Minecraft, i’m sure you’ve all heard of the million-dollar game created by the one and only “Notch” and his brilliant team of programmers and sound artists. If not I will now introduce you into the vast (almost) limitless world with a huge array of crafting materials to create any structure you desire. If you didn’t know there’s only one goal in minecraft – To Survive – this is done by mining blocks underground and creating shelters or bases to survive the hoards of creatures that roam the lands at night. These creatures range from spiders, to skeletons to zombies but by far the worst of all of these is the infamous CREEPER!
Play the YouTube video at the bottom of the page for some of the games music while reading through this blog.
Now these creepers (pictured left) are the scourge of the minecraft world exploding when you least expect it killing you and destroying anything in the vicinity. They are widely seen as the face of minecraft and are as silent as the night itself, some say they look sad because they aren’t able to hug due to their lack of arms.
But anyway back to the review, there are over 100 blocks the player may find, mine or create into other blocks which you can use to design the ultimate mansion which you can rule. The most recent addition being piston blocks which allow the player to push or pull other blocks to where their needed, there are already many creations using these blocks, just search YouTube for some ideas. Yes, Minecraft isn’t finished yet but that should change in November this year, when Notch plans to release the full version of the game. The ability to create anything in Minecraft is the fact that made it so popular (along with the creeper), there are an unlimited number of building possibilities in Minecraft. I myself have built castles, creeper statues (to stop their anger and destroying my town – hopefully), giant mob farms, mansions, secret doors and many other things and I still find it extremely enjoyable to play.
Some might say the graphics are somewhat lacking, but it seems to work well with Minecraft and if you get bored of the same creepers and blocks you can always spice it up with downloadable texture packs, which range from photo-realistic packs to hello-kitty packs.
The thing I just adore about Minecraft though is the randomly generated terrain, it’s simply beautiful to watch the sunset on top of a mountain next to the ocean. The picture above is an overhanging ledge in my world i’ve just created with no human structures in it yet, there’s multiple of these everywhere around my world, I guess I got a lucky seed for it. I’m waiting for the underground caverns update first so I don’t have to re-build everything to get the caverns on my best map, much like if you built a level before lapus lazuli came out, the new material only appeared in areas that weren’t already loaded.
The music and sounds effects are fantastic and suit the game perfectly, it’s calming and soft at sunrise and sunset and underground you get short bursts of sound which tell you there’s deep dark caverns nearby, which always make you jump. There are also a few music discs you can obtain as well to play on your jukebox. There are only two songs at the moment with “cat” being the best, but there’s possibilities for many more in future updates.
If I was forced to give some criticism about Minecraft i’d have to go with: It’ll take so much of you life, and three days will have passed without you knowing what happened to them. No, really it’s so addictive, before I bought it I knew it was going to suck my time which was the reason I didn’t buy it for awhile, but eventually a friend bought it for me, being in the final weeks of Alpha. One other thing i’d like to point out is after you’ve fully explored every item in Minecraft, and made multiple objects from it, the game can get fairly repetitive after awhile, but the new adventure update should fix this problem with new innovative ways to kill zombies, a new “scary” mob (hopefully a dragon) and large underground caverns to explore.
At the moment Minecraft is in it’s Beta stage fairly close to to being completed, so i’d highly recommend buying it before the full version, because there won’t be the 25% discount that there is now. If you don’t have Minecraft yet I hope this review has helped you decide whether to get it or not. After the 1.8 update there may be a few more things to consider when deciding to buy the game so look at my “Has Minecraft gone down a Notch” post for more details.
Here’s the final score out of 100%:
Story: –
Game-play: 90%
Graphics: 75%
Sound/Music: 75%
Fun Rating: 95%
Addict-ability: 100%
Total: 87%
Legend:
0% – 24% = Hopeless Game, Definitely not worth buying! if you have it sell it now while its worth something!
25% – 49% = Terrible Game, This game will not prove to be very enjoyable, and may only be played once and forgotten.
50% – 59% = Average Game, A very mediocre game that you may play occasionally to pass time but doesn’t prove to be very enjoyable.
60% – 69% = Nice Game, A game you would play once or twice to see how it is, but ultimately lacks replay-ability and immersion.
70% – 79% = Brilliant Game, This game would satisfy your gaming needs for a very long time but would eventually be forgotten over time.
80% – 89% = Fantastic Game, A very fun game that proves time and time again to be enjoyable and addictive.
90% – 99% = Amazing Game, Extremely Enjoyable and has lots of replay-ability content, as well aspushing the boundaries for future games.
100% = Epic Game, Go and buy 20 copies right now! (In-case there’s a nuclear war and they get destroyed)
