Eckyman.com

First in my minecraft series…

Ahhh the gaming drought is over! I love this time of year, even if  my bank balance does not.

1. Driver: San Francisco (Xbox 360)
2. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Xbox 360)
3. Minecraft (PC)
4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Xbox 360)

Driver took the number one spot this month despite heavy competition from Deus Ex. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Driver is really good! A lot better than I was expecting, and quite possibly some of the most fun I’ve had with a driving game.

Not far off completing Deus Ex now, just need a chunk of time spare so I can sit down and crack on with it. Not the type of game I can play in 20 minute chunks really. Is it as good as the original? Well, no.. but it’s still a great game and certainly more enjoyable (to me) than Mass Effect or most of this generations RPG offerings.

The new Minecraft 1.8 patch added a lot of reason for me to pick it up again. Lot’s of changes and reasons to explore and fight things again. Game had kind of got boring once I set up the Wheel of Pain mob grinder and had no need to ever leave my ice lake, now I’ve started a new world, minus the mob grinder, and gone back to basics.

Creative mode was probably the best update with 1.8 though. I started out using it to test out some redstone ideas and before I knew it I was working on an adventure/puzzle map! I think I put more time in on creative now than I do on survival. Maybe because I feel like I already beat survival, many times on many worlds. Creative actually gives me a point to all the building beyond killing time.

As you know, Bad Company 2 is a frequent guest of the “Playing this month…” section so not a lot to say on that front. Although… I will say, I’ve seen more cheap tactics over the last three nights than I’ve seen in months! Crate bashing, 8 man strong medic trains, 8 man strong USAS recon groups, circle jerking, tank sniping, even C4 on the bloody UAV has been going on. From level 50 players too? I know you’re probably bored of the game at this point, but really? No need for the cheap tactics..

The pack on my back is heavy with ore and minerals, valuable resources I need to last the coming weeks. I’ve spent the last three nights down here and I’m beginning to lose it. I’m sure I can hear something… inhuman. The foul air down here and lack of sunlight is playing tricks on me, making me paranoid. I know I’ve secured the area and provided sufficient light but I can’t shake the feeling that something is down here with me.

I reach in my pack for another torch and realise I’m running short. Time for a resupply.

If subterranean life makes me paranoid, it’s nothing in comparison to the living hell my above-ground life has become. I’ve taken to living just below the surface so I don’t have to see those dead eyes staring at me nightly. Waiting, planning…

They seem mindless, they don’t even have the sense to get out of the sunlight in the morning. As their green flesh and bony remains ignites with the rising sun, I’m offered a glimpse of victory over my undead companions. If I wait it out long enough the sun will take care of everything for me. At least, that’s what I thought at first. Now I’m not so naive. Every night there are more, no matter how many I kill there are always more.

At first I searched for a cure. For a long time I would mix various types of mushrooms and plants with some of the minerals I had found underground, trying anything I could to cure these, things. It was around this time I almost lost my arm and fully lost my drive to find a cure. Whatever had happened here, I was obviously as immune to their disease as they were to my attempts at a cure.

I soon began to use a bow from the top of my tower to pick them off, but as the months passed, so did my fear, or perhaps my sanity. Slowly I forgot the sorrow I once felt and became consumed by hatred. I spend days constructing varied elaborate traps designed to burn, explode, or drown my foes. I sometimes watch them drown through a glass wall I have built for such purposes. It gives me pleasure.

Who exactly are the monsters here? Them or me?

Pushing these thoughts from my mind, I concentrate on the task at hand and continue my ascent. As my thoughts clear I feel my heart tighten. There are no torches in front of me.

This is not the way I came.

I backtrack for a good 20 minutes hoping to find a landmark, something familiar that indicates the way out but I’ve been so engrossed in my thoughts I could have passed a talking chicken and not noticed it.

Idiot! This is exactly what I told myself I wouldn’t do!

Picking up the pace I jog back down the tunnel only to find myself face to face with a gravelly dead end I don’t recognise.

Wait!

I do recognise this! I shovelled out a piece of dirt and all this fell behind me. But which way was behind me? Frantically I begin to shovel the gravel away in all directions. More tumbles down in it’s place. Panic shifts into fifth gear and locks me in its grip. I’m mumbling to myself now, pleading to some unseen force to just let me get out of this tomb alive when I hear it. Slowly I turn and stare into the green face of my death and laugh. A laugh too loud and too long, tinged with madness and despair.

The creature begins to sizzle. A millennia flies by unnoticed. Stars form and die and still that sound spreads til there is nothing else. I look for the last time upon that sad face before the sound fills my brain and rips out my mind.

sssssssssssssssssssssSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

*BOOOOM*

Welcome to Minecraft!