Price: $35.00
Website: https://minecraft.net/en/
Minecraft. The obscure Indie game turned multi-billion dollar juggernaut that took over the world and launched a new era in video gaming. This is the ultimate sandbox game. You are able to explore, build, and defend either with your friends or alone. There are no limits, no objectives, and (if you're playing PC edition) an enormous and continually growing amount of content to keep you occupied for hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours.
When I first encountered Minecraft it was still in early beta. My initial impression was that it was a strange block world thing with really bad graphics where people built houses on the surface and dug narrow tunnels underground to get diamonds. My friends assured me that it was so much more than that but I really didn't see the appeal. Then one fateful day, back when I had enough time to be bored out of my mind, I decided to try a free version of the game. Well the graphics aren't actually quite so bad once you get used to them, and building a small house of blocks is kind of fun. Nobody told me that monsters come out at night though or that the bush monsters will explode if they get too close or that you could upgrade your tools and manipulate water and lava flows... Suddenly it was 3:00 AM and I couldn't sleep because I wanted to go back and play more Minecraft.
I gladly purchased the Beta version of Minecraft and since that time it has developed well beyond the vision of its creator into something truly innovative and amazing.
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| Vanilla Minecraft, no mods or texture packs. |
New to Minecraft?
When you enter a Minecraft world for the first time you will have no weapons, no tools, and no items. All you have is your hand, which you can use to punch blocks to break them and then put them in your inventory to either place back into the world or craft an item. Everyone starts by punching trees to collect some wood to build a crafting table and some early tools. The tool you use determines which blocks you can break and at what speed you can break them. Why would you want to place blocks or even break them in the first place? Why so that you can keep the monsters out that will most certainly tear you to pieces and blow up your stuff once the sun goes down! |
| Zombies will travel a long distance to come eat your brains... |
Aside from avoiding monsters at night there is something in most people that finds creating and building a rewarding experience in and of itself. It's part of how God designed us in his image, He is the creator and his creative nature is imprinted into us. It's what made us enjoy Lego and building sand castles when we were children and what allows us to create awe inspiring architecture and works of art. In Minecraft you can build anything you like and for most players we can't resist feeding the creative spark within. You may start off with a hastily built dirt / wood shack or just a hole in the ground to escape the monsters... but you probably won't be satisfied with that and feel the urge to knock it down and build something bigger and nicer out of actual building materials with a door and maybe even a smooth stone foundation. Then you will look at your new home and think "I wonder if I can put some windows in?" and you can... but first you need sand to turn into glass so you go so you go exploring and find a beach and a bay sloping down off a mountain and you think to yourself "wow, I bet a lighthouse would look really nice up there..." and you're hooked. Three days later once you have built up your house and constructed a lighthouse on the mountain overlooking the bay and discover that you can dye wool different colors which means that it's time to pick out some interior wallpaper. Then you discover the wonder of mine carts and simply must have fast transit between your projects. Then some friends log on to your world and marvel at your lighthouse setup and you get it into your heads to transform the mountain into a skull fortress with lava dripping out the eyes...and on and on it goes...
The things you can build in Minecraft are not simply cosmetic, they protect you from enemies, allow you to craft tools and refine materials, grow food, travel faster, and if you are technically minded you can create ingenious traps and secret passage ways.
The other draw to Minecraft is exploration, especially once you adjust to the blocky nature of the world. What will you see from the top of that mountain? Hey, some ruins, I wonder what's inside? Oh look, a new biome, I wonder what I can use the plants here to make? An underground fortress!? I bet there's treasure! And if you are playing on a server with other people who knows what strange, wondrous, and perilous structures have been created for you to explore...
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| The sky is the limit, who says you can't have a castle in the sky? |
Modded Minecraft?
If you have played Minecraft for any amount of time then you know what I'm talking about and I haven't covered anything new. You may have played the game for a while and then tired of it but what if I told you that you that vanilla Minecraft only scratches the surface of its potential and that if you own the PC version of Minecraft you have free access to hundreds of incredible mods that take Minecraft and stretch it in every direction as far as it will go? I'm talking about new monsters, new blocks, new items, transport pipes, robust magic systems, spaceships, automation, electricity, ships and flying vehicles that you can pilot, jet-packs, laser beams, and fireballs. |
| I lied, the sky is not the limit... the Galacticraft mod allows you can build on other planets too! |
Take also the enormous and robust Thaumcraft mod which adds an impressive and deep array of magic systems into the game accessible through arcane research. Imagine wands that shoot fire and lightening Harry Potter style. Imagine creating servant golems to harvest resources, sort your chests, and patrol your base to kill enemies. Imagine breaking blocks and items down into their magical components and infusing the resulting essentia into mundane objects to create truly powerful magical artifacts that can reshape the land, protect you from damage, allow you to fly, and more! The mod also has a mechanic where you begin to go insane if you research forbidden knowledge and expose yourself to the warp of magic.
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| Machines for smelting, mining, power generation, refining, transportation, automation... so many possibilities! |
Installing mods and running modded servers used to be a real hassle but today there are handy 3rd party launchers like Feed the Beast and Tekkit that make running modpacks quick and easy. Each modpack brings a different experience to Minecraft. A tech focused pack plays and feels very different from a magic focused pack. A hardcore sky-build pack like Agrarian Skies where you must build the entire world of scratch plays and feels very differently from the adventure and combat focused Departed mod pack which turns Minecraft into an MMO complete with dozens of new monsters, a skill system, revamped combat, and dozens of increasingly dangerous planes of existence to explore and conquer. There are also 'kitchen sink' mod packs (like the Direwolf20 pack) that combine a variety of mod types to appeal to all types of play. As of the writing of this article I am currently diving into the Mage Quest mod pack on Feed the Beast which features Thaumcraft, Botania, Blood Magic, Witchery, Adventurer's Amulets, and a host of other mods that add magic to Minecraft. I am
Unfortunately mod packs are only available for the PC version of Minecraft. The restrictive coding and hardware capacity of consoles coupled with corporate monetization models have made the creation and distribution of mods an impossibility on all but the wild and free frontier of the PC. Skins and resource packs which change the way the game looks are freely available for Minecraft on PC but must be purchased for console versions, which is another reason why PC Minecraft is far superior to its pale console reflections.
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| A simple shader mod makes Minecraft look fantastic! PC only of course, consoles don't have enough power to run this. |
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| Modpack + New Texture Pack x Shader = Awesome Fun / Lag |
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| The bright and stylized PureBDCraft |
Minecraft has something for everyone, except for maybe those who only play FPS. It's a title that I keep coming back to over and over again and has provided the most value for any game I've purchased. This may just be my favorite game to date. I recognize that not everyone will appreciate Minecraft as much as I do which is why I recommend trying out the demo or maybe ask a friend to borrow their account for a weekend before committing $35.
Download the demo or purchase the game at https://minecraft.net/.
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