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Over a year ago now, I wrote my first article for The Yorker, a "Have You Played" (actually the first HYP) of then rising-star indie hit Minecraft. I'd been playing for over a year at the time, but by October 2010, the game was making waves in the press world, following a plug on developer Valve's blog in July. Back then the title was in Alpha release, but as of last Friday, it's been through Beta and out the other side, and is now a fully-released title. With this review, I feel I can get down to the critique of the game - an HYP requires description, evangelising about an obscure gem.
The first thing to note is that I'm not just reviewing the most recent update - the final part of the promised "Adventure Mode" update, which is what marked Friday's release - this is a relatively mundane update as they go, broadly only adding content which didn't make October's update. I'm talking about the entire game here (excluding the Classic, free version), and I'd like to find another games review where the reviewer has two years of playing the game to judge it on. First, a brief explanation for those in the dark (somehow) - Minecraft is a game where you build things using blocks. The world is made of equal-sized cubes in a pseudo-medieval-fantasy setting, which can be harvested and modified. In the dark and at night, monsters come out, ranging from the mundane zombies to the explosive creepers. People have used this as a tool to create some fantastic stuff, but others enjoy it simply for the survival aspect of it - it is a completely free-roaming game, and that's what's so enjoyable about it.
The only real objective is to survive - the level of comfort at which you do this is up to you, you could have a shack and a small farm, or a castle, complete with village and villagers - you get out what you put in. The game is genuinely immersive, you can play it for hours (seriously, don't check it out if you have work to do), not to mention scary - even with the best tools and armour available, when mining for materials in a dark cave you live in constant fear of something sneaking up behind you and killing you silently. This is to say nothing of the landscapes above - procedurally generated and infinite in scope, these range from snow-capped mountains to expansive deserts, through rainforests and swamps with everything in between. Every world is different, your world is yours and only yours. But like anything, it's better with others, and the multiplayer, despite some bugs, is fantastic to play with friends.
The only real criticism I can level at the title is the somewhat unfinished state it still seems to be in. As noted, this is ostensibly the "release" of the game, but it still feels unpolished. There are bugs, there are promised upcoming features, but these are mostly minor. It can be difficult to start off, stuck in a world and knowing nothing of what to do, but once you get into it, you're in for some of the most entertaining gameplay in the world. I'm comfortable to say, Minecraft is one of my all-time favourite games.
Unfortunately I have to say I sort of shunned Minecraft when Markus Persson (Notch) first introduced me to it when it was conceived (he was a lead developer of a game I have played now for something like 6 years (Wurm Online) but left us). I enjoyed the concept at first, but the way Minecraft was originally planned and put together seemed a little bit too... unoriginal to me. Perhaps that was because there were other, strikingly similar games that Markus pointed out that he was inspired by, perhaps I felt a little too inspired by at times. However, over time his genuis came out a little bit, and he managed to give Minecraft the edge which gave the game it's unique identity as opposed to those other similar games. Plus, Markus always was good at PR, and so the game turned out to be a big success.
So, when I think about Minecraft I cant really separate it from Markus. While I enjoy the concept of Minecraft and I do not question it's worthiness of success, I suppose I am still sad that he left us at Wurm. Although, this probably explains why the game feels unfinished at release. I am quite sure Markus' experience with MMO development has opened up the idea that online games just don't have to be, or just can't be, finished, and they can be continually developed over time indefinitely. There's something beautiful in that flexibility... though I admit it does in some sense legitimise putting off some bugfixes, but at least we know fixes will always in time.
Either way, the skill and the ambition was always evident if you had a chance to talk to the guy often. Maybe his experience in the Java 4k competitions, and other such things he involved himself with, illustrated to him that a compelling core simplicity, while optionally deeply complex, in a sandbox environment just makes for a good game, along with the promise of an indeterminate number of updates post-release. At least, that's how it seems. Not that I was a very good judge at the start, clearly. Maybe I was a little biased 
And yes this is a long comment.
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