It was Minecraft

They say there was a man. A man who, while wearing crocs with socks and sitting in a bean bag chair, being as casual as possible, came up with the idea for the most casual game to ever exist. That man was Markis ‘Notch’ Persson; the game was Minecraft.

It’s hard to believe such a staple in game history is now over four years old. It was May 2009 when Minecraft showed its face to the world in Alpha. It wasn’t until November in 2011 when Minecraft hit full release, but by then it was too late. Minecraft sold almost two million copies before even being released, grossing an estimated USD$33. The company was founded, and Mojang, having never spent a cent on advertising, continued to build on the game it made a fortune from. With Minecraft 1.7 just around the corner, the tide of casualness is slowly subsiding with updates becoming less and less frequent. But then the community stepped in.

In my opinion, Minecraft is possibly one of the worst-built games of all time. Having been programmed with Java, one of the most flexible, but one of the most limited platforms, Minecraft could have been so much easier to work with. There is only so much Java can do, and they have pushed the platform so much it’s surprising the whole game hasn’t imploded. The main issue I have with java, is its poor allocation of RAM and the constant need to supply (and instruct) it to use the memory you have. Such a memory intensive game like Minecraft suffers greatly from the limits of Java. Not that the game is worse off for it, but I’m sure the developers are.

Then came the mods. With Java being such an accessible platform, the community were able to push Minecraft above and beyond breaking point. Want high-resolution textures? New mobs or how about extra vegetables? What about series of pocket dimentions or would you like to visit the moon? Sure, just wait an extra ten minutes to load the game and you’ve got it all! The community support is great, and now that Minecraft isn’t updating every few months and breaking every mod in existence each time it does so, the real potential of the community is available.

Now you can have whatever you want in Minecraft. You can participate in the Hunger Games, travel the ages of time or survive a zombie apocalypse. Download one of the stand-alone platforms to ensure uninterrupted and functional mod support such as one of the big staples: Tekkit and Technic.

Do I blame Minecraft for a surge in the number of casual games and copycats? Sure, but it would have happened one way or the other and the world isn’t worse off. In fact, the rise of more accessible games has sparked an increase in the number of people who play games. The people who can’t just sit down and play a high intensity FPS or RPG can easily jump on the computer or their mobile device and play a quick game of something quick and casual. It’s opening the industry to a wider market, and that will only help grow the developers.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with the moon.

Plenty of Time To Explain

Newgrounds is the birthplace of many an internet oddity, one such oddity made it's way to Kickstarter, raised over $25,000 and made a full fledged game of itself. That game was: No Time To Explain.

The game starts with your future self telling you that there is no time to explain before being promptly snatched away by a giant UFO crab or something, I don't know. It takes a page out of the insane book and slaps it on the classic jumping puzzle. Using the future blasting device that is both laser gun and rocket boosting device, you use it to navigate an increasingly difficult array of pits, spikes and the usual array of slightly-hazardous-to-you-health obstacles.

The great thing about this game is the pace, snappy music and instant respawning from the last place you touched safe ground keeps the game running smoothly, at least till you get to a boss. There are several boss levels, each one increasingly more difficult. They start out easy enough, even though most will one-hit-kill you, you instantly respawn and don't have to start the level again, so there is no challenge on those ones; then there are the bosses that use certain attacks that set you on fire. Fire is a different danger all together. If you are set on fire and don't jump in water quickly, you burn to death and must restart the room completely. With several later bosses using this power, and the glitchy and uninspired fights that take place, the game goes from face-paced platformer to annoying and frustrating grind.

Aside from the annoying boss fights, the rest of the game is fantastic. The randomness is thrilling and the variety of challenges keeps it fresh. One second, you're a failed clone sticking to walls and sling-shotting wall to wall and the next you're flying through the air on a jetpack blasting at dinosaurs.

It's short, so you won't go nuts playing this game, but I found the overall comic nature to slightly outweigh the letdowns of glitches and the boss fights. Oh, and on of my favorite quote of all times.

"My ribs are in my eyes! THEY'RE IN MY EYES!"

IWBTF!!! Why do you do this to me?

I am raging. I re-found IWBTF which stands for I Wanna Be The Fangame. I really don't wanna play The Guy (yes that's his name) on his quest through %*#^&@^ HELL!

Seriously, this game is so bloody rediculous. I found myself in the original PokemonTM house and you need to go down the stairs, BUT WAIT! Try to touch the stairs and YOU WILL DIE. If you shoot the stairs, THEY GET SUPER F-ING BIG AND SLIDE ACROSS THE SCREEN! If you don't stand in a specific place within 0.8 seconds YOU WILL DIE! Then, when I got past that bit and went downstairs, a flying stool jumps out and YOU WILL DIE! So you jump onto the tv and jump over the trigger spot and fall down where the bookcase turns and falls down above you and YOU WILL DIE! This continues when you get outside, where you get massive giant Pokemon fly across the screen randomly. If they touch you, YOU WILL DIE! You'll see this screen a lot:

Do you see a trend yet? And there are over 100 rooms apparently. And you know what's worse? It the kind of game that says to you, "You can beat me, come on. HAHAHA I KILLED YOU. But no, seriously, you can beat me, you know how to, just do it. Oh, you got past that bit, see! You can do it, now for the next bit, HAHAHA I KILLED YOU AGAIN! You didn't expect that random flying object did you?"

You can beat this game, it is so simple that you know you can. But it's not going to make it easy for you. And when you fail, you know it's all your fault for not being good enough.

See, making you rage will do one of two things, rage to be better, or the other...quit.

The Thing

Watched the remake/prequel of the 1982 move of the same name; The Thing is a pretty gorey movie but aims for the more horrific scenes to scare you, rather than the usual jump-out-at-you scares. I have already watched the $15 million, 1982 version made by John Carpenter, so I had a decent idea of what events needed to be in the prequel and how it needed to end.

Unlike the original, all the monsters were clearly done with CG, which was disappointing compared to the horrific puppetry from the Carpenter version. Although computer generated graphics are getting extremely realistic these days, there is just that sense that it's not real when thay create something like this. The reason why the Carpenter one is scarier is because they were real puppets and props and you could tell.

So I won't spoil too much, but overall, the movie was a decent stab in the right direction, but it suffered like the Carpenter version, focusing so much on the gore and horror that it built up little plot investment in the characters since there are quite a few of them and many don't last long. In some scenes it felt that when a character died or became a 'Thing' I had no idea what that person actually did.

In all, it tried to be as good at the Carpenter original, but it followed in his footsteps far too much and suffered just as much as the original did. It's simply a case of, it's nothing new at all really. If you're gonna watch this movie, you're going to watch it for the gore. I did have fun watching it, but I doubt I'd watch it again as most of the scares are one-time affairs.

It scrapes in at just 3 out of 5 stars for me.

I also found this remake of the 1982 'The Thing', happily portrayed by Pingu the Penguin. Enjoy!