PixlBit

News: [This was supposed to have posted last Sunday but I must've not hit the "live" button]

I played a bit of Minecraft today with Mark. We did the usual thing: set up shop at a village, mined for diamonds, built the Nether Portal, created Eyes of Ender and searched for The Stronghold. We found The Stronghold. It was pretty far away from the village. The default Survival game gives you a very large world, so you need multiple maps to navigate it. The Stronghold was just off the first map we started in. I had to saddle some horses and build little ports with boats to make the journey quicker. Once we looted the place, we built an Enchantment Table surrounded by a library of books to make the best magic enhancements.

The next task was to get 12 Eyes of Ender to open The End Portal and fight the Ender Dragon but we ran out of time. Ender Eyes are hard to come by but luckily there are a lot of other things to do while you wait for another Enderman to show up like collecting more resources and battling mobs both in and out of The Nether for experience to use to upgrade your equipment.

Memory:

I’m going back to 2004 on Xbox. This was a good year for shooters for me with games like Dead Man’s Hand, Red Dead Revolver, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, and Halo 2 but what really leapt out at me while looking at the list was Burnout 3: Takedown. Many people say this was the pinnacle of the Burnout series and they’re probably right. Criterion added the Aftertouch mechanic where you could manipulate your car during Impact Time (the slow motion sequence you get every time you crash). This made Crash Mode a little more strategic as you tried to crash your car into as many other cars as possible. Mark and I played this game a lot and still talk about it to this day.

Photo:

Meet “Team Water” from Skylanders Giants.

Thumpback, Gill Grunt, Zap, Chill, Slam Bam, (Lightcore Chill not present)

Thumpback was once a pirate but he much preferred fishing.  When he had the opportunity to try and catch the Leviathan Cloud Crab, he couldn’t resist. The Crab carried him far out to sea and eventually got away. He ended up so far from his ship, he never found it again. Eventually he joined the rest of the Giants to fight the Arkeyans and after that became a Skylander.

Gill Grunt and Zap return from Spyro’s Adventure and are, except for a different pose, the same.

Chill is new to Skylanders with Giants. She was captain of the guard to the Snow Queen in the Ice Kingdom (that sounds like a prog rock song lyric). One day a cyclops stole the Queen away and in shame Chill left the Ice Kingdom. She still searches for her lost Snow Queen but has found new purpose as a Skylander.

Slam Bam returns from Spyro’s Adventure.

Missing from my collection is Lightcore Chill. It lights up and has a different pose, that’s about all.