Review: Minecraft

The time has come to carry out the analysis of one of the biggest phenomena of independent games of recent times, Minecraft. The game reached its final version after some time in open development with the community. The result is a very fun game that most people already knew with more and more developed content. Check out my full review over here! 🙂

Minecraft became known worldwide as an “infinite game”, as it was open to players in the beta phase, who could buy it at a discount and participate in the development by giving suggestions to the creators. Constantly, the game was updated and new features were added that created new and exciting possibilities.

Nowadays, the game is in its evolving and better version, version 1.8, and this is what we are going to analyze in this review. As the creators have already stated that they intend to continue updating the game with various new features, it is possible that any complaints we make now will end up being fixed later on.

Minecraft has two modes in addition to multiplayer. Survival, which is the main adventure, and Creative (on PC), where you can simply build whatever you want in the game without any challenge. In Survival mode, players create a world and start playing in it. It is possible to create different worlds and keep several different saves.

In this fantastic “square world”, it is possible to interact by destroying blocks, such as trees, earth, stones, and then reassembling them at will. Some blocks can be used to build whatever the player wants, from houses to castles, while others become raw material for tools that help you better accomplish these tasks.

The game starts by leaving the player in the middle of nowhere and from there he will have to provide a shelter to stay the night and collect food, because eventually his character will be hungry and may be weakened if he doesn't eat. Besides, at night monsters arrive and it wouldn't be interesting if you were the special dish.

Something that draws a lot of attention is the contrast between Minecraft's day and night. During the day, you have good lighting, everything is very quiet and players can invest their time in productive things, which will improve more and more the main features of the game.

However, during the night, monsters will appear out of nowhere in any location on the gigantic map; it's dark and it's just plain easy to tell it's not safe to be outside. Minecraft successfully manages to establish that feeling of fear when going out at night that most games do, but not in pixelated form.

The enemies present in Minecraft are a show apart, presenting a good variety throughout the generated map. Some of them can be killed easily, others require a little more elements.

Among the enemies, two deserve to be highlighted: the Endermen, creatures that teleport and offer a very big challenge in battle, and the well-known Creepers, monsters that explode when they approach you and are known for always destroying your dear and laborious constructions when you least expect it, so it's good to protect yourself.

Initially, Minecraft was just a game without any objective, that is, where players could do whatever they wanted. However, the full version added the hunger bar, requiring them to hunt to survive, in addition to also adding a full adventure, with enemies, among others.

The premise of Minecraft starts off simple, like building a shelter, feeding and fighting monsters at night, but it evolves, allowing you to create a variety of giant buildings, complex mechanisms, have your own crops and herds to secure food, forge armor and stronger weapons and even utilize magic to become even more powerful.

There are many possibilities in Minecraft, where nothing is particularly mandatory, so players can only dedicate themselves to what really captivates them. Once they start to dominate the game, and this will inevitably happen, it will be highly necessary to venture into another dimension.

However, it is worth remembering that there is a “Creative Mode”, which, as the name implies, allows the player to access practically everything that exists in the world of Minecraft. Through this method, you can test everything that exists in Minecraft, from textures, buildings, water supply, etc.

Minecraft's gameplay is very simple, with much of the gameplay being used by the Mouse, the keyboard is still used, but it is relatively less used than the traditional peripheral. Following this concept, just click to use the items and hold a button to use a certain item on the other, such as breaking a stone with a specific pickaxe or just cutting a block of wood with an ax.

In graphic terms, Minecraft gains space, for being very creative and innovative in representing in a very “square” way everything that exists around it, from buildings, blocks (in general), etc. Some players who have never played Minecraft before may find the look a bit strange. However, over time the gamer will get used to it very quickly.

The audio sets the right tone for the adventure. The sound effects are by far quite impressive. The feeling of hearing a Creeper screech before it explodes or hearing monsters behind the walls as you dig, creates a very cool and unique atmosphere.

With such versatility, Minecraft became very accepted also when referring to gaming communities, which could create servers and play online with other people, accomplishing even greater feats. There are so many servers online, each with its own rules and features, that a player could spend even more time on them than on the main objective.

This great acceptance, from the online community, also means that there is a multitude of modifications and, respectively, maps customized at the extreme level for Minecraft. We can't forget to mention that, on the internet, you can find several super interesting mods, which bring even more resources to the game. These features add even more emotion and effects to the game, whether in terms of textures and/or missions and different objects.

And you, what is your opinion about Minecraft?