Minecraft: Java Edition (2011)

Prelude

After playing this game since I was a little kid off and on it is probably the game I have sunk the most hours in by far. From playing with other on xbox on survival worlds with fellow squeexers, creating a "bow clan" whatever that is, crying when my worlds were trolled by older kids, playing on hypixel and mineplex especially bed/eggwars, roleplaying on house in hypixel during my cringe highschool/preteen years. It is in a way the game that has brought me up like many of my generation.

Why beat the dragon now?

Though I never seemed motivated to beat the ender dragon until now because all the things aforementioned kept me preoccupied. But now as a grown man I am again watching minecraft content more like I did when I was younger particulary speedrunners. And this finally motivated me for 7 hours straight to beat the game and honestly I feel like I have completed a childhood dream/goal as sad as that sounds.

Conclusion

This game as it has evolved as I found after playing all these years later has kept the same charm and gameplay for the most part we have always loved. This will always be dear to my heart as a game and to me the survival/sandbox game that none other will really compete with. This is a weird review but to me this game is more a part of me then any other game would be so I see it as part of my youth rather than a game and I am glad I came back and finished up what I didn't do as a child. Nostalgia at its best

10/10 5/5 or whateve its minecraft ffs

I bought the alpha version of Minecraft when it was first released. It went the old school way: A badly designed HTML 5 page from Mojang on which you could buy a game called Minecraft for seven euros. After that, you could download the game in a zipped .jar format and extract it to your pc. Start the Minecraft launcher and you are good to go.

When I first played Minecraft, I did not know what to expect but the whole survival and free build concept immediately intrigued me. It felt so new and fresh but the ancient graphics (who were much, much worse back then) took some time to get used to. I started building a nice, safe home right away and looked for coal to make some lights.

Minecraft has laid the foundation for all the crafting survival games out there and, in a way, I am proud that I played “the original” one first.

The whole concept of the game has not changed much over the years. Just build stuff and, in the present times, defeat a dragon and conquer a fortress, located in the seventh layer of hell.

The game has been updated over the years and it remains fascinating to see how such a simple, small game, became one of the biggest open world games of all time. Every update included a ton of added resources, items, mechanics and mobs and still does these days. You now can make potions, grow any crop you can think of, enchant stuff, make magic books, the list goes on.

Today, whole servers with custom build playrooms, mighty castles, incredible build projects and unimaginable feats have been accomplished and it is just great to see how creative people can be with this game.

I spent hours surviving, building nice castles and exploring the caves and the nether. It was all good fun. With mods you can make the game into everything you could ever imagen, my personal favourite being Pixelmonn.

The only problem I have nowadays with Mincecraft is that it has no purpose anymore for me. Back then it was new, the exploring and surviving was a goal on its own. Today, I am sometimes motivated to build a huge castle or project, spent hours and hours of my free time on it and then, when it is finished, I take a death stare into limbo and ask myself: “What was the purpose of this”? Technically you can beat the game nowadays by slaying the Ender Dragon, something I already did. The credits roll and you have beaten Minecraft, but still, the game goes on after that and there is no ultimate end goal. I experience this issue with other sandbox survival build games too, but with Minecraft, it is the worst.

It could be my age (30 next month), after all, Minecraft is now considered a kid’s game, fun for the whole family. Whatever the case, these days I can only respect it like I did back then and pas the torch (stick + coal) over to the next generation.

Man, this game deserves better. And I’m gonna say it, one of the best games of all time. I think the main reason it’s hated is it’s oversaturation in mainstream media, but most of the people who give that criticism are the people who haven’t played this game!

Obviously, there are a ton of reasons to dislike this game for a different audience, it’s a sandbox game, this is the most subjective a genre can get. But I love this so much. The visual style, though simple and basically just copied is so iconic, the mob designs are memorable, and some naturally-generated structures and landscapes can look absolutely beautiful.

Of course this started as an indie title, so stuff like the icons are pretty much borrowed from Zelda games, but now people see this as, "Oh, the Minecraft heart", because it really does fit the game. It’s so cool that Minecraft is being used as an educating tool, since the possibilités are basically unlimited. That’s the whole marketing factor of the game! Obviously you can make some of the worst shit out of dirt and diorite, but seeing creators use the tools given and create cities, kingdoms, mansions, it’s amazing!

Yes, the community of this game is whack, yes, it’s heavily oversaturated, yes, it’s a very dependent on personal taste, but I for one, love it!

Playing this game with your friends leads to really fun interactions and building your world is so satisfying and makes you proud of every single achievement you’ve made. This game is monumental, and saying that it’s bad and judging it because of its community, sales, and oversaturation.

Yes, I’m playing this on PC, but I also want to give a shout-out to the awesome Super Mario tie-in for the Nintendo Switch version. For me, got the Switch version, but haven’t touched it for that long.

9.5/10. I truly have no regrets. Don’t judge it off what people say, and go get it if you haven’t. It’s good.