VideoGame Minecraft: A Simple Premise With Infinite Possibilities
Minecraft is a game with a fundamentally simple premise. You are dropped into a world, alone and naked, and allowed to do whatever you want. It possesses deceptively simple gameplay involving destroying, collecting, and placing blocks of various textures properties, along with a simple creation inferface that allows for the crafting of various objects, such as armor, weapons, tools, food, etc. Included in the mix are a mixture of various types of plants and animals that can be harvested for food or other materials. Rounding out the gameplay are a variety of enemies ranging from zombies to arrow-shooting skeletons to the iconic exploding creeper.
What makes Minecraft so effective is how it combines three simple but appealing ideas: exploration, creation, and destruction. Minecraft allows a player to wander the world, exploring the landscape both above- and belowground, it allows the player to construct anything their imagination allows them to, and it allows them to destroy monsters and the landscape freely. However, what makes this so effective in Minecraft is the simplicity of the game itself. It doesn't tell you what to do, nor does it give you instructions; you're simply placed in the world to make what you wish from the game. That freedom allows the player to turn Minecraft into whatever they wish; I've talked with people who played the game as lone wanderers who roamed the landscape during the day and built shelters at night. Other players I've talked to built vast citadels of stone and iron both above and belowground. Others built vast highways over hundreds of miles of landscape, deadly traps to kill monsters en masse, created scale models of real life or fictional places, structures, and starships, and more.
There is an endless range of possibilities in Minecraft. The world is yours to shape however you wish - and best of all, it isn't even finished yet. The game is currently in Beta as of this review, sells for remarkably cheap prices for it's immense replay value, and is continuously updated with a range of new features. Highly recommended for anyone who loves to build or explore.
VideoGame Fantastic before the 1.9 Update
Minecraft has always been a fantastic sandbox game, allowing players to do whatever they want. Build castles or great big farms? Yep. Defeat bosses (Ender Dragon and Wither)? Got that. Adventure? Yessiree.
HOWEVER. 1.9 changed the most basic mechanics, altering the whole experience. Combat has now been changed to include a charge meter, where full damage can only be dealt if the bar is full. This means that the old spam-click method of dealing with mobs is no longer anywhere near as effective. Additionally, the protection gained from armour now diminishes with damage gained to it, making death a lot more likely. These two changes are far more than enough to ruin the core Survival experience, as you cannot kill mobs as quickly as before, while they can kill you far faster than before. This was likely done to 'balance' PvP, but it also affects Singleplayer, which is utterly stupid.
The only way to get around the attack meter is to either use a command to change a sword's attributes (which is counterintuitive), or to have a permanent Haste effect, which can only be done via commands. Which are set to off by default, and most people consider it cheating.
As for right now, Minecraft has fallen from a ~7/10 to 4/10 because of these stupid changes. AS SOON AS THEY BECOME OPTIONAL, or removed entirely, it goes back up to 7/10, as the other additions (new Command Blocks and Shields) are pretty dang cool. If only they didn't come with such HUGE setbacks...
VideoGame It Is What You Make It
Minecraft is a game that I've known about for some time, yet never had the drive to play until some friends of mine put up a server and I wished to play with them. Once I became immersed in the world, I quickly found out exactly why people played it and why it is held to its unique standard.
Minecraft is a special game in that it does not have a specific way to play it; you are the one who chooses how to play. If you wish to roam the world like a wanderer, wishing to see the beautiful sights of the world and building many tiny homes in mountains along the way, then you can. If you wish to remain in one spot, yet still venture out at times to collect Ender Pearls or other valuable resources so you may kill the Ender Dragon, you can. If you just want settle down and spend your days crafting enchantments so that slaying the Ender Dragon and other enemies is a cakewalk or building structures, then you most certainly can as well. The possibilities are downright endless.
Being creative is what this game is all about, which is also helped by the fact that this game gives you the ability to make your character appear however you want. Whether you make the skin on your own or download it off some website, there are hundreds if not thousands of options to choose from. This addition to the game really does create a certain sense of freedom I haven't felt in too many places before, and I most certainly appreciate it. There really aren't too many games I can think of where you can have Satsuki Kiryuin and a Lucario hug in a moment of cuteness.
Of course, the game isn't without flaws. Glitches are sometimes prominent, resulting in silly things such as horses glitching out of pens or the moment of lag after you come out of the Nether portal. Reaching the Ender Dragon is a bit tedious, as it requires such a huge amount of effort to do and even finding the portal to that creature can be a hassle with how the Eyes of Ender operate. Then also, it is very easy to rage quit. Extremely. You will often find your patience tested with this game, whether it is due to falling in lava or because some Creeper blew up part of your house.
But overall, I would recommend everyone to give this game a chance. Play on a server and see what you think. You might like it.
Videogame An Awesome Video Game Made by Mojang
I give Minecraft 5/5 stars. First of all, I like how it's non-linear, but has an optional achievements list and an optional ending (appropriately called "The End"). That way, if you want to do your own thing, like I do, you can, but if you want a set-out goal, you can. Secondly, I like how you can adjust the difficulty to how you see fit: there's Peaceful, Easy, Normal, and Hard. This way, almost anyone can play Minecraft. Thirdly, I like the update system. The updates aren't done weekly, which I think would be overwhelming, but they're not done yearly, which would be boring. I also like the quality of the updates. Every time there's an update, there's something new. This, in my opinion, keeps the game interesting. Like I said before, I give Minecraft 5/5 stars. Minecraft is a game that's fun to play.
Videogame A game for everyone
This is a game...that has an appeal for everyone. You could build, dig, or go an a massacre of piggies. And that's just the singleplayer. Multiplayer introduces teamwork/competition, and some geniuses have gone and created custom minigames. The biomes are unpredictable and unique, and that's pretty cool. However, some computers may not be able to run it at optimal settings(i.e. low fps, rough lighting), and this game does have quite a few bugs. All in all, it's an addicting game with endless possibility. P.S. The soundtrack is amazing
VideoGame Freakin' Addicting
Minecraft is one of those games. A game that pretty much steals all your free time. There's no overarching storyline, no characters to speak of and it is quite blocky. That last reason is great for 3 reasons. It allows for huge ass worlds(8 times the surface area of the FREAKING EARTH), it can be ran on almost any machine(I got it to run on High school computers)and it being blocky, the whole constructing your own stuff becomes much easier when you think of it as say LEGO. This game is still in Beta at the time of writing this review, and it's probably the second best 20 bucks I've spent on a game(if your wondering the best is Team Fortress 2). If I could choose a flaw is that there isn't a whole lot to do aside from digging. Sure you could explore the world, but that just leads to more digging. But that isn't particularly a bad thing. The digging is fun, and finding yourself a nice place to mine to hell and back is much better than it sounds.
VideoGame Quite Possibly The Best Game I'll Ever Play
I tried Minecraft at a friend's house about a year ago. I only played for 15 minutes, but it left me astounded. I loved what I saw, and now that I have the game, I can safely say that I absolutely love it.
The beauty of it is that you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT. Wanna make a castle? Go ahead. Kill 100 creepers? Why not. This level of freedom, combined with a simplified control scheme, make something wonderful on its own, and the community only makes it better. People have created everything from new dimensions to Capture The Flag servers to amazing adventure maps with deep stories.
Of course, nothing is perfect, and Minecraft stumbles in some ways. For example, the final boss is somewhat poorly made, and is far too hard to access. The Nether is fun to explore, but has less content than the main world. But the good outweighs the bad, and it can only get better from here. With 1.4 on the horizon, I look forward to the challenges I'll be facing in the future, and I salute Notch and his team for taking a chance on such an unorthodox game. If you can't make your own fun, you may be disappointed, but perhaps the adventure maps can help you there.
VideoGame Good and bad.
The game is both good and bad. It is good in that is a vast world in which you can explore. Your options for buildings are quite impressive and there is no guidance forcing you into a particular path. The monsters are interesting and can provide challenge for those looking for it. Exploration is slowly expanding and useful additions to the game have been made.
The current set of implimented features and gameplay are fun and some are quite useful. They add flavor to the game. The game encourages very creative thinking for unique solutions to a number of building challenges and creating certain effects in the game. Multi-player is a blast especially on a server with a shop mod available and a build focussed server group.
The bad side is the game has serious bug list and assorted stability issues from version to version. It seems now that the creator has a team to work on the game it's progess has slowed to a crawl and little care is given to fixing the plethora of bugs that crop up. The lack of testing phases before various releases to spot serious bugs is very annoying. Yes the game is in beta but there is a point where letting bugs that make the game randomly unplayable on a variety of machines is not acceptable.
There seems to be a fair amount of contention between the creator and the modding community. Most of this revolving around mods, access to a modding API, and implimentation of new ideas in the game itself. Then there are various issues of what seems to be a arrogant attitude of quite a few of the more well known modders and members of the community.
Both the game and community are a bit out of control and it hurts the game and the modding community. The game has the possibility of improving drastically I am not sure about the rest though.
VideoGame As one put it, "An infinite world of Legos that occasionally explodes."
Let me start by saying one thing : This is a BETA? Minecraft is already robust and rounded out enough to be a full fledged game, and I doubt anyone could complain. This game is meant to inspire everyones inner architect, and possibly inner child. I can think of a million reasons to not like minecraft. The graphics are intentionally pixelized, the enemies can be annoying while building, theres no story, no gameplay goals, etc.. But all of those are thrown out the window (well, mostly) when you really start to get inspired and tinker with all the toys at your disposal.
Let me be honest - I didn't like Minecraft until I realized all the crazy things I could build. Why go shoot faceless Mooks one after another when you can ride a pig off a cliff into a pool of lava, while eating chicken? The game offers tons of fun if you know where to look for it. Giant pixel art, multiplayer mahem, fun with fire, and, for those other people, possibly giant [Instert something I would not like to mention here]s. Theres no predefined goal - Its just you, a world 8 times the surface area of earth, and those damn creepers.
Minecraft isn't for everyone, sure. But the gameplay is what you want it to be. Maybe.. build rollercoasters? Build scale models of real-world buildings? Complex machines that constantly kill monsters? Or if you're not that creative, maybe you could just go set a village on fire or something. I dunno. Minecraft is a game about imagination, and if you don't have much of it, you probably won't find much fun here.
However, the one glaring problem I see in Minecraft is, believe it or not, boredom. The game is a blast.. while it lasts. After a while, you may slowly become uninspired and decide to call it quits for a while, only to take a long break from the game that slowly evolves into a month-long hiatus.. I'm not saying this will happen to everybody at once, but boredom will grip you eventually. Also, the combat is dull at times, with each enemy being incredibly predictable eventually. But does this make the game any less fun while it lasts? Heck no!
And if you DO get bored, why not try some of the other things, or challenge yourself? Build a stable house in the Nether? Try out the freakin' epic Multiplayer? See just how ABSURD your creations can get? Minecraft is epic. Buy it.
Just watch out for cree - *pchk* ssssSSSSS - *BAM*
9/10
VideoGame Legos, Firecrackers and Creepers
Being a sandbox game and in alpha state, Minecraft is a hard to explain game, not having any story and just letting the player figure things out in his own. The player is welcomed usually by the ocean, standing on the beach or a sand patch. Having no tools, no weapons and no instructions is up to the player in what to do. Easily they will start hitting everything around, collecting sand, dirt, wood and start to figure out their first wood tools to quickly pass to stone and look for the precious coal needed to make torches and make night safe. Later looking for iron and other ores once a home is created and made safe. The whole world is generated which each new save letting awesome-looking places that hardly give the feeling that they are made from cubes of around 1m. Once with tools, the player has it easy to plow down a mountain and create large and deep mines in look for useful resources to build incredible projects. The game has a little number of NP Cs, with the Creepers, this one are totally original from this game, a failed pig, in Notch's word, a green, tall,four legged, and not necessary an animal, enemy. Totally silent and deadly, creepers don't make any sound when they walk, the only sound is a "SSSSSSSSSS" before they explode with the force of a dynamite charge blasting everything in a small radius, destroying, usually, the player's house. This infamous creatures are an icon for the game, and even if destructive, the community has grown to love them, and have a desire to hug them. The forum of the community, even if "lovely", provides with a lot of good material, from ideas to useful mods and texture packs, able to change the form and quality the world looks like. The original texture of the game is a simple grid of 16X16 pixels squares, but the program can actually support files bigger, the only drawback was a little bug corrupting some of the textures in how they looked in game, after a fix from part of the forums, now bigger texture packs are available, letting people play with, sometimes, better looking packs. But since the game updates frequently the community presses against Notch to make the code more open-friendly and don't make programmers in the forum have to redo every mod after the updates.
VideoGame One of the all-time greatest video games.
I first played Minecraft on a loaner world through a friend's account, and lost myself in it until I lost access. My time with the game never left me, and too many years later, I finally decided to purchase it for myself.
Minecraft is in a word, iconic. It's one of those games with such a distinctive visual identity and such a simple yet extremely wide gameplay system that it really works for any kind of player and still has its own perfect identity from what the developers have given it. Minecraft essentially translates pixel graphics into the third dimension where every square meter of space is a block that acts like a pixel you can remove and replace on any space in the world's extremely vast grid. It's remarkable how attractive the game is for the blocky aesthetic that results, and building feels limitless and constantly inspiring, with the pixel system working to add structure and confidence in a way that works really well for me.
Minecraft's main campaign is a survival game, where you are let loose with nothing in the mostly empty overworld and must accrue resources to build a shelter, defend yourself, craft tools, and make beds to respawn at and chests to hold resources, all before you can consider luxuries like creativity. There are realistic natural hazards while exploring, and monsters everywhere that's dark (and some in the light) that can ruin a whole ton of progress, either through killing you and making you drop items, or by blowing up your structures. This game mode takes you to other dimensions from the overworld toward a boss, and allows for a grueling but rewarding sense of development where every building is really earned.
Then there's Creative mode, where I thrive. Here, you can't die to anything but the void under the world, and you can build with limitless resources to create anything you can imagine. It's a joy to experience building with total freedom. It's like a whole new medium of artwork that can combine elements of sculpture, architecture, interior design, and even electrical mechanics. Minecraft has a surprisingly complex electrical system using the redstone material that allows you to build just about any kind of trap or mechanism you want. Hideouts full of secrets and puzzles are yours to design- if you can understand the redstone and, ideally, hide the workings away somewhere.
Minecraft also allows cheat codes at the creation of the world to be used at the player's discretion, which I appreciate. The game really gives as much freedom as it can and there's myriad ways to play and enjoy the game that each person can choose for themselves.
Minecraft is perhaps the epitome of "the world is your oyster". The game is what you make of it, but what the devs made of it first is distinctive and groundbreaking in its own wonderful way.