Minecraft
Minecraft is a game that cannot easily be described. Any attempts I’ve heard failed to do the game justice, not necessarily because the game is amazing, but because the descriptions make it sound pretty lame. I’ve been putting many hours of free time into the game since I bought it last week, so there is definitely substance to this game.
I’ll attempt to give a basic summary of the gameplay. The game revolves around blocks that represent different materials such as stone, wood, and minerals. The whole infinitely generating world is made of these blocks. You can build and use various tools to help manipulate the blocks and collect the materials. You can also attach blocks to other blocks to build things, which is where most of the fun lies. For an added twist, there are monsters that appear at night or in dark tunnels.
Enough about the game. Here’s how my experience with this game went. First I created a single-player game and started randomly digging around, then built a failure of a shelter. After that, I joined some friends in a multiplayer game and never went back. After breaking some stuff, I borrowed some supplies and started mining for materials. Then I leveled an island and built a cabin on it. At this point I thought “Now what?”
The answer is build stuff! You can build pretty much anything you can imagine, limited only by your creativity and amount of effort you’re willing to put in. So far I’ve built a maze and a roller coaster, which is pretty fun. Other players on the server are building way more impressive structures.
At the time of this writing, the game is in the alpha stage of development so there are bugs as expected, especially in multiplayer mode. These don’t do much to get in the way, though. The game is moving to beta on Dec. 20th, which also means the price will double. So if you’re thinking of getting the game, buy it before then!