Terraria?

Terraria

This Indie side scroller game is surprisingly popular. I lot of my friends play it and have recommended it to me despite my dislike for all games lame.

My first impression of it was ‘it’s basically a rubbish version of Mine Craft’. I asked one of my friends to tell me a bit about the game and going with my first impression he said it’s “comparable to the original Metroid. It’s kind of a cross between Metroid and Mine Craft.” From what I have seen you go around blowing stuff up in order to collect ores to make armour (seems kind of pointless to me). My friend however was exceedingly enthusiastic about it (each to their own) and so I did what any good blogger would do and decided to ask him some more questions.

First of all I enquired about his favourite aspects of the game and what he would change if he could. His original reply informed me that it is ‘a fun social game’. Which is not much to go on so I inquired further and ‘he-of-little-words’ informed that it was “just going out and trying to out-gear your mates” (If this is what gaming is turning into then things are getting bad).  Still I enquired further but I couldn’t get him to say anything critical about the game, he seemed to generally like it a lot although he does inform me that there is “not much of a story” and that the exciting part was getting “to progress, kill bosses and get rid of corruption” (such an original idea).

I think it is only fair that I give you some more information on the actual game and allow you to form your own opinions:

Terraria...

Aside from killing bosses and building castles what can you do? After you’ve invited your friends to live in your castle what is there to spike your interest? Explored all of the underground caverns? Collected wood, money and metal....make some armour. Build a new house. Destroy some people...get a bit of PVP action in.

When you die you get a message informing you that ‘you were slain’.

Dig deeper (literally) into a world of adventure and building stuff.

There are a lot of different biomes on this game, I suppose they thought it would be nice not to have to stare at exactly the same picture for hours on end, they were right, but there isn’t much you can do with a 2D (not just literally) game like this one. There is: The Hallow, Floating Islands, Meteorites, The Corruption, Dungeon, Underground Hallow, The Underworld and more.

Environments

Forest, Desert, Ocean, Hallowed Desert, Hallowed Ocean, Jungle.

The Hallow – unlocked once you have defeated the Wall of Flesh in the Underworld. Is used to counter the seed of corruption by spreading seeds or throwing holy water. Appears disturbingly cheerful with colourful trees and blue grass and a rainbow and a sun in the background.

Floating Islands – Appear in the sky. Usually made with a building of ore bricks and spawn the same creatures as the forest except for Harpies and Wyverne.

Meteorite – Make random appearances and can only be mined using a Gold pickaxe or better, Dynamite or Bombs. Player is informed when a meteorite crash-lands.

The Corruption – As afore mentioned in ‘The Hallow’. Evil that is formed randomly when a world is created. Corruption appears as purple grass and orange sky. Spawns high-level monsters. Hard to stop from spreading.

Dungeon – Many layers deep, can reach the underworld. Found opposite side of the world to the Jungle. Randomly formed from 1 of 3 dungeon bricks. Contains chest of rare items and decorative items.

Underground Hallow – Naturally forms as Hallow spreads to the underworld. Large amounts of Pearlstone Block. Monsters include: Chaos Elementals, Illuminant Bats, Illuminant Slime and Enchanted Swords, Mimics, Armoured Skeletons, Heavy Skeletons and Skeleton Archers.

The Underworld – Deepest Biome. Found below stone. Background is lava pattern. Contains underworld houses, chests, shadowchests, pots, Hellforges and potions. Stronger enemies – Fire Imps, Bone Serpents, Demons, Hellbats, Lava Slime, Hell Demons, Wall of Flesh (Boss).

Just a bit of information on the selection of areas to visit to intrigue you, I don't want to give away to much. Check it out and tell me what you think. 

Titus Proxima

X-men movie

Hey there ladies and gentlemen (mostly gentlemen).

Tonight me and Valhalla (I think I’m going to start shortening it to Val., despite his many protests, let me know what you think) wanted to do a post on all the fantastic Marvel movies that have been coming out lately as the latest one will be here soon. Who here is excited about ‘The Avengers’? I think me and Val. are both extremely excited. I was upset when ‘Captain America’ came out as Val. had promised to come and watch it with me but every time we planned it he cancelled on me (all his excuses were valid and forgivable….:( but it also means I haven’t been able to see it yet). It came out recently on DVD and as soon as I am able to get to town that will be the first thing I buy.

Tonight, Val. supposedly left me his part of the post in our blog email account drafts box but I’ve been through the whole thing and it’s empty and I left my laptop at college so tonight’s post is a bit late again (you’re probably thinking, ‘so how is he sending us this?’ well, my smart muffins, I managed to convince my reluctant mother that it would be a good idea to let me use her desktop (which incidentally is better than my laptop) for a short period of time, and this is all I have time to supply at this hour as she was adamant that I get to bed as soon as I can for college tomorrow and the rescue of my laptop, she seems to have forgotten that I am, in fact, 18).

I thought that I would be cool to at least do a brief review on my favourite Marvel movie so far.

To date, my favourite has been X-men. Yeah I know, not exactly similar to the comics (they could at least have made the costumes SIMILAR, poor Wolverine, missing out on his yellow and blue and getting instead a plain blue x-men, rubber, one-piece).

Despite it’s dissimilarities to the original I would like to examine the movie as something separate to any comic.

I am a HUGE fan of X-men and regardless of the movies lack of respect I thought it was a pretty amazing movie.

I thought the actors were impressive, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was pretty darn cool, James Marsden as Cyclops (If I was gay James would be my man crush), loved it. I loved Halle Berry as Storm, she was pretty awesome and of course totally hot in her cat-suit, even Professor X was awesome, Patrick Stewart was perfect. Enough about the actors.

I thought the school was well done, the filming, the acting…let’s just say that I have watched that movie more times than I can count on my hands and probably toes together.

I will have to leave you with this brief post tonight as I am falling asleep at my desk and I have a performance tomorrow night so I must be awake.

Fable 1

Fable I

I’m a huge fantasy fan and I also have a strange adoration for the period that this game was set in despite my hatred of history (for someone who hates history there is a weird amount of time periods which fascinate me).

This game is one of the most anticipated games on the market. Who doesn’t love a bit of sword play, fantasy, heroism and ale drinking?

Fable is a third person action RPG based around 1 main character and his dog which follows him everywhere, the character is called ‘The Hero of Oakvale’. The cool thing is, your character can either be good or evil depending on your actions. The game is set in Albion which is a patchwork collection of towns and cities that used to be called the Old Kingdom (you’d thing that would come later rather than sooner) when it lived in prosperity but as time went on the ruler became corrupt and now the hero lives in a lawless, country that is slowly deteriorating.

The Hero is sent on quests, some further the plot and some are merely for entertainment value and for gain. Some quests allow the player to pick which side they wish to help, good or evil, these choices lead to the characters over all popularity and reputation. If a player accepts a quest then they can boast and can have bets like doing the whole quest naked or without getting hurt they can then increase the money they get from the quest if this challenge is overcome (I think that’s pretty cool, how many games dare you to do a quest naked?).

Renown is the most important thing the hero needs. To get this they can boast about winnings and trophies, they can use gold from quests to buy it but they also need the gold to buy better weapons to make harder quests achievable which also gets them Renown.

Weapons range (see what I did there? I make myself laugh sometimes. Someone has to...laugh that is) from swords and maces to bows and arrows and that even includes magic. To increase magical ability the hero must kill enemies and collect their orbs. Different colours mean different things; there is general, strength, skill and will. General can be used to modify groups of attributes, strength is good for toughness, health etc, Skill, for speed and accuracy and such and Will is for upgrading your spells. Each spell upgrade will tell you how much of which one it needs.

The Fable map is riddled with towns and cities, full of life and activities for the hero. I good way to get gold is to buy houses and rent them out(if you are feeling malevolent you can raise the rent or even, if you are feeling extra vicious, kick our your tenants for new ones). If you want, although if you ask me it’s a bit strange, you can find a woman, or man (you can even be gay) and get married (I should warn you, all the towns folk are really ugly) and have children (unless you are in a gay relationship in which case you can’t have children).

A note on alignment

I mentioned this earlier. Your character has the ability to become good or evil based on actions you choose to take. Well here is a bit more about that.

I think most gamers like the evil looking ones (it might just be me and my weird observation) like me and Valhalla. Some I suppose may like being good, well this game takes them to the extreme. The good ones get halo’s and end up looking a bit like prince charming (retch) and butterfly’s follow them around and it’s all pretty and such and the evil ones grow horns and get red eyes and give of a glowing red aura as a warning to any who approach.

Other things that affect the hero

If you eat too much or drink too much you become irreversibly fat it can also make you throw up.

Clothes can make you appear scary or protect you in battle and they can also affect your alignment. Bright colours will make the townspeople like you and dark colours will make them fear you.

You can change your hair, facial features and even get tattoos. Attributes also affect aesthetics such as your strength increases brawn, skill affects your height, and spells make celestial patterns on your skin.

Plot

As a child the hero’s family is killed, on his sister’s birthday. The hero joins ‘The Hero’s Guild’ and trains to become a champion. The hero begins a journey to find out why his family were killed and eventually a friend tells him that there is a blind seeress in a bandit camp nearby who may be able to help. So the hero travels to find her and discovers that it is his sister and that she was taken by the bandit leader who the hero challenges.  The hero can choose to let him live or kill him which marks the beginning of his choice of alignment.

When the hero is stronger he is invited to a battle arena where he meets Jack of Blades who challenges the hero to fight Whisper, a friend and rival. He then has to decide whether to kill or spare his friend.

The hero discovers that Jack of Blades is the one who killed his family and the whole of Oakvale (the hero’s childhood home). The hero tracks down his mother who has been a prisoner of Jack of Blades since ever since.  The hero is captured and when he escapes and takes his mother the hero once again searches for Jack. The hero’s friend is revealed to be a traitor and kidnaps the hero’s sister when the hero defeats his friend he gets to fight Jack where is mother is killed.

It is discovered that the hero and his sister are the only remaining decedents of the king and so the only ones who can wield the sword. After killing Jack the hero can either keep the sword and kill his sister or cast away the sword (it’s kind of like Achilles’ decision in mythology where he had to decide between living a short and heroic life or a long and boring one).

There are 4 possible endings, you must decide.

There is a special edition where the story continues but I will leave you to discover that.

Have fun.

Btw this is a great game and I give it high ratings GGGGGGGGG (9/10 gamer points) because it is original and has interesting interpretation of storyline.

Titus' Guide to Yu-Gi-Oh

Hey guys, another post from me, Titus. Today I bring you news of great excitement. I have very recently expanded my Yu-Gi-Oh deck.

I’ve had a deck for years and years and years but I had no one to play it with. Within the last year I have taught Valhalla to play and now I play at school in any spare time. Well, last week it was my birthday and my awesome work colleagues, when my cousin came in to the store looking for a present for me, directed her to the Yu-Gi-Oh cards. The exchange went something like this:

“Hi. I’m the cousin of one of your colleagues. It is his Birthday and I need a present for him.” My colleagues all pointed at this tin of Yu-Gi-Oh cards that I have been going on about for weeks. In fact about a month ago my manager put me in charge of the trading card section because he had no idea what it was. Anyway, the point is I now have an even more awe-inspiring deck (Valhalla refuses to fight me because I keep defeating him).

I thought it would be exciting to explain to you how the game works and so you can have some fun with it too.

First of all you need to know the origin of the game. You all remember Pokemon? Digimon? Well this is similar in the sense that the player fights battles using cards which represent monsters he/she controls, sometimes using trap cards and spells cards to aid or revive your monsters, sometimes even to destroy your opponents, sending them to the graveyard.

The Layout is simple (beginners, I suggest using a mat). You are allowed 5 monsters on the field at one time, this includes attack position and defence position and you can have 5 spell or trap cards face down on the field at one time. You have a deck zone, a field zone, for field cards, a graveyard and an extra deck zone.

There are different types of summoning for a monster. Normal summoning is simply placing a card from your hand in attack or defence position. Special summoning is done using a card effect, the card must be placed in face up defence or attack mode unless the card specifies otherwise. Synchro summoning means that you must add the levels of a tuner monster an a non tuner monster to summon one that is the exact same level and finally fusion summoning requires a card that allows it e.g Polymerization.

Monster levels

Levels are represented by the stars under the name on the right hand side of the card.

Level 1-4 monsters require no special summon unless specified.

Level 5-6 monsters require a tribute of one monster from your field.

Level 7 + monsters require a two monster tribute from your field.

Monster types

Blue - Ritual Monster. Summoned by a ritual spell card eg Black Luster Soldier requires Black Luster Ritual

White - Synchro Monster. Kept in the Extra deck and can only be summoned by synchro summoning from deck.

Orange - Effect Monster, specified in description at bottom.

Yellow - Normal Monster. No effect.

Purple - Fusion Monster. Kept in Extra deck and usually can only be summoned through fusion summon, specified on card in description.

Gemini Monster – Once already on the field you use your normal summon turn to re summon them. It will have an effect as long as it is on the field.

Tuner Monster – Allows for synchro summoning.

Spell and Trap Cards

There are many types of spell card. You can play as many as you want per turn.

Normal Spell – placed in spell/trap card zone and can only be played during your turn.

Field Spell – placed in Field card zone can only be played during your turn until destroyed.

Equip Spell – (pretty self explanatory) played from spell/trap card zone, equipped to chosen monster, stays there until monster is destroyed.

Quick Play Spells – Goes in spell/trap card zone or can be used during your turn from your hand. Cannot be used the same turn it is set. Can be used as a trap fro opposition. It stays on field unless specified otherwise.

Ritual Spells – (also pretty self explanatory, also pre-mentioned) specific cards used to summon specific monsters. Can only summon a monster from hand unless specified otherwise. Normally requires tribute.

Continuous Spells – played from spell/trap card zone. Stays on field until specified otherwise.

Normal Trap – Goes to graveyard once used.

Counter Trap – Goes to graveyard once used. Nothing can be chained to it except another trap.

Continuous Trap – Stays on field until destroyed.

Quick Guide to Battle

Phases

Standby – for cards that activate specifically in standby phase.

Draw – Solely for your once per turn mandatory draw.

Main – summon, set, activate cards.

Battle – Any attack position monsters on your side of the field may attack.

Main 2 – Same as ‘Main’.

End – You declare that you end your turn.

Damage

Attacking attack monster

If the attack of your attacking monster is greater than the opponents that is being attacked then the opponent takes the remaining points as Life Point Damage and the monster is usually destroyed.

If the attack of your attacking monster is equal to the opponents that is being attacked then both monsters are destroyed.

Attacking a defence monster

If the attack of your attacking monster is equal to that of the opponents defence then neither monster is destroyed.

If the attack of your attacking monster is greater than that of the opponents defence, the defence monster is destroyed and no damage is taken.

I’ve spent many hours playing this game and I rate I give it GGGGGGGG (8/10 gamer points) because It’s only as good as your imagination (I have a pretty awesome imagination).

GOOD LUCK and have fun!

Your Dungeon My Dragon

Your Dungeon My Dragon by Adam de la Pena

Hi guys, this isn’t a game but technically we do all things geeky and if this isn’t geeky then nothing is.

This is an online animated series about 2 Guilds, one good and one evil, who are constantly at war with each other. It’s funny, geeky, and it has a trouser-less Dwarf in the first episode (All very good reasons to watch it.). So far only the first episode is available to us but there are interactive games for you to enjoy in the mean time (if you have Windows Internet Explorer 9).

I think I will provide you with a character list

First and favourite of mine:

Kill the Brobarian. Kill is part bro(lover of partying, girls and things that make him Hench) and part Barbarian(we all know what a Barbarian is but for those who don’t, they like swords, storming castles and wearing very little, he keeps his sword in his loin cloth). He lives by the Philosophy ‘Strong and Wrong’ which I think tells you all you need to know about him.

Next is Hork. Hork is the trouser-less Dwarf I was telling you about, he spends a lot of time looking for them. He is a professional wanderer (or as we would call him today, hobo). He isn’t terribly bright but he can change in to various animals for short periods of time.

Amy the Enchantress is the most powerful member. Most dudes are scared of her, which is just how she likes it. She has a bit of a thing for Kill despite their constant bickering.

Haro is an Archer Elf with an Afro. He fights with a Golden Bow but he is also a bit of a ladies’ man. He is the brains of the operation and the one who keeps them all alive.

Devious Most Evilest (My favourite villain). Devious is half Dracula and half Warlock, how is that possible you ask? Well his father is Count Dracula and is mother is supposedly of one of the very rare female warlocks. He supplies his Coven of Evil with Mission Statements and such that help him keep control. But don’t all villains secretly have a dream? Devious does. He wants to start a Hip-hop/rock fusion band. Really he just wants to have fun.

This is ‘I’m just a Skeleton’. Skeleton wants to raise his status but is often getting into trouble. He has nothing especially interesting about him, other than being able to drive a car.

Krog is made of Brimstone and bad ideas. He does what he is told as he is the muscle of the group. He wants a girlfriend (Amy if possible) but he isn’t very good with the ladies (and Amy never returns his calls).

There is also Zonkie. Can you guess what he is? Yes, a Zombie/Donkey.

Here is the link because I know how much you guys want it.

http://ydmd.msn.com/BehindTheScenes/1

I wish I could give you more information but sadly none is availiable at the moment.