Minecraft

Developer: Mojang

Publishers: Mojang, Microsoft Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment

Minecraft has five game modes to choose from. These are Survival, Creative, Adventure, Spectator and Hardcore.

In Survival Mode, the player gathers blocks and builds to gain experience points as well as try to survive different physical dangers. He has a health bar, hunger bar, and armor level. You could die in Survival. In Creative Mode, the players cannot be attacked by creatures or be killed. Some unique items are available for crafting. Hardcore Mode is the same as Survival Mode but the difficulty level is harder. When the player dies he can be sent to the Spectator Mode, wherein you can’t interact with any object. In Adventure Mode, you cannot break or place blocks like in Creative and Survival Modes. You can interact with objects however.

The best way to experience the game is to pick Survival Mode. Survival has difficulty levels. I picked this one so I can create as well as fight the creatures. Survival Mode has several features that you can explore in the game. These are crafting, smelting, brewing, enchanting, and collecting items in your inventory.

It can be a single-player game with no specific goal or multiplayer, depending on your preference.

The health bar can lower when the player is hungry or injured. When you’re hungry, then of course you have to eat. If you have a house, you can build a stove where you can cook the foodstuffs you have gathered.

To create items and structures, you need to collect resources from anywhere in the map. Destroy blocks so you can collect them. Everything on the map is made of these blocks. Some blocks can be destroyed by specific materials.

The map has different biomes. Each area has flora and fauna specific to that terrain. There are also mountains, caves, bodies of water and forests. While you explore the map, you may encounter NPCs known as mobs like animals, villagers and other creatures. Some can be hostile. Some animals can be taken as pets and fenced like the wolf, horse, donkey, ocelot, mule and skeleton horse. The name of the dimension where the player spawns the first time is the Overworld.

There are also two other dimensions in the game, the Nether and the End, which can be accessed through portals.

There is a day and night cycle in the world. At night, there are more hostile creatures such as zombies, skeletons, spiders, and creepers. Mobs can be killed to acquire items.

(I played Minecraft on PS3 so it took me while to get used to the controls when building. I’ve had no other problems besides that slow, confusing start. I have not tried multiplayer or online so I can’t really comment on that. This short review is about my experience in Survival Mode.)

Minecraft was very addictive. It took me months to build a home with rooftop gardens but even that was not enough. There’s always something you want to add or another project you want to start. 

For someone who spent most of her childhood building miniature houses, this was like a dream game for me. I was gonna pick Creative Mode initially but I figured a little challenge would be more welcome. It was confusing the first time I played. Even when I started with the Tutorial, I had two bad starts. The first time I was killed by a skeleton. I was trapped in a forest at night and didn’t know where to go. I also realized later that I should have picked a different site for my house. I built mine on the beach so when I started digging, a section of the beach collapsed because there was water underneath.

It’s a game that you master through experience. I don’t read manuals or tutorials so sometimes I had to redo projects when I realize I could have picked better materials.

It can be time-consuming. I don’t remember how many hours I spent in a cave the first time I found one. The more you learn about the types of materials you can create, the more reason to explore to gather items. For me it was a cycle. Whenever I finished a project, I always had another new idea. The only limit is your imagination. I could play from evening until morning and not know about it.

The graphics was not bad for my eyes. Some games trigger motion sickness when I try to look around, but Minecraft’s animation isn’t high definition so I could play for hours at a time.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

(Note: This review is long overdue. I've been busy the past few months so some of my latest game reviews are quite late.)