DDR ; Assassin's Creed II ; Minecraft ; Just Dance

DDR, Assassin's Creed II, Minecraft; my life has been revolving around video games for the past few days but I don't mind. Sleeping Beauty has gone out of town for a few days but left me her xBox so I may kill time effectively. So far, it hasn't worked very well. First day I forgot a controller, second day I needed to get a game from a friend but didn't get it until on my way to my school's dance (hence Just Dance, but I felt clever putting a fourth video game into my title), and yesterday I waited for a friend to show up at my house before starting my assassination shenanigans so I only got two hours of game play done. This may seem like a fair amount of time, but this is a long game with a lot of side quests. It looks like I'll be busy for a while.

As for Dance Dance Revolution, I've been on a one hour or more regiment of it for the past four days. Today will be my fifth if I go to it after school, but yesterday I found it brought back some of the pains I previously had in my left knee. For quite some time my knees were more or less falling apart, or so it felt like. I'm unsure what the problem was, something between osgood schlatter, something I can't remember the name of but it means my knee cap was rubbing against bones in the wrong angle, and muscles in my upper leg that were not supporting enough (which was associated with the knee cap problem). After a lot of rest, they seemed to get better. Apparently rest helped one condition, but not the other. It was a tricky balance but it looks like I'm all better except when I agrivate my knees. One to three steps a second, sometimes even four, for three thousand six hundred seconds shouldn't be too aggravating right? Well that's assuming I play the entire time, but there are breaks between songs and I will sit down to catch my breath on occasion, play an easy song, then get back to my expert difficulty.

And I'm starting to find expert to be not that difficult, again at least. When I first acquired the game I played for ridiculous amounts of time until I was great at the game. With a loss of interest in the game from my family I shied away from it. Now I'm back and working towards being better than I was before, not that I have much to use as a marker for my skill. I figure when I can play the songs on my game (SuperNOVA 2, right now I'm playing Extreme 2 which is being borrowed from Sleeping Beauty) that I could barley pass or couldn't pass before, I will declare myself at the top of my ability.

As for Assassin's Creed, which I am not sure if it should have an apostrophe or not, I'm loving the second game in this series. The story is great so far, and I'm not even that far into it. I think the graphics are better than the previous game, but they might just be done in a different style so it's more notable. I've found that I'm not always attuned to what looks better, but what looks different. Perhaps because it is in a more modern area it has a slightly more sophisticated feel to the environment. The features that were in the first game of this series, I thought were great. Of course there were a few complaints, such as a limit in some aspects of combat or problems with the climbing system. I don't have all the features for the second game yet, they need to be unlocked, but the simple features that you start off with are great. The combat system for hand to hand is great, and it gives you the opportunity to punch a guard in the face a few times even if they have a sword. I've only gotten to use a sword for a few minutes before it was smacked out of my hand by an axe wielding giant, sorry for the spoiler but it was small so I decided not to go back and put a warning in about it. I've progressed as far into the game as learning how to steal, having my hidden blade fixed, and I was about to use it on a guard who was beating up Da Vinci (easily my favorite character so far) when I messed up and then had to leave. I'm hoping the automatic save took place after the cut scene (which I think it did). The auto save icon, along with most of the icons in this game, annoy me a bit in their odd shape which just doesn't seem to fit in; but the auto save system seems to work very well so I'm not complaining too much.

Minecraft, the game of simple graphics (which I love) and frightening creepers. This must be the most frightening game I have ever played. I know I have not played many games meant to be frightening, but I know several people who have and who play Minecraft often. They will agree that it has a ridiculously uneasy feeling at night time or in caves. I am just getting to exploring my first natural cave, after several hours in the world I am working on. I was shy to go to the caves, because I have been doing a lot of above ground work. I have my own cave system that I hollowed out entirely by hand except for a (maybe) 100 cubic meter area that has lava and some natural water. I intend on harvesting all of the lava, well moving it to a cave closer to the surface so I may use it for my glass tube lighting system eventually, and then once I get a diamond pick I will be removing the obsidian from the area. I'm in the process of moving everything I have underground, more or less. Above ground I have a sugar cane farm, that is useless considering when I harvest it I get two or three stacks of sugar cane and at most I'm only ever going to need five pieces of it. I also have a wheat farm which is a good size, but I also have one of the underground which works well. I have an artificial island, in the shape of a cube, that has the dimensions 25 x 25 x 25 m and I was going to put a castle on top of it, but it is too small. Instead a log house will go there. I almost have two large chests full of cobblestone for my castle, which I may put on top of the entrance to my natural surface cave. Bleh, that's a frightening cave. There's a lot of sudden drops in it. A few drops that I'm sure would kill me if I were to step off of them by mistake. This combined with a lot of corners and paths that split off in all directions quite frequently, it is not a friendly place. Another underground feature I have is a tree farm that I put in the 20 x 20 x 8 m (8m deep) room. It is entirely underground, and I carved it all out. It may be easy to see where I'm getting so much cobblestone. My glass collection is also becoming huge, and may be taunting me with the idea of an under water fortress. One tunnel I have runs under the ocean, and the ocean was slightly deeper at one point. This would make it very easy to create an underwater glass castle. Did I mention my unground tunnels? I needed a way to get around, so I started to make a tunnel system with rails in it. I ran out of iron quickly, but once I get them working my three minute walk will be much less I'm sure.

At the moment my plans for my world is a pyramid, that I must just put lava on top of and declare it a volcano; a cobblestone castle, which I have the materials for but I'm going to wait until I'm done exploring the cave I found so I have even more materials to work with, a underground tunnel system that will reach every point of my world if I continue expanding it; I didn't mention it before but I think I'll make an underground cactus farm, branching off of my tree farm, just because I can. I already have more cactus than I'll need (over a hundred planted and almost four stacks in a chest); some glass tubes filled with lava for lighting outside, because I think that would be the best way to detour mobs; wooden house on top of my giant island, that really is not all that big but it looks big; hmm, and I'm sure in a few days I'll have more plans.

It's so tempting to make a pun about Dance Dance Revolution now, but I think I'll leave my statement as 'at the school dance, I can honestly say I enjoyed next to every moment of it.' This may not seem like much, but all the previous dances I've been to, I have not enjoyed very consistently. I usually leave dehydrated, which didn't happen this time despite the fact I forgot to get some water before I left. The water fountain seemed to keep me alive properly this time. I usually leave with headaches, which may be due to the water but I credit it to the loud music which bothers me in most cases. I like my music to be quiet. Despite there being a lack of dancing, I usually leave with sore knees as well, which didn't happen. I even played DDR for an hour before it and I ended up with a slight ache for a few minutes once I got home but that quickly subsided. For the first time though, I found myself actually enjoying the process of dancing. It was odd, though I'm sure my statement saying it is odd will be much more unusual for most readers. Everyone seems to enjoy dancing, I never have though. I'm not fond of how everyone forms circles and always arranges a collective mindset it seems, everyone moving at the same time and all that. I would much rather stand in the middle of the room, with few people around me, dancing with Sleeping Beauty. This happened a few times, and I was pulled into a few circles that I promptly got out of in most cases, but all in all it was enjoyable.

You could say, I had a dance dance revolution.. nope. You couldn't say that, well you could but you would sound really cheesy. Yes, I'm glad I didn't say that at the beginning; turning off my readers to any serious words I may hold.

Bugworlds {{