Minecraft Dungeons – honest review

Mojang studios aka Swedish home base for Xbox Game Studios. What started as a brainchild of Markus Persson in 2009, gradually rose to fame when they developed their signature creation – Minecraft. Minecraft is the Best Selling Video Game of all time. Mojang was bought by Microsoft Studios in 2014 and was recently rechristened Mojang Studios, given the fact that it has become so big, it created a niche, a cult perhaps, for itself. Just to clarify, when we say ‘brainchild’ we don’t mean that it was an original, as Persson borrowed certain assets from a game called Infiniminer, an open-source game developed by Zachtronics in 2009.

Over the years, Minecraft has seen several versions, at certain times even the clones took over the main stage. From humble beginnings of Minecraft Story Mode, Minecraft Classic, Minecraft Earth and now Minecraft Dungeons, the game has seen best and worst of times. Yet it holds up to its name and followers stand by it. It saw competition in stalwarts like Diablo series and Path of Exile. And every year’s Minecon is a decree to it.

The Trailer

The official Minecraft Dungeons game trailer features our Hero running for safety in a dungeon surrounded by walking, lightening arrow-shooting skeletons. He escapes the dungeon to fight more enemies on the greens. While he continues to slit the adversaries, he also picks up equipment from wooden treasure chests. In the EQUIP section of the game he gains the Thor hammer, which later brings down lightning from heavens and drops dead the enemies. HE zooms across bridges over canyons and lands up into massacre pits, where he seems himself surrounded by foot-warriors and wizards causing spells from high places.

And with the sound of someone’s whistle, our Hero finds himself rolling on the couch with his buddies and playing in Co-Op mode. They clump together to defeat the wizard and his foot-warriors and pile up upgrade goodies n the process. The trailer closes with the curtains rolling in on mega-fight stage with evil Boss and his accomplices on one side and our Hero with his buddies on the other edge of the bridge. And one of the viewers on YouTube commented “dude in the thumbnail looks like he’s wearing silver armor from Terraria”.

The villain goes by the name of “Arch-Illager” who seems to have a full woven web of small and big monsters around him. The shear gallant number of monsters and Heroes fighting in a single situation sets this Minecraft apart.

Storyline

The story is set in a hilly village on the Squid Coast, which purportedly has been ransacked by the evil Arch-Illager sounds like “Villager” and his minions. “Ran-sacked” sounds shallow against the storyline “they sweep across the land like a ravenous scourge, subjugating or destroying all in their path”. Then your Hero just runs around the burning Village slitting Zombies and shooting the arrow shooter skeletons, thereby collecting the emerald jewels. We were pleasantly surprised by the ground roll action of our Hero, which can be used to jump onto farther grounds to gain goodies. The scene is very blocky in a Minecrafty way, but has a sheen to itself.

The sudden ambush attacks where Zombies pop out of the ground are fun and keep the Gamers on their heels. Playing is made easy with full functions available across platforms and you get a choice to play with a gamepad or even with your mouse and keyboard on PC. The enchant gear sucks you into the game with every passing enchantment. Swords get sharper with each enchantment and they involve lesser swings to take out the enemies.

The stage ends with the saying that you were too late in saving your villagers, sounds like cliché, “Thank you Mario but our Princess is another Castle”, at least he claimed a dame at every stage of the game. But hey! I bet he didn’t have his own Camp! The one that floats high up form the rest of the world and the Hero can get teleported up there and use his fishing rod to ecstasy. He still carries his sword all along.

Layouts, music, colors

The layout has such well laid out gradients to everything. The ground, color schemes, mist around the islands, etc.

The background music is enticing and gives out vibes that another surprise is waiting for the player around the corner. Music is pure hand in glove for each stage and situation.

The deep blue tint of the Creeper Woods leaves you with an aura of Avatar. We really liked the higher and lower scenery setout in the woods. Which clearly demarcates the Zombies present at your level and those which are under or above. Another remarkable effect is that the character carries the hit Arrows on their chest or back for some time. Cheesy, yet we love it. But hey! Please don’t kill the poor sheep! Or the Cows! They do you no harm! Don’t worry, the sheep are not afraid of the Wolf-armor you may be wearing, they know who’s beneath.

Seek and Take-out

Your Hero scavenges the lands at every level and kills unwanted moving objects. Reminds us of Rambo who used to single-handedly kill off enemies to free up POWs. Here you’ll either be freeing up your fellow villagers or finding Keys to be able to proceed to the next level. You can call other Rambos too, in the Co-op mode. Play with 4 Heroes in Co-op with split-screen option or connect online.

Use navigation Maps

Some maps can be confusing, especially the ones with lots of trees or houses. Use the Map, even the game keeps a tab on your whereabouts and prompts you to lookup the map. Try walking around as drunk and game send you the prompt. And don’t try to peek into tents with bonfires next to them. They’re just people! Just kidding, you can’t do much about those tents.

Use power-ups and potions wisely

Swiftness potion lets you zap around quickly leaving streaks of light behind. And don’t ignore those dark empty corners around the maps, they would have Golden Chests hidden in them. The chests pop up as soon as you walk into the dark corners.

Use Ballistics

Whenever you see enemies in a group, step back and fire a ballistic bomb (or TNT) towards them and smolder them up together with a single shot. As the enemy Zombies driven by AI start running towards you, you can gather them into a group following and light em up.

The Axe effect

We would prefer Axe over the sword any day. It has better split power. And your Hero can spin around swaying the axe in all directions and cut through the mob all around you. Stay away from those spiders, they’ll make you static with their webs. You can only move once the web disintegrates in a few seconds.

Customise your blocky Hero’s backpack

Every Hero gets to have 6 storage slots for – 1 melee weapon, 1 Bow-and-Arrow, 1 protective armor and 3 artifacts.

Family game

The perfect game for family play, regardless if family is together or far apart. Minecraft Dungeons is a fun Kill’em all game where you don’t miss the bloodshed.

This game is amazing! It is a whole new experience of Minecraft. How are the Minecraft rip-offs going to beat this? This game is better than the Minecraft story modes, the original Minecraft still scores over it. You can never beat the classics. Minecraft never dies!