Minecraft

I was trying to think of a witty/relevant pun to write for this post's title, but I blanked. Ah well, considering this post is about Minecraft, the title isn't exactly misleading =P

But, yes, Minecraft. Perhaps one of the most entertaining games I have ever played, and it definitely is vying for top spot in that category. It has a ridiculously simple premise: punch blocks and build things. You start off in your own world, in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely nothing but the clothes on your back. You go to a piece of wood, and you have nothing else, so you beat it mercilessly with your hands. After hitting it for a while, it pops, and suddenly you have a block of wood in your inventory. You can, after you have gathered enough wood, build a workbench out of the wood, and then after you've gathered some more, use the bench to build a wooden pickaxe. What next? You use your wooden pickaxe to dig and dig, until you find stone, and then you can use the stone you mine to build a stone pickaxe (which is more durable), and then suddenly you're finding more materials to build sturdier tools to build larger structures and so on and so forth. The one danger are the monsters that come out at night, from bow-and-arrow wielding skeletons, to fast-moving spiders, to exploding creepers (which are terrifying, btw), so you must use your newfound knowledge of building things to build yourself a little shelter to weather the monster storm during the night (a Minecraft day is probably 15-20 minutes, while the night is equally as long, so a 24 hr equivalent is about 30-40 minutes, possibly less).

The object of the game? There is no object, other than to build whatever the hell you like. In my single player world, I build a gigantic citadel, with a mine that extends far below the surface in every direction. It has several stories, towers, bridges, storage areas, pens for animals, even a secret tunnel that leads out under the nearby ocean to an island for a quick getaway, in case my fortress ever came under attack (not that it would, considering I was in single player, but still, a nice thing to have). There is also the option to play on multiplayer servers, so what did I do? I grabbed some guys I've been with on an internet forum for years (literally, for years, I've been going to this forum for probably 5-6 years now), we all chipped in with $10 each, and bought our own server. On this server, we have done some amazing things. We built a to-scale version of an Imperial Star Destroyer, complete with command tower, engines and turbolaser batteries. We built an entire city, after clearing out thousands of blocks worth of dirt (each block is supposed to be 1m by 1m by 1m, btw, for a sense of scale). We each have our own base, from hollowed out mountain, to lighthouse made of glass, to a stone pyramid, to a tree-fort, to an underground maze (the hollowed out mountain is mine, btw).

This game is perhaps the ultimate sandbox game. The factor that makes it better than other sandbox games is, I think, the fact that you have to work to gather the materials yourself before you can build whatever it is you have planned in your mind. Many other games, like Gary's Mod (for Counter-Strike/other Steam games) or Forge (within Halo), simply give you the tools and materials necessary to make your dream come true. With Minecraft, you have to work for it; you have to create the tools, you have to use those tools to gather things, you have to protect the things you've gathered from monsters, you have to repair broken tools, etc etc etc. At the end of the day, everything is just so much more gratifying.

You know the movie, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring? The first one? The scene where (sorry, people who haven't seen this movie, I'm spoiling it for ya!) Boromir dies? When he dies (man, Sean Bean = great), they put him in a boat and send him off with style; through the gigantic statues that have their arms outstretched, and over the waterfall. I'm in the midst of building those two statues (to scale, of course) in my multiplayer server, right at the part of our map where the little bay where we all spawn opens up into an absolutely massive ocean...right at the bottleneck, so everyone will see its glory!

It's stuff like that that makes the game so interesting. I think another great feature is that the map goes on forever. As in, the terrain will forever generate itself. You can literally walk forever in one direction and never get stopped, as the game itself will continually generate land, dungeons, oceans, whatever for you to continually see and explore. Of course, it can also be a pain in the ass, considering that when you die, you respawn at the spot you spawned the first time you played the world. In the multiplayer server, we just build a house around the spawn point, so we always spawn within a certain protected area, rather than die, spawn, immediately run into a creeper and have it blow us up right then and there. It's rather useful, I think.

This game provides no end of amusement for me. After I'm done my statue, my next plan is to build an underwater base in the middle of the ocean, made entirely out of glass, on the ocean floor. I'll be able to see the rest of the fish in the ocean, and be completely dry! I feel as if that's something Dr. Evil would build....but, hell, it's fun. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll go back to my hollowed-out mountain base and surround the whole mountain with a huge wall. Pointless? Yessir. Fun? Daaaaaaaamn straight.