Minecraft Review

Minecraft Gameplay

Minecraft is a 3D sandbox with no specific goals. A player can choose their path based on the features of the game that include either farming, crafting and exploring the world made of blocks to create massive structures or to be involved in the PvP and raiding system that is present on the servers. Depending on the player's intentions, one can choose a preferable game mode.

In Survival Mode players will have to move around the world, obtaining various resources to craft blocks and items. Crafting weapons, armour, tools, materials and building shelters is an essential part of the Survival Mode gameplay. Players face such difficulties as attacks by mobs, which spawn at night in random spots of the map, forcing the players to defend themselves and build shelters to sleep over the night so they can venture onwards in the morning. Also, they can be attacked by enemy players to gain experience points, materials and other valuable loot that drops from the defeated player's inventory.

Survival Mode introduces some environment dangers as well. Careless players should be aware of the natural sources of lowering their health bar: falling from significant heights, falling into lava, drowning and starving. The Hunger bar must be continuously refilled with in-game food that can be obtained by killing roaming animals (or bred ones) and gathering fruit and vegetables. Players can turn off the hunger bar on peaceful difficulty. Food and materials can be purchased in the NPC's villages for emeralds. This game mode can also be enjoyed on the hardcore difficulty, the main feature of which is permanent death.

Creative Mode, as the name implies, allows players to focus on the creative side of the game without paying attention to the obstacles of hunger, mobs and other damage. All needed items for building are provided to the player from the start in the items menu, divided by categories, therefore, giving the player endless opportunities. A player can also enable the free fly so moving around becomes much easier and faster.

Adventure Mode was created to provide a structured storyline in the worlds made by other players. Specific restrictions made by map creators allow players to interact with the world in a more immersive way, telling an individual story to ones who choose to play in Adventure Mode. The adventure creators themselves establish the goals.

Spectator Mode. This game mode allows players to fly freely through the map without interacting with the environment and to view the action from other player's perspective. Spectator Mode also becomes available after the player's death in the hardcore Survival Mode.

The multiplayer of Minecraft provides the opportunity to connect players by using various preferable connection methods. It has a direct game-to-game multiplayer, LAN play, local split-screen, and servers, which are hosted by server operators. In the 2013 Mojang presented Minecraft Realms, a hosting service that provided players with a quality multiplayer platform without the need to set up their server.

Minecraft mods have been developed by players and are mostly independent. Mods contain texture and shader packs, blocks, items and creatures. There are more than a thousand downloadable mods, and they're considered to be one of the most successful game features.