Review: Minecraft Dungeons
From the same people that brought us Game of Thrones and Tales From the Borderlands comes their newest decision based game, Minecraft: Story Mode. Telltale Games is notorious for their rigorous storytelling and memorable characters and this time is no Different Types Of Wood Minecraft. You play as Jesse, regardless of which gender you choose at the beginning, who is on a mission to create the greatest build at EnderCon, (Enderman Convention if you didn’t catch on). The winner gets to meet the great Gabriel of the Order of the Stone, a group of people who slayed the Ender Dragon years ago but have disbanded since. Of course, the episode would be nothing without some kind of story of revenge that spirals the characters into an adventure that they would have never seen themselves in. Someone sets out to create a Wither, a huge monster that sets out to consume everything, leaving you and your friends to seek out the Order of the Stone. You are accompanied by your friends Olivia, confidant and trusty, Axel, large and loyal, and Reuben, a pig. Telltale hit the nail on the head this time with a different, family-friendly take on one of their main installments. No prior knowledge of the original building game is needed, but it would help if you had some basic terminology.
This game becomes quite engaging with friends once everyone gets a hang of how the game is played. Each session of Project Zomboid is rife with danger and thrills, with players ruing the loss of their partners in-game when the going gets tough… which it does. A
The lack of plot means the action needs to carry the game, which Minecraft Dungeons nicely pulls off. It’s a fairly stripped-down entry in the genre, with no character classes or specializations, but instead focuses on character customization through loot. At the start you choose a character skin, none of which have any advantage or disadvantage over another, and then through the course of the adventure find gear to fit your play style. There are six slots to fill, three of which are for action accessories assigned to the controller face buttons and the others being the equipment of weapon, armor and ranged, and while it’s tempting to go for straight power over anything else, it’s better to find things that suit your play style.
The episode relies prettily on QTE (Quick Time Events) and gives you something next to decision making to worry about. While a lot of the QTE are really to avoid taking damage, some are just used for the sake of being there, like to build things, but they also add to your situation and count as something else to watch out for. You are given a set of ten hearts to have throughout the episode (and most likely throughout the series) and damage gets taken away every time you are either attacked by an enemy or fail to do a QTE. The QTE also acts as its own decision as some events can change how a person sees you. It isn’t as effective as a regular decision, but something like which group of people you want to run with or how long it takes you to do something might have a much more of an impact in the future.
After their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere, a group of eight survivors are left stranded in the wilderness and must adapt in order to survive. As they wait to be rescued, they have to work together in order to avoid falling victim to the mysterious entities that surround them. It may have taken developer Fntastic a little longer than some would have liked to get The Wild Eight working as promised, but, for a low-budget crowd-funded game, the end result is pretty damn impress
There’s probably a good reason people build dungeons. At first it seems like a great plan to construct a subterranean labyrinth, because maybe the kingdom needs a place to store its surplus supplies or random undesirable people. Why build a giant construct from wood and rock when there’s so much unused space underfoot, other than mining being crazy-hard to get right. The point is, eventually all that space attracts things. Big, mean, hungry things that no society can function around. Zombies and skeletons are only the start of the problem, and it doesn’t take long for an evil overlord to come along and put this undead labor to use devastating the countryside. Dungeons are an archaeological trap, useful right up to the point they’re the base for the downfall of the realm, and the ones in Minecraft Dungeons are a perfect illustration of how it all goes horribly wrong.
The lore also does not seem to be empty at all. In some games, you walk away feeling like you could have lived your whole life not needing to know anything about what just happened. This game, and specifically this episode, doesn’t feel that way and makes sure to utilize all the time in the episode to prove that. Nothing goes unnoticed and everything is important whether it be information that pertains to this game specifically or the base game. Battles are not too long-winded and conversations don’t make you want to skip them. Everything feels as though they are timed just right and you almost forget that you are sitting in front of your television for so long. You don’t really think about what could have happened if you did or said something differently and only look forward to seeing what comes of the decision you’ve just made, which is odd for a game that is meant to be replayed in order to make different decisions. Besides, there are some things that you wouldn’t want to see happen again and are better off just forgetting all of the decisions that you didn’t make.
