Minecraft: Xbox 360 / One / PS4

[EvilBoris]

(PS4/One editions chat starts from around post 106)

So.....Minecraft.

It's been around a while now, but barely knew anything about it.
I downloaded the PC beta an age ago, but it was in the early stages of design and wasn't really a game at that point.
I'd also written it off as being some kind of awful casual game toss.

I'll do a little explanation of what it is for people that were as clueless as I was until last night.

So I started off in the world, it kinda looks like this


Each Block is a specific material, some are sand , some are earth, some are rock or gold or coal or wood.
You can walk around an jump and make a strange thrusting motion (crouch?). You may see some blocky animals walking around too.

Pressing or holding R lets your character punch, you can punch an animal , punch them enough and they will drop an item, some wool or some leather for example.

Punching a block that the world constructed of you lets you mine it, I believe this is is the mining of the title. Soft blocks such as sand or leaves only need a little punching to destroy them, once destroyed you can collect it. Harder rock and other ore type blocks may take lots of punching or you may not even be able to mine them at all.

Pressing X brings up the crafting menu, here you can use the raw materials you've mined or collected to make other items.

4 wood blocks will make a pile of wooden planks, You can then turn wooden planks into one of several other components and in conjunction with other components make other more complex blocks or even tools, weapons or equipment.
This is the bit that I was enjoying, slowly creating myself new objects, it works very much like using a forge in skyrim, slowly and surely you can build the things that you need or build yourself new components to actually build things in the world.

You can place the blocks you've mined to rearrange the world you are in or to build yourself a structure. The blocks themselves all have physical properties which I've yet to quite figure out. I was mining underground and did something wrong and it actually collapse in on me.

This is itself may sound a little boring, thing is, there is a day and night cycle, during the day you are free to mine and build and craft and explore.
When the night hits.... the beasties come out, blocky zombies, exploding cacti, skeletons with weapons and spiders will literally chase you until you are dead.

Run out of hearts and you will soon respawn in a random, but you will lose your entire inventory.

Now if you were sensible with your daytime, you'd of been building yourself a sword for defence or perhaps even a building of some sort, a fort or a castle even. These will stop the monsters getting you and you can survive the night. Perhaps you will just dig down and down and then when the monsters come, climb into your mine and block up the entrance.

As you start creating better components via crafting you can build storage chests to keep your items safe in the face of death or a bed that lets you literally sleep through the night if you are safe.

All of this can be done in a co-op mode with upto 8 people online or with 4 people splitscreen (only on an HDTV).

I was playing this with a good friend last night and it was kinda the perfect chill out game, we were just mucking around thinking of ways to fend of monsters. One solution was literally to build a block stand on it, then jump and build on beneath our feet whilst mid jump until we were on a giant pole up in the clouds.

I'm not sure if I would want to do it on my own, but I'm looking forward to logging on again in co-op and figuring out some more.

[yesteryeargames]

I am addicted to this, but sadly my tutorial save has been corrupted when i try to load it it simply crashes the 360.

I have had to start a new world. I would be up for some co op "SILENT MOUNTAIN" is my tag

[Fader209]

From what I have seen so far the main differences between this and the PC version are:
Much smaller play area, plus you get a map right at the start.
"Recipes" for crafting are present making it much easier to get started whereas with the PC you have to experiment or use a guide.
There won't be any crazy mods - check out Sky Grid on Youtube, it's insane!

[EvilBoris]

Oh My goodness!

Totally hooked.

I didn't realise the world that you play in is randomly generated, that's so cool.

Must of spent 5 hours playing with Family Fry til 4am this morning, we decided to venture away from chopping wood and exploring above ground and dig underground and find some ore.

I'd assume that beneath ground it was just solid chunks and that you'd just bury down and make yourself some tunnels to mine front. How wrong was I.

After making a giant staircase cut into the earth at 45 degrees I was pretty proud. I got bored of this though and decided one way to get deep was to dig straight down. So I ran away and made myself a whole load of ladders so when I got down to my own pit I could get back up again.

My Plan was fine, what I didn't realise was that as well as the world being randomly generated, the actual ground beneath the world is randomly generated. Here is an example



I dug straight down and fell out of the ceiling of small cave below my world. It was really dark so I put a torch on the wall and watched as the save lit up, to reveal a tunnel, I walked through this surprisingly natural space , past an underwater stream and a small flow of lava. I could see a small hole in a wall of rock, so I used my pickaxe to make a bigger hole and walked though, another torch went on the wall and I hacked away a few more blocks nearby to let the light reach further. My jaw hit the floor as I had stumbled into a massive subterrainian cavern.

Absolutely incredible. I was properly blow away by how cool it was.
There were loads of monsters down here though, as it turns out that they will spawn anywhere that isn't lit.

I shouted for Fry to come down and have a look and told him to bring a sword and more torches.
We spent the best part of an hour exploring the seemingly endless network of caves, some were literally filled with pits of lava.
It was really treachourous though, mining in the wrong spot could literally unleash a flow over lava through the whole you've just made straight into your face, in which case you would die and lose all the items you were carrying.

It was slow progress exploring the caves, sometimes you'd come across a giant pit that was maybe 4 stories deep and there was no way down except for carving a straight into the walls of the pit and placing walkways from your mined stone.

Really really cool. Kinda reminds me of Dark Souls in that you really do make slow progress, you can go further and look for more materials but at any point you could run into some monsters. Regular trips back to our item chest were required to keep our precious haul safe from the risk of lava or monster based death.

Of course, if you don't want to have the risk of monsters you can actually change the settings so you don't have to face them at all, they just won't appear. This leaves you to carry on spelunking in peace, only having to worry about falling to your death or even getting lost!

A couple of times I did get lost, the final time I decided I would dig upwards towards the surface, but my pickaxe wore out and I literally had to dig through solid rock with my fists, it took friggin ages.

[Plough Boy]

I joined Prinny's game this morning with VP and I have to confess that it was 4 of the best gaming hours I've had for ages. I'm just jealous that it was 'his' map. The sky tower is hilarious and our underground adventure from one island to another was amazing.

Brilliant, just brilliant.
I'm looking forward to creating my own world later tonight. My only wish is that I had experienced the 'first night' without any prior knowledge. Now I feel my panic might be lessened as I have an idea how to approach it. (not that I'll necessarily be successful mind).

[Fader209]

A couple of times I did get lost, the final time I decided I would dig upwards towards the surface, but my pickaxe wore out and I literally had to dig through solid rock with my fists, it took friggin ages.

I had a similar experience to that and it actually felt really claustrophobic which I would never have expected to happen to me in a game. Luckily I had some wood* so was able to make crafting table and then a stone pickaxe - but this was in a tiny cave I dug out in the depths of the underground and it felt surprisingly uncomfortable!

Lol!

Edit: Might as well post this here. Now that some of you have got to grips of how the game is played, check out this mod I mentioned earlier (contains swearing):

[Family Fry]

Just been grafting some achievements and playing away alongside Boris and I take back what I said about the game being overrated, it is by the crazy fans to an extent BUT I can see where that originates from. Once you get playing it though it really does become addictive, I thought even playing it alone could be boring but it's actually still ok, you start building your own shelter and making glass for windows, bedding down for the night becomes a little survival experience.
It's nice and a totally different style of game to play, I'm converted.
Will definitely give some DLC a try if it comes along also and adds some new stuff.
Made a small boat today and was sailing around the map, until it got dark and I had to get back to my house which I have built TOO far on-top of a mountain, takes ages to jump up will need to ladder it soon.

[Lebowski]

A good tip for exploring and not getting lost is to build yourself a bed in your settlement, this then becomes your spawn point if you die. make yourself a compass too as it always points back to your spawn.

I remember putting great big beacons on the hill tops around my castle before I knew about this little trick. The first castle I built i lost would you believe it, I stumbled across it weeks later by accident lol.

[originalbadboy]

A good tip for exploring and not getting lost is to build yourself a bed in your settlement, this then becomes your spawn point if you die. make yourself a compass too as it always points back to your spawn.

I remember putting great big beacons on the hill tops around my castle before I knew about this little trick. The first castle I built i lost would you believe it, I stumbled across it weeks later by accident lol.

Some good tips there ... I would add that if there is anything of interest in the world that want to rememeber or you have an entrance to an underground cave that you want to signpost, the best thing to do is just create some sort of vertical stack and put a bunch of torches next to it. A lot easier to find things then. I imagine it wont be as difficult in the 360 version though given that its a more limited space.

It is also crucial that when building a dwelling of whatever sort that you fill it inside with torches ... a lot of them, this reduces the chances of monsters spawning inside which can be an interesting experience.

Given I have this on the PC I can't quite bring myself to purchase this on the 360 as well, not in its current state anyway. Also I think the 1600 points price tag is a little on the expensive side, given that there is a quite a bit missing from the 360 version.

[Fader209]

A good tip for exploring and not getting lost is to build yourself a bed in your settlement, this then becomes your spawn point if you die. make yourself a compass too as it always points back to your spawn.

I remember putting great big beacons on the hill tops around my castle before I knew about this little trick. The first castle I built i lost would you believe it, I stumbled across it weeks later by accident lol.

I built a huge lava tower near my house so I would never lose it

[toythatkills]

Is nobody just using the map?

[Fader209]

There was no map from the start with the PC release as you had to craft it later on I really should make myself one now haha.

[originalbadboy]

There was no map from the start with the PC release as you had to craft it later on I really should make myself one now haha.

This.

I guess if you never played the PC version it would seem obvious just to use the map! I will be picking the 360 version up once it is in line with the PC version from a features point of view

[prinnysquad]

As Plough Boy mentioned, my map was started on Saturday with Vanpeebles, and a 9 til 5 session on Sunday with VP and PB beefed it up.

My empire is now basically split into multiple areas.

1) A starting shack now has a network of glass-roofed tunnels leading to 2 separate mines. In one of them, deep down, we found a weird case thing called a monster spawner, which kept kicking out zombies. We sealed it up and ran away.

2a) A massive mountain. Bit-by-bit we have explored and hacked out the interior. It now belongs to us, and is adorned with glass everywhere. The lookout point halfway up is called the Observation Lounge. We use it to peer out on the monsters at night.

2b) On top of the mountain is a massive glass tower. I've sealed access to it from below, with a staircase. It also has a little service hatch. The tower itself reaches the top of the game world, and it's an outstanding viewpoint. Now the tower has a glass strut extending about 100m out of it at an angle, which itself turns at a right angle. Essentially, it looks like a massive glass crane. Eventually we hope to connect it to the original starting hut below via a ladder and another tower.

2c) The mountain is connected to the original starting hut via a massive ground-based causeway, with raised sides and a glass roof. It's lit by torches. It's essentially a Doom-style corridor. From the Observation Lounge, it looks like a huge reptile, snaking its way between outposts. It makes movement at night much safer. This tunnel was almost ruined during another construction effort when one of the exploding cock things blew up on the edge of the mountain, allowing another to drop into the corridor/Observation Lounge area. I had to coax it out of the side door and lure it away.

3) Another mine, connected to everything else from an offshoot of the Doom corridor. This was the site of the massive mining expedition. Lava pits, diamonds, gold, and some brilliantly-carved stairs into an abyss. Right up to the other side of the map, on a lonely, sandy island. That island is now the starting point for a massive railtrack back to (roughly) the starting shack.

The Observation Lounge is the best, with the tower above it. It's like a palace of crystal, with amazing views.

Great game! So full of little stories.

[ItsThere]

I've got to say I am finding this really compelling as well.

Started out with a crummy wood shelter. Which was clearly a mistake. Spent a good few hours reformed a grand designs esque grey and glass 2 story house... Carved into the side of a mountain.

Still no idea hoe to properly farm, get food, cook food and replenish helath but seen as I never stray too far from my pad at the moment its not an issue.

As the house is nestled at the base of a mountain I thought I'd be able to find some iron ore. No such luck, only managed a few pieces of it because right next to my house is a series of massive caves and tunnles filled with monsters. Need to get prepped to go and kill them all. If I do that and place a lot of torches around, presumably they won't respawn?

Enjoying my time a lot though, the missus joins in on split screen and is making a huge sculpture out of dirt / drowning herself by accident at the beach a lot.