Minecraft Xbox 360 Geek
Minecraft comes to Xbox Live Arcade this week, and that development amounts to dread tidings for the Xbox 360-playing addictive personalities of the world. The experience of playing Mojang’s formerly PC-only sensation can be boiled down to a simple idea: LEGOs with monsters. Within that brief description, however, there is a literal world of possibility. Now, we will talk about: Mining and Crafting and Console Strip-Mining.
Mining and Crafting
There’s a very simple concept at work in Minecraft: survive, and then thrive. Any new game starts out by depositing you in the center of a world built out of cube-shaped blocks of various types and properties. Monsters come out at night (unless you have the difficulty set to Peaceful), so your first necessary steps in the world involve building shelter and some basic survival tools like torches, swords, and a front door (which keeps monsters at bay).
The core game play conceit has you “mining” any in-range block that you target with your crosshairs, and collecting the resource that the “mined” object offers. Stone and wood blocks (and a few other things) can be placed in the world, allowing you to build elaborate structures. For example, if you’ve got two wooden sticks and three stone blocks, you can ease the process of mining by building a stone pickaxe. A “planted” tree sapling, for example, will eventually grow into an actual tree. For example, the resource Redstone can be used to build rudimentary electrical systems. You hydrate soil using a nearby water source and then use any seeds you’ve gathered to build yourself a proper farm. To support your creations, you’ll need to thoroughly explore the world and dig deep underground as you search for the rarer resources.
Console Strip-Mining
While the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft retains the same fundamental qualities that make the PC game so popular, some necessary changes had to be made. It’s worth mentioning there are stated plans to bring this console release up to date with the PC version of Minecraft. It’s not fair to call Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition an unfinished game, but it also definitely isn’t all that it could be.
Fortunately, the work that 4J did on porting Minecraft wasn’t focused solely on stripping out content. The Xbox 360 release has some major tweaks built in to make the game friendlier for console gamers. There’s a tutorial world for starters, a chunk of game that walks you through both basic and advanced techniques for cultivating your Minecraft world.
Perhaps the best improvement over the PC game is the console version’s online implementation. You’ll only be able to join worlds belonging to your friends in Minecraft on your Xbox 360, but the “Load Game” screen will automatically list any open multiplayer worlds alongside your own saved ones.
