Fans surely know of those particularly tense moments in Minecraft that involve scrambling to build a makeshift fortress to live out the hostile night. Well, they can look at Craft The World as a more fleshed-out, two-dimensional version of that experience, with some fun tower defense eleme

Ideally it's the optimal situation for consumers. You buy a system, and you have access to almost every major game, with as few exceptions as possible. To me though, it's a sad thought, as I sometimes long for a time when there were an assortment of games I couldn't play because I could only afford one system. When that one guy in the neighborhood who bought the Xbox would show us all "Halo" and have us regret our PS2 decision (if only for a moment), or when N64 owners could stretch arguments with their Playstation rivals on into the morning by just dropping the name "Goldeneye" every now and then.

It wasn't meant to last though, as even though the 32/64 bit era only barely blurred the party lines, with every subsequent gaming generation, it became harder and harder to separate one system from another just by looking at the games on the store shelves. By the time that Peter Moore revealed a "GTA IV" tattoo on his arm at E3, the message was clear that Triple A titles had become too big and too expensive to only commit to one system or another and, outside of some in-house and privately published development teams, the idea of big name exclusives was a dying light in the night drowned out by the dawn of a new day.

Pathea Games' My Time at Portia is a cute take on Minecraft and The Sims, with some RPG elements tossed in for good measure. One wouldn't know it from the whimsical themes, but the game takes place following the collapse of civilization, from which point, emerging from the (literal) underground, players must rebu

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.

The episode also alludes to death; a lot. Considering the fact that both Olivia and Axel are completely omitted from the episode save for the prologue, there is basically no comic relief. Not that you should play a game simply for its humor, Minecraft: Story Mode has a reputation for having humor and making friendship stand above all else. While this episode does focus on friendship and how your decisions can shape the future, death always seems to be around the corner and everyone you come in contact with seems to want you to die, or at last Aiden openly expresses it. It also doesn't help that Aiden and the Blaze Rods were basically considered obsolete until now, so it's difficult to really believe that he would want to do this to the citizens of Sky City just because he's jealous. Had this episode focused on why they are being brought back rather than throwing them into a whole new story, the episode would have made a little more sense.

The episode doesn't stop there, because once you've returned from either of those two paths, you head off as a group with whichever other character you picked up in the first episode (Lukas for me) to find the last member of the Order of the Stone, Soren the Architect. This path also follows a relatively fast-paced action sequence, but falls a little short with its sub-par cliffhanger. It's only episode two, but visit the following website page weird events surrounding the Order of the Stone and exactly what they're going to do to stop this crazy Wither Storm seems as though it will never be resolved.

Minecraft Dungeons is a capable all-ages dungeon crawl that, while doesn't use its license to anything like its full potential (see Dragon Quest Builders 2 for how to do it right), is still good fun once it gets moving. The variety of enemies keeps you on your toes, and the various skills and weapons make for plenty of experimentation in figuring out the best way to take them on. Each level has at least a couple of secrets to chase after, ranging from obvious to head-scratchingly obscure, and finding everything while collecting all the gear will keep players busy for hours whether fighting single- or multiplayer. Just be aware that if you've got any experience with the genre, the difficulty selections on the levels are there for a reason. The younger crowd deserves a good intro to the world of dungeon crawling and Minecraft Dungeons provides that nicely.