Well, it’s been a long time coming but finally we’re getting close to the time all PC-based Minecraft players have been waiting for. Mojang have announced that if they don’t identify any more big game-breaking bugs in the latest snapshot, Minecraft version 1.8 should see pre-release on Thursday.

The update’s been a long time coming, but that’s mostly because in terms of what it adds to the sandbox game, it is one of the biggest in recent memory. Indeed we’re on snapshot 14w34c and has 1.7.10 come out during the build-up to its release because there has been that much added in stages that needed careful integration into the game. This includes new mechanics, new blocks and even a handful of new mobs for players to play with.

The most important ones for me are the addition of 3 new stone types beyond the type regular ‘stone’ block that forms the basis for most generated worlds; the new rabbit mobs which will provide some cute wildlife to the game as well as a new source of food if you so desire; a new way to generate worlds based on data values which could give you a world full of water, floating islands or even mountains and valleys as far as the eye can see; the addition of the slime block, which not only gives you a way to better store extra slimeballs (if you happen to have enough of those!) but also a way to make a landing pad that cancels fall damage; a new skin system that sees a ‘hat’ layer applied all over the avatar model; and finally the addition of Spectator Mode, which will be of tremendous use for the PvP community I’m sure.

This isn’t all that we’re getting of course, but it’s what stood out for me. What are you most looking forward to with 1.8’s release? Leave a comment below!

Mojang 14w34c post: [x]

In a move that suggests that they want to take a tough line on people who cheat and unfairly exploit glitches in the code to the detriment of other players in their games, Bohemia Interactive announced yesterday that anyone banned with their BattlEye system will not only be kicked from the game they committed their crimes in: it’ll now extend to all their games.

This means that Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, Arma 3 and DayZ among others will now be tied together with the anti-cheat system, and that being caught in one game could mean you lose your access to all the other games tied to the system.

DayZ is a difficult enough game without coming across other players who have cheated their way to gain some measure of power over you. I dare say that Bohemia has a system to dispute bans and to investigate people before making the decision to cut them off completely from their games. Otherwise this move could end up taking out more than just the exploiters…

Oh wow Blizzard, you were just teasing us the first three weeks weren’t you? Just pretending that you’d set the difficulty to a level that was challenging but nothing more than that. Because boy does the Construct Quarter top everything seen before it in difficulty. Which I suppose makes sense as it’s the forth wing…

As I said up there, the forth wing of Naxxramas proved to be the most difficult one so far, and while some of that could be put down to the fact that it hosts FOUR bosses instead of the three per wing we’ve been used to; honestly most of it is down to the first two bosses. That was my experience of it anyway.

The bosses this time are Patchwerk, a creature who plays with no deck (weirdly) but is equipped from the start with a weapon with 8 durability that hits for 5 damage each time. And has a Deathrattle that returns it to his hand after it breaks, so he can play is again for 3 mana. On top of this, his 4 mana cost ability allows him to destroy any minion on the board. If you have a deck full of Taunt and low cost Charge, you stand a chance. Also, any card that can destroy his weapon might help you. I personally did it by adding two Acidic Swamp Oozes into my deck.

Next is Grobbulus, a boss that gave both myself and our station manager trouble. His Hero Power is a 2 mana cost ability that causes 1 damage to all minions on the field and summons him a 2/2 slime if any die because of it. He’s also very fond of the Echoing Ooze, and giving it a power up that buffs it 4/4 and gives it Taunt. One is annoying enough, but given that the Echoing Ooze divides once at the end of the turn it is played you suddenly have double the trouble.

The third boss is Gluth, and after the first two bosses I personally didn’t find him as hard. His Hero Power is a 2 mana cost that reduces all minions on the field to 1 health. The only thing you really need to be aware of is that he has a special weapon card for 1 mana – Jaws. At 5 durability and 1 damage you’d think it easy, but every time a Deathrattle minion dies, it gains +2 power. This includes your minions. Keeping a careful eye on it and thinking about your actions means that you should be able to control its power and not get bitten too badly by him (if you’ll excuse the pun).

Finally, you face off against Thaddius; a giant reanimated and seemingly being forced to fight you. His Hero Power costs nothing and inverts the Attack and Health of all minions on the field. He does this at the beginning of every turn without fail, so once again a little careful thought means that you can win although he is tougher than Gluth certainly. Beat him and you can be sure that Kel’Thuzad is not impressed and has had enough… cliffhanger to the Frostwyrm Lair next week and the final wing!

The Class Challenges once again are harder than they have been in the last few weeks, the Warrior one against Grobbulus and the Priest one against Thaddius. Once against Thaddius is easier of an opponent because of his stat-switching ability which he also uses here without fail at the start of every turn. Grobbulus? Well, keep trying and hope that you beat him. That is honestly the only way I managed to beat the Warrior class challenge.

In summary the Construct Quarter surprised me with how difficult it was. At times the level of difficulty with Patchwerk and Grobbulus had me somewhat annoyed, but since the end prize was two Legendaries (Feugen and Stalagg) I guess I can’t complain too much. I certainly earned those cards. The fact that at least 3 of the bosses required you to control or take advantage of their weaponry and abilities gets a tick from me though, Hearthstone should be a game that requires you to really think about your next action and with this Quarter I was made to do just that. Can’t wait for the final wing and the Frostwyrm Lair!

… Grobbulus can get knotted though frankly.

PC ports are a bit of a double-edged blade. We want good games to come to our preferred platform, but at the same time porting over games from console to PC can sometimes leave us with what feels like a sub-standard experience, especially if time isn’t put into properly optimising the game for the new hardware or re-mapping the controls comfortably.

However, the port of Dead Rising 3 is set to be different. Among the things done to it to make it a good port, is to allow full control of the graphical options, mod support, the ability to remove the 30 FPS cap and much more alongside the usual tweaks and bug fixes. An interview with Gamespot had producer Jon Airhart tell all about the port.

“For PC, that meant we needed to go back and put extra work into optimizing the game for the full range of PC gaming hardware out on the market,” he said, adding that although 30 FPS will be the cap players with beefier computers will have the option to remove it and get higher framerates as a result. He also spoke about officially allowing mod support, “Dead Rising is the ultimate sandbox, and if modders decide to turn their creative talents to DR3 (which I hope they do) the sky is the limit, with combo vehicles, DR3 has blurred the lines between a vehicle and a weapon, so I expect to see an even wider variety of crazy creations.”

Dead Rising 3: Apocalypse Edition will come with all the DLC packs for the game, as well as being released on Steam and all the additional things such as trading cards that brings too. ~It will be released September 5th.

A quiet little post made on Steam forums has revealed that behind the scenes of Steam, Sega have been working on improving the way some of their old Dreamcast classic games play on the PC.

The post was made after a user noticed what looked like some new achievements on their game, with Sega representative ‘kehittäjä’ making the post on the Sonic Adventure DX forums to be read by all.

“You may have noticed some new things crop up in our existing Dreamcast collection on Steam, such as achievements.” said kehittäjä. “Currently this content isn’t accessible but it’s part of an initiative from SEGA over the next few months which is going to improve the player experience for these titles.”

Among other things the games will get some slight tweaks and some optimisation to help them continue to run well on newer computers and hardware. There isn’t an exact date for when we can expect these changes to be finalised and the achievements unlockable, but it’s always good to see a company taking care of a loved back catalog for their players.