742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, Minecraftia

Block with Greatness

My first night in Minecraft was spent by the soft, warm light of cooking sand, squatted in a hand-forged hole in the side of a hill. Over the coming days, this hill was slowly leveled and in its place sprung up a home of most stirdy brick. Already, life was quite comfortable, and I knew the next thing I wanted to do was start a large building project, as was the style at the time.

Lollipop Lane

I chose this subject because, it being a symbol of something I have great passion for, I figured I'd be less likely to become disenchanted and abandon the build. Plus, I could do a bunch of fun quotes and stuff.

"That should do it."

A perfectly cromulent quote.

The first step was to decide on a place to set up and turn it into a large area of flat grassland, and what better construction site than my own front yard? As I set to work steam rolling the neighbourhood, I found I suddenly had a lot of mind-numbingly repetitive time to contemplate the future. I figured I was gonna need a lot of wool down the line to dye pink, so I started making a habit of punching every white sheep I could see, as well as brown and light gray ones for the roof and driveway, respectively.

A Car Hole

Most of the land I wanted to clear out consisted of hills that didn't stray too far from sea level, but there was one mountain, which I sliced down the middle, completely mining away one half, and making a huge natural staircase from the other.

"My doctor says I have the wrists of an 80-year-old."

Soon enough it was time to place blocks. Taking in my hand more stacks of white wool than was probably ever necessary, I set to work, using the screencap included above as a reference image.

"Lisa's window is the next one."

Naturally, a lot of time at this point was spent standing around thinking, plotting and planning, placing blocks and taking them back again, seeing how things looked and staring at empty spaces to try and figure out the best possible design. This was definitely the most fun part of the project, by far the most involving, and is pretty much what makes any Minecraft build worth doing. Hence the Creative mode eventually making it into the full game.

"That's okay, the box is empty."

Once it was all done up in white wool the house looked a lot like one of Doc Brown's unpainted models. The only difference being that I had all the time in the world to paint it. And painting it meant lots of roses. Also bonemeal.

Bare Backside

At first I was going exploring for roses and using bonemeal to make pink dye, but before long, version 1.6 came about and suddenly I could grow my own roses where ever I pleased. And with that, Skeleton hunting by night became a long-term quest, while my days were spend scrounging up some clay, frying up some cactus, and keeping on the lookout for those brown and gray sheep.

"Remember, you can always find east by staring directly at the sun."

Once I got some pink dye going, I started taking out the white wall blocks and pinking them up, but then I realised I could get up to 4 wool from a single piece of dye by colouring and shearing sheep. So most of the white wool I'd already gathered ended up going in the incinerator.

The incinerator (on the right).

Eventually the only thing left to colour was the roof. By this point about 1% of the job had been done using brown sheep, but I was going to need a better method. Unfortunately, there wasn't one around, so I decided to put the build on hold until a more efficient method of gathering brown wool was implemented, whether it be wool regrowth on sheep, animal breeding, or a way of farming cocoa beans.

"We need some more vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice-cream!"

A little while later, 1.9 prerelease 2 became available, and as it turned out, sheep breeding was the way of the future. However, it turned out all sheep were born with white wool, so it was back to waiting, for the moment. It wasn't until the sixth 1.9 prerelease that I was delighted to hear that baby sheep had been updated to inherit the wool colour of one of their parents.

The Simpsons' House in Minecraft

I immediately started trying to round up a pair of brown sheep, which didn't take as long as I was expecting. Miraculously enough, two spawned together around the back of the Simpsons house. Since I was still in 1.8, I couldn't use wheat to lead them around, so I quickly captured them in a ring of fence and then, with some difficulty (those passive mobs are wily buggers), funnelled them into a pen closer to my home.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

And so MineCon went down in Vegas, and at last the official release of Minecraft was here. I started a wheat farm and set to work breeding up a storm. The end was in sight now, but I soon learned that wheat grows very slowly. And here I thought my days of Skeleton hunting were over.

And that's the end of the story.

"Just don't look! Just don't look!"

Always the Last to Know (About My Own Affair)

More than the frustrating car chases, the poorly thought out interrogation system, or having to comb every inch of the environment waiting for the music to chime, the thing that annoyed me the most about L.A. Noire was the fact that Cole Phelps cheated on his wife and didn't tell me.
 I strongly believe that video games have the greatest potential for storytelling of any medium today, except, perhaps, for novels. With settings and themes as varied as any other medium, and little to no limits or guidelines on things like length, stories in video games can range from the latest wartime FPS to the most twisty-turny, convoluted JRPG you can think of.
 Now here's the part that's relevant to L.A. Noire. If you're going to tell your story through a video game, you need to take into account a very unique narrative element that you won't find anywhere else: the fact that you are the protagonist. From Pac-Man to Skyrim, video games are about assuming a role. Whether the main character is an empty shell for the player to occupy (Gordon Freeman) or a fleshed out individual with their own personality (Niko Bellic), the protagonist is always embodied by the player. It is for this reason that you ought to be privy to all your character's actions from the time the game starts onwards. Unfortunately, Team Bondi seems to disagree.
 In any other medium, the main character is their own entity separate from the audience. They are free to partake in events offscreen that may be revealed at a later time, usually lending to a twist. But since a video game actively places you in the lead role, withholding information that your character learns after the game starts is like keeping a secret from yourself.
 Even if a game's story is extremely linear and I have no control over my character's plot-related actions, I still want to be there when they happen, and to know why I'm doing them. I have no idea why Cole had an affair. Had he fallen out of love with his wife? Did he find some reason not to trust her any longer? Or was he simply smitten by Elsa? Maybe if they had shown that Cole and his wife were becoming distant or something, I would have at least understood where he was coming from.
 The other thing that I wanted answered was how long the affair had been going on for. Did it only happen once? Or had it been going on since that first time Cole visited the jazz club by himself? This leads me to the cutscene where Cole shows up at Elsa's home. I suppose it was designed as a hint at what was going on, but I certainly didn't think it would go where it did, especially since there had been no indication that Cole would ever want to betray his wife.
 Basically, as I've said, the last thing I want to see in a video game's story is ambiguity or omission of my player character's actions. I think this story would have worked better if it were anything but a video game.

Mais Oui? Mais Oui!

23. The Internet Adventure #3

 Two Guys Walk Into the In'ernet...

Episode 3: Lost in Translation

The first site on my Favourites list, and I apparently wasted no time in expressing my fondness for Tim Buckley's work, with no hint of irony or a joke of any kind. Perhaps not the best tactic for keeping people reading, but I still wouldn't take it out because, regardless of what some people think of Tim personally, his work has been a pretty huge inspiration to me, second only to that of Matt Groening.
 The other thing in this strip that I'm not 100% sure was a good idea is the curious Doorway of Unexplainedness, which pops up out of nowhere for no reason and somehow acts as a portal between webpages. The original plan was for Red & Yellow to literally go into my Favourites list as a means of hopping between websites, but I guess I decided it would be too much fuss to put together, so I came up with these Lanes Between-esque corridors which Red & Yellow immediately accept and trust without question. Then I was going to actually show them walking through these corridors, with various choice webpages projected on the walls, which I also decided would be too much hassle to put together, and scrapped it. In later episodes, the characters tend to travel via actual links anyway.
 And then, I was pretty much burnt out on the whole idea. With no direction and few ideas, there was pretty much no motivation to spend time working on it. I realised I needed a story. Of course, that meant writing one. Throughout that year I did come up with a few ideas, such as having a character from some famous web series play the villain (Dr Octogonapus, for example), having him kind of lurk in the shadows while Red & Yellow visit a TV Tropes page about villains, and emerging into view after they leave.
 Another idea was to have Red & Yellow find a time machine (also on TV Tropes) to go back in time where I could use screenshots from the Wayback Machine to have them explore the internet's roots. But with no actual conflict or goal to drive any of the characters' actions, I couldn't make a plot come together, and there was nothing to really get me excited about putting this beast back into motion. Until one night, sitting on the floor with my new puppy...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: The Movie: The Game

"Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me." - Amy Wong

You can't get fooled again. EA only has one movie tie-in game left, and Deathly Hallows Part 1 is not a promising lead-in to say the least.
 The game starts with an awkward over-the-shoulder-on-rails-shooter section that has you knocking Death Eaters out of the sky from Hagrid's sidecar. Once you've arrived at the Burrow, the wedding is on and you can walk around and talk to various guests including Ron and Hermione who like to do a weird kind of backwards run thing if you get too close to them. At this point the game gives you a spell called four-points that is used to show you which way to go. Using this mechanic over something like a map seems very lazy, and the spell never seems to want to co-operate anyway. If you are facing in completely the wrong direction when firing the spell, it can be difficult to spot or even realise that it worked at all, which it sometimes straight up doesn't.
 During the attack on the wedding, the game's main focus gameplay-wise kicks in: third-person cover shooting, which consists mostly of standing around and mashing R2 while locked on to enemies. Cover is next to useless, the only time you'll need it is the few instances when there are too many enemies on screen at once. Otherwise, firing Stupefy at everyone and their Protego charms (they only prolong the inevitable) until they fall down will get you through. There are even points when you can simply run past enemies, the rather sad AI is powerless to stop you.
 After the wedding escape, the trio are hiding behind a building and Ron decides that a random person standing at the other end of the street might be a Death Eater, so Harry is tasked with making his way over there to check them out. Putting on Harry's cloak puts you in a first person perspective, which completely kills your peripheral vision, making it all the more difficult to dodge unsuspecting muggles who like to bump into you and make you start again. After navigating around people, poles and metal fence things, as well as standing still to wait for your stealth bar to recharge, Harry looks at the person for a second and somehow deduces that they are just another muggle. Your reward for reporting this shocking news back to Ron is having to repeat the task twice more, with Ron's suspects being further away each time. Turns out none of them are Death Eaters.
 After a few average (at least in comparison to the rest of the game) levels in Grimmauld Place and the Ministry, the trio find themselves tailing Dean Thomas and Griphook through the countryside. As if this shit wasn't tedious enough already, this portion of the game has you traversing Whomping Willows, Cornish Pixies, Snatchers and all manner of other bothers just to catch another snippet of Dean and Griphook's conversation. I'm reminded of a line from the PS1 Emperor's New Groove game, when they are tied to a log in a river: "This scene was much shorter in the film." And how.
 At several points in these wilderness sequences you come upon a boulder blocking your path. The solution is simply to blast it away with a spell. There's no challenge, it's impossible to fail at, and it serves no purpose other than to make an already tedious game that little bit longer.
 Speaking of making things long and tedious, there are a few times throughout the game when the story progression is interrupted by completely disjointed and unskippable side missions that all consist of some form of "Rescue muggle-borns and kill Snatchers/Death Eaters." One of these is set in the Ministry directly after the trio's daring escape and arrival in the woods. One throws unkillable Inferi at you to contend with while carrying out the mission. Another plops Harry in the middle of a deep cavern and tasks you to "Escape the dragon's lair!" with zero explanation for how or why he is there. There aren't even any muggle-borns to save, you just run past the AI impaired Snatchers and fire four-corners until you reach the exit. Not even the dragon can do enough damage to kill you before you've run right past it (the same goes for Whomping Willows).
 Once Harry and Hermione figure out how to destroy Horcruxes, Ron has a tantrum and fucks off. Anyone who has ever watched the Lion King and then gone and played the Pride Lands world from Kingdom Hearts II will know just how much changing a scene's music and lighting and such in the transition from film to cutscene can completely kill the atmosphere. Ron leaving and pretty much all of the story points in the game have this problem. Honestly, I don't understand why developers don't just use actual clips from films as cutscenes any more.
 So Harry and Hermione go on their merry way, sneaking muggle-borns out of Godric's Hollow and following creepy old ladies into creepy old houses. Eventually Ron comes back and it's time to destroy the locket. This is one of the most ridiculously frustrating boss battles I think I've ever seen. As the fight begins, the game informs you that "Voldemort's soul fragments are vulnerable to spells," subtly dropping the hint that you have to shoot the dozen or so black snakes that are in front of the locket. Only the problem is the locket has started lobbing smoke grenades at you in large numbers, which seem to take about 90% of your health in one go if you get too close. So already, standing still for even a second is out of the question. The second problem I had was that it was only after several failures that I realised you could run 360 degrees around the locket, which made dodging the grenades a little easier.
 Once you manage to off a few of the snakes, you start getting chased down by venom-spitting spiders, which would be manageable if you didn't need to run around dodging bombs and shooting snakes at the same time. The locket also switches to a squiggly laser beam attack that is much harder to evade. To compound the frustration, for some reason, every time I died and the level restarted I had a completely useless spell selected automatically, which became very annoying every time I forgot and tried to get a quick shot off on the snakes right off the bat. In the end the only way I could find to beat this boss was to keep a fair distance behind the locket and snipe at the snakes whenever possible.
 The next stop on the Plot Train is the Lovegood residence, which is both preceded and followed by a lengthy galavant through the countryside while defeating/running past enemies. The attack on Xeno's home is a survival level in which you have to defeat an endless wave of Snatchers and Death Eaters and not get killed until the game decides it's time to move on.
 The last level in the woods sees the trio ambushed by Scabior and a whole shitload of Snatchers. The game's helpful advice this time is "Survive the Snatcher attack." Now, to me, that means "This is another survival level so just sit tight and kill these dudes a bunch," which would make the most sense since the trio don't actually win against the Snatchers. But after several minutes of solid battle with constantly respawning enemies and leveling up about three times I started to wonder why it was taking so long and figured I'd better try casting four-points. Sure enough, there is a path you're supposed to take to reach the end of the level. I don't know if it's actually required to beat even a single Snatcher.
 The final battle in Malfoy Manor really is another survival level that has Bellatrix, Narcissa and Draco standing around shooting spells in your general direction while you run around like a headless chicken until the game has had its fill and kills Dobby.

Big Willy is People!

9. Look at My Big Willy

This strip is based on, inspired by, and ripped from Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed. All the dialogue except the last sentence is from the game's opening cutscene, as can be seen in this charming walkthrough.
 The artwork was also made with the help of that video. I took a screenshot at around 2:40 into the video (just after the aforementioned dialogue) and traced the line work over it in Paint. The result is a really great looking and accurately proportioned Crypto and Pox.

Once I Caught a Fish Alive

3. I'm Spider-Man

My first attempt at a Masterpiece. The idea behind this one was little more than the original joke: taking dodgy looking MS Paint doodles and calling them works of pure genius. To that end, this was drawn very quickly and roughly with a mouse (I look forward to one day buying a drawing tablet). Spider-Man was chosen as the subject matter for little reason other than that I love Spider-Man.

4. Boxes

This is something I used to make for no reason when I was bored. Ironically (or not, I really have no idea), this is probably the least appealing version I ever produced. There's a lot of white on top of white, for example. I probably would have fixed that if I were making this today.

5. Ethan MacManus vs Purple Alien Thing

This one is the only result of one of my early ideas for increasing the number of Masterpieces in a hurry. Basically, I was going to draw all kinds of different characters in this scene with Ethan (of Ctrl+Alt+Del). Fortunately, better ideas came along before this really went anywhere.