Tuesday, 5 October 2010

Minecraft, a tale of poverty, prosperity and getting lost in other people's tunnels.

Okay, so I've forked out the menial £9.00 for the Minecraft alpha, and so far I can say it's totally worth the money. I mean what's better than a game that say's it all in the title right? Take "God of war" or "Bioshock", in those games you're a God of war and in a shocking environment. This is a simple game. You'll be mining and crafting. Although, I'm pretty sure anyone who is reading this has managed to fathom what Minecraft is by now, as it's spread around the internet like wildfire. So I'm just going to give you my experience and leave the wonderment and joy of finding out about it up to you.

So when I started the game up, I was a broken man. You spawn in an infinite environment with nothing to your name, and only your fists to defend yourself with. Now I'm a smart lil cookie, so I read up a bit on what you need to do to make a few tools in the game to get me started, and so, like everyone else, I started punching tree's. Now, that's an odd thing to do no? I mean, you don't go down to the park for your daily run, or whatever and see every tree is being shoryuken'd into pieces. But I digress, I was a man with a lot of logs by mid-day, and so I decided I may need a place to rest and store my wood. Namely a hole.

I found a nice spot at the bottom of a valley, there were plenty of tree's around and I could see a cool looking land formation from the top of the valley that I would go and explore the next day. So I dug a small four square sized hole in the side of the valley and constructed a front door, poifect! There was just enough space for me, my storage box and a log I'd attempted to use as a seat. So then the night came, the incredibly dark and scary night that left me in my pitch black hovel that made me regret not looking up how to make candles. Outside there were noises, horrible noises, but I couldn't see what was out there. Figure's were moving about just outside my front door, seemingly waiting for me to exit. I just stood still, wishing for the night to end as soon as possible so I could get some torches to light up my home.

So after a tremendously scary night, the sun rose, and everything outside burst into flames, there were zombies, skeletons, weird four legged green things and spiders. Only the spiders had some sort of different agenda, as they weren't burning. I was worried at this point, as I only had logs with which to attack these guys with, and these spiders weren't your normal spiders, no, they were the classic "big" or even "giant" spider's, a log was not something to use.
However, there was no other options for me at this point, and so I valiantly hid behind my front door and held the mouse button down to beat the spider to death. Now, those who are more versed in Minecraft may know that holding the mouse down in front of a door results in it getting destroyed and therefore able to be picked up again. I was not privy to this knowledge, and so the spider consequently bit my face off.

So there I was, a broken man with nothing to my name. I had just spawned in the same infinite land-scape with no idea where my four square hovel full of logs were and only my fists to my name. I sighed, beat up a tree, and exited the game.

This is how Minecraft roll's. It's a learning experience, much like guitar hero, or even a fighting game. You're not going to do well your first time round, or in this case, in your first hour or so of play. No, there is a lot to get used to here, and you're going to love every minute of it, I know I do. I just want to stress this is not a review, but a tale from the mine as it were, feel free to add your own to the comments section below!

image credit: news.cnet.com

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