by Stone Marshall | Jan 23, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Admittedly it looks and moves more like a worm (it’s even partly made ofslime blocks), but hey, it’s underwater and it keeps you dry. A bit proof of concept-y, but it’s a Minecraft submarine.
Designed by Minecrafter Alex_you, the sub is constructed out of slime andredstone blocks and glass, with glowstone for lighting and pistons that actually move the cabin forward. The start/stop mechanism is operated by way of flint & tinder, as the video shows:
Looks like a bumpy ride. Still, some engineering. If you wanna give it a try yourself, a download link to the map with the submarine in it can be found here, in the video description.
Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest, funniest game-related screenshots and art we can find. Send us suggestions if you’ve got them.
Today’s Feat of Minecraft Engineering: A Working Submarine
by Stone Marshall | Jan 22, 2016 | Minecraft News |
People play violent games, where they kill characters in the most horrific ways. In other games, the murder scenes are not explicit, but only the thought that your characters will “die” is troubling the players. Minecraft is not necessarily a sadistic game, but many deaths happen in it and the players want to know in how many ways they can die.
By The Ghast
Ghasts stay around the Nether, they’re floating and their eyes and mouth are closed and they might trick you to believe they’re cure and harmless with those sounds they make, imitating cats or infants. They have the size of 4x4x4 blocks and their tentacles have the size of a player, and when you’re in their attack range (within sixteen blocks), ghasts will open fire and kill you. Also, these things will make other mobs attack you, but they will never attack mobs.
By TNT
TNT is a cube with an edge length of 0.98 and when it’s activated, it’s spawn at the center of a powered TNT block. If it’s activated by redstone/fire, its fuse lasts 40 redstone ticks, and it’s destroyed by an explosion – a number between 10 – 30 game ticks. Primed TNT’s texture blinks and the texture will alternate between the normal texture and a pure white one. Primed TNT can be pushed by water and when it’s shot through lava, it catches on fire. TNTs can be used for traps such as land mines, which generate naturally in desert temples, and they activated when they’re placed by a dispenser, hit by a fire charge fireball, in contact with fire or lava etc.
By Drowning
Players can’t breathe under water, so they will drown for sure when their air supply value drops. It’s recommended to keep a solid block (cobblestone or dirt) somewhere on the toolbar, so when mining into a spring or ocean and making a hole, the player should use that block to block it. This way, they will not drown.
By Falling
Players can’t fly either, so if they will fall from a height equivalent to 23 blocks, they will surely die, even if they are protected by their armor. The only thing that can save them is an armor enchanted with Feather Falling or Protection.
By The Enderdragon
This is the boss that appears in the end and the death won’t be pleasant! It throws out fire, it’s very healthy (the purple health bar appears at the top of the screen), it can regenerate itself using Ender crystals and when you’re destroying an ender crystal when the dragon is being healed, it will take a 10 damage.
Minecraft Methods to Die – Try to Avoid Them
by Stone Marshall | Jan 22, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Minecraft is probably the next best thing after Lego when it comes to building something out of blocks. It’s not every day that those blocks you piled would be under threat as soon as the sun goes down, anyway. You might also need to battle awful things in The Nether if you want to defend your creation.
Well, fighting your nemesis would look much better if you dress the part. And there isn’t a shortage of skins in this game.
Best Minecraft PE (Pocket Edition) Skins
Are you looking for skins for Minecraft 0.11.0? Here are some of your best options.
Arab Man
Regardless of what you associate with the Arab Man, it is a fact that playing the game garbed in the traditional than would be interesting. Do you feel like making your own oil depot and silo all of a sudden?
Sheriff Woody
Ah, who doesn’t love Woody from Toy Story? You must be crazy if you don’t have the hearts for him. Although Buzz Lightyear is pretty cool too. But hey, nothing beats a cowboy boots and hat to go with the Wild West look.
Groot
“I am Groot!” Well, don’t believe every word said, because “I am Groot” can be anything. But, as one of the coolest characters in the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, you would not be the only one rooting for Groot. Get it?
Squid Man
Have you always wanted to be the Kraken or…Squidward? In Minecraft PE, the closest you can get to making your dreams come true is to have Squid Man as your skin. Just bear with the squid water mobs style. You would be able to swim very fast, anyway. Part of the skin’s secret feature.
Rana
Previously an old mob that was removed in Minecraft in 2010, Rana is back! But, as a human skin. No reason to be disappointed, right? Better a Rana skin than no Rana at all.
Derp
What rhymes with burp, but sounds more like twerk? Derp! Nothing about the riddle makes sense. But so does having a strange face attached to a human body. Why can’t it be just a normal face? Just leaves you wondering, is derp man or not?
Pumpkin Boss
Think of this Minecraft PE skin as a huge improvement with the scarecrow. Because now he’s wearing a suit instead of rags, although the pumpkin would still give anyone nightmares, especially those that aren’t a fan. Hey, you can use that as a strategy. All you need to do is find out which if your opponents are scared of scarecrows with a Jack O’Lantern for a head.
Tree
Isn’t Groot a tree as well? What makes this skin different is that it can pass as an actual tree in Minecraft. This means you can camouflage yourself as one and then attack. Very few might see you coming.
Barry the Bear
Unlike the usual bear, Barry the Bear is more cute than scary. But because he’s in Minecraft, you can’t trust him to be all that warm and cuddly.
Clown Boy
How many clowns have turned murderer in movies? Well, Clown Boy is just as scary, and being killed by him in survival games can be downright frightening.
Top 10 Minecraft PE Skins
by Stone Marshall | Jan 21, 2016 | Minecraft News |
BY JUSTIN DAVIS A Block and a Hard Place, Episode 4 of Minecraft: Story Mode, is another middling chapter in Telltale’s kid-friendly Minecraft tale. Its attention to Minecraft detail and satisfying, action-packed climax keep it from being a complete bust, but these highs aren’t enough to overcome the rest of the episode’s predictable plot twists, inconsequential story, and often uninteresting dialogue.
This dichotomy is encapsulated in Episode 4’s first major event: a quest in which Jesse and his posse have to travel to the “Far Lands” to retrieve a MacGuffin that will hopefully allow them to defeat the Wither Storm and save the world. The Far Lands are a real Minecraft concept – if you can manage to reach the edge of the (nearly) infinite map, Minecraft can glitch out and strange things can be seen. It’s a cute and clever to see this fabled place discussed and eventually explored by a group of people that actually live in this world. And as usual, the set itself is massive and detailed.
Unfortunately, this is an example of real dialogue experienced while making the long and arduous journey: “Is it much further?” “Not too much further.”
Riveting stuff, I know.
“The dialogue commonly succumbs to cliche.
In addition to often feeling flat and uninteresting, the dialogue commonly succumbs to cliche. “How long have you been standing there?” One character is asked when walking in on the second half of an incriminating conversation. “Long enough,” is (of course) the reply.
A Block and a Hard Place continues Story Mode’s emphasis on the past, to mixed results. Its explorations of themes like the dangers of hero worship and how ego or hubris can ruin friendships is well done, and a welcome bit of thoughtfulness in an otherwise fairly light story. But in practical terms, this means Story Mode spends a whole lot of time focusing on characters and conflicts that aren’t directly related to Jesse, instead focusing on the legendary heroes The Order of the Stone. This puts us in the back seat, often taking a passive role in the drama.
Thankfully, the final showdown manages to satisfy on multiple levels. The victory for Jesse and company feels well earned – they come up with a plan, and execute on it via fun, and occasionally actually challenging, QTE button-prompts. By the end, it genuinely feels like this group of heroes really is a group of heroes, even though they started Episode 1 as a bunch of goofballs. The entire sequence is also well-directed and acted. It’s a satisfying end to Story Mode’s overarching threat.
Unfortunately the iffy storytelling returns to the forefront as the episode draws to a close. Multiple story threads that have spanned the entire series are wrapped up off-screen thanks to a small time jump. Amnesia? Gone. A friend’s life-threatening illness Jesse kept promising he would fix? It fixes itself. This neat wrap-up is especially disappointing because, like Story Mode’s other episodes, the adventure is fairly short at around an hour and 45 minutes.
As for what’s next… well that’s the big question, isn’t it? We know a fifth episode is coming, but A Block and a Hard Place ends the current story arc. We’ll have to wait and see what this means for our motley crew, and for Story Mode’s potential long-term future.
The Verdict
Telltale’s love and deep understanding of Minecraft combined with a thrilling satisfying climax keep Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 4 – A Block and a Hard Place from reaching a new series low at the hands of poor dialogue and a meandering plot. It’s still a little too slow-paced and predictable to recommend wholeheartedly.
MINECRAFT: STORY MODE EPISODE 4 – A BLOCK AND A HARD PLACE REVIEW
by Stone Marshall | Jan 20, 2016 | Minecraft News |
To date, Mojang has enjoyed remarkable success almost exclusively from the strength of one game — Minecraft. The Microsoft-owned Swedish studio is about to test its luck with its next major game though, finally setting a release date for the delayed Cobalt.
The side-scrolling action game, developed by three-person studio Oxeye Games and published by Mojang, will launch on Steam, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 on 2 February. It’ll set you back $19.99 “or equivalent”, although UK specific prices haven’t been set yet.
Cobalt was originally set for release around October 2015, but was held back at almost the last minute because Oxeye said it was “buggier than we’re comfortable with”. The delay has not only allowed for those kinks to be worked out, but for the console launch to arrive simultaneously with the PC version. It also means the game dodges the glut of releases vying for Christmas purchases.
Despite the Minecraft connection, don’t expect it to be anything like the open-world sandbox. Instead, Cobalt offers a blend of run-and-gun combat and fast-paced 2D platforming with cartwheeling cyborgs, upgradable weapons, and slow-motion gameplay mechanics that let you punch enemy fire right back at them. It also packs in an eight-hour story campaign, and multiplayer modes including “capture the plug”, deathmatch, survival, and the Counter-Strike inspired TeamStrike, where each player only has one life. Oh, and tameable space hamsters, of course.
Will Cobalt be the new Minecraft? No, almost certainly not — but only because Minecraft is a certifiable phenomenon. This is aiming more for the competitive gamer, with the real draw being its potential for long-term post-release versus play.
If you can’t stand to wait just over two weeks to get your hands on it, you can buy the alpha version — which Oxeye admits is “remarkably dated” — for PC now. Anyone who’s purchased the alpha will get an upgrade to the full Steam version upon release.
Mojang’s Minecraft follow-up Cobalt gets release date
by Stone Marshall | Jan 20, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Allll aboard Shy Guy’s Perplex Express. It’s a bit blockier than usual but there’s plenty of sights to see.
This faithful (with a few alterations) Minecraft recreation of the Perplex Express comes courtesy of Nathan_Oneday of WalschaertsBuilds. It’s a scale recreation, under construction since early December. There’s some secrets to find since, as the creator put it, he “couldn’t resist hiding a ton of things around the train.”
You can download the map here if you wanna explore the train yourself. If not, here are a couple shots I snapped ingame:
Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.
Exploring the Train From Mario Party 8 in Minecraft is Pretty Fun
