Minecraft Review

Today I will review a game that has changed the way video games have been looked at. It has broken several records and is still one of the most immensely popular games on the market right now with it being released on almost every video game console and app store to date. Videos made about this game garner millions of views on YouTube, with it being one of the most popular games posted on their site, right up there with Call of duty. But what game may this be and why is it so popular?

The game I was talking about is called Minecraft. Even if you aren’t very video game savvy, theres a chance that you will have heard about or seen stuff about Minecraft.  For those of you who don’t know, Minecraft is a game released back in 2009 by a Swedish developer named Markus Persson, who created the game after playing a few other games. He liked the look and feel of them and decided to try and make his own game, based on what he liked from the other games. And thus Minecraft was born.

But let me begin to talk about the game play. You start with nothing in a randomly-generated world made of many different types of blocks, filled with multiple types of blocks, as well as wildlife like sheep, pigs, cows, and squids with no tools or shelter. At nighttime, monsters such as zombies, skeleton archers, and the rage inducing Creepers come out to try and kill you. Your goal is to build shelter, craft tools, find food and survive long enough to delve deep into the surface to claim valuable minerals such as diamond and emeralds to help you progress. Shelter keeps the monsters away from you, while food allows you to regenerate lost health, and keeps you from starving to death.

The presentation of the game shows that graphics don’t always make a game great. The blocky graphics look as if they came 20 years late to the video game party, but they have a unique charm, and Minecraft’s simple yet sweet graphics has become the most recognizable aspect of the game. It’s also a key part of the game play, as the entire game revolves around destroying blocks of the environment, collecting the raw materials that drop from the blocks, and using them to build something anything that your heart desires, whether it be a giant castle or a sleek modern home with chairs and a aquarium built right inside.

Another major part of Minecraft is its multiplayer. You can make your own personal server inside of the game, where other players can join you and help build. People from anywhere in the world can connect with you and share in some great moments. Servers also have the ability to install mod’s, which can do anything from change the look of the blocks around you, to adding in 100’s of new features such as new animals wandering around the world, to new items to spruce up the game play. There are even mod’s that change Minecraft completely into whole different genres, akin to an RPG or a FPS.

I personally have played a lot of games in my spare time, and I have never had the same experience with a game as I have with Minecraft. There’s just something special about it that I can’t pinpoint. If you own a computer, Xbox, or even have access to an app store, I cannot recommend highly enough buying this game right away before another update where it’s even changing price will go up.