Night is coming....
We originally assumed that Minecraft was merely another passing retro fad. Happily, we were proven very wrong. ~_^
Minecraft is an addictive sandbox game based in a blocky world (where it's hip to be a cube ~_^). Players freely decide how they want to play. Explore the world? Go sailing? Build a castle? Mine for ores? Build a tower that reaches the clouds? The sky is the limit (literally... well that and bedrock).
In survival mode players start with nothing but a map and their bare hands. The initial struggle for shelter and resources is our favorite part of the game. Punching dirt, trees, cows (yes cows, and any other blocks... except bedrock) to collect materials for shelter, tools, and food. Tools collect resources faster than fists and are required for gathering better materials like stone and ores. Food is required to avoid starvation. And shelter is required to avoid creepers (until you own a cat ~_^).
Each night players are beset by monsters, including zombies, creepers, skeletons, spiders, skeletons riding spiders, and endermen. You can stay in your shelter, sleep to skip to dawn, or fight them.
Unmentionable hours later, long after players establish themselves with some decent housing, equipment, and a stockpile of resources, the gameplay starts to level off and can become monotonous. But that's where creativity, minecarts, and redstone inventions come in! Minecarts are a great form of transportation in the game and can be rather entertaining to build and ride. Redstone is a power source for many interactive items, such as switches, levers, pressure plates, tripwires, pistons, etc. YouTube is a great place to see some of the inventions players can create with these items.
In creative mode players face no danger and have an unlimited supply of materials to use. This mode is focused on creativity and avoids the resource scarcity of survival mode. Many players build complex structures and entirely custom worlds in creative mode that can be later used as survival mode worlds.
The PC/Mac version of Minecraft is the most updated version and contains content not found on other platforms. Players can also create custom skins for their characters, and make use of the wide assortment of game mods available online.
Summary:
- + addictive gameplay
- + easy to use crafting menu
- + variety of ways to interact with and modify the world
- + large online community
- + fun for all ages
- + great multiplayer
- • can grow repetitive
- • huge timesink
- • important resources can be time consuming to obtain
- - Xbox 360 version is far behind the PC version
- - Xbox 360 world size is too small
- - hard survival is not difficult enough
- - inability to make notes on the map (e.g. add pins)
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