Minecraft – PlayStation 4

"Minecraft" is the type of game that can be played and enjoyed in a number of different ways, depending on what you’re wanting to get out of it. There’s local and online co-op, allowing you to adventure and craft with friends. You can start a game in "creative mode" where you have an infinite amount of crafting materials available to you from the start, enabling the more creative-minded to go wild with their imaginations and build whatever they can think of. The way that I approached "Minecraft" was in its "survival mode," playing alone and without having dabbled in "creative mode" first, so I learned as I went, and in this way it almost feels like a survival horror game, or at least a survival game where the horror comes when the sun sets. The world itself is huge (36 times bigger than on PS3), with a day and night cycle, weather (rain, snow), and various types of terrain (desert, jungle). Once you’re past the tutorial, which goes over only the basics, jumping into "survival mode" has you waking up in the middle of nowhere and learning to fend for yourself. This involves mining wood and cobblestone to build pickaxes and hatchets, building a workbench to make more complex items like doors, ladders, and windows, building a furnace to smelt ore or cook food, etc. When you first start out, nighttime feels terrifying and each day is like a race against the clock to finish mining what you need before dusk hits and insidious monsters start roaming the lands. Shelter becomes your first priority in order to stay safe. Eventually you’ll build weapons and armor and venture further and further out. Spelunking in abandoned mines offers rewards, but there’s always the threat of lurking monsters in the shadows and getting lost in the maze of tunnels deep underground. In the way that I played it, like I would a survival horror game, I found it to be completely enthralling and very often thrilling.

— 5 STARS —

**I will give some tips for new players at the end**

Minecraft is spectacular on so many levels. I’ve been playing Minecraft for about a week and I’m already so addicted. I had so many friends have been playing this for years and is never something that I thought would catch my fancy. But my five-year-old nephew got the game and I decided to pick it up so I could play with him online. Well after about a day of playing I was hooked I now find myself thinking about it and night while lying in bed.

I’ve always said that Minecraft is a must play game for children as it fosters their creative sides. Even though I wasn’t a player of Minecraft I’ve always thought this game is spectacular for teaching children to dream of things and then build them. That is why I was encouraging my brother to buy the game for my nephew little that I know I would get hooked in the process (and so did my brother).

I love how every world is different and never the same it makes the replayability of this game infinite.

I want to give a few tips to new people playing the game. As my brother who had been playing it for about a month gave them to me and they help me enjoy the game a lot more.

I would recommend trying the demo first you can download for free from the PSN network store or Xbox live. The demo will introduce you to a lot of the game mechanics and it’s worth playing it before you jump in the game. Even after playing for a week I learned things from the demo that my brother hadn’t even learn after playing for a month.

The first thing I like to do is build a home base, build a furnace and a crafting table and maybe collect some food. You want to build some torches right away and a stone pickax and shovel.

The Second thing my brother taught me when starting a new game is dig a mineshaft. This will help you get good materials so you can start crafting better weapons and tools. Diamonds are the most valuable material that you can find and they spawn between levels 10 and 14 from the bedrock level of the ground. So basically what you want to do when you start your game is building mineshaft going down to the bedrock level (this is the level that you can’t dig through its basically the floor of your world) from their count up 10 to 12 levels and start building your mine shafts from there you’ll be more likely to hit diamonds in this area.

Be sure to dig down on an angle as digging straight down could run you with the lava and even caverns that could kill you. Use your torches to light your way creatures can spawn when ever there is a certain level of darkness or below. I recommend putting torches about every 8 to 10 blocks. There’s nothing scarier than getting surprised by a zombie in the protection of your mine.

So once you have your mine built you’ll want to start building mine shafts to start looking for valuable materials. I recommend carving a two block high shaft in a straight line. Take that as far as you want, then off of that build other shafts. Separate the shafts with two blocks between them to get your most effective search of the material.

In my mine a furnace a crafting table and a bunch of crates for storing materials. You can spend a good chunk of your first few days of playing basically working in your mine.

As soon as you find diamonds craft yourself a diamond pickax and shovel these will last you a long time. Don’t bother mining obsidian but nowhere it is and make sure to save it for later. To meet with a lot of wear and tear on your diamond pickax and is it worth harvesting until you need it later.

When you want to go journeying through the world I recommend building iron armor and having a diamond sword to me that’s enough to get by. Before you go journeying throughout the world I recommend building a giant spire near your house at least 40 to 50 blocks tall that way you can see your location from far away. Be sure to build this using two blocks side-by-side so that when you get all the way up you can then shall your way through the other blocks to get down.

With your mine going you should be all set to survive in this beautifully fascinating and complex world.

Thanks for reading if you have any questions feel free to post them below in the comments.

PS my only regret with Minecraft is that I waited this long to play.
PS2 these books are great gift for any Minecraft player Minecraft: The Complete Handbook Collection and only 20 bucks

This is my favorite game of all time. I am getting on up there in age and after all these years of playing video games (since the early 80’s and have had many game consoles through the years), this one is by far my favorite. I have seen more developed games out of the box, but this is a game where my kids and I get to be as creative as we want to be and we can build what we want to (we get to be the developers). After becoming familiar with how the game works, which only took a few enjoyable evenings, I haven’t thought of something yet where I was not able to build it in the game. I have to put a time limit on it though because this is a game where we could just keep playing and playing for hours and the time passes by so quickly.