I may have forgotten to mention one particular game the other day. A game which I don’t play too often, but when I do I really get dragged in… Minecraft.
Of course, Minecraft. Everyone’s playing that gosh darned Minecraft. Like I said, I don’t log on often, though if I do I end up trapped in that world of crafting and mining for hours on end, much to the dismay of Morning Ryan. Getting up for work is a real bitch when you were up most of the night digging a really big virtual hole.
And last weekend, my little brother-in-law (to-be, if you want to pick) showed me a gun mod for the game that he’d downloaded and installed. I wasn’t super impressed with the idea of putting guns in Minecraft. And then I was given a demonstration of the high explosives. He put down approximately 100 blocks of the so-called “nuke” in a small shaft near the bottom of the map, and then climbed to the top of said shaft (with a super-awesome grappling hook, by the way). He then proceeded to fire a rocket down the shaft.
That’s when the laptop froze.
For a few seconds there was nothing but silence and a frozen screen. Then things started moving again, and we looked down the hole. Inside was the most gigantic hollowed-out cavern I’ve ever seen. It was bigger than probably all the caves I dug in my first world combined. It was amazing. I’ll admit that I took my time getting home, because there are some things that even exploding the fuck out of Minecraft cannot top. But when I got home, I was on that mod like jam on toast!
This is a small island just east of my sand castle in my second offline world. As you can see, I have strung a series of nukes around the perimeter of the island, and even buried a few in random spots around the sand. This island was infested with zombies at the time, and I was hoping to get an image of them on the island, but I wasn’t able to slip away without them following me. There’s one in the water, and a creeper swam over to the island after I left, but it’s not the same. Now, behold, as I make this entire island disappear! And it’s not going to disappear into time or something silly like that. It’s going to vanish forever.
I will admit, that as cool as the nukes are, unless they’re in an enclosed space, they don’t work all that great. A single box won’t make a much bigger divot than a regular TNT. They also have a fuse, no matter what sets them off, so a nuke set off by a nearby explosion will bounce away and tick for a second or two before it goes off. This makes careful planning important for clearing away large above ground areas.
Voila! As I said, nukes will bounce away from other explosions, so it wasn’t a perfect detonation (it took 4 missiles to set it all off). I would have liked the crater to have been a little deeper too, but the end result is super satisfying. Just look at that wonderful destruction! I also waited until daytime so it was easier to see.
Now, despite the display of awesomeness, you may feel like the gun mod still violates the spirit of Minecraft. And I don’t disagree with you. I don’t see myself using the bulk of the mod items for anything other than explodinating entire islands (or mountains!) at a time. Of course, that grappling hook, which can be thrown to create a rope that goes down until it hits a block, is something that should absolutely be a legitimate Minecraft item. Ladders are neat and all, but the grappling hook is a spelunker’s best friend.
And sometimes it can be so satisfying to pop a cap in a creeper’s ass. Teach those fuckers to explode my library.
