I’ve been playing Minecraft off an on for a little while now. I say ‘playing’ but I’m not sure if that’s the correct description for the time sapping digital lego set with animals and lava that it is.
But anyway, love it or hate it, I’m hooked. And my most recent endeavour on Donncha’s server has been a massive pyramid. The top of it is at the highest buildable level. It’s really quite a large undertaking, and if I’d paid attention at school I’d be able to a) work out how many blocks it needs, and b) how long it would have taken to build.
It’s so big it’s the largest singly structure on the map so far:
Thankfully Nick and Duck gave me a hand last night after Donncha activated Creative Mode on the server – which basically means you have infinite blocks, take no damage and can fly around for easier building. As it was late and I’m minging with the cold right now I left before Nick and Duck. But they had my back. Ensuring that I wasn’t preyed upon in the night by binary vampires by entombing my spawn point. They’d also made impressive headway on the pyramid build, and left some amusing graffiti to boot:
I’m also doing a series on what I’ve built so far on Minecraft and will be doing a live comm/let’s play type thing of the single player. So if you’re interested in that, here’s the first two vids:
Episode 3 of The Gamer’s Craic, hosted by Donncha and I is now available.
Listen via the player or right click and download here to listen later.
Our guest this time is NGT director and Hupit bod Gary, AKA Hypermole and also mole237 on YouTube.
The main topics of the podcast are the C64 PC (?!), Homefront, Vanquish and Battlefield Play 4 Free.
On Donncha’s post regarding this episode he urges listeners NOT to listen past the end jingle……
Don’t forget that Don’t Revive Me Bro also have their podcast running, with the most recent featuring Daniel ‘Zh1nt0’ Matros, the community manager for BattleField games at DICE. You can find it all here
If 40 minutes of me, Donncha and Gary whittering away is enough for you then I also have a 20+ minute vid up. It’s a request effort, live commentary play by play of a game of Conquest on Panama Canal. There are some sweary bits, so NSFW.
And lastly, I recently put up a video entitled ‘Let’s Talk About: Copyright’. It’s the first time that I’ve shown my face on camera and so I’m a little talking head in the corner over some gameplay. The main theme of the video is why it’s not worth trying to get around the issue of copyright on YouTube, why it’s right for content creators to be protected by copyright and the usage of Creative Commons material as an alternative.
The next Let’s Talk will be on the subject of subscribers.
That’s all for now.
Peas and loaves.
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Right I’ve got a couple of things to post about, so let’s get going:
More Choice, More Variety: Non-English Language Commentary
I think it’s important that there’s variety of choice in most things (as long as there’s quality too – no one wants a choice of brainsurgeon ranging from world class, to comes bottom of his class when playing ‘Operation’…) and so when I’ve had people message me about setting up their channels I always give them the same advice:
Do it because you enjoy doing it
Do your own thing, be your own person
Being a UK/Europe guy another topic that pops up from time to time is “I’m from [insert country] and I’d like to do commentary but they have to be in English….” This seems to be a misconception. Sure, if you want to reach the widest audience then doing it in English is going to help out, but I think it’s something of a shame that more people don’t commentate in their native language. It’s definitely a good way of gaining confidence should that person then decide to move on to English language commentary.
I may be odd, but I quite enjoy watching/listening to non-English commentaries. Anyone else?
In the meantime (I tweeted this the other day) for Polish language commentary ThrashHMG has begun putting up commentaries (BFBC2 at the moment):
Powodzenia Thrash, Twój komentarz brzmi świetnie do tej pory (google translate, so apologies for any errors).
MrCheapKills PSN Account
When Vietnam came out I had trouble with the PSN store not accepting my card to the point where it locked my account of the transaction area all together. Sony (non)support were enthusiastic, but ultimately useless and so (with prompting from Donncha) I thought “I’ll just create a new account, download it and play on that!” By some fluke, MrCheapKills was available so I registered with that.
Vietnam downloaded and I was ready to go….. except for one fatal flaw: no VIP codes. Dagnabbit! Well yesterday my pal Nintendo Mike came round for some beer and gaming. He’s a much keener gamer than me and generally beats me on everything we play…. except CoD4. I put that in last, 1v1 and I was like a god! I know it’s not much fun getting beat so we then played some co-op World at War and zombies, then a bit of Spec-Ops on MW2. So what’s this got to do with MrCheapKills?
When Mike had left I thought I’d have a go on MW2 for probably on the second time since I got BFBC2. So MrCheapKills – total noob, level 0 and the first lobby I join….. and infection/hack/something lobby!? Double-You-Tee-Eff! I didn’t think they had them on the PS3. Anyway, as I’m curious about these things I stayed for a look around:
None of that video is speeded up, or edited, that’s how it was – as soon as the game started and I saw what it was I hit record.
It just seems completely pointless to me, and I’m glad I don’t play MW2 anymore, especially as the the next game I got in to was a pro-pipe extravaganza on Terminal. It’s a bit hypocritical for me to have a go at pro-pipers, but the game has been out sooooo long that surely people are bored with that sort of thing now?
Right, so on to what this has to do with MrCheapKills….. after the debacle that was MW2 I decided to play some Level Zero BFBC2 non-VIP. SDM I go and find that level Zero must be where all the CoD players live as the first “conversation” I had was this:
Australian Kid: Anyone got a mic? Me: Yup Australian Kid: Where are you from? Me: UK Australian Kid: Cool, I’m from Australia Me: That’s good to hear …..couple of minutes later Australian Kid: Hey, UK guy? Me: Yeah? Australian Kid: Are you gay? Me: Erm, no. Do you wish I was gay? Australian Kid: NO! Why would you say that?! Me: Well why would you ask if I was gay? Australian Kid: I don’t know Me: Well it was you who asked the question so you should know… Australian Kid: Well it’s just that most UK people are gay. Me: Of course, I’d forgotten about that.
*leave game*
So then Duck joined me and we created havoc among the hard of thinking. We even spent some time being bush wookiees on Laguna Presa as that is what all the cool kids do. I even got a cool long quick scope on a medic who must have been new as he shot his LMG everywhere around me, but not really at me. It was fun, but a bit like playing against bad AI for the most part. Even the high ranking players (level 46) tended to be not very good – and that’s something coming from me!
Video to follow
Okay so here’s what it’s all got to do with MrCheapKills. My main account in PSN is going to remain as evaDlivE as that is where all my DLC access. But for future games I’m thinking that I’m going to be using the MrCheapKills account to tie things in a bit better. Hmmm, took me long enough to say that.
Peas and loaves.
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Since the patch that upped the usefulness of the Tracer Dart Gun on BFBC2 I’ve been able to get some footage of its usage with varying results. Pre-patch I don’t think I managed to plant a tracer on a single helicopter as it was generally easier for me to crack out the CarlG or RPG-7 and use that instead.
Although the tracer velocity has been increased it is definitely not an easy tool to use. It is easy to miss if the helicopter pitches or yaws as your perfect shot reaches it. In the video you’ll see a couple of times where the tracer crosshairs are right on the target but after firing the helicopter moves slightly resulting in a miss. Although the dart is not affected by gravity, it moves at about the same speed as a grenade round which means that in the time it takes to get to the target, the target may have moved slightly resulting in the tracer over or undershooting. There’s a fine skill in getting on target and anticipating the movement of the target vehicle.
I include my many misses in the video for two reasons – 1: I’m not very experienced with the tracer gun and, 2: to show that you need perseverance when you first start using it. It would be simple for me to edit out all the misses but I think that that is a bit disingenuous to take out all the fails.
The main tips are:
Take your time
Anticipate the flight path and lead the target, or…
Wait for the target to hover, get close, or execute a turn in your favour
Big thankyou to TyeWebb for the link to the War Room app that I use to show Mike Island on Isla Inocentes. To go to the app yourself, here’s the link: – http://www.badcompany2.ea.com/war-room
And just to put all the information in one place, here’s the vid on locking on to tracered vehicles too:
And here’s Geoff’s vid on taking out helicopters using the CarlG – Old School Styley!
Peas and loaves
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As I use a lot of smoke in my commentary vids I get messages and comments asking about using smoke. As it’s something that I’m actually experienced in I thought I’d make a tip video showing the different ways to use smoke.
One of the most frequently asked questions regarding smoke is whether or not it looks thicker to the enemy. Well, on the PS3 at least there is a definite difference between friendly and enemy smoke:
Friendly smoke is greyer and less opaque than enemy smoke. The example I use in the video is the first time that I’ve encountered enemy smoke so although I feel it is an underused asset, it would appear to be rising in popularity.
It’s important to remember that smoke is a support tool. You can’t use it on its own and expect to win a round – you also don’t get any points for using it (unless you kill someone with a direct impact). Think of it as an advantage multiplier. If the enemy can’t see you and are blindly entering an area you have a much better chance of winning the engagement. You can use it at a variety of ranges depending on what you and your team are doing.
On the attack you can use it to cover an advance, to make the defenders look in a direction you are not, and when you get to the MCom station to make it difficult for the defenders to approach the objective. Smoke behaves differently in the open as opposed to inside. Although the duration of the smoke remains the same the density/opaqueness is different (it remains thicker in an enclosed place like real smoke would).
When it comes to defending I tend to use smoke to thwart snipers and slow down the enemy advance. The enemy are less likely to run flat out through a wall of smoke, and snipers cannot spot through it. A nice wall of smoke will therefore protect your team and the objectives for longer than a skirmish line alone. Although it is just a game there is a psychological advantage to using smoke, especially against players who are more interested in whoring their KD than playing as a team.
Although smoke grenade kills are cool I’d suggest not running around with the smoke launcher equipped as a primary weapon. You won’t win many firefights that way. In the videos that I’ve put up where I’ve gotten a smoke grenade kill they are at times when I’ve been smoking an area and an enemy has rushed at me. It’s more effective to pop the grenade round at them and then switch to primary for two reasons: 1 – if it hits them they’re dead and, 2 – if it misses it’ll shroud them in smoke increasing your advantage in the impending fight.
Lastly – countering smoke. If the enemy are using smoke there are two things that you can do: 1 – concentrate fire on the smoked area, especially with grenades and other explosives. Chances are there are enemy close to the smoke (why else would they use it….). At the very least it will make the smoke route undesirable – but don’t forget, the smoke may be a diversion, don’t get fixated on it. 2 – fight smoke with smoke. Unless DICE introduce a massive fan add on or thermal scopes for the weapons you can’t do anything about smoke except wait for it to dissipate. So why let a smoking enemy have it all their own way? Make their smoke unappealing to them by firing your own smoke in to it. If you thought friendly smoke was hard to see through, try a frenemy mix.
So that’s the boring blurb – let’s see it in action:
***UPDATE***
After watching this vid it seems that friendly smoke on Xbox is a lot thicker than on PS3
Peas and loaves
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Something I just noticed while watching this back is that BigPresh (Silent Dave) was actually in this game as well – on our team but in another squad. Although thinking again, I reckon I realised this at the time as well and even attempted to warn him later on in the game when an enemy Medic dropped down behind him only to realise that he couldn’t hear me as he was in another squad. I got the revenge kill though.
On this base I was in fun mode, going for defib kills and being a general pain in the ass for most of the time. When you’re on defense, as long as the M-Coms are safe you can afford to throw your K/D out the window and John Rambo it for a while.
Unfortunately the PVR froze up mid way through this base, and just before I got my second defib kill! We did win the match as they ran out of tickets and our team was actually amazing at defending and disarming the M-Coms. The match was played a couple of days after the Ogga Ug patch came out, but I still managed to use the Carl G against infantry with no problems when they were down to about 3 tickets left. A nice juicy rocket kill was close to being the final kill.
It was a fantastic game and I’m looking to getting many more.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this series.
Peas and loaves.
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It’s Thursday, so it must be time for the Weekly-ish Update of what’s been going on with this blog, gaming and the YouTube channel.
YouTube
First – congratulations to sasbenjr (Geoff) for passing the four thousand subscriber mark. His success is down to his measured analytical approach to describing tactics in his videos for both Modern Warfare 2 and more recently Battle Field: Bad Company 2 and his interaction with his subscribers. Definitely worth a view if you haven’t already (and if you are a regular viewer of this blog then you’re probably already familiar with his work). Well done Geoff and all the best for a successful future.
***UPDATE – Pyrotoz has got his new PS3.*** Pyrotoz’s PS3 is still dead. He’s decided that the best option is to go for a new PS3 Slim instead of risking the same thing happening again to a repaired machine. Personally, I think that in the long run that’s probably the smart choice as the PS3 slim has not had the reported failures that the older fat models have. His most recent video explains his position. ***UPDATE – Pyrotoz has got his new PS3.***
My YouTube channel is now in to double figures for subscribers. That makes me more popular than Cannon and Ball, but not as popular as The Chuckle Brothers (joke). ‘Three to Watch’ is now in its fourth week and it’s always nice to receive the positive messages from those featured. The thing is, I don’t feel like I’m really doing anything – the people I feature are the ones doing all the work. So if you would be so kind, pop along to their channel and show them some love. And when I say “show them some love” I mean comment, rate and subscribe if you like what you see.
My subscriptions list on YouTube now stands at 71. It would be more, but I unsubscribed from a couple of people as I really can’t stand listening to someone complaining constantly about something they choose to do. If you’d like to check out who I’m subscribed to then click on the YouTube logo:
The Hauppage Fund
Is still at the same place as it was last week. I’m fifty squids away from the price Play.com are asking.
Gaming
I’ve not been doing so well this week as my Game Results posts testify. But I’m not the only one. It seems that having a crappy time is catching. I suspect that all the average players are now on BFBC2 leaving all the 1337 kids on MW2 to mow down those of us who are older and slower. Damn you BFBC2…..damn your eyes *shakes fist*!
Another issue for me is perhaps my obsession with stealth in game making me ineffective in combat. Using Cold Blooded means not being able to use Stopping Power and I’ve found that I do a lot better with Stopping Power……
Blog Views and Template
When I started this blog I didn’t know what direction it would take, or even if anyone would read it. Many of the first posts are simple verbosity – just posting whatever rambles came in to my head regarding Modern Warfare 2. I was happy to see the stats showing that more than one person had visited per day, and then gradually it became the norm for at least 30 unique visitors per day coming here (whether they found what they’re looking for….I don’t know). Recently though the views have increased again with two major spikes – once when Geoff (sasbenjr) gave me a shout out on his channel, and then Tuesday when we almost broke the 100 views mark.
I’m not entirely sure what caused the spike on Tuesday, although it could have been related to my interaction with Paul Hearne’s blog as I created a new header for him:
Is this responsible for a spike in views?
This was after I had made a new header for here and was playing about with the wordpress templates. I ended up having to alter the header colouring to match the template it’s on as this is a hosted version of WordPress. Being hosted means that I would have to pay to change the CSS to make it look exactly how I would want it to……and that’s not going to happen. In the future I may switch to my own server, but for now, this will do.
And lastly, my favourite:
Search Terms
I love looking at the search terms that point people to this blog – I’m a geek like that. Some are to be expected – MW2, Tactical Knife, and other MW2-centric terms. The top searches are still for Wings of Redemption and all things related to him – especially his face….. Den Kirson has also been quite popular. But this week, the most amusing term has been…. “Commando Peas”
I kid you not. I even did my own search to find out what commando peas could possibly be, but there were no results other than this blog…. Maybe it’s going to be the new big title from one of the game publishing houses. Commando Peas – you heard it here first!
evaDlivE Blog 
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