Minecraft

First off, I’m aware of the absurdity of only playing Minecraft seriously for the first time in 2021. Games as unstructured creation tools don’t really resonate with me, and as Minecraft’s influence steadily poisoned every single other genre on the planet, I wasn’t sure what the game could still have to offer. Turns out it can still offer quite a bit. Most publishers have responded to the game’s success by putting crafting mechanics in everything, but the real secret to that success is the opposite: it puts everything into its crafting mechanics. The unprecedented infinite world overflowing with possibilities is the true star of the show, and Minecraft plays into that with frankly insane numbers and specificity of interactions between entities. And of course, one of those possibilities is being able to take literally the entire world apart and put it back together how you choose – an unfeasible task with more than the primitive graphics displayed here.

Now, while I both like and respect this game, I am continually astounded that it has reached such heights of popularity. The interface is horrible even after a decade of updates, and almost everything beyond the very basic mechanics requires external knowledge, because the game doesn’t teach you shit. Plus, while this is an exemplary version of it, there’s a sizeable degree of tedium inherent to the open-world survival genre. Much of it disappears in multiplayer, so it’s no coincidence that one of the game’s major breakthroughs was applying cooperative gameplay to both its creative and survival modes. As a final note of personal preference, I wish there was an option among the game’s myriads to increase the music frequency, because the music is lovely but only plays about 5% of the time.