Review: Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 2: Assembly Required
Another issue that impacted the episode as a whole were the amount of times that the members of the Order backtracked into flashbacks that told of the argument that disbanded them. While I understand that it’s crucial to the story, it took away completely from the decision making and the story that revolves around Jessie and the Wither Storm. The characters, minus a scene with Petra, receive almost no depth and leave it to the environments and the little bit of dialogue to develop them. With the environments being the main reason to play the episode, the lack of exploration doesn’t help its case. For a game that is meant to develop according to character choices, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of decision-making going to develop the story further. Hopefully, the cliffhanger ending will pose as an entryway to further Jessie and his friend’s role in all of this instead of being focused on the Order.
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.
Despite all of that, under the proper circumstances, this is still a genre that’s very easy to pick up and play, which is perhaps the most important part as it ensures that years and years of gamers to come will find themselves drawn to this intriguing blend of strategy, skill, and luck, just as centuries of people have found themselves drawn to a game of chess.
Those into the more dangerous elements of Minecraft – i.e. roaming through the wilderness with few weapons and resources – should enjoy this far-flashier game. Jurassic in scale and motifs, Studio Wildcard’s Ark provides a sense of wonder and heart-pounding thrills that are rarely matched. Players will be on the edge of their seats fending off reptilians as well as other humans, often with simple, cobbled-together weap
For the most part though, the appeal here stems from getting together with your buddies and enjoying a satisfying brawler with a tightly designed combat system, and bar none some of the best level design of this generation. The multiplayer portion may only last you a couple of hours or less, but is worth revisiting several times for the simple pleasures it provides. Simply put, this is an example of old school beat em’ ups at their very best.
Minecraft Dungeons is a capable all-ages dungeon crawl that, while doesn’t use its license to anything like its full potential (see Dragon Quest Builders 2 for how to do it right), is still good fun once it gets moving. The variety of enemies keeps you on your toes, and the various skills and weapons make for plenty of experimentation in figuring out the best way to take them on. Each level has at least a couple of secrets to chase after, ranging from obvious to head-scratchingly obscure, and finding everything while collecting all the gear will keep players busy for hours whether fighting single- or multiplayer. Just be aware that if you’ve got any experience with the genre, the difficulty selections on the levels are there for a reason. The younger crowd deserves a good intro to the world of dungeon crawling and Minecraft Dungeons provides that nicely.
The other type of item is accessory and each one grants a different skill. The feather, for example, does a quick roll that stuns an enemy, while the soul cube lets out a powerful arcane jet of energy blasting through everything in its path. A bundle of wheat summons an attack-llama, there are healing pendants, berzerk mushrooms, magic shields and plenty more to turn up. These let you create a personalized loadout of three skills, defining character class by what you choose to carry. The more powerful accessories are powered by souls, which are released and automatically gathered as you take out monsters, but it doesn’t take many to fill the bar. The skills are there to be used rather than hoarded.
Scoffing at motion controls is the well deserved cynical right of any long time gamer. However, for as maligned as the whole idea eventually became, linked webpage during the glorious, shining moment you first played Wii Sports with friends, it seemed on track to become the inevitable future. Wii Sports was nothing short of pick up and play perfection, with appeal that goes from curiosity to party game phenomenon the moment you actually try it. It used the innovation of motion controls to tap into a primal level of game enjoyment that many of us though we’d abandoned with experience and maturity years ago.
