The popular tag line of any game that aimed at mainstream appeal is usually something along the lines of “It’s so good, even grandma will play it!” While that’s of course a sensationalized vision that most games never achieve, as a lifelong gamer whose actually played Wii Sports with his grandma (and been soundly beaten by her at it) I can say it holds no hyperbole here.
Clocking in at roughly two hours, this episode is one of the longer Telltale episodes right behind the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands. Even though it’s generally long for an episode, it doesn’t mean that time was wasted. With every passing second, new lore is learned about this rendition of the Minecraft guide world and how characters perceive the strange world around them. Who knew that people were pretty used to the idea of killing a dragon from another dimension and hosting a convention in honor of the heroes who slew it?
So what convinces us to play games in the first place? To answer that, you’d need to look at every game ever made, because that’s the solution. Because of everything games can, have, and will ever do.
If competitive gaming ever really make it as a widely accepted form of entertainment, it will be in large part thanks to the contributions of this strange RPG, action, RTS hybrid known as the MOBA. It’s origins date back to the previous generation, but its influence and prime really began in earnest during this one, as this charming genre mutt quickly found its way into the hearts and hard drives of some of the best gamers out there. Impossibly deep and begging for hours and hours of practice to become even marginally competent on a professional scale at, the MOBA is perhaps the most significant thing to happen to competitive gaming since the FPS.
And understanding what initially draws a person into video games is all the more difficult today. With three major consoles on the market and an avalanche of games to play, newcomers to the gaming world have ample opportunity and choice to select from. Fans of sports games are able to experience the fun of managing their favorite player rosters with Madden . Fans of Dungeon and Dragons or other tabletop games are able to get a faster-paced and more cinematic version of role-playing with The Elder Scrolls . Alternatively designed games like Minecraft , Journey and The Stanley Parable are becoming interesting to scholars who find fascination in experiencing a story from an unorthodox viewpoint. There are so many different styles and genres to choose from that, now more than ever, finding out why anyone gets into games is a question with too many answers to list.
In a way its reminiscent of the film industry in the ’90s, when guys like Quentin Tarantino were causing as much buzz as names like Steven Spielberg, and for a fraction of the cost. It was a time when film studios were snatching up every indie film they could get, while others like Miramax were becoming among the most successful around for being known as the home of daring new independent films that not only excited audiences with their infinite artistic possibilities, but equally thrilled their producers with insane profit margins.
VR Control mode has a number of options available for it, but the default is that turning is done by a series of instant changes, like teleporting in place but facing a different angle. Turn slowly and the jumps are tiny, turn fast and you get a much larger angle of change. Additionally, when you look while walking your “body” automatically changes direction to face the same way without the need to manually adjust it. The trick is to eliminate as much as possible anything that might cause dizziness, and although these changes wouldn’t work on a game like Doom they’re fine for something slower-paced like Minecraft. It may be weird and a little jarring but also surprisingly effective.
Fans surely know of those particularly tense moments in Minecraft that involve scrambling to build a makeshift fortress to live out the hostile night. Well, they can look at Craft The World as a more fleshed-out, two-dimensional version of that experience, with some fun tower defense eleme
Thankfully, the incredibly accessible nature of the game, and the way it so generously doles out moments of instant gratification, make the shared pursuit of the perfect run not a frustrating proposition that only yields its rewards upon completion, but a journey filled with a series of those little moments that define any great multiplayer experience. Monaco may not look like the multiplayer heist game we always envisioned, but it certainly feels like it.
Many other gamers in my age group were hooked during the Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis era, while the older crowd are likely to have the original NES in their hearts. Some might even cite the original Atari 2600 as their first step into the world of gaming, with their reverence for the medium enduring even the colossal gaming crash of the 1980’s. On the other side of things, we have younger gamers who are being raised on Playstation consoles as new as the Playstation 4 and even Microsoft’s Xbox line, which didn’t appear until the new millennium. We also mustn’t forget those of us who played PC games during our childhood, even the consistently ridiculed edutainment games like Oregon Trail II . We’re all given so much history and so many options to choose from as fans within this medium, but those of us who call ourselves gamers find something truly fascinating with games as a whole.