PixlBit

Minecraft set to big biomes and reduced variety of biomes creates a much more realistic looking world. I’m trying to stay in the same seed and make steady progress towards my goal of getting into the End City. Yesterday I got my mine cart railway built and put up the Nether portal. Today I explored the Nether and built a brewing stand. Eventually I overextended myself and got killed in the Nether. I really shouldn’t stay in there too long when I don’t have anti-fire potions, but I was trying to find some way to use the fortress as a kind of base to venture out on the plains to hunt Endermen and Magma. Luckily, when I died, I had turned off auto saves so I could reload from right before I entered. It’s a little cheat I allow myself now in order to keep from quitting out of frustration. I did quit today, though, but didn’t abandon my save. I’ll go back to it next time.

With my remaining time, I played more Red Faction Armageddon. Mark beat the game today and unlocked Mr. Toots, a rainbow pony that shoots massively explosive farts. Watching the animation of that thing being carried around by Mark’s character was pretty funny. It falls asleep if not being used and yelps loudly every time it’s squeezed for a blast. I am not quite finished with the story yet. I used the Magnet Gun quite a lot. This is just like Just Cause 3’s tether mechanic. You shoot one thing and it goes to wherever you shoot next. I was shooting enemies through buildings, grabbing explosive barrels and attaching them to enemies, smashing enemies into each other; it’s a very powerful tool in the game, and only the largest enemies are somewhat immune. Even though they can’t be thrown, other things can be grabbed and thrown at them. So it’s still very usefull. I almost abandoned every other weapon in the game.

The destructible environments are really cool; blast all sorts of things to rubble and then repair them with your nanotech wrist device. Just about everything man-made can be destroyed and repaired in the game. I hope whoever owns this game engine will use it for something. Crackdown 3 sounds like it is going to try something similar in multiplayer. We’ll see.