Lemme tell you something about this game. It’s something alright.
The biggest games out right now, New Vegas, Black Ops, Sims 3, whatever- I’ve played them all and for like two days each. I just can’t seem to get into games much anymore. I always thought I wanted more dazzling shit: fancy graphics, explosions, violence, uncanny AI, immersion, voice acting, blah blah. It turns out that I wanted less. That’s where Minecraft comes in.
All that fancy-schmancy crap made me use my imagination less. Why play vidjya games that you can’t actually play with? Vidjya James that you just kinda play through might as well be another TV show.
I didn’t understand for a long time why people dug Minecraft. I didn’t even understand why I was cathing on. Then, after playing for five hours one night, it hit me like a siezure of the grandest mal: I was using my imagination rainbow.
Please, if you have this game, come talk to me about it it. If not, go buy it. You can even pirate it; I won’t get mad. If you’re such a sad sack of shit that you can’t find 15 spare bucks, intellectual property theft is the least of your worries.
I’ve been really liking Minecraft so far. With that being said, I still play Black Ops and Halo: Reach religiously, because I have people that I know and like to play it with. I do like having an interesting, huge, randomly-generated world to play in and do whatever in, but I end up just digging tunnels, mining for materials, and playing through that way. I also end up using the Mineplumper to expand the mineral veins so I can find more stuff faster so I can build interesting things to figure out interesting ways to solve and build puzzles.
Minecraft seems to miss a few things in the game. I’m not entirely sure what they are, but there needs to be a bit more structure: easier to find dungeons, pre-existing structures that are in disrepair, maybe things of that nature. With that being said, I’m really enjoying it.
FWIW, on the Minecraft forums, there are people who post pre-generated adventure worlds, just download and drop into an empty save slot and see what they set up.
Or, you could just try and duplicate something like this Rube Goldberg contraption.
The problem with Minecraft is, when you get down to it, there is no game in that game. It’s nearly 100% sandbox which gets boring pretty damn quickly. That was okay back when it was in super-early alpha, but I think it’s becoming ever more apparent that Notch doesn’t have the ability to finish this properly and everyone spent $15 on an alpha. The game requires so many community add-ons right now to do a proper job that it’s asinine that he’s still trying to charge money for it.
All it needs to be perfect is just some really simple capture the flag or king of the hill kind of games. I think it would be totally cool to have two teams going at it- bombing each others bases, flooding them with lava, digging spy tunnels. I’m getting teary eyed just thinking about it.
Right. If it’s being approached as a pure sandbox game, some resources are so hard to find, it makes the sandbox aspect harder to approach. I’d like it more with some kind of roaming herd of critters moving across the landscape to tangle with in a game mode.
Like gunpowder. How do you even get enough of that shit to make TNT? I’m toiling deep in the bowels of the planet looking for stupid diamonds.
This is why Notch needs to open the game up to user-generated content. Well, more than he has already.
Personally, I’d like to be able to design my own recipes and control the world settings (like how common various elements are, what monsters spawn and how often, etc). Give the player control over those parts of the game, and you’ll start seeing tons of good games.
Killing Creepers. Some have even made mob traps that will automatically collect the mobs, kill them, and then kick out everything they drop for you to pick up.
I’ve seen them on YouTube but I don’t understand the game physics enough to make one yet. Just starting to understand minecart boosters after I finished my subway.
Exactly. Mobs are dumb enough to jump down into flowing water with a 2-block high edge that they can’t jump out of. You then just arrange it as a series of canals over a decent-sized area that forces anything to whatever you use to kill them.
There are several different ways to kill them, ranging from a simple long drop, to drowning, lava and cacti. The latter two can be a bit trickier, as lava and cactus can destroy the mob drops as well.
My overall setup is pretty crappy and un-optimized, and I still have more than enough gunpowder for pretty much anything I want to do short of a Minecraft recreation of the Battle of the Somme.
Nailed it. I’ve played it for about 2-3 hours, wanting to give it the benefit of the doubt after all the buzz I’ve heard (despite not being interested in the game beforehand), and well…I got bored.
I didn’t “get” Minecraft for a long time, until I watched some Let’s Plays which allowed me to feel what the Minecraft Experience is really like. This game stimulates the imagination like no other game since 1992, primarily due to the “retro” graphics & the concept that Less Is More.
Some people just aren’t into that type of game, and that’s fine. But think of how many copies of this unfinished game have been sold so far – 750,000 people can’t be wrong!!
That’s because they don’t know the game exists yet.
Minecraft Alpha sold 500,000 copies by word of mouth alone – no advertising, no previews, and it wasn’t even on IGN’s radar until recently. NO game in history has done that. And while nothing in life is certain, my prediction is that this game will become a multi-million seller once it finally goes gold – perhaps even bigger than The Sims.
I’m quite confident that more people know of Minecraft than those who own it. Granted, this isn’t anything special to Minecraft alone, I was merely pointing out the fallacy of using sales as a metric of greatness. Take me for example, I also purchased the game and would not recommend it–I suspect I’m far from alone.
ETA: Also, while the game may not have received true previews from the big outlets, there were copious sites that have been posting stories for quite some time showcasing some of the creations made in Minecraft. Also, Minecraft is not the only game to have accomplished those sales with no advertising and minimal coverage: see Angry Birds.
Not recommend to anyone? I find that hard to believe.
That said, I’ve told a few friends NOT to purchase the game just yet, due to some potentially game-breaking bugs which hopefully should be ironed out in Beta. One particular friend is a recovering Sims Addict, and when I told her about this game she asked me, “Should I be afraid?” My reply: “Oh yes, be afraid. Be VERY afraid.”
