Review: Minecraft Dungeons

Much like Assassin's Creed, I wasn't constantly thinking "Wow! What a great multiplayer game this would make!"nwhile playing the original Portal. In both cases, it wasn't so much a lack of potential for Mcversehub.Com a multiplayer experience that turned me off the idea, but rather the thought of how easily things could get screwed up if not handled carefully. Of course, as is the case with most worries involving game design and Valve, those fears would turn out to be completely unfounded.

The popular tag line of any game that aimed at mainstream appeal is usually something along the lines of "It's so good, even grandma will play it!" While that's of course a sensationalized vision that most games never achieve, as a lifelong gamer whose actually played Wii Sports with his grandma (and been soundly beaten by her at it) I can say it holds no hyperbole here.

A lot of us remember our very first video game rather fondly. While I’m not going to explain my own life story, I will say that I was first hooked on video games through my older cousins’ Sega Genesis systems, specifically the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Much of my interest in gaming as a whole came from the Yuji Naka-created mascot. It wasn’t the only set of games on the Genesis available to me at the time, but it was without question the series that hooked me. It began my own journey humbly, but in retrospect, it’s actually quite difficult to articulate why it was so interesting to me. This is a situation that many of us recall, but rarely ever examine deeply. Think about your first video game, the one that convinced you to pick up a controller and keep playing till the end credits, the one that convinced you to try another game afterward. What exactly was it about that first game that hooked you and urged you to keep playing from then till today? In essence, what appealed to you about that game that made you "a gamer"?

The lack of plot means the action needs to carry the game, which Minecraft Dungeons nicely pulls off. It's a fairly stripped-down entry in the genre, with no character classes or specializations, but instead focuses on character customization through loot. At the start you choose a character skin, none of which have any advantage or disadvantage over another, and then through the course of the adventure find gear to fit your play style. There are six slots to fill, three of which are for action accessories assigned to the controller face buttons and the others being the equipment of weapon, armor and ranged, and while it's tempting to go for straight power over anything else, it's better to find things that suit your play style.

Many other gamers in my age group were hooked during the Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis era, while the older crowd are likely to have the original NES in their hearts. Some might even cite the original Atari 2600 as their first step into the world of gaming, with their reverence for the medium enduring even the colossal gaming crash of the 1980’s. On the other side of things, we have younger gamers who are being raised on Playstation consoles as new as the Playstation 4 and even Microsoft’s Xbox line, which didn’t appear until the new millennium. We also mustn’t forget those of us who played PC games during our childhood, even the consistently ridiculed edutainment games like Oregon Trail II . We’re all given so much history and so many options to choose from as fans within this medium, but those of us who call ourselves gamers find something truly fascinating with games as a whole.
Let me begin by saying that this episode is particularly short, like a little over an hour short. I guess that's what happens when the first two episodes are only separated by a few weeks, but the fact that to get the entire experience you have to play through it twice sort of pans out well because it then makes the episode about two hours long. Still, a much longer playthrough for the sequel was expected considering the complication of the events taking place. That being said, the episode covers the areas following either Elligaard or Magnus and each path allows you to follow and understand more of the world of Minecraft. There are a few inconsistencies that don't make sense and some new events that don't necessarily pertain to Jessie or his/her friends, but that doesn't label the episode as terrible. By inconsistencies, I mean there were points in the game where I thought, "why can't they just do this/that in order to progress?" One moment that comes to mind is when a character falls into a hole and can't seem to get out when they could have built their way out as they were able to in the first episode. The rest of the episode is littered with little things like that that make you scratch your head and ask those questions.

There is no new game plus but there is a separate free build mode. Story progression unlocks items in free build mode, and free build mode allows the player to build without limits. Things the player constructs in free build mode can be sent to other players. Free build mode does online connectivity but it is single player only, aside from being able to share items and buildings. It is possible to call for help from other players in this mode. For example, someone was involved with a 24 hour stream and wanted to build an amusement park and requested help through the Dragon Quest Builders social networking channel to get help from other players. Someone built a Ferris wheel, someone else built concessions, and the amusement park was able to get completed quickly since other people were contributing their creations. (noticing the suite is getting packed up for the night and other media people are leaving)