PixlBit

Thought I was going to play Gears of War Ultimate Edition today, but Minecraft sunk it's teeth into me again, leaving me with a kind of sickness. 

I jumped in Mark’s Minecraft survival game on XBO where he had accumulated a lot of resources. I made myself a suit of leather armor and dyed it red. Then I got myself a horse. All I needed was some iron horse armor so I could say I was riding my iron horse (Motorhead song title - I’m kinda of into motorcycles right now). I realized I could repair and enchant leather armor, so I did that. The suit held up pretty well as Mark and I took on the Ender Dragon and killed it. Then we tried to figure out how to respawn the thing. We figured out how to pick up the dragon’s egg but then we couldn’t figure out how to hatch it. Seems the rules for Minecraft XBO Edition are different than the PC version because there are lots of easy ways to do it on PC but not on XBO. Then I lost connection to Mark’s game and couldn’t get back on. I don’t know what was going on but I gave up after several attempts and built my own world instead.

Started Monday playing Halo: Master Chief Collection. Mark and I are playing the cross game playlist that includes all four games. We were in the last parts of Halo 2 when the power went out in the neighborhood due to a storm. I'm feeling like 343 has tweaked gameplay in Halo 2 a little bit. It feels less like a run-and-gun power trip and more like a strategic cover based shooter. Weapons are less powerful and enemies are a little tougher. I used to melee enemies with one mjolnir powered fist, but now it takes several hits. It just doesn't feel right. A grunt should go down with one punch from a Spartan. Anyway, I'm feeling like Halo has gotten the COD treatment across all the games now and it disappoints me. This is not a realistic game. You're supposed to be a super soldier not just another vulnerable combatant. That being said, it was still fun, just not as fun as it could have been. After the power outage, Mark and I played Minecraft instead. 

Not much to mention so far this weekend of mine.

Let me tell you the story of the villager and the emeralds. A villager was minding his own business: he traded with strangers, mumbled nonsense, opened and closed doors for no reason, and huddled with ten others in a house to avoid the terrors of the night. Then, one day, he found himself the last villager of the village. The zombies had finally taken them all. Then, he was taken as well.

More Minecraft this weekend. I ticked off two more achievements with six to go. Mark's got more left to do but he'll catch up really quickly when he wants to. Right now he's winning the diamond hunt. He digs down to bedrock and clears out gigantic areas. I have a different method. I dig channels about every three blocks. That way I don't have to mine out every single block. It can get tedious doing every block. Now that we both have diamond pickaxes enchanted to the max, though, it's a lot faster. Not only that, but we discovered that the enchantment "fortune" on a pickaxe increases the yield for certain mineral types. The most important one is diamond, of course. Use a Fortune II or Fortune III enhanced pickaxe on a block of diamond and you'll usually get twice the normal amount of gems from it. In this way we've been able to get plenty of diamonds for equipment. Mark has gotten so many that he made a full suit of diamond armor. I'm close to that, but not really. 

Mark and I are still chasing achievements for the XBO version of Minecraft. This day was like a mini lifetime.

It always seems like I die in Minecraft for the dumbest reasons. It's usually not dying at the hands of a ghast or wither skeleton but just backing into a pool of lava, falling off a cliff, or drowning. My deaths are a long list of accidents. The Three Stooges theme should be playing at all times. Aside from those recurring and very annoying moments, I did a lot of things in this game over the last few days.

I don't consider myself overly nostalgic for the time of my growing up but there are still lots of memories of those times in my head that are unavoidable. It always seems like pop culture effects one most strongly in the high school years. My high school years were firmly in the 80s, 81-86 to be exact. So when a book comes along that is chock full of 80s pop culture references, and I mean stuffed to the gills with them, I can't help but be pulled in even without a strong sense of nostalgia. 

Now that I had my original Xbox working, I was able to do what I wanted to do today: use all three Xbox systems. I played Capcom Classics Collection vol. 1 on Xbox, Peggle and King's Quest: Chapter 1 on X360, and Minecraft on XBO. Here's how it all went.