Hell, Amnesia and Cubes

What do those three things have in common? Well as far as I know, nothing. But nonetheless, I have been playing three games since I last posted on here, and those were the first things that popped into my head when thinking about each game. As a forewarning, this could be a lengthy post.

The first game up, being the least recent, is Darksiders. I held off from posting about this game, because my views on it kept changing, and really didn't know what to make of it. When the game started out, for the first few hours I felt like it was my favorite game for the 360. But as time passed by, that feeling was waning, even though I was still enjoying the game. It's just way too similar to other games that have done the same thing, only better.

The two games that Darksiders takes almost all of its elements from is God of War and The Legend of Zelda, mainly Ocarina of Time. All the reviewers and critics said that the game is a mash of these two games together but, being reviewers, I didn't always agree with them. Near the beginning of the game, I felt as though the game was 90% GoW and 10% OoT. An hour or two later, I changed that feeling to 80% GoW and 20% OoT. A few hours later, 65% GoW, 35% OoT. Near the end of the game, I felt as though it was a 50/50 blend of the two games together, with random scenes making one game stand out more than the other.

I suppose I should explain what Darksiders takes from these games. The combat is ripped straight out of GoW. The chain-combo fighting made me feel as though I was playing as Kratos, right down to certain button presses to finish off enemies. Luckily this is just one button, and no QTE's exist in the game. And then you can upgrade each weapon, just like in GoW. Or how about the story based around the concept of revenge, playing with the theme of gods, mortals and other entities? Just like GoW.

The Zelda themes don't come into play as quickly as the GoW ones, but these smack you in the face just as hard. There are dungeons in Darksiders (only 5, not 9 like in almost every Zelda game, counting the boss's), and in each one the player can collect a compass, dungeon map, and one special item to help them through said dungeon. Wow, that sounds familiar. But THQ wouldn't go as far as to steal the exact same items, right? Like a boomerang item, a hookshot, a lens of truth, or a slingshot, and just disguise it as a different item? The worst part is that none of the items play a very big role in the game, which was a big letdown. The final item, not listed here, is not found in any Zelda game, and even though it's a ripoff from another game, is still a cool mechanic which could have been a lot more fun, and could have made for some crushingly difficult puzzles.

You can start to see how as the game progressed, the more I felt as though they were taking more and more from OoT. Not that this is a bad thing, however. I mean, both God of War and Ocarina of Time were fantastic games. And later in the game you meet up with Ruin, the main character's horse. Basically it's Epona from Hell. That sounds cool whenever I say it. Ruin controls slightly better than any Epona version, and the mounted combat is much better than Twilight Princess, in my opinion.

To finish my discussion about Darksiders, I believe that the developers at THQ should be slapped in the face for a scene near the end of the game. It's one thing to borrow elements from Ocarina of Time, but seriously?! The items were one thing, but a whole scene from Ocarina of Time that was totally unnecessary to the game and story? There comes a point where you need to just come up with some of your own ideas, because that was just pathetic.

On to my next game, Phantasy Star 0. A friend of mine a couple of weeks ago found a way to play Phantasy Star Online well, online, and so we both sort of got in the mood to play the game. Unfortunately, we never got the online components figured out (til now), and so we didn't play PSO. However, he picked up Phantasy Star 0 for the DS and told me it's just like PSO (O = Online, 0 = zero), and since it has wi-fi multiplayer, I should definitely pick it up. After finding it on sale at a Toys 'R Us, I gave in and said what the hell, it's probably pretty good.

And after putting about 11 hours into it, I agree, it is pretty good, and it's basically PSO for the DS. The graphics are pretty much the same, and the player levels up slowly (well, more quickly in this version so far) and continues to play the game for better and cooler weapons. And this time around the story is pretty good. In PSO, you arrive at a new planet soon after the research team did, although they're all missing, and you go find who or what killed them. In PS0, the story is more about long lost ruins, ancient technology, and a blank period in time in which war occurred between the three races, and most people disappeared. Okay, so it sounds extremely similar to Mass Effect, and while it's not nearly as good as Mass Effect's story, nor as fleshed out, it's still pretty interesting. I play as a Newman, which is basically a person who looks just like a human, but isn't, and while low on health and defense, has strong magical abilities. My character awoke at the beginning of the game with amnesia, and has no idea who he is or why he's on Earth. I can't say more about the story, because Sega had some fun and changed the story depending on which race you play as, or at least it seems as though so far.

If there are any faults with the game I'd say that so far it's pretty easy, which is much different from PSO, which started out extremely hard, especially for magic users. Maybe it's just me, but the camera seems a lot closer to the character than in PSO, and I feel like I can't see what's going on around me. Three teammates constantly surrounding me does not help the issue either. Another complaint I have is with the AI. Ugh I cannot stand my teammates! First of all, get out of my way, that's my kill, go kill one of the other 5 enemies in the room that are attacking us from behind. I know you can change the tactics of the AI, but it doesn't really seem to help, they're still idiots. And for the sidequests, I wish I could always choose to go alone, because they usually stick me with Sarisa, a fellow Newman who does no damage at all, and usually dies during the boss battles. I mean 11 damage a hit Sarisa?! I do around 50 damage a hit...with a blunt rod...with the weakest attack. You're doing 11 damage a hit at the highest, with magic, whereas I do around 75 damage a hit with magic. So let's say there's an enemy with 150 health. It takes me two hits to kill it. Put five of them in a room, I'll kill the first four while she focuses on one, and then I'll go over to her and kill off that one...which still takes two hits for me, since she didn't even do 75 worth of damage during my four kills. Pit her and I up against a boss and she dies? Honestly there's no point in reviving her. I really wish there was a good/evil portion to the game, because I'd be such a dick to her after each mission, when she starts touting how it was great teamwork that killed off the boss. No Sarisa, you laid dead in the corner after just the first 10 seconds of battle, while I killed the boss myself. Please Sega, let me turn friendly fire on. I can't wait to play the game online with a competent teammate, who understands the mechanics of the game and battles.

Finally the cubes. This is referring to Minecraft. Oh yes, I finally gave in to the temptation and tried the game out. After months of seeing articles and videos of the game online, and also seeing that it's not a passing fad, it was about time to give it a go. I suppose the reason I never did is because supposedly for being such an "ugly" game as far as textures go, it takes quite a bit of horsepower to run the game. There was no way I'd be able to run the game on this laptop, and my computer's HD is still shot. But yesterday I noticed an article taking about how you can play the game in a browser, which led me to believe that that version must be much less demanding. This is the game that made me want to write a new blog, and honestly if I ever bought the retail beta of the game, I'd probably use this blog solely to write about my exploits. And that's what I plan to do here.

My first foray into the world of Minecraft was just as fun as I thought it'd be. I was thrown onto a large island, and after seeing a handful of videos online, I knew that the first goal was to build a house or lock myself up in a cave. Once night falls, the enemies and creepers come out. No, not the creepers that look into your windows, the creepers that are green and blow the hell out of your walls. The first thing I noticed was that I didn't have any tools, nor did I have an inventory screen. That was disappointing, because I wanted to feel the real game, where you must forge your own weapons and tools, mine, chop and collect your materials, and learn to survive. That's okay I decided, I was given an unlimited amount of blocks of all different sorts, so I'd be good to build a small house.

So after about 20 minutes I had completed my small house, 3 x 3 blocks inside with a nice roof, and glass blocks for my door since I can't construct a door in this version. After a few more minutes I noticed it wasn't getting dark out, and I knew from those videos how long until it got dark. So I ventured out, wondering if maybe this version didn't have any enemies, and was just for dicking around. Obviously the question was what's next? I chopped down a tree and its branches for fun, and liked how you can chop out the trunk, but the leaf blocks remain suspended in the air. I looked around, noticed that I had built my house on top of one of the hills (on purpose by the way, to avoid the monsters) and thought, wouldn't it be cool to have a secret passage from the beach all the way up into my house?

And so taking another 20 or so minutes, I did just that. It was quite difficult honestly, trying to figure out where and when to dig up to get into my house, and I missed my target a few times. Along the way I found giant caverns that I would mine into, which really made me smile, knowing that the caverns really expand upon the game. Anyways, once I created the passage into my house, and made sure that the entrance was pretty well hidden (even though I'm the only one playing this single-player world), I became...anxious. I wouldn't say bored, because that was not even close to settling in yet. But I wasn't sure what to do yet. So I looked down at the ground, and even started jumping around. That's when a thought came to my mind. My character can jump about the height of one block, so is it possible to create a block underneath me when I jump? It worked, and this opened up many possibilities. First, how high can I get in the world? Up and up I went, til I finally reached the roof of the world, which was pretty high, even if not as high as the newer versions. The next project was obvious, to build another house, bigger, and suspended in the sky.

This project took me about two hours honestly, and if I knew some of the tricks that I know now, I could have halved or maybe quartered the time it took me. Either way, it was a neat brick house, 6 x 6 blocks inside, with a glass roof for light, and a glass floor to see what is way below me. But the house was enclosed, so I decided to make a 2 x 2 block door, facing the water for a nice view. Unfortunately, my house was suspended in the sky besides the one last column I used to get up here the last time, and I needed a grand entrance. I finally decided that the coolest thing I could do would be to build a staircase from the entrance of my first house all the way up to the entrance of the new one.

This turned out to be quite a pain, as the bricks I used were unique, being only half the size of every other brick, and were much more difficult to build with. Using some ingenuity, I turned what looked like a path I needed to hop up to get to the new house, into a well-designed staircase, which did not need any jumping to get up. So I ran out to the beach, took the secret path through the mountain, up into my old house, out the front door, up the winding staircase and into my new house. I was already having quite a bit of fun when I peered down through my glass floor and thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to have a drop from the floor of this house all the way down into the ground, to the lowest level possible?!

And so I got to work, digging a 2 x 2 block hole directly below the 2 x 2 hole in the glass floor, all the way down to the "core" of the world. Oh, I should probably mention that if you dig deep enough, you come across lava. At this point I was having fun, but what's the point of wasting a couple hours on something that I can't come back to? So I opened the menu, and clicked save. Unfortunately a sign came up saying that you can only save in the retail version. However, behind it lie the save button, and I figured I'd try anyways. It brought me to my C: drive, so it worked and I saved the game. Now I didn't know if I could load the game again, being in a browser, but I was still having fun so who cares. Back to the hole, it went pretty deep. When I got to the bottom, I put glass blocks directly on top of the lava, so when you drop you look like you're going to fall straight into the lava, but stop just before it. You can't die or get hurt in this version, but it still looked cool.

But then the question arose, how do I get out without just building blocks beneath me? That's kind of tacky and boring, so I started to mine my way through the ground, to make a path that would eventually lead to the surface. After a few minutes of mining, an idea came to me. What if I were to encase the whole path through the ground with glass cubes all the way to the surface exit, and then went out to the ocean and mined my way into the caverns around my glass path, flooding it, so I could walk through the dry path with water around me. I should mention I learned I could do this a little earlier, when I was digging through the ground and mined into the ocean, completely flooding the caverns I was in with water.

I spent a good deal of time having fun twisting and turning the path and surrounding it with glass cubes, and it looked pretty neat. I even went back to the surface and encased the entire drop from my house to the ground in glass cubes. That way, when I drop to the ground, I can't move in midair to miss the hole. I went back to the path and continued to mine and put glass up. Eventually I got tired and just wanted to get out, and couldn't for the life of me hit the surface. I was much deeper that I had thought. Up I went, right towards the surface when GLUB GLUB GLUB... I hit the ocean. Oh I was so frustrated, because I had formed the direct opposite of what I wanted. I flooded my glass tube with water, and the outside was dry. I went back down to look around, and noticed I missed putting up just one glass block on my path, so all the water was outside the tube as well. Fail. I went back up to check where I came out in the water, which was just a clear ocean view, and turned around to find an island directly behind me. I counted the blocks behind and around me, and realized that if I just started heading upwards 4 blocks earlier, I would have came out on the tiny island, and not the ocean. Epic Fail.

But all was not lost. I figured that if my cavern was filled with water, what if I plugged up the exit to the ocean, went back down, and mined deeper in parts to find more caverns, therefore flooding the water from my caverns and path to those caverns. I saw this done in videos, so I figured it had to be possible. After many attempts, it wasn't working, and resolved to having failed. Luckily, I learned what I did wrong, and how to prevent this from happening again. I really wanted to continue playing, but it was really late and I needed sleep before work. So I turned off the game, and to no surprise, I had one last idea. I got back into the game, and right from the start it created a completely new world, which is what it's supposed to do. But I went into the menu screen, to load, and tried to load my game. I mean it was worth a shot. After a few seconds, I was back in my flooded tube. Awesome. This meant I could spend quite a bit of time on the free game on giant creations, if I so choose.

I know what you're thinking, "Oh geez, here comes the Lord of the Rings creations." Sorry, but that's already been done with Isengard. "Well here comes Zelda creations." You mean something like the world of A Link to the Past? Well maybe I'll focus on other fantasies, and actual objects rather than places. How about a Star Destroyer...or the ship from Serenity...or the whole Earth! Oh c'mon, is there anything I like that hasn't been created in Minecraft yet?! Anyways, I think I may have thought of one thing, so at least I'll have something to focus on if I play the game. Now if only I had the minecart like in the newer version, and I could build a roller coaster.