Minecraft: Xbox One Edition (Xbox One) Review

For those few that aren't quite familiar with Minecraft yet (under a rock for the last three years, perhaps?), here's a brief run down: the goal is to survive and live off the land by any means necessary. The world is filled with valuable resources to craft armour, construct homes, defeat vicious creatures, or breed hundreds of chickens - it's completely the player's choice. The only limitation really is the imagination, as there is no real 'ending' and it's extremely easy to lose entire days playing this wonderful title.

Now that's out the way, time to start focusing on the console specific version. Even for someone that has played ungodly number of hours on the PC version, it's still surprising just how well Minecraft has transitioned to the Xbox One and control-wise, some may actually prefer it to its PC brother -don't inform the PC master race crowd, though, as it would end badly for everyone.

The main difference between the two versions is how items are crafted. The PC edition revolves around either luck of the draw by randomly placing items in the crafting window, hoping to create something, or by constantly studying the Minecraft Wikipedia page. The One version, however, lets the player browse through all the craftable items at any time by simply opening a menu, looking at what is available and what needs gathering to build them. It removes a lot of the frustrating guessing and allows for more focus on collecting and building.

Any open sandbox game needs plenty of content and Minecraft: Xbox One Edition certainly isn't lacking in things to do; it has something for almost everyone. There are dozens of items to play with that focus on different areas of the game, so it's just a matter of hunting down the necessary resources to create them. The game revolves around the raw resources that can be found in the wild, leaving gamers to chop down trees to make basic equipment and, from there, it's time to start hunting through vast cave networks for coal, iron, gold, and, if lucky enough, those incredibly rare and valuable diamonds.

For those that aren't into the gathering aspect of the game, it will be pleasing to hear about creative mode. Creative mode is the ultimate toy for someone who just enjoys building weird and wonderful enormous structures. This mode lets the player spawn any item at any time, so the core is purely the building aspect but, unfortunately, it can only be accessed in creative-specific worlds, meaning switch between survival and creative at any time isn't possible in the console version.

Minecraft may revolve around letting people do whatever they feel like, but there are plenty of goals that can be accomplished along the way. Since its launch, two terrifyingly dangerous bosses have been added that reward adventurers with copious amounts of experience and special items, so they are well worth tackling once good enough equipment is obtained. It's pretty safe to imagine that even more will be added to the console versions in the future, and it's hoped that these updates aren't released months and months after the PC receives them.

A fantastic feature of the PC version of Minecraft has always been the player-made skins and texture packs that have managed to find their way onto the beloved consoles. There are a variety of character skins and texture packs already available like the glorious Star Wars pack that lets the player dress as their favourite Star Wars character, such as R2D2 or one of many different Jedi that fans have become familiar with over the years. As much as some may love that popular skins and texture packs are making to the One platform, they are oddly expensive for what is essentially a bunch of editing image files.