Gaming Review: Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition

When the Minecraft beta was first released two years ago, the game immediately caught the attention of hundreds of thousands of PC players. It became the talk of the town with its extremely simple graphics and gameplay style. I personally never understood why the game caught on, and I had no intent on getting it whatsoever because it never really seemed that interesting to me. Not only that, but I also never had a PC that was capable of running Minecraft.

On May 9th, 2012, Minecraft was released for the Xbox 360, and this was my perfect chance to finally try the game. I orginally wasn’t going to get the game, but after hours of persuasion from friends and extra money at my disposal, I finally decided to try it out. The download went quickly as the game is only 130mb large, which is surprising for a game of this caliber. I was genuinely surprised when the download finished so quickly, and it made me feel like I wasted my $20 because, normally, the lower the size of the game, the less quality the game is. Boy was I wrong.

As the game started up and I entered the tutorial world, I was surprised with how gorgeous the game actually is. Even if the graphics are pixelated and seem like a 3-D 8-bit game, the further away you are from an area, you can see just how amazing the graphics really are. Sometimes, simple really is better.

I easily breezed through the tutorial and got the hang of the game, so I decided to try the real thing. I started up in a random world, filled with mountains and valleys, beaches, plains, and a very extensive forest. I quickly lost track through the forest as I punched my way through each tree, stockpiling up on wood to build my very own house, when nightfall hit. During nightfall, monsters will begin to spawn in the world in large clumps in very dark areas, and they are extremely dangerous, even on easy mode. I panicked to find a flat area to start building my house when I was eventually overrun by zombies and spiders. I died, losing all of my items, and had to restart from the original spawn point.

The amount of terror that I felt during this hectic moment left me shocked, as I haven’t felt like this during a game in a long time. The fright I felt when I saw that first creeper sprint toward me and explode made me feel alive and happy, leaving me wanting to play more. I began to treck through the night once again in search of some items to build a shelter for the night, dodging every zombie, creeper, and skeleton along the way. I came upon the place where I died, where stacks upon stacks of wood sat in one square on the ground. Joy rushed through me as I picked them up and built a quick 4 x 5 house to rest for the night.

All of this was just in the first fifteen minutes of the game, and I was already hooked. Minecraft is very simple to play, from slowly punching down wooden blocks, to the very easy-to-get crafting system, the game isn’t that hard to understand or get and it gives a sense of nostalgia from the old days, where games wouldn’t hold your hand through a poorly written story. Where games would just give you a world to re-create as you wish, which is what Minecraft does best.

The multiplayer is really what stands out the best. I never had a chance to play the four-player split-screen co-op due to me not having an HDMI cable or an HDTV, but the online multiplayer can host up to eight players in a single server, allowing you and seven other friends to travel through a randomly generated world and be able to work together to create really large cities or town, or clear out vast and extensive cave systems with ease. It’s truly a blast seeing what you and your friends can create when you all put your minds together.

Minecraft is one of the most fun games that I’ve played in a long time, and I’m sad that I never got to play the PC version of the game, which is much much larger than the Xbox 360 version. But overall, Minecraft is perfect. The soundtrack is calm and soothing, which is perfect for the creativity that Minecraft needs to be played properly. The concept of the game is well done and, even though there isn’t a story, there is still an infinite amount of possibilities that you can do with the game that makes it better than most of the top mainstream games that are released every year. Minecraft is perfect for casual and hardcore gamers alike, whether you’re playing the game just to see what you can create, or trying to survive the long, dreadful days, Minecraft is one of the top games of the year, and earns a well deserved:

★★★★★

I’m Justin Nipper, and you’ve been a reader.