mike my latest creation in minecraft. I have found a very minecraft friendly font (arcade).

superdalebot

a message from mine craft http://j.mp/iwUBkX

he suggested a new project.

_Rades

@superdalebot So here's a new Minecraft challenge for you:http://youtu.be/QdSBHXgWv7w

superdalebot

@

@_Rades soooo my challenge is to get the nerdiest sounding voice of all time

_Rades

@superdalebot You unlocked that achievement years ago

superdalebot

@_Rades hahahahaha "you see this door it's forty blocks tall." hahaha

superdalebot

@_Rades thats were we keep the adult beverages hahahahahahaha

_Rades

@superdalebot Hahaha it must have taken him so long to do

superdalebot

@_Rades just imagine how long it took him to measure his entire belongings in inches

_Rades

@superdalebot "Honey what are you doing, you doing some renos?" "No dear I have to accurately build our house in a computer game."

superdalebot

@_Rades his nerdy southern accent is amazing

superdalebot

@_Rades haha he even has water coming out of the faucets

_Rades

@superdalebot YEAH haha now that is attention to detail

superdalebot

@_Rades this guy is the bob ross of minecraft

superdalebot

@_Rades if they crossed katamari and minecraft I would die of nerd

_Rades

@superdalebot You should make a giant room somewhere and create a Katamari scene/diorama

superdalebot

@_Rades put a lot of effort and time, time and more time into it hahaha

Mike: Oh my god you absolutely destroyed the server hahaha it is going fucking nuts

Dale: your welcome hahahaha

Mike: I'll let it rest for now haha

Dale: haha I was like woops both portals are in the same spot. Cool it's a trampoline. then it was like No flying on this server BOOT

Mike: The game froze and then I tabbed to the server program and it was like A MILLION LINES OF CODE FLYING BY AT LIGHTSPEED.

Mike: I think I have Snow Crash now

Add ons and the mishaps therein

If your familiar with what an add on is in a video game then you already know they are a brimming pot of awesomeness gold heralded by a rad leprechaun. If you don't know I'll explain it.

An add on is when a third party basically designs something to add to a game with a small downloadable file. They craft a piece of code to change the way your play the game usually by making it more convenient and simple. Or sometimes they just add something to make the game play more involved.

In mine craft Mike has downloaded a few of these that not only make the game easier but more interesting and in some ways hilarious.

Specifically there is an add on that has added an rpg aspect to you in game skills. You can level up your mining and eventually you will get two ore from digging one square. In dirt and sand you will find glowing dust which you can craft into light blocks.

I was well familiar with the previously stated skills. Well I should be since I've dug a million blocks or so and leveled up my mining to well past 200. Something has changed though. The last update to the game and add ons now has secondary skills on weapons and tools.

When you are holding an item you click the right mouse and it readies your skill and when you press left mouse it unleashes it. For instance if your using an arrow it makes a flame arrow that lights enemies on fire causing more damage. If your Mike and your using a sword and testing it on me it makes your sword deliver a wound that keeps causing damage after the initial strike. Then you keep getting hurt and Mike just stands and laughs at you and you die like a dog in the street.

More interesting than that though is what it happens when you ready your shovel. You'd expect something not entirely awesome because after all it's just your digging tool. Something magical does happen though. THE BEST DIGGING THEMED ANIME COMES TO LIFE BEFORE YOU VERY EYES. YOU ARE INFUSED WITH SPIRAL ENERGY AND YOU UNLEASH THE GIGA DRILL BREAKER and then well you dig a whole bunch really fast like.

If you don't know why I just freaked out then you are not familiar with Gurren Lagann and your missing out on one of the best digging themed anime every drawn.

If this is you, stop reading this, stop playing Minecraft stop whatever your doing and go get your grubby meat hooks on Gurren Lagann and watch it in full then come back. No I said stop reading.

Did you watch it? If no screw off and go watch it.

Ok now that you've watched the complete series of Gurren lagann I would first like to say your welcome. Yes it was beautiful and I know it changed your life with it's majesty. I do agree the fact that a Minecraft add on referenced this amazingness does make it the best add on in the history of add ons. Now lets just take a minute to have some yoga breathes and really really appreciate how splendid Gurren Lagann was.

Ok once your done crying about how beautiful life is go play mine craft some more and dig the shit out of everything.

I have built myself a monument... or two

Since my last post I have been doing odds and ends and screwing around in minecraft. I realized that since all my digging is now connected I don't really want to go off on a wild tangent tunnel and loose my sense of closure and accomplishment from having all my bases attached. Naturally I decided to improve my already totally awesome bases.

One way I could do that is to dig out my sun shaft a bit more. Actually a lot more.

The cathartic digging forever was interrupted by that my inventory concerns. About five minutes after anyone starts minecraft they realize they fill up their inventory with annoying rock they've dug. Since there is no real use to the rock it plagues every player and burdens their useful slottage. Your first instinct is to build with it because after all why not you have all this useless material might as well find a use for it. Soon you realize it just makes everything ugly and you want to replace it with something cooler any way. Cooking your stone makes a delightful looking hard smooth block that is much much better than icky cobblestone but unless you have the patience of a saint you get bored of waiting for it too cook in about 17 seconds.

So why not just throw it on the ground and leave it there you ask? Well that shit hangs around for an annoyingly long time waiting for you to accidently walk over it where it will be picked up automatically and the whole problem just started over.

I have to credit Mike with the cleanest solution. You make a little square pool of lava and throw all your wast in there since the lava will destroy it. This option is by far the best and unless your an idiot you wont accidentally fall in the lava and kill your self loosing all your good items you wanted to keep.... Ok maybe you will do that about 43 times but just consider it a learning curve. You didn't need that near indestructible diamond pick anyway. You can always get a new one. I mean you find new ones almost NEVER. Enough of my clumsy minecraft accideaths back to the matter at hand which is my giant bagfull of rocks.

So I was preparing to go back to base to destroy all my hard earned uselessness when it dawned on me. Why not go back to your first instinct. Why not go old school. Why not get in touch with your inner child. Why not try to consciously tap into hive mind. I guess that last idea has nothing to do with my rocks,or the idea before it for that matter.

Why don't I build with these rocks.

Build something just to use all the rocks. Something GIANT. Something where the sheer enormity of it will counteract the ugliness of the blocks. Why doesn't this Pharaoh just go build himself something worth of his magnificence.

I'M THAT PHARAOH AND I DEMAND A PYRAMID.

It's just too bad that for me to actually demand a pyramid I would be talking to myself alone at 2am. I did build it though I started with a base of 40x40 and dug a trench 2 blocks deep around it so those fucking zombies wouldn't run up the side and bum rush me when I wasn't paying attention.

I'm a genius I would dig untill i filled up my inventory then just warp to the pyramid and lay the bricks down and repeat. For five hours straight. In the end I had a fancy dancy new giant sun shaft and a sweet new pyramid good enough for a king.

Sad thing is a king isn't the same as a pharaoh. It's pretty damn great but not as great. Just like my pyramid. I mean its awesome and it's pretty big. It's just not stupid big.

So i started a new pyramid beside the old one. My new pyramid would be bigger, much bigger and floating because floating pyramids are bad ass.

My second pyramid started on a 70x70 base which if you do the math is a fuck of a lot bigger and taller and much more magnificent. I can barely see from one end to the other, PERFECT.

Although it is so big that I got fed up with trying to build a floor and opted for an open design.

Minecraft a big, big BIG FUCKING CIRCLE

Since i got back into minecraft about three weeks ago I have been doing mostly one thing digging and adding onto my main tunnel and bases. Actually bases which are now all connected because I went in one giant magnificent glorious circle.

You might remember I started a floating base when I got back into the minecraft three weeks ago. Shortly there after I got bored of transporting back and forth between there and the ground for raw materials so I started of on a digging journey.

I basically went below my floating base dug down then went ever deeper at a forty five degree angle. I hit the bottom unbreakable blocks without ever punching through a natural cave. If you don't know what I mean by unbreakable blocks and punching through a cave then you've probably never played minecraft and are probably not even reading this anymore sooooo never mind.

In my frustration with not hitting a natural cave I developed that bad OCD trait of digging dirt I mentioned in a previous post. Basically if I find dirt or gravel while I'm mining I feel compelled to dig it all out. This is actually how I made my main underground base.

There were pockets of said dirt and gravel touching and when i dug them out there was a giant room left over. I cleaned it up made it square fashioned a swimming pool threw a thousand torches on the wall and viola mi casa.

The most insidious thing about Minecraft is the endless freedom without specific goals. Since minecraft is just so fucking fun to play you invent for yourself goals. IE you make a base and then you make your base bigger and then you make it bigger still and then you dig a tunnel to find special materials to help make your base awesome. then you realize your tunnel is too long so you make another base. Then you need more wood but you get sick of going to the surface and getting shot by skeletons and blown up by creepers so you wisely decide on making underground trees. Then you need natural light so you dig a pillar tunnel straight up to the surface so sunshine makes it's way all the way down to your base to grow trees. Then you really start fucking around.

You start to mess around with lava and water and if your mike you burn the world down and then make a whole new one. If your me you just accidentally fall in your own pit of lava and loose all your good shit so you have to go digging again. Then you get in a digging mode. You abandon your base for a while then you just dig for diggings sake.

Then you keep getting lost in your your random directional digs. Then if your like me you need to make your main tunnel distinguished from all the twisting tentacle off shoots of that main tunnel. This is where I developed a sort of bread crumb based path system. I make my tunnels at least three blocks wide and the middle of the floor i put a dirt path. I used to use sand so you would know it was not a natural dirt patch but going over water and lava nixed that system because your path just falls and burns or gets in the water and screws up the flow.

I'm getting close to the circle thing don't worry.

In all this digging I found a natural waterfall with 3 separate water falls in a large cavern. Being a nerdy minecraft player with a non-exist ant social life I got really excited and realized this would make a perfect centerpiece for yet another new base. This base is just a basic way station though I don't want to put all the effort into another super base and feel guilty for abandoning yet another one in my wake. We can discuss my frightening need to personify holes in the ground as having feelings some other time.

I decided to make my glorious find more accessible I would dig a spiral staircase around the edge of the cavern and in behind the water falls so you could travel up the cavern and take in the view. I made a glass floor every so often so you could go out and really enjoy the ball tingling height of the cavern. Once I got to the top I was satisfied with my accomplishment and set to go fuck around some more.

After a while of experimenting with dynamite, and by experimenting I mostly mean blowing myself up, I decided to go back to waterfalls.

I thought to myself that since there was glass floors all the way down why not dig up to the surface so light could travel all the way down the cavern. So I did I was surprisingly close to the surface which was handy because making a sun shaft is a real douche and takes forever.

Low and behold I was UNDERNEATH MY FLOATING BASE. Yeah remember that guy from three weeks ago that I abandoned and felt bad about WELL HERE IT WAS just like an ex-girlfriend you've forgotten about how crazy she was but remember how good the sex was. Not to say I was going to have sex with my old base. Even if it was possible... OK maybe but it's impossible so lets move on.

I just want to re-establish how much distance I had covered underground to magically end up in the same place. 2.5 weeks of fucking around digging this way then that. There's literally miles of cave down there.

So after I broke through the surface I decided to continue the spiral staircase upwards to floating base. Now everything is attached in a giant circle now all my abandonment guilt is gone. Most excitingly though now i get to go fuck around and figure what else to do.

Minecraft scary moon

If you'll remember I was bragging about how awesome I was for skinning my mine craft with a zelda pack. Everything looks rad I'm the smartest man alive because I can now live a sandbox zelda fantasy.

That is untill I saw that scary ass moon from Majora's mask peering down my sun hole.

I didn't mean to sound dirty with sun hole there. What a sunhole basically is is dale slang. In Minecraft if you want to grow trees in you sweet cave you need sunlight so you have to dig a pillar straight up to the surface and top it off with glass so no baddies get in. This is also a great way to tell if its day or night outside. Hence why I was looking up to check where the moon was to see how long night lasted so I could go outside and get some supplies without worring about exploding zombies or human sized spiders.

When the moon isn't this scary monster

it's basically a white dot

Minecraft fever dreams

I always know I'm obsessed with something when it shows up in my dreams. Sometimes it's work, often it's sexy ladies but 90% of the time its either video games or something to do with Sci-Fi or, as my horrendous stomach flu treated me to, a mixture to both.

A couple of days ago I had a torturous night riddled with dreams which mixed Minecraft and the BBC One TV show Outcasts. If your not familiar with Outcasts, well shame on you it's really quite exquisite but for the plot of this blog it doesn't matter to heavily. Basically all you need to know about Outcasts is a bunch of people abandoned earth and settled on another planet where some of them do shitty things to each other.

The best thing about fever dreams is they make no sense. Just like the movie Lost Highway your treated to some startling imagery and intense story fragments that ultimately don't connect. Instead of playing the Saxophone and transforming into a younger self I laid black explosive blocks and could peer through walls and the ground. I know, no sense at all, awesome huh?

As far as my cognitive normal thinking mind can place together of my dreams this is what I get. I was on a planet with some other refugees from a dying planet earth. We had taken some technology with us and since I was in the future the tech was awesome. Since I am not from the future I don't really know what it was. Since we were new settlers we had to mine for resources. My mind instantly went to mine craft and the whole scenario was fashioned after the game.

Since I had the ability to see through the ground I was the miner leader. To set the scene there is a giant storm. (Since it's a new planet just take the cop out of most sci-fi and just think of a variation of a Sandstorm. The Darude kind is most preferable.) Since my mind was not being especially creative on all fronts there was a trapped family, a mom, dad, brother and sister deal. They are in a cave under the ground and I have to free them with my miner awesomeness.

Since I am still Dale in this dream I choose explosives as my tool. I get black smoking blocks and lay them down and when I want to I trip these remote mines and they explode. Every time I accidentally frappe the family the scene starts over. This triggers another constant of my fever dreams and that is a short loop. So in reality I rock back and forth clutching my stomach in a cold sweat while dream me Ground Hog Day style repeatedly blows up an innocent and tragic family. In the dream I realize the error of selecting explosives to get a family out of a cave but to my horror I don't care and continue to blow them up.

Finally a hot girl comes and tempts me with her wonderful tidbits if I basically get my shit in order and save the family. Since it's a dream the family is instantaneously saved and I am warped a bubble in the middle of space. Like in the movie the fountain except I'm not tattooing my fingers, I'm inserting them... In that hot chick.

Minecraft getting back in

So I'm playing Minecraft again. Which also means I am playing nothing else. I really really get obsessed with minecraft and making my base.

before I talk about my base and how awesome it is and how awesome that makes me I just want to touch on minecraft skinning. I finally skinned minecraft with a custom design found online. It took 15 minutes and i would urge everyone to do this. You can google one pretty easily because apparently theres a hundred million Minecraft nerds who want to make your life better.

Theres a pretty extensive list found here http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=12352 with a very easy to follow tutorial on how to install the skin. I would also suggest to make a back up of the default one becuase you never know what could happen or if you get sick of a skin you chose.

I choose the Legend of zelda theme because well lets face it Zelda is the shit. Heres what it looks like.

Finally now onto building my base.

I am on my third iteration of said base. First there was a vertical mine room design where there were about 10 rooms on top of one another and were not that large. Then Mike decided that he wanted to try a new server and thus create another world for us to inhabit. I mostly think he did this because he set half of our old world on fire screwing around with lava.

It was a good decision because I had also screwed around and toyed with landscaping halfhazardly. I did learn how to make sweet water and lava pillars which I put to good use in my second floating lair.

With the addition of the Magic Carpet in minecraft you can basically walk around in mid air. I took advantage of this and built a three room single level floating platform base. Problem was theres no where to go mine and piss around in mid air and using the Magic Carpet is actually a giant pain in the ass.

I needed resources so I would teleport from my base to a mine. Until Mike suggested I build a way station in my mine so I didn't have to go back to base to craft anything. This was the inception of my third base.

I admit it sometimes when it comes to video games I get obsessive compulsive disorder. I have to cut down all the grass in a Zelda game or I have to kill only one type of bad guy for a while. In minecraft I have to dig the dirt out of a tunnel... ALL the dirt. This means that if I am digging a mining tunel and I come up on dirt I switch to a shovel and get rid of all the dirt I can see. If i see uncover more I get rid of that dirt too. Ends up there was a catacombs of tunnels left over after one infuriatingly long clearing spree.

Third Base ended up being me digging out these catacombs in to one giant room thats something like 30 block by 20 blocks with tow floors. I have been adding to this base over the last couple of days and now there is a pool a verticle sunlight tunnel to let the trees grow and even a lava disposal area.