Minecraft

Hey peoples. Today is another videogame blog. Here it goes.



This blog is on, probably my favorite videogame, Minecraft. Minecraft is game with a large world made out of blocks that the player can remove and place. There are 3 modes of gameplay, survival, hardcore, and creative. In creative mode monsters cannot hurt you, you can fly, and you have an unlimited amount of every block. The goal here is just to build whatever you want from futuristic space stations in the sky to towering citadels. In survival mode you start out with nothing in your inventory and a health bar. In this mode you need to craft tools to mine, farm plants, build a house to protect yourself at night when the monsters come out, and finally travel to 2 other dimensions to defeat 2 bosses. If you die you lose everything you had in your inventory and respawn where you last slept in a bed. You have five minutes to find where you died to get your stuff back which will be lying on the ground. After five minutes your things will disappear. After you beat both bosses you have beat the game but you can still continue playing on the same world. Hardcore mode is just like survival mode but once you die you can no longer interact with anything else in the world.



Minecraft is available for PC, smartphone, and Xbox. On the phone there are not any caves underground, the world is much smaller, there is not as many blocks, and you cannot travel to either dimension or fight either boss. On Xbox it has caves under ground, large but not infinite worlds, all the blocks in the PC version and you can travel to both dimensions and fight both bosses. The PC version has large caves, infinite worlds, all the blocks, and both bosses and dimensions.



Another reason I like Minecraft is that it can be heavily modded. Minecraft has many story possibilities but perhaps the most prominent is a medieval fantasy world. And free mods add many new things like more monsters, new dimensions, bosses, blocks, tools and weapons. The possibilities are endless.

By Ashton

Now you see me

Hello people's. Today I am doing another movie review. Here it goes.

Katie finally had her birthday party last Friday. Our friend Sarah came and we went to watch a movie. We saw the movie Now You See Me. It is a movie about magicians doing an illegal magic act. It was a pretty good movie.

The acting was good. It offered many things to think about. The only thing it didn't have was much development of the characters. There was a touch that one character had gone to jail, that there was romance between two characters, and that one characters struggle to become a man. They did almost nothing about those problems and spent most of their time with the reveals and the look of the movie.

Overall I give it four stars. It is a very interesting concept and gets you thinking but I think it was just another money grabbing summer movie. It fits right in with the heist type movie but is still unique. I also think that they chose the actors right. Worth your time but don't get to excited.

Bye

By Ashton

Deepstar 6

Hey peoples. Today I am doing a blog on another horror movie. Here it goes.

On friday night me and my family (except for Alex) saw a horror movie called Deepstar 6. It is an underwater missile site and they need to build something else. If they couldn't build it they would be shut down. Before building it they found a cave system under the ocean floor and they are not allowed to build there. They tried to blow up the caves but something got loose...

Deepstar 6 was a bad movie but if you look at it from the perspective of "this is a bad movie but I am going to like it" then it can be really enjoyable. It's a bad movie but it's great for a cheesy horror movie night. Plus it was great to see Katie scream at every innocent crew members head pop out of the water. It could of been better if it was less predictable, the acting was better, and the monster looked a bit cheesy. The actors were all TV actors except one who played Snyder who was really good.

One thing I liked about the movie was the horror. It wasn't so bad that it wasn't scary. Most of the deaths are pretty gruesome but the one that scared me the most was the first one that is showed on screen.
(spoilers)
The captain was crushed on his abdomen by a door hatch sliding shut.
(your good)

So that was Deepstar 6.

Bye!


By Ashton

Hey peoples today I am taking a break from the Alone blogs to do this. It is on one of my favorite video games. Here it goes.



The title showing the player and people that can move into your house. Or town

The video game I am reviewing is called Terraria for PS3. It is a game available for download on PS network for 14.99. It is rated T for teen but I think it is pretty good for all ages. The worst things about the game are only a small pixelated blood effect when killing certain enemies and the fact that you can drink beer. It also is available for Xbox, PC, and soon for the PS vita.



This is a player fighting a boss called the eater of worlds.

Terraria is a 2D sandbox, adventure, building game. First you customize your player, choose the difficulty, and choose small, medium, or large world size. You start off with the weakest items in the game, a copper sword to defend yourself, a copper axe to cut down trees, and a copper pickaxe to mine. Near your spawn is also a another character called the guide that gives you information on how the game works. You can build him a house to keep him alive and give him a place to stay. First cut down trees to build a shelter to survive the first night. After that you can start a mining outpost upgrade your house have others move in and defeat bosses to progress through the game.



2 houses and several non playable characters.

Here are the main components of the game. 1. Upgrade your tools such as a iron pickaxe to a silver pickaxe, get armor and collect items. 2. Explore new biomes and get people to move in your house or town to sell you items. 3. Defeat bosses to beat the game. One feature that is unique to this game is the fact that the game saves your worlds and your character so if you wanted to you could put items in your inventory and then go to another world and still have those items. They are many things to do in terraria and I find it a perfect mix between adventure and building.



A players house.

There is a wrap on one of my favorite videogames. Bye!



Another boss fight.

By Ashton

Hey guys. Today I'm doing another part of the alone blog. Here it goes.

Once again I am starting where I left off. Now I am in my classes and everything is normal. Everything that happened in the morning had stopped completely. It was like that part in a movie that the audience never sees. The day passes and it is now 2:30 and I am sitting in the brown painted bleachers inside our gym with no air conditioning. It is crowded with kids with their backpacks waiting for their buses. The white light came from the lights that still worked, suspended from the ceiling. I was listening to my iPod through the headphones and closing out all the programs to save what little battery I had left. Then the song came on. I swear to this And then it happened again.

I was surrounded by kids waiting to go somewhere. I still kind of felt like I was in a box. Like the morning I could do nothing but do what the teacher on the loudspeaker said. Sit down and be quiet or in the morning, just keep on walking through the rain. The only thing that had changed was the orange daylight spilling in from the windows behind me lighting up my gray jacket I got from Ocean City. I was still Alone. The teacher on the loudspeaker called my bus number and we were lined up in front of the bleachers and filed out of the school. I was last in line and before I went out the peeling blue doors of the gym I looked back and I saw it. It changed a lot. It had been there before but I never really saw it. Don't ask me what it was I saw because I don't really know what entirely it was either. I paused for a moment and continued on my way out the blue doors and through the lobby, out into the stained sidewalk and the gray sky.

Bye.


By Ashton

Alone part two

Hey peoples. Today I am writing the Alone part two blog. Here it goes.

So I am starting where I left off. I am still walking up the steep hill with hundreds of other kids in the dark and the rain, the song still playing on my iPod. I finally get to the top at the end of the sidewalk, and at the top edge of the building, in front of where the sidewalk ends, there is a light next to a loudspeaker. The light is bright white in sharp contrast with the soft yellow of the bus headlights, the only other source of light. The rain seems softer now almost slower. I can only see it falling in front of the light and the bus headlights. It patters on my hood and starts to drip slowly near it's point. The light shines down on us and I see the light illuminating our faces below depicting pale and ghostly creatures. To my immediate left is the road and the buses lined up and to the right the main entrance with a teacher to the side of the twin double doors. Past the wall at the end of the sidewalk are a few more buses and another strain of kids pours in from that end like the water flowing steadily at the side of the road. Right before I enter the building the loud speaker booms with some kind of non important message from the principle. My song isn't loud but it seems like this message and my other senses are a little dull and my steps seem slow, the sound of people around me and the speaker a low buzz. This mass of kids slowly squeezes in the two doors, not to close again for another steady fifteen minutes after I get in. Here it is slower and I have to stop and wait often. We enter into a small lobby before another set of doors leading into the school's main hallway. It is like a a big release and we separate the six-graders going right, down the hallway, and me with the seventh and eight graders going the other direction. We pass the gym on our right and some kids go in the cafeteria on the left for breakfast. Here the social clicks and groups become visible. The most prominent, the little tribes of popular kids.

Another right turn for us in order to go down this hallway. At the end is another pair of double doors outside again. It is just a sidewalk going vertical across our path before entering the separate building for seventh and eight grade. I get out and for some reason I stop. I look right just outside and hold the door open. At the time I had never done it before in this particular place. To this day I still don't really know why I did it. The song is long and still playing; I am now much more aware now and the alone feeling steadily faded away when I began entering the building. The rain is slower now and the sky has shifted to a gray despite the sun not being up at all. I am still holding the door for the endless torrent of people and most of the people walking through don't say anything, if they notice me at all. The other small group of people either teased me a bit or thanked me. This is going to sound a bit weird but I don't think that I really cared what any of them said. I took note of the people that did say thank you, still in a haze with the song and that feeling I had earlier, but it felt like it was something I was doing for myself or for no reason at all, not really out of the pure kindness of my heart. As for the people that teased me, I didn't really care, besides this is middle school and you can't let anything get to you. During this it felt a little like everything was in slow motion, the rain, the train of people moving from one building to the next. Some of the people in my head barely even passed through, people I didn't know and had no connections with. Others I knew and had me thinking a little about the long day ahead of me. Finally they are these spare few that set off powerful memories. Some of these people I don't even know and something about them just triggers something inside me. The rest from this group I have powerful memories about spending time with them and these people seem to notice me but say nothing. At last a few little groups of teens dribble out. The song is near its end as I walk down the hallway past the people at their lockers on either side. A teacher on the side barks at me to put my hood down. I arrive to my locker on the bottom at the very end of the hallway and squat to get my things and put my book bag away. With my things in hand I head to homeroom to start the day and think about the time in the dark and the rain when I was completely alone.

I am writing this blog at 9:05 PM in the car on the highway on a long trip back from Pennsylvania. Bye.




By Ashton

Alone

Hey peoples. Today I'm talking about music, fate, circumstance, and what you think of the three. I think I am going to write this blog in two, maybe three parts, one each Sunday. Here it goes.

I get up at 5:50 in the morning take a shower eat breakfast and I'm off for the bus stop with my backpack my hands in my jean pockets and my hoodie with the hood up at around 6:50. Usually it is still dark and often wet. Eventually I get my iPod and my earplugs and set it to shuffle through all my songs. I listen to sad songs, party songs, songs from the Heart. This particular morning in the fall of sixth grade. It was very dark and raining. At the bus stop there was nothing to do except listen to my music and watch the rain. I was standing so ahead of me was the road that led to my house. A road to my right led up to a hill so you could see not much but the tops of the trees on the other side. To my left another road and a turn to it's left where the bus came around. The only lighting was the porch lights from the surrounding houses and the occasional early morning commuter in his or her car. I was still perfectly engrossed in my music and I was fixated on the blacktop in front of me the rain pattering in puddles. The bus came into view out of the corner of my left eye and stopped for some other kids. The headlights bright in the still pitch black sky. I shared the bus stop with only one person and there and we rarely talked. The bus started again and stopped in front of me. I walked inside and sat at the first available seat. The bus started again. I was the only person in my seat near the front of the bus the whole time so I had the window. The window was fogged up with the rain but good enough for me to see clearly. The bus is filled with middleschoolers and highschoolers. Then we go through the woods on twisty turns. There are fancy old houses there, a pond where geese hang out, and even a farm. Still listening to my music I get this feeling it is like when your sad and theres not much to do but your not bored. I almost felt like I wanted to be sad and nature was setting the scene for me. Then we go through crowded downtown Martinsburg. Finally we arrive at school. It is around ten minutes before the principle gives the go to let us out of the buses. The buses are lined up and mine is last in line. So I have to walk up a long sidewalk on a hill to get inside. I step off the bus and immediately this song comes on. It is completely in tune to everything going on around me. It is everything that I believe in. It is everything that is me. I don't think I'm ever going to share this song or why it is me. This is the first time I have ever voiced this to anybody. The song continues and I continue walking in the pitch black and the pouring rain with my hood up, my hands in my jean pockets, and my backpack. Hundreds of people all around me are all talking at once but somehow, then, I was completely alone and I liked it.


By Ashton