Minecraft Brain Training

Recently I've been pondering on all the pro's of gaming. Last Monday I posted about how Minecraft is educational. Check it out here. This lead me to realise that Minecraft is also great for adults as well to exercise our brain. Using our brain to conquer puzzles, test our memory, solve problems and be creative keeps our minds strong in these areas.

You could go ahead and do brain training exercises... *yawn* Personally I find this a chore... Or you could simply play Minecraft. Here's how Minecraft keeps our brain strong!

1. Minecraft tests our memory 

There are so many recipes to remember to build tools and supplies in Minecraft, while you can go ahead and look them all up, that gets overly tedious, so it's much easier to just remember the ones you need to make often such as your tools which break over time and food.

 

2. Minecraft helps you with your directional sense

Personally, I need help with this, direction is not my fortè. Minecraft requires you to go exploring, having a strong sense of direction is a huge plus because not only do you need to find your way back out of a cave or back home but you may also need to do it in the dark. This also once again, tests our memory.

 

3. Minecraft requires you to solve problems and gives you multiple ways to do this

For example you have a hunger bar and need to make sure that it doesn't drop all the way down or your character will die. You can kill wild animals for food but you must also cook the meat, you can grow wheat to make bread and even bake a cake. Just like crafting tools and items, some food requires a few items to create.

You also must survive the monsters which appear at night, your best bet is to create shelter and perhaps build a bed to sleep through the night. You also need to equip yourself with weapons such as swords and/or a bow and arrows.

The monsters become harder as you gain experience and level up. To better your chances of staying alive you can create armor and better both your weapons and armor with stronger materials and enchants.

 




While you can simply survive and build your dream home and even a whole city, you can also take on the adventure of slaying the Ender Dragon; the end game boss. This brings up a whole new list of problems to solve which I'll leave for you to discover.

4. Minecraft is a creative game

You start in the vast wilderness, with different types of landscapes; such as desert, jungle, forest and snow plains. It's entirely up to you what you will do. You could build your dream home, build a city or pretty landscapes, build gardens, build a giant statue of your favourite character, build a roller coaster, build a train system, have an animal farm, explore the world or strive to slay the Ender Dragon; the lists of what you can do are endless. 

Being creative while having to also think logically connects and strengthens both sides of your brain. It's just as important to exercise the creative and subjective side of your brain as it is to exercise your logical and objective side. While our society tends to favour logic and rational thinking, our culture is beginning to realise our right side allows us to be imaginative, create and problem solve through thinking outside the box and transcending ideas altogether.

5. Minecraft is a puzzle game

 Minecraft requires problem solving skills such as logic and remembering patterns. You may remember SighFye's post about him making a binary clock in Minecraft, take a look here. You can also find and solve puzzles that people have created, such as The Puzzles of Hydro Map.

And if you're up for more of a challenge, you could create your own puzzle. 

6. Minecraft helps develop your math skills

Along with remembering patterns to create items, you also need to use math when you want to create multiple items at once in recipes or when you're building. You'll be using math from addition and subtraction to algebra.

7. You can test your current skills in programming or learn how to code

You can build customized features into Minecraft by coding modifications into the game. Minecraft provides a fun platform to learn how to program, even 8 year old's are learning how to code with Minecraft.

The survival aspect along with the freedom to be creative and do what you want makes Minecraft the perfect brain training game!

Have fun strengthening your head muscle but don't forget to exercise your other muscles too ;)

Bellistik

The Walking Dead's Most Shocking Moments

The Walking Dead TV show has has some really shocking and some really screwed up moments. Here are my most shocking moments.

WARNING: This post has some MAJOR spoilers for The Walking Dead. If you have not seen it you have been warned.
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5)  A Grimey Moment in Cold Blood

A cannibalistic group of rebels has the group in sights. Making the cannibals think they have left a smaller group behind, they go in for the kill. A clever trap has the cannibals surrounded. The group decides it's best to kill them and Rick lets all his anger loose, brutally murdering the leader in cold blood. Its a moment you realise Rick is starting to lose the plot.

4) Deadly Childbirth

With zombies loose in the prison, heavily pregnant Lori runs with Maggie. Unable to continue as labour begins Lori asks Maggie to perform an emergency C Section. Unfortunately the child birth takes Loris life. Knowing that she will turn, Carl takes the responsibility to shoot his mum when she turns. The beginning of a life, and the end of another at the hands of her son.

3) A Family Reunion Denied

Beth has been trapped in a hospital trying to work off her rescue for some time. Noah, a friend she makes inside manages to escape and finds the main group. They come to rescue her. After thinking she is dead for some time, Maggie, Beth's sister is robbed of her chances to see her again as a shocking twist ends with Dawn, the leader of the hospital group accidentally shooting Beth in the head.

2) Right Under Your Nose

The whole of season two is based around the group trying to find Sophia. They have maps, they are crossing off areas as they expand out from the farm further and further. The group realise that Hershel is holding a load of zombies in the barn and break it open. They start shooting one after the other into the zombies. Hershel still believes all these people are his friends and family and is devastated at the carnage. After all the shooting ends one more zombie slowly emerges from the barn and Sophia is revealed. Suddenly everyone is in complete shock. The scene gives a moment where the group suddenly realise how Hershel felt.

1) Lizzie the Kiddie Killer

This has to be the most shocking and screwed up moment in the whole of The Walking Dead. Lizzie had been defending the walkers for some time and had a belief they are still the same people. She was left alone with her younger sister Mika and baby Judith while Carol and Tyreese went for supplies. Upon return, Carol and Tyreese find a blood soaked Lizzie stood over Mika and Judith with a knife in hand. To prove her theory that they are just like us, she had killed her little sister and was about to give the same fate to Judith.

Look at the flowers Lizzie....

I would love to know if you would put a scene in the top five so leave a comment below. You can also find us on Facebook and find me on Twitter.

SighFye

Tech Tip - Free Steam Downloads Bandwidth

If you're like me, you've often run over your monthly allowance of data because you bought a few too many games through steam that week and been restricted down to dial-up speeds until the month rolls over. (That's if you live in the stone age, like most of us Australians do)

Now most internet providers have certain content that they call the "freezone" or something similar, where anything you download is not counted towards your monthly limit. Some companies, like iiNet, have Steam servers set up that run inside this Freezone network. You can make use of these servers using the steam settings, but ultimately that just sets a preferred server. Steam can still download through a metered server if the unmetered server is busy or doesn't have the content you're after.

I have found a piece of software that allows me to download most things off steam without them touching my monthly allowance of data whatsoever. It's called Steam Limiter and it blocks steam from connecting to any download servers that are not within the Freezone for your ISP. This effectively forces Steam to run only through servers that are not counted towards your monthly allowance of data.

Now there are a few small drawbacks. I have noticed that some content is not available from these freezone servers, so occasionally I have to disable it to install a game, but it happens very infrequently. The software's benefits also depend on your Internet Service Provider having a Freezone Steam server. So if you are with an ISP that doesn't provide one, you're out of luck :/

All in all, it's a very useful piece of software and it has stopped the majority of complaints from my housemates about the data always running out each month, so it has served it's purpose for me. Your mileage will vary, but I highly recommend trying it and seeing if there's a noticeable decrease in your monthly data usage :3

Why I No Longer Play World of Warcraft

When World of Warcraft first began, it was brilliant. In fact, it was brilliant for a long time and still today people say it's epic. However, I just can't get into it anymore, the game truly wowed me for a while but my WoW days are over and it's more like a disappointing sigh.

I first started playing during the vanilla days, I didn't make it to end game before Burning Crusade was released but I had a blast discovering along with my guildies. We were all so nooby and we had to do many things the hard way like:

• Make it to Wetlands, running for miles from Ironforge through tunnels without a mount because the first mount wasn't available until level 40.
• Even at level 40, most people didn't get a mount because they cost 100 gold and people didn't have that kind of money. Many people were even okay with waiting to get a mount because they'd spent 40 levels running anyway.
• If you just did quests, you'd run out and you were still too lowbie to go to the higher areas so you had to grind your way through mobs to get high enough.
• When you wanted to run a dungeon, you had to go there. I died many times trying to run to Scarlet Monastery.
• When you wanted a group, you had to ask on local or trade chat for people to go with and vanilla had 40 man raids.
• There were also no where near as many flight paths as there are now.
• There were no flying mounts.
  
  
  
  
  

There were many other things that made WoW more grindy, slower and harder back then so Blizzard listened to the community and made things easier... and easier... and easier... When I saw the flight path in Goldshire, this reminded me of how people take their car 3 houses down the road. Just walk people!

While I did appreciate the additions that made in-game life easier, I also noticed that for many plus's there are negatives. It was so much easier to get into a dungeon when you were just instanced there from wherever you were in the world when the queue “popped”. It meant you could continue questing while waiting for the queue and the queue's popped ever so quickly when we could all instance cross-realm. However, the community died. Trolls were already a problem, but within your realm, everyone knew who they were, I played in Dath'Remar and Snuggles was notorious as a troll. When we had to group up in a city then head to our allotted dungeon, we all chatted and got along, sometimes people would even leave their guild to join the people in their group because they'd become such BFF's chatting away, fighting alongside each other.

People were patient with each other, everyone worked as a team and I think a lot of this was due to the fact that if you were a pain in the ass in your group, you would most probably have to face those people again when you ran into them in a city plus you would know no one would want to group with you for future dungeon runs. You had a reputation to keep within your realm.

Now, no one gives a flying #$%@ about anyone else. You run dungeons hard and fast, if you don't keep up your vote-kicked, no one even says hello... there's me, trying to be all old school “Hello” … *crickets and a tumble weed...* It goes like this: Kill the mobs, down the bosses, pick up ya token, wham bam thank you ma'am, rinse, wash, repeat.

While they fixed it so you didn't have to grind mobs to level, you can now level doing quests, they made it so you have to grind end-game dungeons and daily quests. Oh hurrah.

During Wrath of the Lich King they took out team-work, made dungeons a joke where the group just ran in, everyone threw everything at all the mobs, no need for any CC or even a plan... and made us do them over and over again to collect tokens to get gear. So while running the same dungeon over and over again sounds fun they decided to bring back team-work and crowd control in Cataclysm.

So there we were with a whole community from WotLK; DPS running in trying to get in first hits and making sure they weren't on the tanks target because their whole role had become such a bore it became all about being on top of the DPS meter, tanks spamming AOE to easily keep threat and healers yawning through their role almost hoping something would go wrong for some excitement to: Cataclysm, where we went back to needing DPS peeps to use crowd control, needing DPS to wait for the tank to pull and gain threat and for DPS to stay on the tanks target. The tank's job was once again challenging and so was the healer's. It wasn't that it was hard there was just a simple need of team work. It wasn't about being carried by tanks and healers anymore, the DPS were actually needed again, they had a responsibility along with the rest of the group, it was up to them to not pull threat as much as it was up to tanks to hold threat and it was their job to control the mob.

It was a complete and utter mess with many many wipes because no one had any idea how to work together. It amazed me how many mages could fail at such a simple task of polymorphing. And of course when it all fell apart everyone blamed everyone else, off they went on their tangents where it was obvious they had no idea of the game's dynamics.

Although it was frustrating, I was happy for the time being that they'd brought back challenging dungeons, especially when I could run with guildies. It was quite fun. My guild and I were working our way up through dungeons, Heroics and starting to raid. We were a little slow but we were getting there, all working as a team, gearing up together etc.

When expansions are released, I'm always a little disappointed to say goodbye to the epics I'd worked towards for 2 years, it's so disheartening when green mob drops outdo your epic raid gear from the last expansion but it's a whole new journey once again. However, when they did it with a patch; Firelands, (okay, maybe not as big as an expansion) I rage-quit so hard I made hurricane Katrina look like a willy-willy. I was so despondent as I'd worked my butt off, grinding for months and it felt like all my gear was null and void. SighFye who just reached max level out geared me with a couple of Heroic Dungeon tokens. 

 

I quit the game for about a year or so but then those cute little Panda's had me curious again. I bought Mists of Pandaria but it just didn't have any appeal anymore. It just felt like the same thing again and with the sense of community gone it wasn't fun just bracing yourself for 12 year old trolls. I tried again with Warlords of Draenor but that attempt was even shorter than MoP. Trying to play again bored me to death.

There were a couple of things which I think added to the boredom. I'd gotten into Call of Duty and other FPS's which are really fast paced all the time, plus we had a clan to play with so I always had people to chat and play with. There's no grindy questing or professions. You just play, and when you've had enough you jump off. Easy.

I'd also played WoW and a few other MMORPG's (and in my opinion they pretty much all felt the same) for about 7-8 years on and off. Perhaps I'd exhausted the genre.

I still have a small part of me that misses the good old days of friendly community and discovery of new content, where we worked towards gear that dropped from bosses, instead of repeating the same dungeon for tokens; where we worked together, everyone had a significant role and we encouraged and helped each other.

That part of WoW is just a faint memory and what now stands is a troll-fest of egocentric teeny boppers who think they're pro because they can collect tokens and spam AOE's quicker than the next guy to be on top of the DPS meter. Let's all give them a slow clap as they bask in their own glory none the wiser that they're the reason for 99% of the wipes.



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Have fun gettin' your geek on!

Bellistik

Kill The Beast: Ep3: Theres no place like home

Hey guys, today is Way Back When's Day and I thought I would do my Minecraft series today because well it was supposed to be done way back on Monday.

Last time I left you guys, we had had a major battle with cave spiders which almost ended it for me. Well that battle took all my food so I needed to find some more. In previous days of playing, I have found that fishing is a great source of food. After the epic cave spider fight I had managed to pick up a lot of string. So I made myself a bow and a fishing rod.

With my new tools in hand I set out to find a fishing hole. On the way there I found my world had become corrupt, with a massive chasm. I saw in the chasm my torches so I knew my cave had now become useless, or at least difficult to navigate.

I started fishing in a local river. About ten minutes past and I had not caught a single fish. Maybe I was doing it wrong. I decided to move location to try somewhere else but once again, in about ten minutes, I had only caught one fish.

I decided it would better to look for some cows, sheep or chickens instead. But my luck was not too good in this frontier either. As night time fell I was still without food, my hunger running lower and now I had to fight the monsters of the dark.

After about fifteen minutes I stumbled across a cow stuck in a tree. I was saved.

But my night was not safe yet, monsters started to arrive. I first saw a skeleton but managed to take him down with ease.

But turning the corner I ran into big trouble. A whole horde of monsters coming at me.

The closest creeper even managed to get close enough to attack.

Every where I turned more and more monsters came out of the night.

By this time I was well and truly lost. I had no idea where home was, no idea which way to turn so I went for a new plan, to find a village. Villages are great with enough food to sustain me and rooms to hide.  I climbed into the trees to get a higher view, and a rest from the mob behind me. I saw clear land, land where villages are likely to spawn.

But heading there gave no relief from the mobs, in fact I ran into two enderman. Luckily I already knew to avert my eyes and all is fine.

It wasn't long until I found this little cove with plenty of food, that I can raise and a horse I could tame. This would be my new home.

And as the sun rose to clear the land of any more monsters I thought, today will be a better day. Today I start a new.

Thanks for reading guys. Feel free to leave a comment, +1 or share the post. You can also follow me on twitter.

Geek it up readers :P

SighFye

Tales from the Bargain Bin - Retro Games Haul

Now, anybody who already knows why I'm here may suspect that I just have a lot of games because I have too much money, but unless it's a big game like GTA5, that's not the case.
I love finding bargains and bundles that let me get tons of games for pennies on the dollar. You might even say I'm addicted to videogame bundles.

Today the Humble Store is having some sales and the content was too good to resist, so I thought I'd share my haul.

Sonic Hits Collection ($112.99 $16.94)

This collection includes copies of:

• Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed + Metal Sonic & Outrun DLC
• Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing
• Sonic 3 & Knuckles
• Sonic 3D Blast
• Sonic Adventure (Director's Cut)
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Sonic Adventure 2: Battle
• Sonic CD
• Sonic Generations + Casino Nights DLC
• Sonic Spinball
• Sonic The Hedgehog
• Sonic The Hedgehog 4 (Episodes 1 & 2)

Sega Genesis Classics Collection ($29.96 $7.49)

This collection includes copies of:

• Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
• Alien Soldier
• Alien Storm
• Altered Beast
• Beyond Oasis
• Bio-Hazard Battle
• Bonanza Bros
• Columns
• Columns III
• Comix Zone
• Crack Down
• Decap Attack
• Dynamite Headdy
• Ecco the Dolphin
• Ecco Jr.
• Ecco: The Tides of Time
• ESWAT: City Under Siege
• Eternal Champions
• Fatal Labyrinth
• Flicky
• Gain Ground
• Galaxy Force II
• Golden Axe
• Golden Axe II
• Golden Axe III
• Gunstar Heroes
• Kid Chameleon
• Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole
• Light Crusader
• Phantasy Star 2
• Phantasy Star 3
• Phantasy Star 4
• Ristar
• Shadow Dancer
• Shining Force
• Shining Force II
• Shining in the Darkness
• Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
• Space Harrier II
• Streets of Rage
• Streets of Rage 2
• Streets of Rage 3
• Super Thunder Blade
• Sword of Vermilion
• Vectorman
• Vectorman 2
• Virtua Fighter 2
• Wonder Boy in Monster World
• Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair

Grand Theft Auto III + Vice City ($19.98 $3.98)

Max Payne ($9.99 $1.99)

Drunken Robot Pornography ($14.99 $3.74)

Now pretty much all of these are older games that I played as a kid (with the exception of Drunken robot pornography) so I thought I'd grab em whilst they were on special for Way Back When's Day.

Drunken Robot Pornography is a bullet hell game about giant robots so I thought I'd grab that one as well, just for funzies.

All in all, this was a good haul. I ended up with $407 worth of games (original individual game prices, not the collection prices) for just $34.14 USD or $42.71 AUD.

That's a saving of just over 372 dollars for a grand total of 67 individual games!

Granted I already own about 3 or 4 of these games, but even some of those got new DLC from this haul, so I'm happy.

Feel free to head over to the Humble Store and check out some of the bargains yourselves. They do amazing videogame bundles too and a large sum of the money goes straight to charity. Well worth the price they usually offer.

Fear The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead was first, a graphic novel, written by Robert Kirkman and Illustrated by Tony Moore. It follows Rick Grimes and his family as they survive a zombie apocalypse.

In 2010, The Walking Dead received the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series at San Diego Comic-Con International. It was also adapted into a TV series, loosely based on the comic book series.

The Walking Dead TV series has become highly successful, with 5.35 million viewers on it's very first episode to 17 million viewers tuning in for the premiere of season 5. 

With it's high popularity, The Walking Dead has also been adapted into a video game

...But wait! There's more!

There are also Webisodes which are a series of short videos which tell the back story of some of the characters seen on the TV series, including the back story of Hannah, the half torso Zombie Rick stumbles upon in season 1.

...And if you thought that was all, then you're in for a treat because there's still more!

Coming in 2015 is “Fear of the Walking Dead”. Set in Los Angeles we follow a divorced teacher, Sean Cabrera (Cliff Curtis) and a guidance counselor who is a single mum of 2 and is said to be the girl next door with an edge Nancy Tomkins (Kim Dickens) along with others in a kind-of prequel set just as the zombie apocalypse began. We'll see how humanity handled the epidemic and perhaps discover how it started. Get ready for it's release in July this year!

Secure your doors and barricade your windows! The Walking Dead are taking over... well, maybe just the entertainment industry. 

Sweet Dreams

Bellistik