Minecraft is a voxel-based game with graphics that look like they're from the late '80s. It's a game where tedium is commonplace and combat is basic. Everything you see is a cube, and everything you build is made up of even more cubes. But it's about so much more than that.

 

Minecraft is a game that has changed the face of the indie games world, and took the average player's world by storm. Minecraft is a game of freedom, creativity, and expression. Of danger, survival, and struggle. While Minecraft certainly isn't a game that everyone will love, it is a game that has forever changed the way that the gaming world at large looks at indie games and has become one of the largest PC games in recent memory.

  

While many of us have been playing Minecraft since its Alpha and Beta stages, I felt it was right to review this beast only when the final version was released to the public. It's true that there will still be updates even now, when the game is out of Beta. But the milestone of going from "Beta" to "Minecraft" is an accomplishment that has taken nearly two years of steady updates, tweaks, and changes. This model of release is the first thing I'd like to address: It's brilliant. Giving players the chance to play the game as the developers work on it was a phenomenal success and a great way for a small studio to work on a game and please its fans at the same time. Without this release method Minecraft would surely not be what it is today.

 

Minecraft is a game that is very loosely based on one thing: Survival. There is an ever-present day-to-night cycle that drives that point home. In the day, the world of Minecraft is a relatively safe place, where you're free to explore a world that is almost never-ending. But come nightfall, the darkness sets in, and anywhere that darkness can be found, hostile mobs can spawn. They don't care who you are. They just want to kill you. Creepers, Spiders, Skeletons, the terrifying Endermen; it makes no matter. These creatures have no other purpose than to kill you. This is where the survival element of the game kicks in. You stand virtually no chance against these hostile mobs in combat, so you have to resort to the tools that you're given. Mining and crafting is what you have that the mobs don't. Your first step is to build a shelter to wait out the night. You can accomplish this by mining, chopping, and digging your way through a wide variety of materials. Gathering wood takes longer than building a house of dirt, but you'll find that you need wood to build even the most elementary tools.

 

This is where Minecraft begins to shine. You soon realize that your basic wooden tools are pretty much worthless. But they allow you to gather stone in order to make stone tools. Stone tools allow you to gather iron, and iron tools allow you to gather almost every kind of material. Minecraft is a simple game with a simple goal: Mine stuff, craft stuff, and build stuff. Nearly every material you gather can be used in construction. It's only a matter of what you're willing to gather. Minecraft gives as much as you put into it, and rewards players who have the ambition to build fantastical buildings made of fantastical materials. Minecraft allows anyone to express their creativity, and limits you only by what you can imagine and what you have the willpower to accomplish. You put the work in to get what you need, and then change the face of the world as a Hall of Fame to the dedication you've given the game. The final release of the game features a Creative Mode, for those who only want to build without having to worry about survival and mining.

 

 

 

But another big part of Minecraft is the world. The world, your impact on it, and the adventures you have in it. The world of Minecraft is one of the biggest gameworlds in recent memory. At a staggering eight times the surface of the Earth (That's real life Earth!), you have no shortage of exploration and adventure. The world is made up of different biomes, which boil down to environment types. A snow biome may feature evergreen trees and snowfall instead of rain, where a desert biome features no rain at all, and cacti and dead shrubbery are your only foliage. There are many different types of biomes, from tundra to ocean and everything in between. And in addition to all of these, every biome has a chance to spawn caves, caverns, and dungeons ripe for exploring. As you gather better and better resources, and adventure more and more, you come to realize that you'll never be able to see it all. And that in and of itself is an accomplishment. But if you gather up some obsidian and a flint and tinder to light it, you'll make a portal to the hellish Nether, which is filled with creatures that want to see you die. It offers rare materials you can't find elsewhere, but you can only obtain them with great risk.

 

A new feature of the final release is yet another type of portal, one that leads to The End, home of the final boss of Minecraft. These portals are found only in Strongholds, which are rare in their own right. While killing this boss doesn't truly end the game, it is a great challenge and one that people won't be able to undergo easily. The Enderdragon, the most difficult mob in the game, awaits you -- And its massive health bar stares straight into your soul the second you step foot in The End. It's the type of boss that one tries to kill, realizes they aren't ready for, and has to come back later.

 

 

 

 

 

But where the game truly proves its mettle is in its Survival Multiplayer mode. You host yourself a Minecraft server, gather a few friends, and the experience is multiplied and changed in the best possible way. The game manages to stand completely on its own with just its single player, but multiplayer is the icing on the cake. Playing Minecraft with friends is one of the most unique experiences in gaming for the sole reason that everyone plays it differently. Some people love to adventure, and others just like to build. And others still simply like to mine the day away. And with multiplayer comes expression, and this is when Minecraft shows us how different everyone's style is. You might build a log cabin, while your neighbor may make his house completely out of TNT and cake. While you may go out adventuring swinging a sword at enemies, your friend may like to use a bow instead. Keeping with the theme of individuality, there are countless player-made texture packs available which wildly or subtly change the look of the game. From packs that make this native 16x16-bit game into a 512x512, or simply giving Minecraft the look from some of your other favorite games, texture packs are significant enough to make a great game even better. Where else can one kill a creeper while swinging the Master Sword from Zelda? Everything about Minecraft boils down to how the individual plays, and that is what makes it an experience unlike any other. An experience that everyone should, at the very least, try.

 

Minecraft is simple game at heart. But it's so much more than everything it offers. It's an expression of creativity, a way to play a game your way instead of having a predetermined method of play. It is one of the finest examples of a sandbox game that the industry has to offer, and it's possible that no other game has ever come as close to that moniker. It is a world that the player shapes and lives in. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.