Minecraft + Physics = Win?

Ever thought what Minecraft would be with real physics? Not the lame "sand falls down", but the real deal? Well here you go!

Preview : Portal 2

2011 seems to be a good year for new games. Personally I am looking forward to two games specifically, Mass Effect 3 and Portal 2. I will be discussing Portal 2 in this article and talk about some great mods for Portal 1 to kill the time until Portal 2 arrives.

Apart from the graphic update Portal receives, it will also feature new gameplay elements to make the puzzles even harder. Not to forget a multiplayer function, can't get better working with 4 portals to solve the most complicated puzzles with a friend right?

So what are these new gameplay elements exactly? Lets take a closer look :

1. Excursion Funnels - The Excursion Funnels acts like a beam that can manipulate gravity, you will be able to travel through them and use portals to connect the beam all around the room. You can also move objects through the beams, making the beam act like an elevator.

2. Aerial Faith Plates - The Aerial Faith Plates act as some sort of trampoline. You stand on them and get shot away, making a big leap in the process. Some of them are chained together which makes travelling through the room a lot easier! Again, objects can be shot by using the Aerial Faith Plates.

3. Thermal Discouragement Beam - The Thermal Discouragement Beam acts like a laser, a very deadly laser. By shooting portals or by moving boxes through it you can make this laser move whatever way you want. The goal seems to be to lead the laser to an end destination to activate a door/switch. It is almost the same as the energy balls from portal 1 except the laser is active the whole path it follows. Funny little addition : you can burn through turrets killing them in the process!

4. Pneumatic Diversity Vent - Definitely my favourite. The Pneumatic Diversity Vent is some sort of tube that sucks everything in it. Placing a portal at its entrance is guaranteed sucking power at your other portal. A new way of killing those poor little turrets is born. Who wants to flip them over if you can suck them into a vacuum tube?

Repulsion Gel in action

5. Repulsion Gel - Repulsion Gel acts like an automated jumper that can launch you to amazing heights. The gel will be released from a tube and falls to the ground. You can place a portal just below the tube and move the gel to any place you please. This way you can reach higher platforms with every jump without using the fling tactic ( Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out )

6. Propulsion Gel - Propulsion Gel acts like an accelerator, if you stand on it you start moving faster and faster until you reach velocity, this way you can get to insane speeds by just moving horizontally. The gel will be released from a tube just like Repulsion Gel.

I made you guys a playlist on Youtube so you can see all these new mechanics in real time, credits to the creators of those vids. CLICK

The best new feature in my opinion is the multiplayer function, I just can't explain how awesome it would be to fix all the puzzles with a friend, having an extra pair of portals at your disposal will surely help. I am expecting some real hard puzzles, since the possibilities with 4 portals are endless, and with all these new mechanics I think it will be the best multiplayer experience I had since I started gaming. CLICK for mutliplayer video.

Release date USA - April 18
Release date Australia - April 19
Release date Europe - April 21


Since we need to wait another month until we can play this masterpiece by Valve I will recommend you two mods I found for portal 1. Both of them are genius, funny and can be pretty tricky.

The first mod I recommend is called Portal Prelude ( CLICK ). In this mod you play as a test subject at the time humans were still monitoring all the tests. At the time you are progressing through the chambers you will hear that a new AI is going to take over the testing soon, guess who? Drama guaranteed!

The second mod I recommend is called Portal Pro (  CLICK ). This mod is all about placing intelligent portals, and not so much about making hard fling manoeuvres. This is where you really need your brain to survive the testing labs! I played a lot of custom levels/mods but I have to admit this is simply the best based on the puzzles, some real outside-the-box thinking is required.

Review : Minecraft

Ooooh Minecraft... I spend countless hours playing this game and I must say I love it. It is definitely not the first time I spend a lot of hours on a game, but the fact that Minecraft doesn't really have a goal to it makes it different from your normal game. If you haven't heard of Minecraft in the last months you have been living in a cave ( looking for diamonds? ).


If you are that one person that hasn't heard of Minecraft before here is a small explanation of what Minecraft is all about. You are all alone, you wake up on an island where no other human beings are present, it is you versus nature, you must survive all by yourself, you must survive all the horrors that come out at night, you are the only one that is able to shape the world around you, you must manipulate your surroundings so that you come out on top of the food-chain.

So how do you survive? By chopping down trees you gain wood, which you use to craft tools like an axe, a pickaxe, a hoe, a shovel and a sword. With the tools you acquired you can start digging down in the search of caves, in which you can find coal, iron, gold and even diamond. Maybe you enjoy shovelling the beach away so you get yourself some sand. Maybe you are hungry and you start yourself a farm, finding seeds with the hoe and harvest your own wheat. At night all the monsters come out and you want to be safe. With all the materials you collected during the day you can build yourself a nice little house to keep the monsters outside.

As you can see on the screenshot the world of Minecraft is very "blocky". Almost any block can be removed and can be replaced at a different spot, or you can change the block into another one, by heating it. For example you can make bricks out of clay, and dye wool in all sort of colours. The possibilities are endless.
Being successful in Minecraft is really hard to define, one could say making great complicated structures is an amazing feat, while other prefer to make small cosy houses.

As you know I rate the other way around, I do not focus on the good points but on the bad points of a game ( Minecraft is far from finished and still in beta so +5% ) so here is what I don't like about Minecraft. Minecraft is different than your usual game, so it can be hard for new players to understand what is going on. Suddenly you are in this world with no clear idea why you are there, and if you don't hurry up you are surrounded by monsters and you will die a painful death. You may walk around and get yourself some materials but without any pre-knowledge of the game you will never ever be able to make yourself the most basic tools needed to enjoy the game to the fullest. Making tools by -1. Chopping down a tree 2. Convert tree chunks into wood 3. Placing wood in a square in your inventory 4. Make sticks and put them in a shape of a pickaxe on your workbench- is just not the first thing you would think of, therefore it can be really hard for a new player to understand what to do, this game needs some sort of tutorial to help new players. ( -4% )
I understand one of the praised features of the game is the unknown, and that figuring out stuff yourself is one of the key concepts, still I feel like coming up yourself on how to make tools is just a little bit to hard for the average person.

How exciting building is, there will be a point where you feel bored and don't know what to do anymore. There is no interesting story that keeps you with the game, when you feel like you have done everything, then your done. ( -1% ) Some people might be bored pretty quick and give up on the game after building their third house, or maybe some people just don't know that there is so much more to do than what they figured out themselves ( again a tutorial would be nice, maybe something basic for new players and something more advanced like redstone wiring for people who are ready for a new challenge ). The lack of content and "your inspiration is the limit" is the biggest flaw of this game. Luckily Minecraft has an awesome community with amazing builders which can inspire you to make the most amazing buildings/mobtraps/cactusfarms etc, stuff you would probably not come up with yourself, looking up on the internet how to keep your interest in the game isn't a good point. ( -4% ) Just search on Youtube for Minecraft related videos, maybe check out some Lets Play's, or maybe even my own waterslide video!

You won't hear me complaining about the 'crappy' graphics of the game, I think the blocky world is THE Minecraft trademark and won't be forgotten for a very long time. Minecraft has some interesting music which really adds to the feeling of being all alone on some random island. Multiplayer is really fun but sadly very bugged from time to time ( -1%) ( I know, still in beta, already gave you plus 5 percent for that! ), which can really kill the fun.



Personal playtime : A long time, probably more than 40 hours

Final score : 95%

Stay tuned for more Minecraft related tutorials!



Next up : After certain requests on Youtube, written Arcane Mage Guide

Review : Dragon Age II

The latest instalment in the Dragon Age series is Dragon Age II, Bioware ( those guys from Mass Effect! ) promised us a great RPG but did they deliver?



The game starts with a small tutorial explaining how certain skills work and how to play a basic combat situation. Being way overpowered compared to my enemies gave me that great feeling of being superior, being a strong important character in the tale that Dragon Age II tells us, a feeling that didn't return in the rest of the game. ( ok ok, I know this is a tutorial and you are supposed to be way better than your enemies so you don't actually die and can learn how to play ).

After completing the tutorial we see Varric talking to a woman, telling her how things went a long time ago, making the whole game a flashback, giving me the feeling the future is already set, that I couldn't control what was going on around me and so losing the whole point of a RPG where I am supposed to make decisions that affect my surroundings. Since I had only one playthrough  I assume the story that Varric tells will vary on your own decisions, still I don't really like the idea of playing in a flashback while I am the one that should create the story. ( -1% )

Being a bit disappointed I moved on to the character creation screen, which some may praise, I don't. Being a male myself I tried to make a male character that looked a bit like me, IMPOSSIBLE, whatever I tried I never got him to look like me but instead making him look like an absolute wimp. ( I hear you thinking that I probably look like a wimp in real life, oh well... ). Then I tried to edit some of the other presets, surprisingly you can't even edit all the features of some of the presets, I mean why not? Do some of the presets have special features that only belong to them and are impossible to add in the creation screen to other characters, to the one that I wanted to look like me? The default main character looked the most like me without that beard and skin complexity, but I wasn't even able to edit ANY feature on him? Is he unique? Does he has features that are unavailable in the creation screen? Feels like the creation screen is really really limited now, despite all the options they have. Yet these options are kind of expected these days, eye colour, cheekbones, jaw placement, overbite or not etc. ( -1% ) I ended up creating a cute female character that looked decent. Always liked the idea of a small cute girl beating up the monsters ( Probably seen too much Buffy The Vampire Slayer ).

My very own miss Hawke

Character made, ready to rock. A few more battles, a bit more role playing and you end up in Kirkwall, the main city of the game, or should I say the only city in the game? For me Kirkwall is the biggest flaw in the game. The city itself is is divided in some parts, the rich part, the poor part, the docks etc. Now the biggest problem is the fact that 95% of what happens in the game is in Kirkwall. ( -5% ) I expected some nice scenery but got disappointed, I expected to look down ( literally ) on the whole city from the rich part ( Hightown ) but instead I only saw water and some mountains, not that great overview of a city that you experience in assassins creed on one of the many lookout towers. Another problem is the fact I have seen the same fucking guy with the exact same clothes multiples times in 20 seconds of play. He either found a way to clone himself into 10 different persons or Bioware failed badly in making different NPC models. Same goes with the sewer system of the city, every sewer is exactly the same. I went into different ones to complete different quests yet I always found myself in the same one. Same thing with the caves, every cave in this game is the same. Doesn't matter where you go, you will always find yourself in that same cave again. ( -1% ) Bioware closed down some parts of the cave in some quests so you don't go through the exact same thing all the time but I feel it is lazy designing ( not enough time? ) . To make it worse the city of Kirkwall has a day and night feature. Different quests, different time of the day,but still the same goddamn city. I played for over 25 hours now, and the only different places I have been to is a mountain, an underground tomb and a coast, which are all kind of small. Another weird thing is how the citizens of Kirkwall respond on stuff that happens in the city ( or how they don't respond ) , if you have a big bloody battle in the middle of the city they just don't give a fuck. They do not move, do not run away, just stand there like nothing is happening at all. After the battle they still stand there talking to their clones, doing absolutely nothing but standing still. That is another issue with Kirkwall, the city doesn't seem to be alive, okay there are some merchants and some people standing around doing nothing. The merchants are just waiting until the end of time until you come along and buy something, there isn't much interaction between the NPC's except for some dialogue between some of them, but no real action. ( -3% )


The rest of the game is really well done, a great variety of spells / abilities and some really hilarious dialogue between your companions. Personally I didn't quite like the ending but that is more personal taste. All in all it is an epic experience throughout the world of Dragon Age II Kirkwall!

Personal playtime : 25+ hours

Final Score : 89%





Next game : Minecraft