Now playing.... Minecraft?

I'm in it now?

Well this feels a little weird. Quick little update feels good about it though. I've never really had much to say on this game. Its a classic from last gen and a major indie game blown up into huge mainstream proportions, but outside of that description I have so little to say for it. Just.... "eh.". I rented it and checked it out, but didn't do too much with it. It just didn't hook me or feel like it had anything to truly worth sinking my time into. Maybe the PC version with mods (I want that fox skin as pictured above!), but as weird as this sounds it isn't intel friendly even with the settings toned back. Meanwhile we've got people running Crysis 3 in really low settings on the same machine.... funny how this stuff works. So my intel 3000 laptop is out of that chance of me running minecraft. So... I'm left with the vanilla "eh" experience. Similarly that's how I've felt towards the argument of its popularity... I hate hearing people complain or call it crap, but I also hate to bump into those who pretend its everything and dedicate their entire youtube or community time to it. Both just rub me the wrong way, even though I usually love passionate dedicated communities working for something cool, and I can sympathize with those who see its flaws or feel its shoved in their faces. But yet... I feel like this is just an oddball that doesn't catch any extreme and isn't worth much of my energy in discussion most of the time, and those trying to push me into it just get on my nerves. However.... right now I'm actually playing it. It showed up in my downloads menu mysteriously (no joke. very weird, but I'm not complaining). So eventually after I spent some good time with R&C I decided to boot this up as a bit of down time from the bigger games, put on a podcast, and just got to work in a new map... well I had to because the digital copy doesn't work with physical data for some weird reason. I then booted it up today, no podcast, and it just felt so good for some reason to return and complete a house on the cliffs I made. Its safe to say I'm probably returning.

Its not going to become my favorite game anytime soon... at least not that I'm aware of in the short time. The combat, controls, building, and interface all feel clunky within a game that is already at odds with me for being a wide open sandbox experience. Of course none of these things are detrimental, it just goes against a bit of my typical experience.... except the clunky controls bit, I'm used to that I suppose. Still the game shines to me as a peaceful distraction. Its exactly as I noted above. You have been playing adventure games or shooters for the past week or two, feel maybe a little presured in life, and one day remember you have minecraft, load up a podcast on youtube, and then jump into a world and go to work on something. Once you've started you need less of a hook and just return until you're bored later, and the cycle may repeat and different rates. Its just perfect for that sort of odd niche routine of a distracting fun little game I'd recommend to anyone either introverted or with a decent size library of "normal" games. So while I'm no serious minecraft fan, I'm really thankful to have.... err... stumbled(?) across this game again. Oddly enough it was right before the news of Microsoft buying Minecraft as well as the talk of it coming to PSV and PS4 in the future. It'd be fantastic if cross-buy kicked in for the vita, though I'm not so sure that's the case as it certainly wasn't with PS4. Who knows though, I may pay the lesser toll of $5 and upgrade just to get access to some nice share features. Well anyways I've got to get to bed, and then work on minecraft as well as a couple other things. Speaking of which, the weird doesn't end here. I know what I'm writing next... I had an interesting meta experience with the "non-game" game called Glitchhiker and I'll be replaying and discussing that for the next topic. Of course, that'll happen after I put the finishing touches on my basement in minecraft. I may turn on monsters and throw back in that sense of fear and unpredictability as well.