Young or old, PC or Xbox—Minecraft is for everyone. The addictive game immerses players in a world where they can build structures and tools out of the terrain and items they collect. Despite the game’s absence of plot and its blocky graphics, Minecraft continues to be a hit, selling more than 121 million copies across all platforms since its 2011 release. Why is it so popular? One of the game’s greatest strengths is it allows players to be in charge of their journey. Some folks want to build modest dirt huts, ride horses and fight zombies—and others would rather construct exact replicas of Westros as seen in Game of Thrones.
But Minecraft doesn’t stop when you beat the Ender Dragon—an episodic choose-your-own-adventure style spinoff was released in 2015 in the form of Minecraft: Story Mode. The game follows Jesse—voiced by Patton Oswalt, if male, and by Catherine Taber, if female—a new Minecraft player who is on a journey to find four legendary adventurers who saved the Minecraft world.
What else do we love about Minecraft? Check out the the best parts below.
Markus “Notch” Persson could be working on a successor to Minecraft, with him recently revealing a series of images and videos from a new project with a similarly eye-catching design.
Notch is most famous for developing Minecraft before he handed over its Microsoft, with him selling both the sandbox game and his studio Mojang for an estimated $2 billion. Since then, Notch has mostly stayed away from game development, though he recently uploaded a slew of screenshots and videos for his new project “Voxels_WebGL2.”
Notch has noted that the project is “definitely not a sequel to anything,” but if this project does become something more substantial then it will be the first proper game he’s released since Minecraft. The project is in the very early stages of development, with Notch adding that he’s “just having way, waaay too much fun seeing how far I can push this tomfoolery.”
On top of various screenshots of the project’s various structures and its sprawling, mountainous landscape, Notch also posted a video showing it in motion. Notch said that the core engine used by the game is called Core, while he’s writing the project in Javascript and “abusing WebGL 2.”
When a follower asked Notch what he’s making, the developer replied: “I have no idea. It’s a currently a voxel engine that runs in a web browser at 99fps with 60+km view distance with real time terrain generation. Oh, and all voxels are modifiable in runtime, although that will eat up the ram pretty fast. Just added real time reflections.”
Notch doesn’t appear to have bigger plans for the project right now, though he seems pretty pleased with the results thus far. Could this wind up being the Minecraft successor that his followers have been waiting for?
The seventh generation of Pokémon games introduced the world to powerful new Fire-type Pokémon.
In Ultra Sun and Moon, players have access to over 20 different Fire-type Pokémon exist in-game. Even with this limited amount the Fire-type Pokémon offered are some of the strongest players can find in Pokémon history.
Having a Fire-type Pokémon in your team became crucial in Sun and Moon because of certain strong Pokémon like Klefki, that could only be beaten by a strong Fire-type.
All Pokémon in this list are catchable in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon. Some stronger Fire-type Pokémon, however, can be transferred from another game in the Pokémon series to Pokémon Ultra and Moon through the Pokémon Bank if you want to use something different. Pokémon Bank is available on the Nintendo 3DS eshop for a small yearly rental charge. Incineroar
Type: Fire/Dark
Players can only get Incineroar by choosing Litten as a starter Pokémon. It evolves from Torracat, the evolution of Torracat, at level 34.
Incineroar’s strengths come from it’s typing. By being a Fire/Dark type Pokémon, Incineroar can use a lot of effective moves like Knock Off, which knocks off an opponent Pokémon’s item. The move Fake Out, which causes the Pokémon to flinch, making it unable to use a move for that turn, is also important as it leaves the opposing Pokémon wide open for attack in Double Battles.
Incineroar’s typing also means that it can learn an abundance of moves that can deal with some of the game’s most popular Pokémon, such as Klefki and most of the Ultra Beast Pokémon.
Overall, Incineroar does a lot of damage. In Ultra Sun and Moon, Incineroar is able to learn the move Superpower, which is one of the strongest Fire-type moves in-game, making Incineroar vital for competitive players. Volcarona
Type: Fire/Bug
Players can find a Larvesta in the Lush Jungle. It can then be evolved into a Volcarona from level 59.
Volcarona is a huge damage threat to any opposing team as it is arguably the best Fire-type Pokémon in-game. Due to its unique typing of Bug/Fire, a lot of the weaknesses that both types would have individually are nullified.
One of Volcarona’s biggest weaknesses have been Rock-type moves in the past. Competitive players started to put Pokémon in their teams specifically to deal with Volcarona by giving them moves like Rock Slide, which can do four times damage to Volcarona, killing it in an instant.
In order to get around this glaring weakness, players should give their Volcarona the item Choice Scarf during battles. The item increases Volcarona’s speed, allowing it to hit an opponent first in order to try and avoid a critical attack from an opposing player’s Pokémon. Talonflame
Type: Fire/Flying
Players can find a Fletchling at Route 8 or Wela Volcano Park. It can then be evolved into a Talonflame from level 35.
Talonflame received a nerf in the Sun and Moon series and is weaker than it was in generation six. Even with the noticeable nerf, it is still one of the strongest Fire-type Pokémon available to find due to its blinding speed and its Flying-type move set.
Talonflame is used best in Ultra Sun and Moon when players attach a Flying Z-Crystal item to it. It can then use the Z-Move Brave Bird which can do a ton of damage to an opponent. It also has a lot of priority flying moves at it’s disposal that can hit an opponent fast and hard, giving players a huge advantage. Blacephalon
Type: Fire/Ghost
Blacephalon is a Pokémon exclusive to Ultra Sun and Moon and was one of a handful of Pokémon to be added to the game. It is only available in Ultra Sun at Poni Grove after completing the main story, meaning Ultra Moon players will need to trade to get it themselves.
Blacephalon is a glass cannon for any player’s team. While the Pokémon can deal a lot of damage that could take out multiple Pokémon, it itself is so squishy that any type of powerful move could beat it in one blow.
The Pokémon should be used in your party as a last resort to take down a troublesome opponent that has been causing you grief. The Pokémon is set to rise in popularity in competitive when Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon becomes the staple competitive Pokémon game in 2018 and will be a solid addition to any party. Arcanine
Type: Fire
Players can find a Growlithe on Route 2 and then evolve it into an Arcanine by using the item Fire Stone. It’s best to evolve a Growlithe at level 33-34 after it has learned a bunch of moves. An Arcanine cannot learn moves by leveling up like normal Pokémon.
Arcanine is best used when it knows the ability Intimidate, which lowers the attack stat of all opposing Pokémon greatly. It should be used against physical attackers to weaken them in battle.
It is one of few Fire-type Pokémon to have access to a large move pool, giving the player tons of options on how they want to build their Arcanine for battle. You can have it be a swift fighter that attacks first for tons of damage or assists your team through other means, allowing you to mix and match the Pokémon to fit any team composition.
Arcanine was best used in the Sun and Moon competitive scene due to a lack of good Fire-types in the game. While more Fire-type Pokémon have become readily available in Ultra Sun and Moon, it is still a good fighter to grace any party.
Warning: Major Doki Doki Literature Club spoilers feature below.
Ever since Team Salvato released its horror visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club, fans have been obsessing over the titular club’s president, Monika. And a new mod allows players to hang out with just Monika for the rest of their lives.
In one of Doki Doki’s most memorable scenes, Monika deletes every single character from the game in an attempt to enter into a relationship with whoever is playing Doki Doki. It’s a creepy scene, but because of Monika’s obsessiveness and sheer loneliness, she’s quickly won the hearts of many fans. And that’s where the mod “Monika After Story” comes in, turning dating Monika into a reality. Image via Monika After Story
In “Monika After Story,” the game’s mod team has built a chatbot AI for Monika, which essentially allows her to understand the player’s responses and engage in discussions on things like video games and the meaning of life. Players can also listen to music together, challenge Monika to chess, and fantasize about going on dates. New content is regularly added into the mod, and the update’s 0.6.3 version even comes with special events for Christmas and New Year’s.
If you want to appreciate Monika in all her glory, go ahead and download the latest version here. “Monika After Story” requires Doki Doki Literature Club to play, but the game can be downloaded for free via Steam, itch.io, or the visual novel’s official website.
If you’ve had troubles trying to access Fortnite: Battle Royale today, you’re not alone. Epic Games has confirmed there’s a widespread issue.
Earlier in the day, players had reported issues with logging in or even finding a massive queue to connect to the game’s servers. Now, Epic has provided detailed reasoning as to what’s been going on behind the scenes.
“We wanted to provide a bit more context for the most recent login issues and service instability,” an Epic Games representative said on its forums. “All of our cloud services are affected by updates required to mitigate the Meltdown vulnerability. We heavily rely on cloud services to run our back-end and we may experience further service issues due to ongoing updates.”
The Meltdown vulnerability came to light earlier in the week, and it’s some sort of backend issue with certain CPU’s. Many people have been affected, and Epic’s no different, as its cloud services have brought about the problem at hand.
“Unexpected issues may occur with our services over the next week as the cloud services we use are updated,” the forum post continued. “We are working with our cloud service providers to prevent further issues and will do everything we can to mitigate and resolve any issues that arise as quickly as possible. Thank you all for understanding.”
For now, it appears Fortnite’s servers will be something of a wait-and-see situation for the next few days. More information about the Meltdown issue can be found in an in-depth article on SpectreAttack.com.
On top of various screenshots of the project’s various structures and its sprawling, mountainous landscape, Notch also posted a video showing it in motion. Notch said that the core engine used by the game is called Core, while he’s writing the project in Javascript and “abusing WebGL 2.”
Notch doesn’t appear to have bigger plans for the project right now, though he seems pretty pleased with the results thus far. Could this wind up being the Minecraft successor that his followers have been waiting for?
