Brightside Review 2: Minecraft

Minecraft Review

So James is in Denmark, and I have no idea of the schedules for Brightside Reviews, though I have a feeling we do them on Saturdays and Sundays. I would be on my way to Siesta Key then, so I'm just going to do it now before I leave. This Brightside Review will be reviewing the game, Minecraft.

So this game is pretty much as James said, Legos for adults. Though I don't like that description, which makes the game sound childish. One of my favorite reviews of the games is, and I quote, "This is a Sandbox game where you can build a giant sandbox, build a life size pyramid in that sandbox, tear the pyramid down with TNT, melt the sand into glass, rebuild the pyramid out of glass, blow it up with TNT, all while riding a pig." That pretty much sums up the game.

So I like to play this game in my free time, as it is fun, and it never gets old. It has two versions, Classic and Survival. The creator of minecraft, dubbed "Notch", states that he and his developing company, Mojang Specifications, may remove Classic Minecraft all together. The Classic version, which is completely free, is a freebuild type of game, where the player has unlimited types of blocks, such as dirt, sand, gravel, wood, all that basic stuff.

(Keep in mind, this game is a retro style First Person game, though the world is made out of blocks, though the graphics are pretty vivid still, despite the game being made up of squares, though 3D. If you want to try out the free version, go here.)

The survival version is much more fun, and is in its Beta testing phase. As of now, it is about 20$, and can only be purchased over the internet with a paypal, as there is no physical version of the game currently. This version is a randomly generated map, roughly 8 times the surface of the earth. It isn't all loaded at once, the farther the player goes, the larger the save file becomes of the game. In survival, you start with no resources, and have to gather wood, dirt, and any other resources from the blocks around you. You create tools from these resources, lowest class of tools being constructed of wood, and the highest of diamond. The game has day and night cycles, and at night, at hell breaks loose. Zombies, skeletons, giant spiders, and a nasty enemy called Creepers spawn in the dark. Creepers are particularly nasty, as they are completely silent, and explode if they get close enought to you. In the day, when the zombies and skeletons burn, the spiders are passive, and the creepers despawn eventually. If you want to see gameplay and tutorials of the game, I strongly suggest searching Minecraft Let's Play on Youtube. The game has really exploded lately, with over a million accounts in the last 6 months. THere is a wide range of tutorials and gameplay, from singleplayer to multiplayer.

The game is still in its testing phases, so the multiplayer is in a buggy stage, though it does exist. You have to know the specific IP address of the server your connecting too, in order to get on the server. Some server administrators create reservation list, known as whitelists. They only allow people on the list into the server.

Some players have created beautiful structures, other homely survival caves, and some have created renditions of Music, namely, Portal:Still Alive, one of the greatest songs of all time. The game has a block, called a noteblock, which depending on the surface it is placed on, can be tuned to play certain notes. There is a circuitry/electricity system, called redstone, which players use to power complicated machinery, or a music playing instrument. some players have set up a pressure pad system, where the pressure pads correspond with certain notes, to make a giant walk-along piano.

All in all, i suggest buying this game, as I haven't even gotten close to explaining the whole game, and it holds endless possibilites. When you think you have plenty of supplies to survive, you can move out of your house and start building decorational stuff, for example, right now I am working on building a castle. When your done building all of these things, you can start from scratch, and generate a new world. The game is very Mod-friendly, and has its own mod forum. I recently discovered a mod which adds new animals in the game, such as horses, that even including breeding to create new horses, like pegasus and unicorns. Sometimes, even a Pegasus/unicorn/packhorse! Once I got bored of that, I found another mod that added humans to the game, including factions, and even an AI, that once in a while yells something on the chat, such as "Taste my blade, Samurai!" or, "You are very unfortunate, Skeleton!" Pay the measly 20$, it's worth it.

-D

Denmark

Welcome and thanks for visiting us!

So, yes, it's time for post 2 already. We'll start this off by reminding you that, once again, I'm heading to Denmark! Tonight, in fact.

So, in todays post, we inform you about JaDS episode 16, say a little bit about the history of Denmark, and we'll give you a little bit of the Teaser for the next, "Brightside Review," which Drake will be covering for me!

Phew, that was a lot of exclamation points. Anyway, time to start.

JaDS

Here's episode 15 of the JaDS, and episode 16 will be out tomorrow night. We're hoping you will enjoy the new theme song that we developed!

(Ok, to tell you the truth, it's not that great and we'll take suggestions if you have a song and want it to be on an internet show.)

Denmark History

Well, this segment is going to be long, so if to some it up for all of you TL;DR people, I'll just say, "Denmark has a lot of history and it's pretty dang awesome culturally. But it's small."

The word ‘Denmark’ dates back to the Viking age and is carved on the famous Jelling Stone from around 900 AD. Today though Denmark is very different from its historical past. Between the 13th and 17th centuries, Denmark was a superpower whose influence was as powerful as that of the largest European countries. Today, the current size and influence of Denmark is the result of 400 years of forced relinquishments of land, surrenders and lost battles. For a small country though, Denmark still punches above its weight in many different areas including design, architecture, farming, green technology and pharmaceuticals. [1]

Through out the entire history, Denmark was pretty social to the outside world, but by the beginning of the Viking age {c. 750 A.D.) the country really became part of the European history. The Danes became most notorious as the Vikings who plundered churches and monasteries, which is why it has a cultural advantage over a lot of European countries. Stealing things from churches gave it many expensive and priceless relics. Which is a reason that Denmark is the center for religious studies.

So, in conclusion of this two-paragraph report of the history of Denmark, the Danes are very renown for their knowledgeable and cultural ideas. I'd give you more, but I can't really sum it up without exactly stealing it from this website, and I'd rather not be a jerk and do such a thing, so here it is.

Teaser?

This isn't much of a teaser, but I felt like just letting you know, even though minecraft is pretty well known and everybody goes crazy for it, I want to do a review on it (and unlike my Denmark history, I'm not going to just steal everything.) To sum it up right now, it's this amazing game that's pretty much, quote on quote, "Lego's for adults."

So, I hope you all enjoyed today's post, and Drake will be your Author next week.

[1]= Denmark: http://www.denmark.dk/en/menu/About-Denmark/History/

-J

The Blog

Welcome to the blog

Hello and yes! Drake and I have developed a Blog to talk about our innermost feelings, embarrassing stories, and whatever we feel like on the internet! It's a nice way to get things out, it's cheaper than therapy, and other people get to enjoy my pain. Overall, this is gonna be awesome.

Now, yes, me and Drake have tried blogs before, and both of us failed epically, but together, maybe, just maybe, we can scrape together enough intelligence to maintain this one! We're hoping there's at least going to be a blog a week, and we're planning on the post to be on Wednesday nights. If not, they will be on Friday mornings (we run on Eastern time, just so you know.)

Teaser

I'm going to start by letting you in on a teaser. Me and Drake are planning to work together to develop a podcast with another fellow youtuber whom you may or may not know. Whether or not it will work out, we're not quite sure, but if it does ever happen, look on here for it.

JaDS news

Also, JaDS is now getting updated weekly again. We apologize for any delay that we caused, it's just with vacation and diseases and deaths (ok, maybe not deaths) we couldn't keep up with the show, but we're back to doing it every week.

Leave of Absence?

Another thing is that I, James, will be gone for a week. I'm gonna leave this country and explore the world, and then I will return to meager America. But, that means that Drake will have to cover for me on Posting to this, so expect that much.

Brightside Review (Sucker Punch)

And lastly, seeing as today is Sunday, I thought I'd do a weekly (and by weekly, I mean every two weeks) story/review thing. I find obscure/well known/well hated things on the internet, and look on the positive side of everything. I shall dub it- Brightside Review. Whether or not it will stick, I'm not quite sure.

If you've already seen the movie Sucker Punch, and absolutely was disgusted/hated it for lack of nudity, then you might as well wait another week for the next LB post, but otherwise here I go.

Sucker Punch's story (which isn't that great- in fact, if it weren't for the fighting, I wouldn't have stayed the whole movie) is based in the 1950's and follows a young girl (whose name is never disclosed, but the nickname "Babydoll" is given). Her step-father (who is shown to be either a rapist or an abuser, but either way is the antagonist of her reality), after (once again, we presume because nothing is shown) killing Babydoll's mother, discovers that Babydoll's mother didn't include him in the will. In his anger, he drank his heart out, and went after the two girls. He locked Babydoll after a failed attempt at rape, and went after her sister. Babydoll escapes her momentary prison, rushes for a gun, and shoots her stepfather. She misses (because obviously girls can't shoot- the only time she does it right is in her fantasy (just kidding, in no way am I sexist. Now go make me a sandwhich)) and hits her sister, who dies instantly. The cops arrive, take her away into a mental institution where the madness ensues.

Upon entering the institution, the real movie begins to start. She hears a psychologist telling her to, "free her mind," and in doing show she appears in a whore house. She, herself, is recruited as an Orphan; the owner of the mental institute is portrayed as the, "pimp," and the rest of the girls there are shown as dancers and prostitutes.

I can't go into more detail without ruining the movie for most (which I wouldn't mind doing, to tell you the truth) but overall the movie's plot was slightly lacking. Where it lacked, though, the music, special effects, and fight scenes all made it up. The fight scenes were something out of a DnD game gone mad, girls wielding guns twice their size, wearing clothes extremely tight (though there were, once again, no nude scenes or girl-on-girl action, which disappointed most. In my opinion, it wouldn't been that great; the actors were hot, but I didn't pay $8 for porn, I paid for mindless fighting.) So, I actually enjoyed the movie. In my words (after just watching the movie), "It was like having dopamine force fed on an IV while smoking weed and watching Ultraviolet. Except, it was better."

I'd give the movie 4/5, the stories lacking didn't hurt the movie as much as everyone claims, and the action scenes are definitely worth getting out of the house for.

This concludes the Brightside Review, and remember, "Always look on the Brightside of life."

-J