Oh My Minecraft

For a good chunk of ye olde internets Minecraft is a phenomenon that isn’t new at all. In fact I have several friends who are dedicated Miners (or Crafters? Steve-Heads?) and while the game always seemed interesting I have a pathetic laptop so I resigned myself to admire the work people were putting into things like HyruleCraft and just not play the game.

Then Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was released. On May 9th. I tried the demo on the 10th. Paid the 1600 MS points for the full game on the 11th. Spent hours and hours and hours mining and building and dying in lava. It is fairly safe to say, I just might have a Minecraft problem.

With the latest update for Minecraft 360, that problem just got worse.

There’s a good reason this post has taken me so long to get around to it, I keep getting distracted. By distracted I totally mean lost in yet another ravine. While we’re still missing quite a bit from the PC version the addition of random villages, ravines, abandoned mineshafts and strongholds are a lot of fun to explore. My creative world has 5 villages, and so far 2 ravines with mineshafts in them, but no strongholds yet. I’m hoping to eventually connect the villages via a rail system and then build them out.

A castle gate – pre-update build.

The one issue I’ve found with the latest update is my two pre-update survival maps are being taken over by ice and snow. The Starks aren’t crazy, Winter really is coming. I vaguely remember some early PC players talking about this winter spread after an update years ago, so hopefully it will be fixed with the next big update. Until then I’m scrambling to greenhouse all my farms so they don’t get iced over. I’ll castle in and survive the winter. The stackable food changes helps with this a lot. As well as being able to get more than just feathers and leather out of chickens and cows.

Despite the appeal of building ALL the things, Minecraft popped up at very opportune time for me. I don’t want to go into to much detail lest this turn into a “Very Special episode of BigFatGeekGirl” but things were not so good in my world and Minecraft provided a very necessary sense of order. When everything around you is chaos, it really helps to have a place you can go to where you are in complete control. Even as odd as the water and lava physics can be, once you learn how they work they are easy to manipulate. And so Minecraft became a haven.

With that I’m off to hopefully find a stronghold in my creative map. If I do I’ll share the seed because then it will really be the best Minecraft 360 seed EVER. Until then check out this awesome creative build from Redditor Colonel_Popcorn: MouseCraft!

N7 Special Ops, I love you all.

I’m finally writing about Mass Effect 3, but I’m not talking about the single player campaign.

Image from masseffect.bioware.com

I’m here to confess my love and admiration for the multiplayer experience.

For the longest time I’ve been afraid to play online games, despite my love of gaming. I’ve heard so many horror stories of harassment (examples are illustrated at Fat, Ugly or Slutty) that I chose to avoid it rather than try to blend in.

But then Mass Effect 3 came along. I was SUPER excited to play this game. J pre-ordered me the Collector’s Edition for Christmas and I was going to take my various bad-ass FemSheps and take back Earth! Fuck Yeah! Then I hit a point in my first play through where even though I was being as good and diplomatic as can be and doing ALL the side quests, I was not satisfied by my readiness rating. I needed to be super prepared to kick the Reapers asses like a Girl Scout on PCP.

So I started bugging my friends who were playing. Most of them were engrossed in their SP campaign and didn’t want to try multiplayer yet. Finally I get a friend to join in. We start out as little level 1s on Bronze, an Adept and Engineer, chugging away. We wipe at wave 3. Get a level, still wipe. Manage a few more games of wipeouts then he has something else to do. My readiness had raised a paltry 2%. Then I saw that hard work go away when my rating dropped back down to 50% the next day. That pushed me into trying public matches.

I’m really glad it did. Seriously you guys, I’m having more fun with multiplayer than I am in my current renegade play through. I have devoted hours and hours into multiplayer, and even some money.

The best thing about this though, I haven’t been harassed at all. I use my headset, I am not hiding my female gamerness from the masses. Everyone I’ve run into has been really cool. We joke around, get our strategy on, and share the joys and pains of a tough match. A good chunk of the people I’ve played with have been added to my friends list. Some of them have become actual friends. This weekend I’ll be spending a lot of time with them as we kill ALL the Banshees for Operation: Silencer.

Maybe the Mass Effect fans are of a different quality than the avid players of other online First Person Shooters. Maybe I’m incredibly lucky to have encountered the players that I have. No matter what the circumstances, I’m thankful for the friends I’ve made on Mass Effect Multiplayer.

So to all my fellow N7 Special Operatives, you fucking rock, thank you for not being dicks, and let’s go kill us some goddamn Banshees!

A Round-up of Awesome

For your reading/viewing/listening pleasure, I present a round-up of things I’ve found to be particularly awesome recently! Hooray!

First off, in a wonderful combination of Comic geekery and Kitchen geekery, there is the Wonder Woman Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

Found via LaughingSquid

Next up we have a Star Wars/Macgyver mashup.

National Game Design Month

I am fairly certain that most of you have heard about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, by now. If not, go Google it, then come back here so you’ll have some context for what I’m about to blather on about.

For those that aren’t dedicated writers (like me, this blog has 15 posts in over 2 years… yeah) but still like the idea of the challenge of completing something in 1 month time there is now NaGaDeMon or National Game Design Month.

While game design has never been a huge interest for me personally, it is something I’ve been doing a lot more reading and researching for lately, as J eventually wants to become part of the gaming industry and I like being a helpful resource. So when I saw the blog post by Nathan Russel (linked above) describing NaGaDeMon, my first thought was “I should totally get J to do this, or we could do this together!”

Funny thing is, I’m way more excited about the idea than he is. This might be due to the fact that as a housewife with no children my free time is somewhat legendary and he’s currently in school full time. So I’m running with it.

GeekGirlCon Recap

The Mystery Box Game Design Challenge

Last month my husband and I got to fly up to Seattle and attend GeekGirlCon. This seemed like a bit of a last minute miracle for us, since I had previously thought we weren’t going to be able to go and it was making me HELLA sad. (Shaddup, I’m Californian, I can say “hella”) But two weeks prior to the con we figured out we were gonna make it after all. So we scrambled to get everything together, flight, hotel, con passes and I think the most important thing, Whedonesque Burlesque tickets. What, geeky burlesque is extremely hot.

We actually didn’t get to do much of official convention activities. I was having some mobility issues and the distance between a lot of the events didn’t help. BUT, I had a lot of fun regardless.

The best thing about GeekGirlCon was the atmosphere. Everyone who was there was really excited about being there, even the guests. I vaguely remember being told that everyone who was part of the con paid their own way in, just like the attendees. Which if true, is totally awesome and just really shows that yes, everyone who was supposed to be there really did want to be there.

Tina’s Mostly Humorous Mass Effect 3 Squad

The fate in the universe rests in their hands.... Not really.

If you follow me on Twitter it is no secret that BioWare totally owns my soul in the world of video games right now. Particularly with the Mass Effect series. Like many gamers I am eagerly awaiting the release of Mass Effect 3 so that I can take my badass FemShep and totally kick some Reaper butt. While some news of Shepard’s team made me happy, (Garrus! Tali! Liara!) not all of it was well received (Kaiden, Ashley, DudeBro McNewGuy.)

So I decided to assemble my own team, and they are FABULOUS.

Geek Girl Con!

I may be a little late to the party here, since I’ve seen references to this TOTALLY AWESOME CONVENTION elsewhere on the internet, but better late than never.

You need to hear about this con. If you are a geek girl, or if you love some geek girls, you need to support this con. This particular geek girl is saving her pennies so she can fly up to the magnificent Seattle and attend said Geek Girl Con.

Here is a handy video talking about this TOTALLY AWESOME CONVENTION:

Doesn’t that sound awesome? Don’t you totally want to go now too?

Check out their website at geekgirlcon.com