[Review] - Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition

[Uzi]

SYNOPSIS
Imagine it, build it! Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition lets you create worlds from the comfort of your sofa. Play alone or play with your friends. Explore, build and conquer! At night monsters come out, so make sure to build a shelter before that happens. After that, your world is your imagination. Turn your hours into minutes with Minecraft! To experience split-screen functionality a high-definition television is required.


GAMEPLAY
Minecraft for the Xbox 360 was currently based around the earlier version of the PC edition of the game; Beta 1.6.6, so it doesn't yet have a few of the features which are found on the PC version of the game, such as the ability to sprint, and so forth. The developers of Minecraft have made an attempt to include as many of the features from the PC edition onto the Xbox 360 edition. If you have played the game, you may have noticed some of the recognisable tools, blocks and other features found whilst on the PC version - such as, similar tools for constructing, digging and mining; wolves, sheep, cows, and pigs; zombies, skeletons, spiders, and the biggest annoyance of them all... the Creepers. There are four separate difficulty modes you can choose from when you're creating your world;

• Peaceful - Allows your health to regenerate, there are no mobs spawning, etc (hence the title, 'Peaceful').
  
• Easy - Your health doesn't regenerate unless you eat food. There are also mobs, such as detonating Creepers, zombies, etc.
  
• Normal - Things have been turned up another notch. This time there are more mob-spawns, more enemies, and your health decreases faster.
  
• Hard - The most difficult setting of them all.. 'Hard'. It takes a great amount of patience and determination to want to survive on this difficulty.

You cannot change the difficulty of your world mid-game. To change the difficulty setting, you must firstly exit out from your world and before clicking to play your game, you shall see 'World Preferences' appearing. These preferences include, making your world 'Invite Only' or 'Join-able', changing the name of your world, and of-course.. changing the difficulty. I personally would recommend either going onto 'Peaceful' if you're looking to build your fortresses before tackling mobs, or 'Easy' if you're looking to gather bones from skeletons to tame wild wolves to become your pets. There aren't as many blocks to choose from as on Minecraft's PC edition, but it's only been released about a week ago from today, so if we were to give it some time, we could safely say that there will be upcoming updates and more features to arrive in the foreseeable future. Another advantage of Minecraft is that you can play co-operatively online with people you know. You can have up to 8 players in a single world, which is pretty awesome!


CONTROLS
The controls for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition are very basic. Like any other ordinary first-person game, such as Call of Duty. You use the left analogue stick to move forwards, backwards, left and right; and you use the right analogue stick to look up, down, left and right. The controls are very simple to get to grips with, and aren't confused after spending around an hour acknowledging how to perform certain manoeuvres and actions. Like many other games, you can press the "A" button on your controller to jump up and down. You can also click in the "RS" (right stick) to change to first-person view, third-person view, and to see your character inverted. I must admit, some performable actions can be very difficult to acknowledge if you haven't yet played the PC edition of Minecraft, such as the crafting table, and how to correctly create something out of different materials. All-in-all, once you figure out how to use everything, the controls will seem basic and manoeuvrable. If you would like to find out more simplistic information on how to use the controls on Minecraft, click here.


GRAPHICS
Well you cannot really say that Minecraft have the best graphics, considering it's supposedly supposed to remain as a 'retro block-styled' game. Although it's supposed to be a retro-styled game, they have included near enough every little bit of detail that you would fine from the PC version of Minecraft. The colours are vibrant and stand out, it's a peaceful game and looks attractive. They have a range of different blocks to use and construct from, so you'll be spoilt by a choice of colours for your home's carpet!


MY PERSONAL THOUGHTS
In my honest opinion, I could easily say that the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft has to be one of my favourite games out at the moment. It's definitely worth buying, and I find it to be worth every penny. From my perspective, I can say that it's money well spent! I've spent countless hours this past week working on my world, mining underground for diamonds, iron and other materials, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time playing co-operatively with my friends. The levers and the iron doors secure your house, and I enjoy coming up with new ideas on what I could create in my spare time. My difficulty for the game is set as 'Peaceful' because I enjoy building, rather than fighting Creepers. Once I have my diamond armour I will make an attempt to play with eight other players and we'll all try and survive for as long as possible on either 'Easy', 'Normal' or 'Hard' mode.


RATING

I'd like to give 'Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition' a positive rating of..

9/10!

..as I believe it's not worthy of a 10/10 rating due to the lack of spawn-points.



Everything other than the 'synopsis' was typed out by Uzi.

[playzzzz]

Woow, what a great review.

I stopped playing minecraft but your post make me want to replay