The day has come where Minecraft finally comes out of beta. And so it is now fair game to review. But as Alec Meer puts it:
How would you review Tetris, if you were reviewing it today? “The puzzling is very tight, and the soundtrack is catchy.” That’s the thing - Tetris is so much more than that by now, but it’s almost impossible to disassociate it from its cultural resonance. Minecraft, the free-form building and survival game, hasn’t yet seeped into the global consciousness to the same degree, but it has become something far more than a mere game.
It is one that over four million people have already paid for and played. It is the brightest example of an indie success story you could name, having never been near a publisher or even an investor. Its lead developer, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, is all but a celebrity - that one-word nickname guaranteeing instant press and gamer attention for any and all pronouncements it’s attached to. There are T-shirts, there are costumes, there are conspiracy theories about an in-game nemesis who doesn’t exist, there are podcasts, there are more YouTube videos than one human being could watch in a lifetime, there is a dedicated video commentary site starring a girl with pink hair who has her own frighteningly loyal fanbase.
Identifying quite where the game stops and where its online legend begins is a tall order. Review Minecraft? Might as well review Justin Bieber. (“The hair is very shiny but the voice quite weedy; 7/10.”)
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Eurogamer’s review of Minecraft
Feels a bit strange to finally be there after playing this game for so long. One thing is for sure, I am looking forward to brand new post release multiplayer fun.
Wendelius
The official release should happen sometime between 1pm and 2:30pm (Pacific time, presumably), according to the Minecon schedule.
Zylon
4223
Based on the new door- and chest-opening sounds that they snuck into the mainline release, I’m going to assume that the final version will allow you to craft oil cans.
DeepT
4224
I wonder how long it will take the mod scene to catch up with this new version considering it is holiday time.
Watched the stream of the opening ‘keynote’. Seemed underprepared and awkward. But they were super excited, or at least the chick with the pink hair was. Notch didn’t really address his disciples much.
And jnkboy is apparently the elephant man.
dtolman
4227
Downloaded! I didn’t play any 1.9, so super-excited.
Pogo
4228
World-gen is “broken” again, correct? I should just delete all my old worlds from 1.8.1? I only have two, and they were more for exploration/catharsis than any real building.
Marcin
4229
I would also like to know this.
World generation has definitely changed since 1.8. It looks like it changed between 1.8 and the 1.9 prereleases, but hasn’t changed between the 1.9 prereleases and final release, though.
You can of course continue using your current map, and you’ll just get the ugly transitions when you hit unexplored areas. And won’t have any of the new stuff like lilypads in swamps, NPC villagers, strongholds with the End portals, etc., in your existing areas.
Any suggestions for seeds that generate wacky terrain?
I saw that ‘Minecraft1.0’ will spawn you right in the middle of an NPC village. Convenient, even if it feels a little cheaty. Our group is restarting with 1.0 and we’ve been trying to find a seed that mixes it up, as our last world turned out to be a bit more mundane than we’d have liked.
Who is this guy? He seems to have abandoned the 7-10 scale and has instead embraced the 0,1,9,10 scale. Why is metacritic including his reviews?
Do you realise that anyone can sign up to metacritic to provide “user reviews”?
Oh nevermind I haven’t been to metacritic in a while and the new format confused me, I thought that guy was counting as a critic review.
any notice the moon has phases now?
So I started two days ago a new game. I have my little refugee, with a lookout tower, a (hidden behind a waterfall*) dock, an animal farm (chicken and cows), a wheat, pumpkin and sugar cane farm (the last one automated with pistons). I explored a pair of caves and two huge deep mines. I have a diamond sword and a diamond pickaxe. And a bit of unused gold. I also made two Nether portals, but i barely explored the other dimension.
*:The waterfall will open and close with a lever. It was my first redstone thingie!
But I have read about the snowmen and I wanted to try them. For that, I need snow. I don’t see snow nearby. Not even far away, i already explored around 1.5 full maps. Do the biome generation have some kind of logic? Or it random? If i go south or north will i find snow?
You should eventually find snow but some maps may only generate a fairly small snow-covered section.
I loaded this up the other day but I really don’t see all that much difference between this and 1.9b3.
I’ve spent a phenomenal amount of time of this game, and I’m sure to spend a lot more at some point, but having said that, 1.0 is essentially anticlimactic.
Therlun
4239
I have to agree.
After spending lots of time with minecraft but playing it much less in the last few months 1.0 has few things to draw me in again. Most of the additions do little for my play style and some are even annoying (hunger especially)
Well, the whole point of the 1.9 prereleases was to test as much of the final functionality as possible, so it’s not that surprising that the final release isn’t that different. It would have defeated the entire purpose of the debug period if he’d stuffed a whole bunch of new, untested stuff in at the last minute.
