Minecraft, or my new virtual crack
Minecraft is a great game, but it's sort of difficult to explain to people who haven't played it previously. Technically, it is classified as a survival RPG, but that doesn't really explain anything. This video here can you a basic idea of the look of minecraft:
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I know, it looks like something built out of legos or drawn with an etch-a-sketch, but all of those terrains are randomly generate with full biomes that classify different types of trees, plants, and even animal/monsters. Minecraft was written by one man, known as Notch, who wrote the original programming for minecraft, and now has a multi-million dollar business off of it... and the game is still in beta. there are no commercials for minecraft, it's all been spread by word of mouths from players, and the reviewers who have come across it.
To explain how Minecraft "works", I guess I'll go over my initial experiences with playing. I start the game getting dumped along a rather nice beach with some forested hills before me, the sun just rising over the ocean behind me, and I figure that the tutorials that almost all games have will pop up any moment. Yeah, that doesn't happen here, there is nothing to explain what all you're supposed to do. I fiddle with the keys and mouse, learning that WASD controls movement, while the mouse controls where you're looking. Pretty simple and straightforward, so I start fiddling about some more, and discover that if you can pick up blocks of dirt by holding the left mouse button down to dig them up, and place them elsewhere.
This forms the most rudimentary part of the gameplay for Minecraft, with the ability to make buildings out of various block combinations as you so desire. Unfortunately, I took too long and fooling around with dirt blocks, and the sun set. At night, the stars came out with the moon rising, and that's not all. I was suddenly assaulted by a skeleton archer who kept shooting arrows at me, and with no weapons or armor, I was forced to run away swiftly, only to have a kamikaze shrub rush up and detonate on me, killing me instantly.
............ "What the fuck was that thing?!" I literally paused blinking at the screen for ten second before the WTF moment. My buddy tells me to check a FAQ, but I'm a little ticked now, and screw the FAQ, I'm not getting my ass beat by a shrub and a skelly, so I respawn, and I go again. Um, yeah, died again, but I took out the skelly first. Problem being that I didn't pay attention to the sounds of a giant spider that was near me, and got eaten. This cycle admittedly goes on for a while, until I have my moment of epiphany: I'm disobeying my basic survival training. Not for video games, but for real life, and the game is beating me like I owe it money because of that. If I were actually in the wild, the first thing I would do is find/make a shelter, not fight everything in the surrounding countryside. So the next go, I use my digging to bore into the side of a hill enough to be able to close all but a single block behind me, and I wait until morning.
When day comes, I watch as skeletons and zombies a like are set on fire by the sun's rays, and I can go out without too much hassle. Now armed with a different manner of thinking, I go after the nearest tree, breaking the blocks to get me wood. I check my inventory (the i button), and I see I have 2x2 crafting square. When I place the wood I've gathered onto it, it turns out that it will make 4 blocks of wood planks, which I can use to build a more secure shelter, and set about it. The tree itself yields a number of saplings that I learn can be planted to make more trees. I manage to get a better shelter built by the time nightfall comes around, and since I know I'm stuck in my little cabin till morning, I start playing with the crafting screen, learning how to use the wood planks to make sticks, and a crafting table, which, once place as my first piece of furniture, gives me access to a 3x3 crafting grid, so that I can now build now advanced tools, such as wooden pick, shovel, ax, hoe, and sword. they wear out somewhat easily, but hey, I'm doing better than I was, but I'm still stuck in the dark, and I worry that creatures might spawn inside the house at night. So in the morning, I make light a priority, remembering seeing torches in the promos for the game.
Walking around for a bit I stop when I see some black mark on stones along a mountainside, and use my pick to mine out not only coal, but discover gravel, which produces flint, and mining stone, which becomes cobblestone. Cobblestone allows me to upgrade to stone tools and weapons. This essential cycle continues on as I play, and its one of the founding principles of Minecraft: It isn't there to tell you how to play it, it's there to let you discover the game as you want it.
From those early days, I've discovered, built and mined, and once you start figuring things out, you take on projects of your own creation, with some truly stunning worlds being created by users, such as this:
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This game delivers on so many levels, and with new expansions and updates coming regularly, the experience will continue to expand as far as your own imagination lets you.
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Originally Posted by Noir
