Review

XBLA

3:00 PM on 5/9/2012 by Christopher Metz

The massively anticipated arrival of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is already turning console gamers into absolute crafting addicts. Now having their opportunity to craft to their hearts content, Xbox 360 users can thank Mojang and Microsoft for turning the mega popular PC game into a console counterpart with some beefed up co-op components.

How do you explain Minecraft to someone who’s never experienced the game before? Everything in the game is a block. You mine things, you craft things, you kill things. That’s the game in a square shaped nutshell. However, explaining Minecraft to someone doesn't convey the nusances of the game that can only been seen while playing hands on. After making your first wooden sword or encountering a stalking Creeper outside your front door, you’ll begin to see that Minecraft is more than just “Legos: The Video Game”; It’s an experience all its own.

Gorgeous, isn't it? You haven't seen the half of it.

Minecraft is as “open” or “sandbox” as an open world, sandbox game is ever going to get. You can do almost anything you’d want and there are no true objectives to accomplish. Depending on what kind of gamer you are, you will either become extremely bored with game, due to the complete lack of direction, or become instantly overwhelmed with endless creativity and imagination. The latter is the more common reaction to first experiences with Minecraft, mostly because of how hard it is to put the game down once you start playing it. Again, this game isn’t about defeating any great evil, saving a princess, being the greatest in the world, or any generic goal most other titles will throw at you. Minecraft is the ultimate game to sit back, relax, and do whatever pleases you most.

At the beginning of the game, you’ll start off in a randomly generated world with nothing but a paper map in hand. From there, your own imagination is the only limitation you’ll have. Any restrictions you’ll encounter in Minecraft are through crafting items needed. Some items are harder to obtain than others, but most aren’t necessary for enjoying the game in the simplest ways possible. Where your adventuring takes you is all up in the air, making the world your own personal playground to be shaped to your liking. If you are brand new to the game, I suggest running the tutorial to get a hands-on approach to the world of Minecraft. The Tutorial is a new addition to the game that the PC version doesn’t offer for its players, so it’s best to take full advantage of it.

As the name states, mining and crafting specific items require knowledge of the right materials needed to make and find them. For the most part, the game is pretty open about how to find these materials and their uses. Small, pop up text boxes will appear when you discover new things, giving you a brief overview of what they are used for and can be very helpful when discovering uncommon resources. Crafting these items together is also made much easier in the Xbox 360 Edition, as the game doesn’t force you to place the objects in the correct position on the crafting table to be crafted properly like in the PC version. Basically everything is automatic on the 360, as long as you have the right amount of items need to make the object. This is a blessing for the average console gamer and his limited thumb stick control scheme.

Author

Christopher Metz
News Editor

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