Even better, indie games can afford to lose. They are often low cost, low maintenance, high concept works that don’t rely on reaching a certain figure to be considered viable, and as such they can throw caution to the wind and take some big risks while still making a profit off of even the most modest sales. That means they can also afford to remain loyal to a system like an undertaker with a debt to the don, as while they might want the money that can come with being a multi-platform release, what they need is the backing and spiritual support of a major company like Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo to get their games out there. A backing that is no longer lip service and is becoming very, very real.
Even people who passed on gaming in their youth are able to experience that same magic in their adulthood with more mainstream successes like Wii Sports . In fact, this demographic, a group who likely passed on the gaming world as kids, are now realizing a fresh new perspective. They get to see different elements of game design that they might have ignored back then, making the evolution of the medium and the broadening of the market a much more appealing prospect. Specifically, that big moment where a “virgin” gamer (regardless of age) is finally able to have fun when playing a game is a sense of purity and epiphany. It’s all about having fun. As we get more involved in the medium, we begin to take sides. We begin to favor consoles or developers. We begin to look at games with the minds of cynical and judgmental critics. Even as kids, we’d argue at the lunch table as to whether Sega or Nintendo is better, but if you rewind just a few years before that, you didn’t even care who made the console. Perhaps it was the catchy level themes that you remember the most or maybe it’s some iconic environmental hazard that sticks in your mind. Maybe it was similar to my case where it was just the character’s expressive personality that encouraged me to pick up a controller and actually control the character. The moments of realization and involvement vary for everyone, but as fresh faces in the gaming community, we’re never forced to pick a side. We are clean slates for series to enthrall and characters to enlist, and our focus was precisely on the game itself and those subtle moments of appeal.
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.
When it comes down to it, Minecraft is a fairly simple game to play. Things are pretty intuitive in terms of crafting, especially since a recipe book allows you to go back and check all the recipes you know so far. However, there’s one form of craft in the game that’s only reserved for the smartest: Redstone contraptio
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 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?
Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 2: Assembly Required doesn’t meet the bar that the previous episode set, but that doesn’t rule it out as awful. The fact that it relies on environments to cover the fact that there’s really nothing to do/talk about gives reason as to why forked paths are rarely done in games. There are no new innovations and because of that, the story should be a little stronger, but instead stumbles. Hopefully, with the potential that the series holds, the following episode will focus more on Jessie and give players a much wider variety of things to do, decide and explore.
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 Building Guide , 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.
The action from the first episode hasn’t left at all and if anything, managed to speed itself enough where you practically have to do a second playthrough just to catch it again. There are plenty of moments that could have been explained more and it’s upsetting that they weren’t in the short time it took to finish the episode. Things like Olivia’s disappointment in finally meeting her hero and Lukas’ role in Jessie’s group of friends could have been touched upon a little bit more but the fact that they weren’t makes me fear for future episodes. It leaves you with a, “oh, that was it?” feeling that should never be felt while playing any game, especially right when you begin getting into the action and quickness of it all. Hopefully, the third episode will capitalize on a few more important moments within the main character’s development and slow down a little in order to give everyone the attention that they deserve.