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Minecraft is an incredibly popular game. It is so popular in fact that Microsoft shelled out an incredible amount of money to buy it. Well, technically they bought the company but it was clearly the game they were after. I had dabbled with the demo of Minecraft before and I just didn’t understand what all of the fuss was about and I moved on without giving it a second thought.
That all changed the moment my daughter asked what Minecraft was. Some of the kids in her class had been talking about it and she was curious. A quick download to the PS4 and a tutorial completion later and I had built a house. My daughter wasn’t impressed. She was polite enough not to express her true opinions but her facial expression said it all. I, on the other hand, was well pleased with my house. Well, it was more of a hut but I built it and in my humble opinion, it was the best hut in the world ever, amen. I guess that is debatable but what cannot be disputed is the fact that it was the best hut I had ever built.
The moment I realised my opinion had done a complete u-turn was later in the day when I started thinking about some improvements to my house/hut. I think I might just understand Minecraft now. This review will all be based on the experiences of a newcomer to the world on Minecraft. It is the PS4 version I have which is something like 36 times larger than on the PS3 but I’ll not be making any comparisons since I have only ever played the demo on the PS3.
The first thing that will strike you about Minecraft is the graphics. It is all squares. It is like Legoland with less variety in the shapes. The landscape is made of blocks, animals are made of blocks and your character is made of blocks. It is all very primitive but yet surprisingly not as basic as it sounds. There is a fair bit of detail and everything is easily recognisable. You only have to perform a quick web search to see that people can build some mightily impressive structures. A bit like my hut then.
My first venture into the proper Minecraft experience saw me opt for the survival mode. This apparently is more of a game than the other mode which, I will admit, I’ve not even tried yet. I found my little character dumped in the middle of a randomly generated landscape. According to the merchandise packaging, the character might be called Steve so he shall be referred to as such from now on.
The first task is to build another masterpiece hut. All manner of unfriendlies come out at night and I need some shelter before I can explore my surroundings. But where do I set up home? Wood is a good building material so a location with trees nearby seems to make a lot of sense. I find a nice picturesque spot by a lake and get down to work. Steve is a bit of a karate master and can chop trees up with his bare hands. The result of the martial arts is some wooden blocks (as if they would be any other shape) which can be piled on top of each other to build a house. By night fall it has really taken shape. The only thing missing is glass for the windows. And right on cue, I get a visitor. It’s a little green chap who fortunately can’t climb through these spaces that should be filled with glass. How I snigger at him... BOOOOOOM... what the **** was that? It seems my visitor has an explosive temper. He is gone but so is the entire front of my house and there is a huge crater where my front lawn was. I wasn’t amused. It took me back to when my daughter was younger and I’d build her something amazing (in my humble opinion) out of her building blocks only to see it get destroyed in an instant. She did at least manage not to self destruct in the process.
I make it through the night without further incident. I cowered in one of the remaining corners and waited for dawn. It was a long, long night but at least I learned that these creatures are creepers (or ******* creepers as I call them now) and I’ve learned to avoid them. Minecraft teaches you all manner of lessons as you’ll see. There is no time to reflect on what happened, I’ve got a house to repair.
The tutorial taught me how to make a crafting table. This, as it sounds, allows you to craft all manner of things and is somewhat vital to the game. Provided you have the right ingredients you can craft anything from garden utensils, pickaxes, weapons, armour, food, house decorations, boats and mine carts. There is a staggering amount of items that can be created but the key part is finding all of the ingredients. And a bed can be used to sleep through those deadly nights.
After the crafting table you will want to build a furnace for some cooking. You will need some fuel for the furnace, wood is ideal, and something to ‘cook’. Unlike the crafting table, the furnace is a little less informative in that it doesn’t tell you what you can make so there can be a little trial and error involved. Sand can be ‘cooked’ into glass and after some repair work, my house is back together. Now what?
You see, there is no goal in Minecraft. You’re just left to do what you want to do. Generally speaking, I am no good at this kind of thing. It reminds me of art class at high school where the teacher would say “express yourself” and I’d think to myself “just tell me what you want me to draw”. I’m not the most creative type and I tend to need a prod in the right direction. Minecraft isn’t going to prod me so I’m left to my own devices. There is a whole world to explore and all manner of things that can be built, surely even I can manage to do something more that stand outside my (lovely) house wondering what to do.
But before all that, Steve has a hunger that needs addressing. The hunger is easy to overlook if you get engrossed in building a fabulous hut like mine. The local wildlife offers some meat which you may want to cook first. You can also grow your own crops and partake in a spot of farming.
After breakfast, it isn’t long before my hut has an upstairs. Impressive I know. Ok so it is a ladder on the side rather than an internal staircase and upstairs is just an empty room but I have grand plans for that room, you’ll see.
A few hours later and I had a tunnel under the lake to the other side. It makes getting across the lake quicker you see, some practical thinking there. The lesson I learned here was that if you don’t dig deep enough your tunnel can get very wet. Tunnelling requires light in order to see what you are doing and wouldn’t you just know it, you can craft some torches. I also learned that it is impossible to tell what time of day it is underground and it is hard to find your hut in the dark. I put torches round the hut to help me locate it at night. I’m getting good at this.
Tunnelling also taught me that the tools don’t last long so it is handy to have some spares as well as showing me that the inventory spaces can be used up quite quickly since the digging sees me gather soil and stone blocks. I built a storage box and placed it upstairs in my hut. I told you I had grand plans.
Different materials require different effort to dig. Sand and soil are easy and a spade will make short work of them. Stone is naturally harder and a pickaxe is the ideal tool here. The tools have a lifespan which diminishes as you use them. The most basic tool is made of wood but stone, iron, gold and diamond can all be used to make the end of the tool and make for stronger tools that will cut through materials faster. Of course the better materials need to be mined and in order to do that you need to go caving.
The landscape in Minecraft is vast but it also goes very deep. Across from my lake there is a cave which is just crying out to be explored. As with tunnelling, things get dark and torches are essential. The caves go surprisingly deep and there are all manner of tour guides inside to greet you. There are many lessons to learn in a cave. Lesson 1: skeletons are impressively accurate with their bows and arrows. Lesson 2: you drop all your items when you die. Lesson 3: thankfully these items are waiting to be collected when Steve 2.0 spawns. Lesson 4: it is useful to remember where you died if you want to collect those items. Lesson 5: Creepers help you mine in the caves. They will say they are simply trying to kill me but I’m taking the positive stance here. Lesson 6: swimming in lava isn’t advised. Lesson 7: gold and diamond are buried deep within caves but your stone pickaxe is no use, you’ll need an iron one. Lesson 8: I’ve no idea where the way out is. Lesson 9... oh you get the picture.
Staying above ground is much safer for the newcomer and there is a lot of ground to cover with various landscapes. To aid my traversal my tunnel system is extended and bridges are built. You can lose hours in this game just pottering about. Steve is equipped with a map which will grow as you explore further. I’ve not really seen it in actions since I lost mine when I went for a Jacuzzi (swimming in lava) and that has caused me some problems. After a successful day out caving, I came back out at a different point to where I went in and I was completely lost. It was back to day 1 essentially; quickly build a makeshift shelter for the night. And then get distracted by renovating the makeshift shelter into something more impressive. I now have a scattering of dwellings from my mountain retreat to my holiday home in the sand by the sea and I’ve still only scratched the surface in terms of exploration. There are so many items I’ve not found yet. Part of what keeps me from travelling too far is getting lost again and losing all my hard work. I’ve seen video clips of numerous things and creatures I have not seen yet which show there is a great deal more to this game than initially meets the eye and at some point I will have to set off on an expedition and “I may be some time”.
I believe you can visit worlds that other people have built or let people visit your world but I’m not doing that, I can’t have any hooligans coming in an wrecking the place.
Minecraft is a strange one. You can lose hour upon hour in the game just building things and not actually achieving much in the traditional sense of a game. At times I do find I’m not sure what to do next and other times I can be hard at work creating something else. I find myself doodling a new design to build and I have since built a castle with moat round it. It has 4 turrets, an upstairs and access to the roof. And wait for it... 4 internal stair cases. Yes, 4. Even my daughter was impressed this time round. And then I saw a castle someone else had done and suddenly mine seems as primitive as my hut but it has given me some inspiration. That’s the beauty of Minecraft, if you can imagine it then you can build it. You are free to do whatever you want.
I’m not sure I can put a number rating against this, it doesn’t seem right. You are given some materials and a location, it is up to you what you do but needless to say, I thoroughly enjoy it.
That all changed the moment my daughter asked what Minecraft was. Some of the kids in her class had been talking about it and she was curious. A quick download to the PS4 and a tutorial completion later and I had built a house. My daughter wasn’t impressed. She was polite enough not to express her true opinions but her facial expression said it all. I, on the other hand, was well pleased with my house. Well, it was more of a hut but I built it and in my humble opinion, it was the best hut in the world ever, amen. I guess that is debatable but what cannot be disputed is the fact that it was the best hut I had ever built.
The moment I realised my opinion had done a complete u-turn was later in the day when I started thinking about some improvements to my house/hut. I think I might just understand Minecraft now. This review will all be based on the experiences of a newcomer to the world on Minecraft. It is the PS4 version I have which is something like 36 times larger than on the PS3 but I’ll not be making any comparisons since I have only ever played the demo on the PS3.
The first thing that will strike you about Minecraft is the graphics. It is all squares. It is like Legoland with less variety in the shapes. The landscape is made of blocks, animals are made of blocks and your character is made of blocks. It is all very primitive but yet surprisingly not as basic as it sounds. There is a fair bit of detail and everything is easily recognisable. You only have to perform a quick web search to see that people can build some mightily impressive structures. A bit like my hut then.
My first venture into the proper Minecraft experience saw me opt for the survival mode. This apparently is more of a game than the other mode which, I will admit, I’ve not even tried yet. I found my little character dumped in the middle of a randomly generated landscape. According to the merchandise packaging, the character might be called Steve so he shall be referred to as such from now on.
The first task is to build another masterpiece hut. All manner of unfriendlies come out at night and I need some shelter before I can explore my surroundings. But where do I set up home? Wood is a good building material so a location with trees nearby seems to make a lot of sense. I find a nice picturesque spot by a lake and get down to work. Steve is a bit of a karate master and can chop trees up with his bare hands. The result of the martial arts is some wooden blocks (as if they would be any other shape) which can be piled on top of each other to build a house. By night fall it has really taken shape. The only thing missing is glass for the windows. And right on cue, I get a visitor. It’s a little green chap who fortunately can’t climb through these spaces that should be filled with glass. How I snigger at him... BOOOOOOM... what the **** was that? It seems my visitor has an explosive temper. He is gone but so is the entire front of my house and there is a huge crater where my front lawn was. I wasn’t amused. It took me back to when my daughter was younger and I’d build her something amazing (in my humble opinion) out of her building blocks only to see it get destroyed in an instant. She did at least manage not to self destruct in the process.
I make it through the night without further incident. I cowered in one of the remaining corners and waited for dawn. It was a long, long night but at least I learned that these creatures are creepers (or ******* creepers as I call them now) and I’ve learned to avoid them. Minecraft teaches you all manner of lessons as you’ll see. There is no time to reflect on what happened, I’ve got a house to repair.
The tutorial taught me how to make a crafting table. This, as it sounds, allows you to craft all manner of things and is somewhat vital to the game. Provided you have the right ingredients you can craft anything from garden utensils, pickaxes, weapons, armour, food, house decorations, boats and mine carts. There is a staggering amount of items that can be created but the key part is finding all of the ingredients. And a bed can be used to sleep through those deadly nights.
After the crafting table you will want to build a furnace for some cooking. You will need some fuel for the furnace, wood is ideal, and something to ‘cook’. Unlike the crafting table, the furnace is a little less informative in that it doesn’t tell you what you can make so there can be a little trial and error involved. Sand can be ‘cooked’ into glass and after some repair work, my house is back together. Now what?
You see, there is no goal in Minecraft. You’re just left to do what you want to do. Generally speaking, I am no good at this kind of thing. It reminds me of art class at high school where the teacher would say “express yourself” and I’d think to myself “just tell me what you want me to draw”. I’m not the most creative type and I tend to need a prod in the right direction. Minecraft isn’t going to prod me so I’m left to my own devices. There is a whole world to explore and all manner of things that can be built, surely even I can manage to do something more that stand outside my (lovely) house wondering what to do.
But before all that, Steve has a hunger that needs addressing. The hunger is easy to overlook if you get engrossed in building a fabulous hut like mine. The local wildlife offers some meat which you may want to cook first. You can also grow your own crops and partake in a spot of farming.
After breakfast, it isn’t long before my hut has an upstairs. Impressive I know. Ok so it is a ladder on the side rather than an internal staircase and upstairs is just an empty room but I have grand plans for that room, you’ll see.
A few hours later and I had a tunnel under the lake to the other side. It makes getting across the lake quicker you see, some practical thinking there. The lesson I learned here was that if you don’t dig deep enough your tunnel can get very wet. Tunnelling requires light in order to see what you are doing and wouldn’t you just know it, you can craft some torches. I also learned that it is impossible to tell what time of day it is underground and it is hard to find your hut in the dark. I put torches round the hut to help me locate it at night. I’m getting good at this.
Tunnelling also taught me that the tools don’t last long so it is handy to have some spares as well as showing me that the inventory spaces can be used up quite quickly since the digging sees me gather soil and stone blocks. I built a storage box and placed it upstairs in my hut. I told you I had grand plans.
Different materials require different effort to dig. Sand and soil are easy and a spade will make short work of them. Stone is naturally harder and a pickaxe is the ideal tool here. The tools have a lifespan which diminishes as you use them. The most basic tool is made of wood but stone, iron, gold and diamond can all be used to make the end of the tool and make for stronger tools that will cut through materials faster. Of course the better materials need to be mined and in order to do that you need to go caving.
The landscape in Minecraft is vast but it also goes very deep. Across from my lake there is a cave which is just crying out to be explored. As with tunnelling, things get dark and torches are essential. The caves go surprisingly deep and there are all manner of tour guides inside to greet you. There are many lessons to learn in a cave. Lesson 1: skeletons are impressively accurate with their bows and arrows. Lesson 2: you drop all your items when you die. Lesson 3: thankfully these items are waiting to be collected when Steve 2.0 spawns. Lesson 4: it is useful to remember where you died if you want to collect those items. Lesson 5: Creepers help you mine in the caves. They will say they are simply trying to kill me but I’m taking the positive stance here. Lesson 6: swimming in lava isn’t advised. Lesson 7: gold and diamond are buried deep within caves but your stone pickaxe is no use, you’ll need an iron one. Lesson 8: I’ve no idea where the way out is. Lesson 9... oh you get the picture.
Staying above ground is much safer for the newcomer and there is a lot of ground to cover with various landscapes. To aid my traversal my tunnel system is extended and bridges are built. You can lose hours in this game just pottering about. Steve is equipped with a map which will grow as you explore further. I’ve not really seen it in actions since I lost mine when I went for a Jacuzzi (swimming in lava) and that has caused me some problems. After a successful day out caving, I came back out at a different point to where I went in and I was completely lost. It was back to day 1 essentially; quickly build a makeshift shelter for the night. And then get distracted by renovating the makeshift shelter into something more impressive. I now have a scattering of dwellings from my mountain retreat to my holiday home in the sand by the sea and I’ve still only scratched the surface in terms of exploration. There are so many items I’ve not found yet. Part of what keeps me from travelling too far is getting lost again and losing all my hard work. I’ve seen video clips of numerous things and creatures I have not seen yet which show there is a great deal more to this game than initially meets the eye and at some point I will have to set off on an expedition and “I may be some time”.
I believe you can visit worlds that other people have built or let people visit your world but I’m not doing that, I can’t have any hooligans coming in an wrecking the place.
Minecraft is a strange one. You can lose hour upon hour in the game just building things and not actually achieving much in the traditional sense of a game. At times I do find I’m not sure what to do next and other times I can be hard at work creating something else. I find myself doodling a new design to build and I have since built a castle with moat round it. It has 4 turrets, an upstairs and access to the roof. And wait for it... 4 internal stair cases. Yes, 4. Even my daughter was impressed this time round. And then I saw a castle someone else had done and suddenly mine seems as primitive as my hut but it has given me some inspiration. That’s the beauty of Minecraft, if you can imagine it then you can build it. You are free to do whatever you want.
I’m not sure I can put a number rating against this, it doesn’t seem right. You are given some materials and a location, it is up to you what you do but needless to say, I thoroughly enjoy it.
Every so often I think about potentially getting Minecraft and "seeing what the fuss is about". My main problem is a massive lack of creativity on my part - I struggle designing anything of note in Terraria, never mind doing that in three dimensions!
The Vita version is just as good and let me play on the bus back from work today.
Why thank you altaranga. The diary style seemed fitting since we are free to approach things how we please. And it was a memorable beginning.
I am not sure I am quite ready to let people into The Land of Dav. The sign at ny castle door warns strangers away.
I am not sure I am quite ready to let people into The Land of Dav. The sign at ny castle door warns strangers away.
I love that your review reads more like a blog than a review. It's like a personal diary of your exploration into the world of Minecraft.
I enjoyed reading more as a reminiscence of my first few days playing the game back in the day. I started out on Xbox 360, then bought it on the iPad, and most recently again on the PS4. The game has changed quite a bit in that time although the basics remain the same: build, build, build.
The beauty of this game, and it is one that I would urge you to try, is the multiplayer. Get some mates, or at least people you can trust not to destroy everything, and work together. Cooperation on survival can make life a lot easier (I played a bit with one of my sons and we got loads done in a short time (i.e. he sorted out the food while I mined for materials)). However I would say that it is in creative where you will see your greatest results as a team. Some of the worlds/things people have created (have a look on Youtube) are truly astounding.
My score: 10/10
A perfectly executed game where the only limit is your imagination.
I enjoyed reading more as a reminiscence of my first few days playing the game back in the day. I started out on Xbox 360, then bought it on the iPad, and most recently again on the PS4. The game has changed quite a bit in that time although the basics remain the same: build, build, build.
The beauty of this game, and it is one that I would urge you to try, is the multiplayer. Get some mates, or at least people you can trust not to destroy everything, and work together. Cooperation on survival can make life a lot easier (I played a bit with one of my sons and we got loads done in a short time (i.e. he sorted out the food while I mined for materials)). However I would say that it is in creative where you will see your greatest results as a team. Some of the worlds/things people have created (have a look on Youtube) are truly astounding.
My score: 10/10
A perfectly executed game where the only limit is your imagination.
Minecraft is an incredibly popular game. It is so popular in fact that Microsoft shelled out an incredible amount of money to buy it. Well, technically they bought the company but it was clearly the game they were after. I had dabbled with the demo of Minecraft before and I just didn’t understand what all of the fuss was about and I moved on without giving it a second thought.
That all changed the moment my daughter asked what Minecraft was. Some of the kids in her class had been talking about it and she was curious. A quick download to the PS4 and a tutorial completion later and I had built a house. My daughter wasn’t impressed. She was polite enough not to express her true opinions but her facial expression said it all. I, on the other hand, was well pleased with my house. Well, it was more of a hut but I built it and in my humble opinion, it was the best hut in the world ever, amen. I guess that is debatable but what cannot be disputed is the fact that it was the best hut I had ever built.
The moment I realised my opinion had done a complete u-turn was later in the day when I started thinking about some improvements to my house/hut. I think I might just understand Minecraft now. This review will all be based on the experiences of a newcomer to the world on Minecraft. It is the PS4 version I have which is something like 36 times larger than on the PS3 but I’ll not be making any comparisons since I have only ever played the demo on the PS3.
The first thing that will strike you about Minecraft is the graphics. It is all squares. It is like Legoland with less variety in the shapes. The landscape is made of blocks, animals are made of blocks and your character is made of blocks. It is all very primitive but yet surprisingly not as basic as it sounds. There is a fair bit of detail and everything is easily recognisable. You only have to perform a quick web search to see that people can build some mightily impressive structures. A bit like my hut then.
My first venture into the proper Minecraft experience saw me opt for the survival mode. This apparently is more of a game than the other mode which, I will admit, I’ve not even tried yet. I found my little character dumped in the middle of a randomly generated landscape. According to the merchandise packaging, the character might be called Steve so he shall be referred to as such from now on.
The first task is to build another masterpiece hut. All manner of unfriendlies come out at night and I need some shelter before I can explore my surroundings. But where do I set up home? Wood is a good building material so a location with trees nearby seems to make a lot of sense. I find a nice picturesque spot by a lake and get down to work. Steve is a bit of a karate master and can chop trees up with his bare hands. The result of the martial arts is some wooden blocks (as if they would be any other shape) which can be piled on top of each other to build a house. By night fall it has really taken shape. The only thing missing is glass for the windows. And right on cue, I get a visitor. It’s a little green chap who fortunately can’t climb through these spaces that should be filled with glass. How I snigger at him... BOOOOOOM... what the **** was that? It seems my visitor has an explosive temper. He is gone but so is the entire front of my house and there is a huge crater where my front lawn was. I wasn’t amused. It took me back to when my daughter was younger and I’d build her something amazing (in my humble opinion) out of her building blocks only to see it get destroyed in an instant. She did at least manage not to self destruct in the process.
I make it through the night without further incident. I cowered in one of the remaining corners and waited for dawn. It was a long, long night but at least I learned that these creatures are creepers (or ******* creepers as I call them now) and I’ve learned to avoid them. Minecraft teaches you all manner of lessons as you’ll see. There is no time to reflect on what happened, I’ve got a house to repair.
The tutorial taught me how to make a crafting table. This, as it sounds, allows you to craft all manner of things and is somewhat vital to the game. Provided you have the right ingredients you can craft anything from garden utensils, pickaxes, weapons, armour, food, house decorations, boats and mine carts. There is a staggering amount of items that can be created but the key part is finding all of the ingredients. And a bed can be used to sleep through those deadly nights.
After the crafting table you will want to build a furnace for some cooking. You will need some fuel for the furnace, wood is ideal, and something to ‘cook’. Unlike the crafting table, the furnace is a little less informative in that it doesn’t tell you what you can make so there can be a little trial and error involved. Sand can be ‘cooked’ into glass and after some repair work, my house is back together. Now what?
You see, there is no goal in Minecraft. You’re just left to do what you want to do. Generally speaking, I am no good at this kind of thing. It reminds me of art class at high school where the teacher would say “express yourself” and I’d think to myself “just tell me what you want me to draw”. I’m not the most creative type and I tend to need a prod in the right direction. Minecraft isn’t going to prod me so I’m left to my own devices. There is a whole world to explore and all manner of things that can be built, surely even I can manage to do something more that stand outside my (lovely) house wondering what to do.
But before all that, Steve has a hunger that needs addressing. The hunger is easy to overlook if you get engrossed in building a fabulous hut like mine. The local wildlife offers some meat which you may want to cook first. You can also grow your own crops and partake in a spot of farming.
After breakfast, it isn’t long before my hut has an upstairs. Impressive I know. Ok so it is a ladder on the side rather than an internal staircase and upstairs is just an empty room but I have grand plans for that room, you’ll see.
A few hours later and I had a tunnel under the lake to the other side. It makes getting across the lake quicker you see, some practical thinking there. The lesson I learned here was that if you don’t dig deep enough your tunnel can get very wet. Tunnelling requires light in order to see what you are doing and wouldn’t you just know it, you can craft some torches. I also learned that it is impossible to tell what time of day it is underground and it is hard to find your hut in the dark. I put torches round the hut to help me locate it at night. I’m getting good at this.
Tunnelling also taught me that the tools don’t last long so it is handy to have some spares as well as showing me that the inventory spaces can be used up quite quickly since the digging sees me gather soil and stone blocks. I built a storage box and placed it upstairs in my hut. I told you I had grand plans.
Different materials require different effort to dig. Sand and soil are easy and a spade will make short work of them. Stone is naturally harder and a pickaxe is the ideal tool here. The tools have a lifespan which diminishes as you use them. The most basic tool is made of wood but stone, iron, gold and diamond can all be used to make the end of the tool and make for stronger tools that will cut through materials faster. Of course the better materials need to be mined and in order to do that you need to go caving.
The landscape in Minecraft is vast but it also goes very deep. Across from my lake there is a cave which is just crying out to be explored. As with tunnelling, things get dark and torches are essential. The caves go surprisingly deep and there are all manner of tour guides inside to greet you. There are many lessons to learn in a cave. Lesson 1: skeletons are impressively accurate with their bows and arrows. Lesson 2: you drop all your items when you die. Lesson 3: thankfully these items are waiting to be collected when Steve 2.0 spawns. Lesson 4: it is useful to remember where you died if you want to collect those items. Lesson 5: Creepers help you mine in the caves. They will say they are simply trying to kill me but I’m taking the positive stance here. Lesson 6: swimming in lava isn’t advised. Lesson 7: gold and diamond are buried deep within caves but your stone pickaxe is no use, you’ll need an iron one. Lesson 8: I’ve no idea where the way out is. Lesson 9... oh you get the picture.
Staying above ground is much safer for the newcomer and there is a lot of ground to cover with various landscapes. To aid my traversal my tunnel system is extended and bridges are built. You can lose hours in this game just pottering about. Steve is equipped with a map which will grow as you explore further. I’ve not really seen it in actions since I lost mine when I went for a Jacuzzi (swimming in lava) and that has caused me some problems. After a successful day out caving, I came back out at a different point to where I went in and I was completely lost. It was back to day 1 essentially; quickly build a makeshift shelter for the night. And then get distracted by renovating the makeshift shelter into something more impressive. I now have a scattering of dwellings from my mountain retreat to my holiday home in the sand by the sea and I’ve still only scratched the surface in terms of exploration. There are so many items I’ve not found yet. Part of what keeps me from travelling too far is getting lost again and losing all my hard work. I’ve seen video clips of numerous things and creatures I have not seen yet which show there is a great deal more to this game than initially meets the eye and at some point I will have to set off on an expedition and “I may be some time”.
I believe you can visit worlds that other people have built or let people visit your world but I’m not doing that, I can’t have any hooligans coming in an wrecking the place.
Minecraft is a strange one. You can lose hour upon hour in the game just building things and not actually achieving much in the traditional sense of a game. At times I do find I’m not sure what to do next and other times I can be hard at work creating something else. I find myself doodling a new design to build and I have since built a castle with moat round it. It has 4 turrets, an upstairs and access to the roof. And wait for it... 4 internal stair cases. Yes, 4. Even my daughter was impressed this time round. And then I saw a castle someone else had done and suddenly mine seems as primitive as my hut but it has given me some inspiration. That’s the beauty of Minecraft, if you can imagine it then you can build it. You are free to do whatever you want.
I’m not sure I can put a number rating against this, it doesn’t seem right. You are given some materials and a location, it is up to you what you do but needless to say, I thoroughly enjoy it.
That all changed the moment my daughter asked what Minecraft was. Some of the kids in her class had been talking about it and she was curious. A quick download to the PS4 and a tutorial completion later and I had built a house. My daughter wasn’t impressed. She was polite enough not to express her true opinions but her facial expression said it all. I, on the other hand, was well pleased with my house. Well, it was more of a hut but I built it and in my humble opinion, it was the best hut in the world ever, amen. I guess that is debatable but what cannot be disputed is the fact that it was the best hut I had ever built.
The moment I realised my opinion had done a complete u-turn was later in the day when I started thinking about some improvements to my house/hut. I think I might just understand Minecraft now. This review will all be based on the experiences of a newcomer to the world on Minecraft. It is the PS4 version I have which is something like 36 times larger than on the PS3 but I’ll not be making any comparisons since I have only ever played the demo on the PS3.
The first thing that will strike you about Minecraft is the graphics. It is all squares. It is like Legoland with less variety in the shapes. The landscape is made of blocks, animals are made of blocks and your character is made of blocks. It is all very primitive but yet surprisingly not as basic as it sounds. There is a fair bit of detail and everything is easily recognisable. You only have to perform a quick web search to see that people can build some mightily impressive structures. A bit like my hut then.
My first venture into the proper Minecraft experience saw me opt for the survival mode. This apparently is more of a game than the other mode which, I will admit, I’ve not even tried yet. I found my little character dumped in the middle of a randomly generated landscape. According to the merchandise packaging, the character might be called Steve so he shall be referred to as such from now on.
The first task is to build another masterpiece hut. All manner of unfriendlies come out at night and I need some shelter before I can explore my surroundings. But where do I set up home? Wood is a good building material so a location with trees nearby seems to make a lot of sense. I find a nice picturesque spot by a lake and get down to work. Steve is a bit of a karate master and can chop trees up with his bare hands. The result of the martial arts is some wooden blocks (as if they would be any other shape) which can be piled on top of each other to build a house. By night fall it has really taken shape. The only thing missing is glass for the windows. And right on cue, I get a visitor. It’s a little green chap who fortunately can’t climb through these spaces that should be filled with glass. How I snigger at him... BOOOOOOM... what the **** was that? It seems my visitor has an explosive temper. He is gone but so is the entire front of my house and there is a huge crater where my front lawn was. I wasn’t amused. It took me back to when my daughter was younger and I’d build her something amazing (in my humble opinion) out of her building blocks only to see it get destroyed in an instant. She did at least manage not to self destruct in the process.
I make it through the night without further incident. I cowered in one of the remaining corners and waited for dawn. It was a long, long night but at least I learned that these creatures are creepers (or ******* creepers as I call them now) and I’ve learned to avoid them. Minecraft teaches you all manner of lessons as you’ll see. There is no time to reflect on what happened, I’ve got a house to repair.
The tutorial taught me how to make a crafting table. This, as it sounds, allows you to craft all manner of things and is somewhat vital to the game. Provided you have the right ingredients you can craft anything from garden utensils, pickaxes, weapons, armour, food, house decorations, boats and mine carts. There is a staggering amount of items that can be created but the key part is finding all of the ingredients. And a bed can be used to sleep through those deadly nights.
After the crafting table you will want to build a furnace for some cooking. You will need some fuel for the furnace, wood is ideal, and something to ‘cook’. Unlike the crafting table, the furnace is a little less informative in that it doesn’t tell you what you can make so there can be a little trial and error involved. Sand can be ‘cooked’ into glass and after some repair work, my house is back together. Now what?
You see, there is no goal in Minecraft. You’re just left to do what you want to do. Generally speaking, I am no good at this kind of thing. It reminds me of art class at high school where the teacher would say “express yourself” and I’d think to myself “just tell me what you want me to draw”. I’m not the most creative type and I tend to need a prod in the right direction. Minecraft isn’t going to prod me so I’m left to my own devices. There is a whole world to explore and all manner of things that can be built, surely even I can manage to do something more that stand outside my (lovely) house wondering what to do.
But before all that, Steve has a hunger that needs addressing. The hunger is easy to overlook if you get engrossed in building a fabulous hut like mine. The local wildlife offers some meat which you may want to cook first. You can also grow your own crops and partake in a spot of farming.
After breakfast, it isn’t long before my hut has an upstairs. Impressive I know. Ok so it is a ladder on the side rather than an internal staircase and upstairs is just an empty room but I have grand plans for that room, you’ll see.
A few hours later and I had a tunnel under the lake to the other side. It makes getting across the lake quicker you see, some practical thinking there. The lesson I learned here was that if you don’t dig deep enough your tunnel can get very wet. Tunnelling requires light in order to see what you are doing and wouldn’t you just know it, you can craft some torches. I also learned that it is impossible to tell what time of day it is underground and it is hard to find your hut in the dark. I put torches round the hut to help me locate it at night. I’m getting good at this.
Tunnelling also taught me that the tools don’t last long so it is handy to have some spares as well as showing me that the inventory spaces can be used up quite quickly since the digging sees me gather soil and stone blocks. I built a storage box and placed it upstairs in my hut. I told you I had grand plans.
Different materials require different effort to dig. Sand and soil are easy and a spade will make short work of them. Stone is naturally harder and a pickaxe is the ideal tool here. The tools have a lifespan which diminishes as you use them. The most basic tool is made of wood but stone, iron, gold and diamond can all be used to make the end of the tool and make for stronger tools that will cut through materials faster. Of course the better materials need to be mined and in order to do that you need to go caving.
The landscape in Minecraft is vast but it also goes very deep. Across from my lake there is a cave which is just crying out to be explored. As with tunnelling, things get dark and torches are essential. The caves go surprisingly deep and there are all manner of tour guides inside to greet you. There are many lessons to learn in a cave. Lesson 1: skeletons are impressively accurate with their bows and arrows. Lesson 2: you drop all your items when you die. Lesson 3: thankfully these items are waiting to be collected when Steve 2.0 spawns. Lesson 4: it is useful to remember where you died if you want to collect those items. Lesson 5: Creepers help you mine in the caves. They will say they are simply trying to kill me but I’m taking the positive stance here. Lesson 6: swimming in lava isn’t advised. Lesson 7: gold and diamond are buried deep within caves but your stone pickaxe is no use, you’ll need an iron one. Lesson 8: I’ve no idea where the way out is. Lesson 9... oh you get the picture.
Staying above ground is much safer for the newcomer and there is a lot of ground to cover with various landscapes. To aid my traversal my tunnel system is extended and bridges are built. You can lose hours in this game just pottering about. Steve is equipped with a map which will grow as you explore further. I’ve not really seen it in actions since I lost mine when I went for a Jacuzzi (swimming in lava) and that has caused me some problems. After a successful day out caving, I came back out at a different point to where I went in and I was completely lost. It was back to day 1 essentially; quickly build a makeshift shelter for the night. And then get distracted by renovating the makeshift shelter into something more impressive. I now have a scattering of dwellings from my mountain retreat to my holiday home in the sand by the sea and I’ve still only scratched the surface in terms of exploration. There are so many items I’ve not found yet. Part of what keeps me from travelling too far is getting lost again and losing all my hard work. I’ve seen video clips of numerous things and creatures I have not seen yet which show there is a great deal more to this game than initially meets the eye and at some point I will have to set off on an expedition and “I may be some time”.
I believe you can visit worlds that other people have built or let people visit your world but I’m not doing that, I can’t have any hooligans coming in an wrecking the place.
Minecraft is a strange one. You can lose hour upon hour in the game just building things and not actually achieving much in the traditional sense of a game. At times I do find I’m not sure what to do next and other times I can be hard at work creating something else. I find myself doodling a new design to build and I have since built a castle with moat round it. It has 4 turrets, an upstairs and access to the roof. And wait for it... 4 internal stair cases. Yes, 4. Even my daughter was impressed this time round. And then I saw a castle someone else had done and suddenly mine seems as primitive as my hut but it has given me some inspiration. That’s the beauty of Minecraft, if you can imagine it then you can build it. You are free to do whatever you want.
I’m not sure I can put a number rating against this, it doesn’t seem right. You are given some materials and a location, it is up to you what you do but needless to say, I thoroughly enjoy it.