Showing posts with label Java. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Java. Show all posts

Friday, February 11, 2011

Minecraft is becoming the new heroin of PC gaming.

Oh Minecraft, what have you done to my brain and soul within the last couple of weeks? If any of you fellow bloggers and readers haven't heard of Minecraft yet, let me break it down for you. Minecraft is a Java-written, in-browser supported sandbox style game in which your main objective involves building. You can build whatever you wish, so long as you have the items, tools, and materials for the said structures. You obtain everything by destroying your world-environment (which is seemingly endless, and made entirely of large 3D cubes) and obtaining the materials necessary for production.

You start out alone, in the middle of nowhere, with no armor or tools to speak of. How do you work without tools, you ask? By punching sh*t. That's right, for the first day or two you're going to literally be punching trees, dirt, sand blocks, and various other "natural" objects in the wild. Your first objective should be to build weak tools (which are acquired through wood, again, by f*cking punching trees) and attempt to build yourself a caveman/hobo style dirt hut to survive the night in. That's right, you must hide once the sun sets, for once there is no sunlight to protect you anymore, the monsters arrive. There are a handful of MOBS (what they're referred to in game speak), and the majority of them only come out at night to hand you a royal beating if you're not well-equipped.

Here's where the game starts getting interesting. In order to accumulate the most rare materials and items in the game, you either need to find natural caverns and caves to dig deep into, or straight-up dig yourself an endless grave from where ever you're standing. The MOBS thrive in dim-lit or no light areas, so prepare to die several times, losing all of your sh*t in the process.


This is a Creeper. Yes, I realize they look like gigantic green dongs with sad faces. They are the most vicious creature in the game, as they're able to walk in the sunlight and also blow up upon reaching you Kamikaze style, destroying most nearby land and structures, including your balls.


There is multiplayer mode on servers, in which several players can join together in collaboration of any "quest for sh*t", and building of various projects (the sky is literally the limit). This requires a premium account, but the game is not expensive - you can purchase a premium account which doesn't expire for around $20. The game is in beta, but according to the overweight Swedish creator of this time-vampire, a current purchase means that you'll still have full access once the official release is made publicly available. Here's a YouTube video of some of the more impressive things that can be created in this game:



As cheesy and awful as the game looks, it's actually very addictive, hence the post title. With that being said, be prepared to have your beautiful creations blasted to oblivion, inadvertently set on fire through flame or lava, flooded, or just straight up deleted (if you're on a server with issues). I spent a couple of weeks on a server with a handful of my friends, where I started fresh. By the end of that time-frame I had a sweet floating glass house, tons of great material, tools, and even a high-speed cart system setup for quick travel. I'd love to show you some screenshots, unfortunately the world my character lived in was completely annihilated. Yesterday I logged into Minecraft to find that the Administrator of said server I was playing on deleted f*cking everything, leaving me staring into an endless abyss of mother nature:


After building some necessary tools and making the equivalent of a cardboard box for shelter, I nerd style rage quit. Unfortunately I'm going back, because as I said, it has become the heroin of PC gaming. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a new home in Minecraft to build (that is, if I don't choose to cut my myself instead).