PixlBit

Played mostly Doom today and cooled down with some Minecraft. I should've switched to PS4 and played some No Man's Sky, but I was waiting for Mark, who had to reinstall Doom, to start up again so he could try out the map I made in Snapmap mode. I was going to go back to Doom when the reinstall finished, but it never did. For some reason the last 25 GB or so slowed down to a crawl. Anywho, here's a breakdown of what I played today. 

Doom [2016]:

I got probably 3/4 through the campaign today. Boy, some of those boss fights were tricky. I'm playing on the default difficulty, Hurt Me Plenty. It's not insanely difficult on that setting though. At some point I got to this room full of every type of enemy. I died a few times and then almost beat it, but I was feeling a bit burned out. It'd been like 8 hours or so. So I exited and checked out some of the other modes and the achievement list. I checked out Snapmap. This is where you can create original maps and upload them to the community. I went through all the tutorials on how to build a map (that unlocks an achievement). It worked very similarly to the map creation tools in Disney Infinity actually (I wonder if both games use the same engine). Doom's tool set was very easy to use, and I created a level and uploaded it (another achievement). I called it "Blow up the Baron" and it was very simple but has a surprise in it. Basically you spawn into a room with a switch in front of you. In the next room you can see a Baron of Hell, one of the bigger enemies in the game, surrounded by exploding barrels. Well, you can guess what you should do, but be aware, there is a surprise. It was really fun and easy to create. I also played some of the community's levels like one recreating the first level in original Halo. Then I played a few of the early levels in the campaign again to look for secrets. Mark's version of the game (he was playing it too) hadn't installed the Snapmap mode and we couldn't figure out why. So he tried to reinstall the whole game again. 75% of it went pretty quickly but that last 25% slowed down to a crawl and never did finish before we had to stop. Something about the Snapmap content takes longer to install. I'm not sure why. 

Minecraft:

So, while Mark was reinstalling, and watching the Eagles football game (yuk!), I played Minecraft. In the spirit of Doom, I made it as hardcore as I could think of. I played Survival Mode on Hard difficulty and turned off Natural Regeneration of Health. I also gave myself two rules: one, must eat vegetarian; two, no respawns. So the first play took 45 minutes and ended hilariously with me getting killed by a Silverfish. This is a creature that lives in rock and only appears once you mine a block containing one. What happened was I had steadily lost hearts (health) through various small mishaps (no regen unless I find apples and gold to make golden apples) and then got surprised by a creeper while digging a mine. I fought the creeper but got a tiny bit too close to it and lost hearts down to one in the explosion. I thought I was safe then but apparently the blast released a Silverfish and it crawled under my feet and bit me to death. I made a video clip 'cause it was funny. 

Then I started over and decided to save only at certain stages in the game. I decided the first stage would be making iron bars. Well, just before I started to cook the stuff, I had gotten into a tangle with a witch who poisoned me. I watched my hearts go down to one half a heart and then stabilize. So at iron making time, I had exactly one half a heart left. I saved it there in my protected hole in the ground with the first batch of iron cooked. The first venture out from that save point saw me get immediately blown up by a creeper. He was litterally right outside where I had holed up. As soon as I broke the protective wall down to get out, there he was. BOOM! The next venture I defeated the creeper but later got shot in the back by an arrow from a leather clad zombie while swimming. I didn't know those guys had bows. Maybe that's new? Anyway, that's when I stopped because like, time. 

Severed:

Back at home (I was at Mark's place), I've been playing some Severed on my Vita. It's still pretty cool. I'm slashing away at new enemies that require different slashing patterns. You learn on the fly and the battles are fast paced. Graphics are gorgeous too. 

And that's a day. I'll be squeezing in some more time with Severed during the week and likely get back to Doom next weekend. 

Oh, bye there.