Yes, I hate Minecraft. I hate it because every 5-year old kid on the planet can intuitively play it and I struggle with it.
The only reason I’m trying to play it is so that when me and my friends get together, I don’t have to sit the conversation out when they whack off about the goddamned game.
In the first place, I couldn’t even buy it online. I kept getting error messages every time I entered my card info. I searched the web. Other people had problems too, and nobody had a solution. I emailed help. They said to try buying it from Wal-Mart. WAL-MART! What is this, the Stone Age? When does anybody have to go to an actual STORE to buy a computer game?
My friend hosts a MC server and sent me the address. I kept getting error messages. Oh, the address changed. Here’s the new one. Still couldn’t get in. I sent him screenshots of every goddamned step I was taking to log in. I never had this much trouble logging in to ANY game before. He sends me back a movie capture of him logging in. The only thing he did that I didn’t do was hit Refresh first. REFRESH? Do I have to do this every time? Why can’t I just click and go? Why do I keep having to do these goddamned multipart rituals to play a game that barely looks a couple of years more advanced than Pong?
I finally get on and have no idea what to do. I go to the Minecraft site and they have introduction videos. Jesus, can’t I just go ahead and play without having to take notes? This is just legos online. 5-year olds build the fucking Sistene Chapel and I can’t even figure out how to build the MC equivalent of a hobo’s refrigerator box.
Now’s the part where I have to *unlearn *to use the controls, because my mentality is already configured to use movement keys like I did in WoW and many other MMORPGs. Then, I could just hold down both mouse keys to move forward and turn with the mouse. Not here. I have to use the stupid ASDW keys, which I never got used to in the first place. I have to train both hands for movement instead of just one. WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS? SHIT!
I finally get the notion that I position the cross hairs and hold down the 1 key to collect stuff. I do that, then build a worktable. I look at the recipe page to see how to build sand blocks, which I guess I use to make my structure. The page shows 4 sand in the bottom left corner, one per square. I find that I can’t single-select from a stack. I have to use the right mouse key to DIVIDE the stack. So now I have two stacks of 20 when I want just one. Do I have to keep dividing the stacks? Why can’t I just hold down the control key and single-click like I could in WoW? Or was it EQ? DAOC?
I read the online guides, and they say nothing about single-selecting. Actually, it turns out I don’t have to. I can just spread the stack along the squares and mass produce. But see, it never occurs to me to do it that way because I’m so used to doing it another way. I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO UNLEARN AND RELEARN! I’m 54. That shit gives me a headache. I want to use the vast bank of knowledge it took me a lifetime to accumulate and wing it from there. But 5-year old kids can do this no problem because they grow up using computer interactions. It’s as natural to them as breathing. This makes me feel stupid and cripples me with low self-esteem. Fuck all those goddamned kids for growing up in a more stellar time than me.
Wait, I have to make food too? What happens if I don’t have food? I don’t want to die because I don’t have food. How long till I need food? I have to build an oven or something first, and I don’t know where to find the materials. Will I starve before I build a goddamned oven? Will I repeatedly die if I don’t figure out how to make food? Why are you piling all this shit on me when I can’t even make a refrigerator box yet? Am I really going to have to beg the other players on the server? Self-esteem meter plunges even lower.
So I start plowing through the beach to collect sand blocks so I can make something. Then I get attacked by the lamest monster possible, a lego zombie. I die immediately. How do I fight it? Can I fight it? I look up Minecraft Combat. It tells me everything EXCEPT which keys to push to fight. It tells me all the weapons I can make with materials I don’t have. It tells me all the fighting styles available, when I just want to know “use weapon.” It gives me a big long list of Minecraft monsters and says Zombies are the easiest to kill. WHAT? I’M BEING REPEATEDLY SLAUGHTERED BY THE EASIEST TO KILL MONSTER? WHY CANT I KILL IT? Nowhere can I find how to actually DO combat, because it’s such an easy thing to pick up, nobody bothers to document it, since it’s such a minor issue and those fucking 5-year olds already instinctively know how to do it. FUCK THIS GODDAMNED GAME!
What I especially do not want to hear is “Oh, how can you be having problems? It’s so easy” or “There’s a much better way of doing it than that” or “My 5-year old kid had no problems playing this and you do?” GO TO HELL MINECRAPPERS!!!
I respawn and find myself at the base of a massive complex railroad structure that somebody else built, with signs, blinking lights and signals, like some archaeological wonder out of Dubai. I realize I’m THAT FAR behind everybody else. They’re going to look out their Penthouse windows and see my crappy refrigerator box made out of sand. It’s going to take me years to catch up with them, and I hate being the one who has to catch up. They’re going to dump all their unused crap on me and treat me like they’re visiting me in a nursing home. FUCKERS!
OK, rant over. Guess I’ll try this stupid game again.