Minecraft

Genre: Open-World Action-RPG / Misc.

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen), 2-8 Co-Op (Online)

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Re-Review:

(Note: This game is included in Minecraft Triple Bundle, along with Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends.)

Note: I previously reviewed this game. In the time since this review went up, I have re-assessed my thoughts on this game, and felt a need to revisit that review. I’m including text from the original review in this article for the sake of comprehensiveness.

Minecraft is an Open-World game with Action-RPG elements that probably needs no introduction since it’s kinda’, you know, one of the most popular, well-known games of the last decade. However, in case you somehow aren’t familiar with it, let me give you a proper introduction.

Minecraft is many things in one, but we’ll start by saying that it is the ultimate “sandbox” game, a game where you’re given a world to play with, and it’s up to the player to make of that world what they will. It is an infinitely large world to explore, it is the ultimate box of LEGOs to create with, it is a world for you to tear apart and recreate at your whim, block by block.

Players start plopped down somewhere in the world, with zero instructions or direction. There are no clear goals or anything like that. For new players, this can be seriously daunting – the lack of any basic tutorial here is one of the game’s bigger flaws. However, before long just through trial and error, players have undoubtedly discovered that they can tear apart the world around them by gradually punching it, that their menus include a system to create new tools and items using these blocks they have gathered, and that once night falls, the land fills up with dangerous monsters, so building a shelter is one of the first orders of business.

After getting used to the game, the player will likely move on to collecting various different kinds of blocks, likely finding that tunneling down into the earth is one of the best ways to gather precious resources. They will have discovered how to build a crafting table and a furnace, which will help them to create better tools and more useful materials, and soon enough they’ll be well on their way to using this core set of abilities to carve out their own personal niche in this massive world.

While this early part of the game can frustrate new players, once a player is acquainted with how this game works, Minecraft is surprisingly player-friendly to players of all ages. In part this is because of its “make of it what you will” design, that lets players decide what part of the game appeals to them most and then focus their efforts on that.

Do you like to explore? This world is literally infinite. Go out and explore to your heart’s content! And hey, bring a map with you so you can chart everything while you go, Copernicus! Want to gather resources? There’s no end to the potential wealth of resources you can gather. Want to build? As long as you have the resources, you can build anything. Want to increase your abilities? As you gather specific resources, you can slowly work your way up to crafting yourself better and better supplies until you’re an unstoppable juggernaut (though you’ll still want to watch out for those exploding Creepers!). Farming, finding natives and trading, reinforcing your base of operations, interior decorating… there is so very much to do here, you could play for thousands upon thousands of hours and never see the end of it.

You may have noticed that while each of these things is a worthy pursuit in and of itself, many of them tie into each other. You can’t dig very effectively if you don’t have the proper tools, it’s hard to gather resources without exploration, and you can’t craft to your heart’s content without the proper resources. So to some extent, players will have to do a little of everything… or they can play with friends.

That’s one of this game’s other great strengths, is how well it makes use of Co-Op multiplayer to drive its gameplay. If you have one player working at home to craft resources and build up your home base, one exploring and finding new territory, and one digging through the earth and gathering resources, everyone benefits from each others’ actions.

With this being the case, Minecraft is an absolute utopia of Co-Op play. Players can play locally using 4-player split-screen, they can play online using 8-player online play, they can do a combination of both… this game even supports cross-play for all major platforms (Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Android, iOS), one of the first games to do so.

For those who don’t want to deal with the game’s monsters, or gather resources, the game has a creative mode for you to build whatever you want with an endless supply and no interruptions from enemies. If you want to do PvP, there’s an ability to turn that on and off. Want to create a little adventure for friends or to share online? People have done that. Heck, people have made working computers inside the game using a series of electronic switches. In short, this game simply has an absolute wealth of options, and is extremely rewarding in countless ways.

Graphically, this game manages to be both extremely impressive and extremely unimpressive at the same time. On the one hand, object textures are extremely lacking in detail, and the entire world being made of boxlike voxels means that everything in the game has a distinct jagged look. On the other hand, this design means that every single element in the game can be deconstructed, and the world can be endlessly, randomly spawned from the moment you first create it, with no two worlds being alike (unless you use the same “seed” of a code to create them).

In handheld mode, this game performs pretty great – there’s limited draw distance, but the game still plays well in 720p with a solid 60fps framerate. In docked mode, that goes up to 1080p. It’s not the best-looking version of Minecraft, but it’s pretty damn good, and the difference shouldn’t affect play all that much.

Originally, the Switch version of the game had limited worlds, unlike other versions, but it seems that this limitation has been lifted and the Switch can access everything the other platforms can. The Switch also has a few nice features in that players can navigate menus using the touchscreen in handheld mode (apparently not included in the initial release of the game on Switch), and there are Switch-exclusive skins and worlds for players to access (more specifically, Mario-themed content).

The Switch version of the game has a shorter draw distance compared to other platforms, as well as the lack of some of the modding tools available on PC (though players on Switch are free to purchase skins, worlds, textures and the like that others have made available on the in-game shop). It’s not game-breaking, but it does mark this as an inferior version of the game right off the bat.

The other issue, perhaps even more problematic, is that in the nearly a decade since Minecraft first came out, it has pretty much always been a somewhat buggy game, not just on the Switch but on every platform. This needn’t necessarily be a game-changer – the Elder Scrolls series, for example, is still one of my favorites of all time, and it’s always been one of the buggiest series to ever reach a mainstream audience. However, when it starts to seriously dampen enjoyment of the game, I feel a need to dock points.

Others have complained about online connectivity in Minecraft being a problem on the Nintendo Switch, and I cannot speak to that, it hasn’t been an issue for me. However, in the time I have played this game, numerous other issues have cropped up. When playing the game across multiple platforms, it has repeatedly erased items in my inventory, which is immensely frustrating as those items can often be difficult to come by. Even worse, I have on multiple occasions had the game outright erase one of those online realms I mentioned before – a shared world that me and my group poured thousands of game hours into. Now, I should mention that this particular issue is not specific to the Switch, since Realms accounts are managed by Microsoft’s own servers, however, you can damn well bet it affected my enjoyment of the game – so much so that I have felt the need to downgrade my review score for a game for the first time in the history of eShopperReviews.

I still believe that Minecraft is an absolute must-play game, with great appeal to all kinds of gamers young and old, casual and dedicated gamers… the amazing possibilities for creation and exploration are literally endless, and this game can be enjoyable in ways that no other game can. However, the Nintendo Switch is not the ideal platform to play these games on, and while I would recommend you absolutely play this game on whatever platform you can get it on, I will warn you that there’s a strong possibility that its bugs will create frustration and heartache for you at some point down the line.

tl;dr – Minecraft is a family-friendly Open-World sandbox game with Action-RPG elements that has you deconstructing and rebuilding the world at your whim, with endless possibilities for those looking to create or explore. The Nintendo Switch version is not the ideal version of the game, and this version also still bears the bugs that every version of the game seems to have, but it is still a must-play game that’s absolutely worth playing despite this.

Grade: A

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