Minecraft: To the Mine like a Champ

Get to work in style:

 

Don't be hatin' on my cape.

And the next game is...

...Shinobi!

I recall borrowing this from my brother's brother (ya, I know) frequently and never passing the first level.  From what I understand, aside from Ninja Gaiden and a few other controller busters this is one of the hardest games that are actually fun.

Thank you to everyone who voted!  A new poll is up.  I've included all games that are in a series for a corresponding vote, as well as the totals from previous tallies that are contributing to this poll.  I've also put a two week limit on the voting, so that I can put up game related polls between game choosing polls (like "Which class should I roll?".

The newest addition is Batman: Arkham Asylum.  Some of you (Jason) may also be pleased to note that WoW slipped in on the Warcraft series.  Thanks again for voting :D

The newest addition is Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Diablo 2: Fuck You, Charsi

Sometimes, that woman...

Diablo 2: Smacked down by Duriel

So Knixia received her first half a dozen deaths courtesty of Duriel.

The video shows what my final strategy looked like.  It only failed me the one time shown. Still, it took me a few deaths to realize that trying to use firewall down there was futile, if not suicide.

Duriel is similar to the Butcher of Diablo 1.  They are both the first enemy that smacks you across the face and puts you in your place.  They're also both high damage stun locking melee bosses that punish you if you're not prepared.  Duriel may even be a touch worse than the Butcher because you fight him in an even more confined space and he has an unavoidable frozen aura.  Also, if you have a crappy comp, you might be dead before the pit actually loads up!  Either way, they are both likely administrators of your first deaths.

Onwards!

Diablo 2: The Dark Wanderer

Knixia, the sorceress, is coming along quite well.

I'm playing through at a much slower pace than normal. I've only just reached Jehryn's palace, which is what I used to be able to easily reach in two play throughs.  I'm actually finding the game easier not using the run function gratuiously.  After playing Diablo 1, I guess I just got used to walking and I find the slower pace makes battles more strategic.  I've only used in battle a couple times, including this fight against Blood Raven.



My luck with items has been pretty poor.  I've only picked up Shadowfang for uniques and no set pieces.  Normally I've found 2 arctic horns or 2 arctic furs by now.  At least I've somehow managed to make a perfect topaz which will help with magic finding.

Gheed, my only source of phat lewt.

I thought the gore in Diablo 1 was much more graphic than it's successor, but it seems if I look for it, it's there.  All the extra environmental details of Diablo 2 just hide it better.

Another fun find was what is apparently the bayeux tapestry on a wall in the monastery.

It's a funny comic strip about a silly king, or something like that...

Anyhow, that's the first bit of the adventure, I'm gonna head to the kitchen to make a sammich now.

Diablo 2: The Hunt Begins

It's time for the next stage of Diablo!

I'm pretty stoked about playing through this game.  It's easily one of the top 5 games for time I've spent playing.  I've tried dozens of characters and tons of builds.  The hardcore option in this game makes for some truly unforgettable moments.  Just ask Steve-O, my previous hellspawn slaying comrade.

The goal is to complete all the quests from normal through hell difficulty (on non-harcore setting).  As outlined in my original plan for Diablo 1, I don't want to be playing with others that offer too much help (waypoints, power-levelling, etc.).  Also, I'll keep my level and the game name/pass posted on the side bar of this blog.  Please, it would be awesome to have some demon slaying company.

Once again, I've used a random number generator to choose my toon.  This time I'll be rolling with a...

SORCERESSESSESSS!!!!

I'll probably go with some sort of meteor and glacial bolt build. Freeze em and nuke em!

Diablo Down, Along with My Wrist!

The warrior, Knix, has plundered the depths of the Cathederal and slain the Lord of Terror himself!  But all that mouse clicking sword swinging has cost him his wrist!  Seriously, how did the testers of this game not complain about sore fingers and wrists?  A warning label should be put in the box for this game like they have for seizures.

Anyhow, I did it so quick because I changed up the difficulty completion.  It turns out multiplayer does not support many of the quests and I was more interested in the lore than just the gameplay, so I switched to single player.  However, single player only supports normal difficulty.  Don't mind though, or at least my wrist doesn't.

I really have to give credit to the original Diablo for some fun monster AI and animations.  Many monsters have retreat tactics, including hiding in shadows, teleporting and fleeing when allies die.  One of the monsters also has a pretty hilarious charge attack.  These simple scripts made many battles feel fairly fresh, rather than just levels of suicidal melee beasties. On top of that the death animations for most of them are pretty sweet.  The shadow walkers in particular have a wicked head rolling death.



There were some other nice touches in Diablo, including weapon sheathing and helmet holding when in town.  Considering that each character only had three different armor displays, it was an expensive addition.

A real gentelman lets the lady see his eyes.

Other details include the rather gruesome body hangings in hell.  I'm pretty sure if a game put these in a modern 3D game, it would receive an AO rating.

Sometimes I wonder what the artists are thinking when creating this stuff.  "Damn, need to add another pixel to the nipple."

Anyhow, the big red fatty is dead and it's time to hunt him again in Diablo 2!

League of Legends

I've been meaning to post about this League of Legends for awhile now, but I'm caught in a cycle of not obtaining footage.  I realize I have no footage, so I go to play it and get some, but then I get caught up in playing the game causing me to forget to grab footage.  So, anyhow, here's my random footage-less babble about League of Legends

Even though I'm making my way through my game collection, I'm still playing LoL on the side as my competetive outlet.  I usually squeeze in a few matches every week.  It's updated regularly and new champions keep it fresh, so I'll probably be playing it for awhile.  My completion status for the game is going to be to reach level 30.

The game is a direct derivative of DOTA, created by one of the guys who created DOTA.  It's free-to-play and there is no in-game advantage to spending cash on it (actually, there is a very every so slight meta-game advantage, but nothing to get your knickers in a knot about).  The only thing exclusive to real-money users, is they can purchase aesthetic skins for their characters.  It's kind of surprising that art is their money maker when the game is designed to run on a wide variety of systems (read: a cardboard box passing as a desktop computer).  Still the character artists are amazing and it's easy to see how they can make a few bucks off each of their players each month.

If you're interested in playing, or already do, be sure to add me (PureKnickers) on the in game friends list.  Also, help a man (me) get free shit and sign up here.

Sonic & Knuckles: Started and Completed

So, I completed Sonic & Knuckles, the final of the original Sonic series, in one shot.

S&K also had the best logo.

Chaos emerald stages aside, it was definately the best of the series.  The levels had the perfect balance of high speed cruising and proper platforming.  Some parts were tougher than others, but nothing seemed out of place (like the boss in Sonic 2).  The two bonus stages were also top calibre.  The first being a mix of Sonic 2's casino night zone and Sonic 1's special stage.  Admittingly it got a bit dry the tenth time around. The second was a wicked 'twirl around balls to get higher and collect stuff' thing that was awesome.  They should have done this for Sonic Spinball.  The lessons from failures and successes of the previous games came together for this final game of the series.

Sweet swirly electric staticy balls of funness.

I realized that I hadn't played much S&K as a kid because I got frustrated by one of the bonus stages (which I didn't understand, due to a lack of patience) and the Sandopolis zone.  I recall often getting stuck on the first Sandopolis Zone and the second one simply being too hard for me due to the harassing ghosties.  Basically, I didn't deserve to go farther.  Still, I thought they were the weakest parts of S&K on my current run through.

Stupid ghosties.

Now off to slay a bunch of demons!

Diablo: Calling All Players

With the sonic series nearing an end, it's time to choose a new game. The top 3 voted games in the last poll were Diablo (4), Shinobi 3 (3) and WCW/NWO Revenge (2).  I'm going with you guys on this one and playing Diablo next.

Being a game that plays best with a party, I'm hoping that you guys will come and join my warrior for at least a bit of the adventure.  I plan on starting the plundering of the cathederal on Thursday October 28th at 5 o'clock.  The game will be hosted on battle.net, with a game name of "knixtime" and password "notapk".  Just as a word of warning, I do plan on reading most of the dialogue and would appreciate if you didn't run ahead and slay all the quest related monsters without me.  So, install your copy, make sure you can get on battle.net, set up your settings and be ready to murder some things you can't really see in poorly lit dungeons!

For future games, I'll keep my level posted on the sidebar of this game blog, with the game name and password (which will be the same as the first game).  So if you're around the same level, I'd love to have some fellow adventurers join me!

My completion criteria for Diablo is to kill Diablo on Hell difficulty.

Also note that a new poll is up, due to the nature of polls on blogspot, I'm just going to reset the votes everytime a new game is chosen.  So, you're free to vote again, with the added option of Civilization 4.

Put up your votes and I hope to see you slicing demons in a couple of days!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Death Egg Relaunch Halted

The sonic team must have been a bunch of Star Wars nerds, they just weren't able to let the Death Egg rest in peace.

Hmmm...that Death Egg looks familiar.

Anyhow, I beat the third of the series in one go.  Turns out I had played it a fair bit but never passed the Carnival Night zone because of the floating rotating barrel things. (I'm not the only one)

 Using the barrels is not intuitive.  Sometimes, even if you're 'using' them it doesn't work, and even when you are 'using' them, it can be hard to tell what you're doing is working.  When I originally played this, my young self probably did not have access to any internet guides, so I was just stuck on that zone.  It's too bad, because the ice cap zone turned out to be one of my favourites in the series. As Sonic, you get a classy little snowboard sequence!

Learn more at the Gaming Wiki

 

I forgot to mention it on the completion of Sonic 2, but the special stages are horrible.  Same follows for Sonic 3.  They both tried to be "3D", but just wound up being sloppy controlled 2.5D not-so-fun-I'll-just-skip-that bonus rounds.  Acid-induced Sonic 1 bonus rounds are far superior.  Needless to say I dropped the chaos emerald completion aspects for both Sonic 2 and 3.



Sonic 2 Bonus Stage



On to Sonic & Knuckles!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Science World, of all places, was where I first got to try out Sonic 3.

I know I played the first level a fair bit, but I don't recall ever getting very far through Sonic 3.  Perhaps a couple play throughs will jog my memory.  Like, Sonic 2, the aesthetics look fairly different from it's predecessor.  This time around, the Sega team kept a similar colour palette to Sonic 2, but added a lot more detail to the surroundings. (Sorry about the crappy image comparison, but I still need to get some console recording hardware).

Sonic 2 (left) detail compared to Sonic 3 (right)

While checking to see where Sonic CD fit into the series, I was surprised to find out that it was built in tandem with Sonic 2, by a seperate team.  Apparently it received good reviews, but it never gained much popularity because well...who owned a SEGA CD?  I'm not going to play in series with the rest of the Soinc collection, because the story doesn't follow the same arc. Anyhow, off to break down that big fatty again...

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Death Egg Down!

I finished up Sonic 2 on the second attempt.  Tails failed me at the final boss on the first try.  The difficulty of the final bosses is ridiculous compared to the rest of the game.  You don't get any rings and the locations they are vunerable are rarely open and missing them means you hit their spikes of death.  Basically, you have to be flawless.  My girlfriend probably lost count of all my *sighs* taking on these bosses last night.

Hate you!

...and I hear the last fight is even harder playing as Knuckles.

Collection Challenge: Edit

I added a few games to the list because I found a stack I missed and added a few free-to-play games.  I also calculated roughly how long this might take me.  Assuming each game takes me a week to complete, it will take me 6 years to finish all of the games. That's a loooong time.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

The next game on the list to beat is Sonic 2.

My understanding is that this was the Sonic that actually put him on the map.  The introduction of the spin dash, tighter controls and a less drab colour scheme made a huge difference from its predecessor. I believe Sega eventually included this with the Genesis instead of Sonic 1.

Colour scheme comparison between Sonic 1 (left) and Sonic 2 (right).

I definately played this more than the original Sonic, soley because of the spin dash.  Getting back up to pace without the spin dash just seemed too cumbersome.  Typical youth impatience.

 I've reached the final boss as both a youth and adult many times, but never actually beat him (it?).  I've used countless lives and continues, to the point it's pathetic.  Getting to the boss should be fairly easy, but I have a feeling I'm going to fail at least once trying to beat him.

Conditions for completion:
-kill final boss after collecting all the emeralds

Sonic the Hedgehog

This whole idea of completing all my games came up from deciding to replay the original Sonic games.  They are some of my favourite childhood games, but at the time I didn't have the skill to beat them.  So, I decided to try my hand at the series before it plummeted down hill as fast as Sonic.

Sonic the Hedgehog was the first game I had on my Sega Genesis.  It still remember playing it the first time through and dieing repeatedly on our first encounter with Dr.Robotnik.  For anyone that knows about this swinging ball encounter, you understand how bad this 5-year-old me and his dad were at video games.  While I have beat it in the last few years, I never did as a kid, I didn't have the patience for the Underwater Labyrinth zones.

Anyhow, I sat down yesterday to give it a spin and get a feel for the game again.  Turns out I've still got the feel for it and beat it one try.  Granted, the chase sequence at the end of the Labyrinth zone and the Scrap Yard zone knocked good portions of my lives off.  I also missed one of the chaos emeralds in what I still think is one of the most drug-induced bonus rounds to date.

Sonic 1 is now completed!

All 300 and 1 of 'em

What to do you when you can't decide what game to play, can't afford new games and hardware and have 301 games?  That's right, you beat them all.

 Assuming I didn't miss any, my collection is 301 strong. I'm not sure whether I'm proud or embarassed.  Anyhow, the goal is to complete all of them.  Many I have beat before, but many more I have never seen to completion. While I'll deal with the details of completion criteria as each game comes up, generally it means experiencing the entire story campaign.  No handicaps, no cheats, new saves (twinking will be allowed), aesthetic mods, normal difficulty (with some exceptions), series are played in order and I'll hopefully have a friend where co-op is available.

Using a random number generator I'll select 10 games to go up on a voting poll hosted on this blog. Feel free to vote for as many games as you please. I'll choose from the top 3 scores based on my preference once I've completed a game or its series. Once a game is chosen, I'll take it off the poll and replace it with a new one, other games' scores still intact.  Hopefully, this method will help me spread out the different genres, the good, the bad and year of production, to keep everything fresh.

So, please vote on whatever basis you may.  If you simply intend to see me suffer by playing the most horrific game that is listed, that's totally acceptable.

Ya, this is going to take a couple of years.

Minecraft: Failed 3-Bit Counter

I attempted to build a counter and well...



This was also an excuse to get used to fraps!

Baldur's Gate: Knix Down

Knix lasted until level 6 before he was knocked out for the ninth time.  Eight of those deaths were in one sitting.  Apparently, Baldur's Gate is a bad game to play when I'm not concentrated.

Real Ranger Action!

Anyhow, I'm not too sure how keen I am on doing the BG series at the moment, with League of Legends, Minecraft and Age of Empires 2 already holding my attention.  I'm thinking I might actually complete the Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis saga instead.  It's less time consuming and a little more up to pace for when I'm in an arcade mode.

Surprisingly, this did not kill Knix.

Side note: Isn't that AoE2 website horrid?

Minecraft: Navigation

I plan on building a boat access only building, but my current map didn't have a large body of water that I knew of.  So, I ventured off and sure enough found a coastal region.  I then proceeded to setup a little dock to harbour boats...

...and shelter/mine access.

The cactii are not for style, they kill the bad things.

Whilst setting this up, I realized I didn't leave a trail back to spawn for myself to follow.  So, I played quite cautiously in hope of lasting long enough to craft some gear (including a compass that points to the spawn location) in order to mark a trail to my new site.  Sadly, after escaping a few close calls, I made a fatal error and died a gruesome death.  I'm shamed to admit I mined out the ore block I was standing on and fell through into a pit of zombies.  Now, I was back at spawn and left to guess as to where my dock and lodge were hiding.

The 'O' marks the spawn point and the 'X' marks my dock.  All that explored area around the 'O' that is not in the direction of the 'X' is the area I explored trying to find the 'X'.

Overhead

Before I had the nifty application that produced this map, I just wandered in the direction I thought I had gone before.  I eventually died in a self dug pit from the arrows of a skeleton maurader. That is how I explored the area above the 'O'.  After respawning I downloaded cartographer I realized I needed to head West! That is how I explored the are below and to the right of the 'O'.  See, it turns out Cartographer takes a nod from the Romans and puts East on the top of the map.  Once I figured that out, I found it with little hassle.

The search wasn't in vain though, I did find an awesomely high mountain that seems fitting for a water slide or hermit hut.  It's the red blob on the upper right corner.

Height Map

As a bonus, here's a map from a different cartography program called AlphaVespucci.

Oblique Angle

Baldur's Gate: Lives

I previously completed BG2 (but, not the expansion) and just picked up BG1 off of Good Old Games.  I then linked them using BGTutu.

I rolled a gruff Ranger.  He's a red-headed double axe wielding beast.

Haters Gonna Hate

From a role-playing angle, he's a loner, but has a soft spot for bubbly small folk.  I'm expecting he'll have maybe one or two party members.  He hates meddlers, almost as much as he hates city slickers. He's rather not have to go through towns and just spend his time wandering and tending to the woods.

Anyhow, I ran into a small problem while playing - I was abusing the save/load system.  I'm not sure I came out of a single fight on my first go (okay, maybe a couple) and I definatley just butted my head against some tough fights until the dice were in my favour.  It feels really lame to do this and takes away a lot of the tension game.  I was thinking that I should play "hardcore", one and only one life, but considering the punishing difficulty of the BG series, that was just too masochistic.  Instead, I took a cue from old-school video games and decided that 3 lives plus the opportunity to earn some more is the way to go.  Every time my character levels, he gets a life.  The initial 3 lives should give me enough opportunity to get through the growing pains of understanding a new classes gameplay and the extra lives should compensate for the difficult ambush fights.  I still expect to see a lot of Candlekeep through new faces.

Minecraft: Hanging Gardens Finished!

A couple thousand blocks later, I finished up the hanging gardens!

Everything went together fairly smoothly, except for one major error on building the base blocks.  I built one layer with a row too many that required me to cut down a row of wall and reposition a bunch of streams.  The only other hitch was when a creeper decided to blow a hole in the side of one wall.

On an unrelated note, I found an elusive tree cow.

A tree cow perches in a tree, awaiting passing prey.

Update: You can now check out the Gardens on the server (see sidebar).

Minecraft: Introducing

If you haven't heard about it yet, there is this awesome indie game called Minecraft.

It seems to be sneaking up on the population and references to it are popping up everywhere.

Its grasp has drawn me in.  The premise of the game is...well there really isn't one.  You spawn in a generated blocky world that you are expected to survive in and build upon.

Yes, that fleshy coloured block is my hand.

At first the game is just about survival and discovery.  While my first day was bright and full of happy cows and frolicking pigs, the following night was grimmer.  Without giving too much away, I was fortunate to discovery how to put together a sword from some of the stone I harvested and craft a leather helmet from the cow I layed some smack on earlier.  Figuring out how to craft various items on my own was fun for a day or two, but I eventually started to just look up recipes online to move onto the more enticing aspect of the game - construction!

Once I had some basic survival equipment down, I started toying with the construction elements of the game.  I first built a two room cave to store all my materials and safely craft recipes without worrying about the dangers that lurk in the darkness.  Afterwards, I added aesthetic (and defensive!) touches to the entrance.

After toying around with the basic digging and construction aspects, I decided it was time for a big project.  I am now working on a Hanging Gardens-esque pyramid.  First, however, I have to mine enough material to build it.  That is a task in itself.  I'm working on obtaining stone currently, but I'll need to start getting plenty of sand too.

Current mining operation.

I've layed out the base layer for the gardens, so hopefully my math was correct, as it will be a bit of a pain to correct it after this.

If this game interests you, now is the time to check it out.  For the next couple of days (maybe less), it is free!  My guess is that the reference to Minecraft in Penny Arcade is the cause of the flood that made the game free this past weekend.  Penny Arcade has brought down servers (by accident of course) in the past.

I am also planning on putting up a Minecraft multiplayer server.  I'll post a link when it is up and running.

WoW: Final Dungeons

After reaching level 42 or so, I'm putting down WoW again.  It's reached that repetetive nature again and I've been messing about with some awesome Indie games!  Anyhow, I just wanted to throw down the last set of pics from the dungeon adventures.

A little discussion after destroying the pesky arcanist.

This run required 2 cow power.  The other tauren is Kagato.

A quick break before taking on the Inquisitors. Thanks to Kagato, Tseluyu, Andromeda, and Vitallremains for the assistance in purging the Cathedral.

The finishing touch on the Armory with thanks to Rekkaell, Vilynne, azerr and Skiknee.  Also a thanks to all those other randoms that ran the Graveyard 8 bazillion times.