Minecraft Review

Indie projects can often be considered the black sheep of the gaming world; often times they spiral into rushed mediocre projects designed to get lesser known companies off the ground. One of the biggest contradictions to this is Minecraft. In its two year beta Mojang's first foray into PC gaming has become immensely popular and now the final product is ready to be built onto computers everywhere, the result? One of the most successful and addicting indie games ever conceived.

Minecraft has no story but goes for three separate game modes. Survival is the primary component and the closest to an actual game. You're dumped onto an expansive, fully 3D world, constructed entirely of randomly generated blocks and are set loose to explore. The player must begin by gathering resources in the day to craft the tools and food needed to survive, whereas when night falls you must take shelter from the horrors of the night including groaning zombies, arrow shooting skeletons and the dreaded explosive creepers to name a few. Survival demands perseverance and determination as you acquire more valuable materials and traverse further across the world, the game truly opens up allowing you to eventually carve out massive strongholds to protect against the monsters of the dark and even build more effective means of travelling such as full blown railway systems. Killing monsters as you go earns experience which puts you on track to the game's ultimate goal if so desired. Enchanting your tools and building a portal holds the materials you'll need to access ''The Nether'', a hellish underworld populated with zombie pigmen and eventually if you're up to the challenge you'll head to ''The End'' and square off against a challenging dragon. This goal is never forced on you however and you're able to build and accomplish your own personal goals in whatever way you see fit. Speaking of challenge the second of Minecraft's modes is hard-core, a frighteningly daunting variation of survival mode that grants only one life, ramps up the difficulty and deletes the entire world upon death. It's a truly titanic task that only those who have beaten the game already should attempt. Both these modes contain a set of linked achievements as well as world options that can change the generated world in different ways. The final of the three modes is creative, a more calm distraction that makes you invincible and gives infinite blocks to use. This mode is best for those who want to build massive structures without worrying about the monsters prowling the lands at night which definitely gives way to some of the biggest and best creations to build in Minecraft.

All three of these modes are available to play online with hundreds, sometimes thousands of players on a single server though this process isn't nearly as flexible or intuitive as in other popular games. A server browser and matchmaking system are absent, replaced with server lists that can be entered in, saved and connected to via the direct connect option. Setting up your own server is a timely process that requires efficient hardware and knowledge of configuration which will likely turn off most who are used to jumping straight into games but playing online is still just as fun and rewarding as single player because creations can built much more quickly and effectively with more players. The final aspect of Minecraft's design lies in the huge amount of texture packs and mods available for download since the game's release. Again these modifications require a lengthy download and install process but much like the rest of the game patience pays off and the enhanced graphics and gameplay are more than worth the hassle. The Minecraft experience is simply gargantuan, you could continue to play the game for months and years on end and that's without mentioning how deeply absorbing and addictive the gameplay is.

The controls for Minecraft are simple to start off with; hold left click and you'll chip away at a block until it crumbles into a form you can carry and right click to place that same block again. The gameplay becomes much more complex when you factor in an inventory space to manage, the different properties of each block such as strength and blast resistance and the complex crafting system which ends up giving the game itself, especially survival mode, a fairly steep learning curve to overcome. The game lacks any sort of crafting book to save recipes but thankfully the Minecraft Wiki and other websites have put together a huge amount of information to help you out despite not being integrated into the game itself. When it comes to defending yourself from the dangers of the night the game plays mostly like a classic FPS such as Wolfenstein 3D; you'll either be hacking away at monsters with a sword or shooting at long range with a bow. Both of these feel very responsive which keeps death from feeling too cheap. The enemies themselves despite being displayed as blocks truly evoke a sense of fear with their creepy hissing and moaning noises, often jumping out of the darkness to catch you unawares. When you do die in survival mode (which could come from falling, drowning, damage from monsters or burning) you'll be spawned back at the last bed you slept in or your default spawn point empty handed. This is similar to Dark Souls, dropping your items where you fell. This can be incredibly frustrating if you died in lava and all your inventory is burned to a crisp but in the end this trains you to remember that dying is a learning experience and should be avoided which in turn will avoid delays in your creations.

Other gameplay types can be hit or miss. The notion of hunting animals such as pigs and cows strikes a sense of vulnerability in the world while the villages you may come across in your travels can serve as good shelters but serve no real purpose for the time being. The biggest achievement in Minecraft's gameplay however is that it feels like you're fully immersed in a real adventure, both in building up from simple to advanced structures and fighting for survival against the monsters which is mostly thanks to the immersive day to night cycle and vividly changing weather types. You'll always want to finish off one more building, dig another mine and find the next valuable material though this is more true and all the more rewarding in survival mode finally constructing a massive structure with the pressure of monsters and limited resources provides an immense sense of satisfaction that few games can match.

While the blocky aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics may look jagged at first, you'll soon realise that this somewhat primitive of graphics is fully connected with both the gameplay and design. After playing Minecraft to its full potential you'll fully accept that the game wouldn't have been what it is without this sort of detail. The texture packs do add a noticeable difference to the visuals but they're hardly necessary to improve the overall experience. The music is of a mostly quiet variety with relaxing piano solos drifting in every now again to enhance the immersion significantly. The game runs well both online and off provided the player has a suitable rig and internet capacity to match and the effects for both monsters, scenery, animals and liquid flow are all well done and fit in beautifully with the blocky visuals. The game will occasionally suffer screen tearing and blocks can become glitchy sometimes but Minecraft ends up being a strong example of gameplay and design over graphics.

With its addictive, immersive and deep gameplay, expansive design and the sheer joy in building anything you want; Minecraft stands tall as one of the greatest of all indie games. While the user interface isn't the most intuitive and some gameplay elements feel rather pointless, few games offer a deeper experience to build into. Anyone with any creativity of any sort will thoroughly enjoy everything Minecraft has to offer be it digging deeper into an abandoned mine or replicating some of world's most famous landmarks.

Rating: 8.5/10