Minecraft: First Impressions From A Determined Non-Player

I hate video game spoilers. Every Silent Hill commercial and promotional video may as well say "Here are the new characters, gotcha moments and new themes you so desperately don't want to know about. Now put your money down anyway."

To varying degrees, every video game has the potential to be ruined by too much advance knowledge. Revealing crafting recipes can take away some of the fun brought about by experimenting. The same goes for revealing boss fight strategies, plot twists, and miscellaneous content.

For this reason, I'd kept my knowledge of Minecraft as murky as possible. I really enjoy approaching a game from the viewpoint the designers intend, a viewpoint that requires little or no advance knowledge.

After three friends and a Hubpage reviewer told me in varying amounts of detail how involving and fun Minecraft is, I took the plunge last night. As you can see in the differences between the first and second sessions, a little familiarity with the game goes a long way.

I see pigs, grass, chickens, and something that responds like my right hand but looks like a flailing pork chop.

Everything is cubes.

The personal and creature sound effects are solid.

I like the background music when it comes on.

There's always interesting stuff in the distance.

When I punch trees, the trunks don't fall.

I can make planks. Lots of planks.

Someone in Sweden has my $20.40.

I had a chance to play with everything handed to me in Creativity Mode: maps, compasses, cakes, spider webs, and diamond everything. I played it for all of ten minutes because I didn't want to spoil the mystery.

I also was surprised and dismayed to see that the used computer I bought, which handled Bioshock's in-your-face eye candy flawlessly, had major issues with a pseudo-8-bit game! Within two or three minutes, my game would auto-save and then shut down because the Java virtual machine had overreached its memory limits. Despite my researching a few cures, the batch files I made either refused to run, or the system variable I added would keep Minecraft from executing. Fortunately, taking the graphics off high quality helped, as did ignoring the optional lighting and far draw distance. Yes, you can actually have Minecraft's simple graphics turned down even more.

Once these issues were solved, running Minecraft was no problem at all. Left click made a hammy pink thing on the right hammer away at whatever was in front of me. Oh, it was my hand! Okay.

In the meantime, I heard the baa-ing of a few blocky sheep. The sun was high overhead, and off in the distance were a few inviting terrain layouts.

In Survival mode, I started out with nothing but my hand and a whole bunch of empty inventory slots. Ouch. That made me so angry I decided to punch a tree. That was a good thing; it cracked a tiny bit. Repeated hits made the cracks radiate from the center of the block. I thought it took forever to deal with, but holding down the button helped. The same happened with sheep and chickens; one slap at a time just wasn't helping me get ready for the setting sun, when monsters were supposed to come out. I hit the E key for crafting, and made a few wood planks. The crafting interface looked nothing like the videos I had seen: it was just 2x2 instead of 3x3. Okay, maybe I just had to level up or something. I tried combining a stack of planks with other planks. Nothing, except for some sticks.

By the time pitch darkness set in, I had dug into a small stone area. Since I hadn't made a pick, I was just in a tiny little pit with a few seeds, a bunch of planks, some dirt, and a piece of raw chicken. As they said in Manhunt 2, "Brutal, Danny, Brutal."

And then came a zombie, moaning and lurching around, and taking chunks out of me a few hearts at a time. I liked how I was able to regenerate a few hearts as I ran like an outmatched virtual horror movie victim. Still, I had missed out on making a crafting table. For want of a 'table, I lacked a pick. For lack of a pick, I lacked coal, which cost me in torches.

Death was pretty demoralizing. It was worse than Bioshock, where you just keep coming back with all your ammo and plasmids. I had lost everything. Everything! Even my piece of raw chicken! I was disconsolate, and surprised at my new attachment to these blocky pixel-things.

In all, I had a few pangs of regret the first few hours for buying this game and experiencing it with memory problems and no documentation. Yet, with a few patient YouTube tutorials and some scratch paper for crafting, I think I will be able to see the depth the game has to offer soon. I think I just need to let my total system reset settle in a little more.

Another night is falling. While running as fast as I can across the island, thoughts of tinkering around with the sticks, leather and Ender Pearl I'd procured dance in my head. Maybe I'll have a sugary pork chop... if I knew how to make one.

After being attacked and losing all my belongings, I've worked my way back into a comfortable, albeit primitive lifestyle on the run. After a sour night's stay in a torchless cave, I've rediscovered my base camp, made a few things for a trip, and set across the land. Now all I have to do is focus on my --

I black out, look up. Water cascades from hundreds of feet up into this stony chasm. I look at my cheesy wooden pick. I have work to do.

The first few hours of nightfall pass by. No monsters come down from above to feast on me. I am lucky.

If I have to work my way back up one block at a time, I will. I go to the single tree down here. My stomach rumbles. I eat some raw pork, don't even care about getting sick. I'm mad enough to make it back up on a diet of sugar and planks if it comes to that. For emphasis I beat the hell out of that poor tree. Grabbing the splintered wood comes only as an afterthought.

Heading back up takes most of the night. It's annoying work tunneling into eventual pitch blackness. Moonlight only does so much reflected 70 feet up. After a while I didn't know which way is up. I risk falling by making a side tunnel out to the edge of the chasm wall. My pick gives out, but thankfully I'm prepared and ready the other. When the first rays of blue morning light break through, I'm rewarded with a view of the chasm below. A third of the way up now.

The rest of the day goes well. I cut a few more holes in the chasm wall at intervals so I can see what I'm doing. Maybe I spend a bit too much time doing this, but what's the hurry? I spend the night tinkering in the silence, munching on chicken and beef that's holding up pretty well after two days in my pocket. I have enough water, that's for sure.

After cutting the third chasm hole for light, I decide to keep tunneling up until I break through. My efforts are rewarded by the sound of mooing traveling down from the surface. I'm not far! I work faster and faster, disregarding the disorientation, and climb by instinct in the gathering darkness.

The rock gives way to pebbly soil; the soil rains down, rattling. The sound joins with another as the light from the chasm brightens: rain, a downpour. So close! In moments, the last of the soil parts and rain streaks down my grimy face. After two nights, I'm free!

I jump up into the reddish morning light, rain hissing around me, rinsing my skin and breath of dust and dirt. I take a deep breath and ready myself for a trip back to the warmth of my torchlit cave home, ready to solve the mysteries of this land in my workshop.

Just a few feet away from the lip of the escape tunnel, a Creeper, also hissing and indistinguishable from the rain during my jubilation, explodes in the early morning hours. Or, should I say, the very, very late night hours. My world ends, again, in a burst of light and extreme pain. Stupid Creeper.

On normal mode, all you need to survive your first night is to harvest what you can from one or two trees, and mine some coal. Or you can just dig the soil with your hand and make a sealed hut of dirt blocks.

To go the torch route, put the wood in your simple crafting interface screen area (E key) and make 20 planks. Right click a stack of planks to split it up, and put a plank in two cells next to each other. Boom! Sticks! All you need is a few sticks so be sure to save some planks. Put a plank in every cell of the crafting grid and you have a crafting table. Put the crafting table in your action bar and put it into the game world. Right-click it, when you stand near it, and you get a 3x3 grid.

You'll need a wooden pick.

To make the wooden pick, place 3 planks across the top row of the Crafting Table's crafting grid, plus sticks in squares 5 and 8.

A very handy item is the Chest, which requires a plank in every square except the middle. If you're killed, any items you place here will be saved. For the first few lives you have, it's a good idea to leave a chest and crafting table together. If you respawn somewhere in the middle of the night, you may be able to stumble over these welcoming creations without getting killed too often. Getting a bed together is even better (see below).

Wooden swords are great just in case your plan to mine coal goes a little off. Just put a plank, plank and stick together in a straight line.

Getting coal is the biggest challenge. Trees are everywhere, but it can take some searching before you find the black speckles on coal-bearing gray rock. Once you get the wood you need, run like mad across the land looking for coal. You can kill things the next day instead.

Once you see some coal, switch to the pick (punching the rock won't award you any coal). Make four torches with a stick-coal combo. Put a torch in the action bar and right-click a wall. I like to dig into a rock wall a little before placing torches near the entry, but feel free to experiment. Remember that you can take the Crafting Table back into inventory by destroying it.

Upgrading your tools can be done by using cobblestone, which you mine from gray stone blocks with the wooden pick. To make a stone tool, replace the wooden planks in your tool recipes with cobblestone. You'll need this upgrade to mine iron, which is found in blocks with yellowish flecks.

One last essential item is a bed. It will keep you from spawning randomly across the world when you're killed, and allow you to settle in and develop one area. It will also help you pass time at night. If you're sleeping in an exposed area, it may bring monsters right to you, which is good if you need to get some skeleton bones or Rotten Flesh to tide you over till morning. To make a bed, put three pieces of wool over three planks in the Crafting Table menu.

If you want to know what you're missing for tech the first time around, checking the Achievements screen is a big help. If you're absolutely stuck, I recommend this crafting resource, Minecraft Wiki.

Good luck and happy mining!

If you're a world-conquering genius by night and store clerk by day, like my friend George, you'll be able to craft whatever you like in Minecraft with a simple empathetic twist of your mind, by putting components in the crafting table's 3x3 grid in ways that (sometimes) emulate the shapes of the game's craftables.

For the rest of you, who think that Minecraft's crafting system might be as intuitive as DDO's, you'd better use some paper and a pencil to keep from repeating the maddeningly simple but mathematically daunting recipe patterns. With no knowledge of what you're supposed to be crafting, your game may stay as static as a noshfest in Tail of the Sun.

I wasn't impressed by Minecraft to begin with. It looks like a low-res attempt at a retro kid's game, and the interface resembles a 1980s NES game's. The memory consumption is geared toward those with gaming computers. But it slyly hands out fun. Whether you're staring at your first pool full of squid, or climbing your way up that rock formation you've seen from far away, or killing your first high-powered baddie (one of my short-term goals), you'll find the hours disappearing like monsters before the dawn.

Except for that (*^#(*^(@^ Creeper. :)

Come back as I add more memorable photos from my Minecraft experiences in the days to come!