Saturday, November 19, 2011

Minecraft (PC)


As a celebration of Minecraft's 1.0 release, I'm going to review Minecraft, the game that brought attention of 4 million people around the world. An addictive game that sold a lot of copies and brought a lot of people into one game, thanks to Markuss Persson (or Notch), the creator of this brilliant game.


This game has no story, but here is my rendition of the story: You appear in a world made of blocks and pixels, and your goal here is to mine blocks in order to build houses and high top castles, as well as pixel art, while surviving hordes of monsters including the famous exploding Creeper, the mysterious Enderman and fighting the ultimate and the only boss in the game, the Enderdragon, where your non-building adventure ends.


There are music in the game. You can have them turned on or off depending on your mood, and occasional music will pop up when it's on. But there are also music discs gained by either dungeon chests or by making a skeleton kill a creeper, and they are worth chasing after because of their rarity and because they are better than the occasional music. The sounds are not that bad, but the new TNT sound is not that good and so is the Enderman's noises.


The graphics are like 16-bit pixels, but they aren't bad as 16-bit graphics brings back memories from the SNES and Genesis era ;). The best part is that you can customize them and make a "Texture Pack", and you can edit your player's skin so that you can log into servers with a special look, different than the look Notch gave you. If you have a powerful computer, you will enjoy how wonderful Minecraft looks with Far and Fancy graphics set.


The gameplay is the best part of Minecraft. It's the reason why it sold out over 4 million copies. The reason why it gained great popularity in the gaming world. You build, craft, mine, and survive through hordes of dangerous monsters. You got three modes to choose from: Survival, where you have to survive your first day in a new world by making a shelter, while crafting, mining and smelting the needed stuff until the shelter is built, then you have to hide in the shelter at the first night, and then continue expanding your world and fight monsters the next morning when most monsters disappear. There is Creative mode, where you've got most of the blocks used in Minecraft and some stuff to toy with, and build anything you'd think of using an unlimited supply of blocks and stuff. You can also fly in this mode by double pressing space quickly, which is useful in creating high end castles. There is the last mode, Hardcore, which is the hardest mode in Minecraft because it's locked on the hardest difficulty and you have one life, dying in a hardcore world will result in the world being deleted, which makes you think and fight carefully the whole way in that world. If Minecraft gets boring though, you can play it Multiplayer, where you can show your builds to people, chat with them, play with them, and showing off your cool self made skin. Minecraft has more secrets than just those, as I can't put them all into one article, but keep track of the updates Minecraft receives, as they increase replay value of Minecraft as well as add new stuff into the game.


TIP: Before you would buy Minecraft, you should check Minecraft.net and play the free Minecraft Classic, one of the older versions of Minecraft. It is basically just like the Creative mode in the full release, except with fewer blocks and no stuff. I'd try that version of Minecraft, and if I liked it, I would waste the 20 euros needed to buy the full version of Minecraft, from Minecraft.net (Minecraft is available as digital copies only). If you can't afford the full version but still want to play Minecraft, then Minecraft Classic is your only way to enjoy the great game (albeit without the survival and monsters), and you can play it multiplayer as well.



SERVERS

One great thing in Minecraft is the existence of Multiplayer Servers, this where you can play with other people and show them your builds, as well as not feeling bored or being alone in Minecraft. There are a lot of servers running Minecraft around the world, but ThisWeekInMinecraft has a pretty decent and well moderated server with multi worlds, and depends on the Bukkit server application which uses plugins including anti-grief plugins. Its available to Minecraft 1.0.0, so if you want a server to play on, then ThisWeekInMinecraft is one of the best Minecraft servers on the internet.


CONCLUSION

A simple story (or no story at all), good sounds and graphics, VERY GREAT gameplay, and many modes to choose from as well as many directions to take in the game, makes me rate this 10/10. This game is also available on iOS, iPod Touch, Xperia Play, and it's coming soon to the XBox 360, meaning a lot of ways to play this game albeit in creative mode on the portables. I recommend you to burn 20 euros on this great game..

RATING: 10/10: The Best PC Game choice!