Monsters and castles and mines, oh my!
My first impression of MineCraft, after seeing a few screenshots and videos was, "This game looks boring. Bet if I gave it a chance I'd get addicted to it, though." That was a few months ago, and I decided to give the game a chanceWhat is it that makes MineCraft so fun? Well, I'm about to tell you!
Gameplay
MineCraft is a game where you really only do a few things. If you break it down, all MineCraft really allows you to do is build, destruct, craft, move, talk, and change a few options and textures. Yet, it's so much more than that. If you have a big imagination, you're going to love this game. If you're a less creative or non-imaginative type, you probably won't have a lot of fun in this game.
If you're imaginative and creative, you'll want to make those things you were, and probably still are, obsessed with when you were little. When I was little, I was really into medieval castles, pirate ships, aliens, tree-forts, the Wild West, apocalypse vaults and mines. So far I have a giant medieval castle that took me about ten hours to construct, a tree-fort that took an hour to build, and I'm working on making a Wild West town with gold-mines everywhere. This game seems to never get boring. Once you eventually do get bored, you'll probably come back after a short break and it feels like you've been gone for a long time, and it feels like a fresh new experience.
As the game's name states, two of the things you will do a lot in this game are mine and craft. You have to mine to get all of your raw materials, such as cobblestone (which is one of the most common resources, and also great for making houses), iron/gold/diamonds (very rare and only found deep underground [except iron]), and many other things. You can also do many other fun things such as go fishing, spelunking, building, fighting monsters, etc....
When the evening comes, you should probably start think about building a shelter. Your character won't die from the cold weather that comes with the night, but he might die from the hordes of spiders or zombies eating him alive. If you don't like that aspect of the game, you can change the game's difficulty (peaceful, easy, normal, hard) to peaceful, an easy mode that's made for getting things done quicker, because you can work at night without worrying about monsters. Once you get good enough, you'll probably be playing on hard, and you'll probably have yourself a giant fortress (pirate ship, castle, anything!) that you can fend off the baddies with.
The learning curve in MineCraft is a bit steep, and it'll take you a few hours just to memorize how to craft everything, and know what each block does. After you learn that, there's still a lot more to learn in terms of how mine-carts work, and especially how to use electricity, pressure plates, and dispensers to your advantage.
The biggest problem right now is with fire. The game is, as I said and will say again later, in its experimental phases. When you use fire, it will burn down anything within two/three squares near where the fire is, which can destroy entire forests if you're not careful. This is very annoying, and I lost a village to it earlier, but for some reason - the fire never stops burning. It stops spreading, but it keeps burning on the remaining pieces forever, which can cause the game to lag and even crash every once in a while.
Graphics
Although impressive in most other aspects, graphics are where this game fails to impress. The game is constantly being updated, as it is still in the Beta phase, and there are neat graphical & texture options like 3D and HD, but the graphics overall are still nothing impressive. It sort of looks like an old-school turn-based adventure game like Doom, Orcs 'n Elves, Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein.
Some of the options allow you to change the game's visuals into a 3D optic, which is a very neat, yet very experimental, feature. It's hard on the eyes, but that might be because of the glasses I'm using. There are texture mods and packs that you can download, one of the favourites being an HD pack that makes all of the items look nicer, and the world looks a bit better.
Even if it is just one person working on this game, no matter how huge the game's world is (it's big), the graphics are still kind of a let-down. It's actually good for the average gamer, who doesn't have amazing specs, because you can run it on netbooks and under-powered laptops, which makes it fun to play on car-rides or during your university lectur----- never mind.
Sound
The sound effects in this game are more important than the visuals, sometimes. For instance, if you're digging deep underground, and you hear a slow gushy flowing sound, that probably means you're near lava. If it sounds clear and quick, then it's probably water. This can help you prevent dying/flooding your mine. Also, when you're outside at night doing things, and the game isn't on peaceful mode, you'll be able to hear enemies sneaking up on you, so you can turn around and attack, or high-tail it in another direction.
The music isn't what you'd expect from a blocky game. I expected to hear 8-bit tracks, but it's mostly calm lulls and tunes that actually give the game a nice feel. The music changes at night, and becomes a bit more spooky, which makes you think twice about going outside into the eerie forests of MineCraft. Personally, I prefer the day-tracks, since it makes me feel more relaxed as I'm building my giant fortress of doom.
Multiplayer
This game has an amazing online component. One third of the people who registered for an account actually got the full game, so there are about 115,000 people who have the ability to go online in MineCraft Beta, probably 5,000 who play on a daily basis.
There are all kinds of different servers, such as race servers, roller-coaster servers, mining servers, and servers where you can just do whatever! Personally, I prefer to just play with my friends, because that way I can talk to them when they're right beside me, or just type in-game. It's really easy to communicate with people, and it's a heck of a lot easier to build structures cooperatively than by yourself, and it's good to have a party when you're doing things at night - one person to watch your back(s), and the other(s) to build/mine.
Longevity
As I said previously, if you have a big imagination and are very creative, the single-player alone will keep you busy for hundreds of hours. If you decide to go online and share that imagination with the world, and explore other people's creative worlds, then you'll probably be set for a long time.
The Verdict
Pros:
• Very original
• Calming sound-track
• Loads of hours of fun
• Great multiplayer
Cons:
• Out-dated graphics
Gameplay: 9.5
Graphics: 5.0
Sound: 8.2
Story: N/A
Multiplayer: 9.5
Longevity: 9.8
The creator is constantly updating every Friday, so there's always new things to do, whether it's a new item to discover, or a new monster to fight/run away from. No matter what you choose to do in MineCraft, you'll be kept busy for a very long time.
9.5/10