{"id":14280,"date":"2015-11-27T00:01:47","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T00:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=14280"},"modified":"2015-11-18T06:11:21","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T06:11:21","slug":"2nd-opinion-minecraft-story-mode-episode-1-the-order-of-the-stone-ps3-ps4-360-xbox-one-pc-ios-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/27\/2nd-opinion-minecraft-story-mode-episode-1-the-order-of-the-stone-ps3-ps4-360-xbox-one-pc-ios-android\/","title":{"rendered":"2nd Opinion: Minecraft Story Mode: Episode 1: The Order of the Stone (PS3, PS4, 360, Xbox One, PC, iOS, Android)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MINECRAFT_BOX\"<\/a>Minecraft is an incredibly popular open-world building adventure game with stylishly blocky graphics.\u00a0 It\u2019s become a bit of a phenomenon since its release a few years back, especially with kids.\u00a0 In fact, Toys R Us has nearly a whole aisle dedicated to Minecraft playthings!\u00a0 But there\u2019s not really much story behind it.\u00a0 Well that\u2019s about to change because point and click adventure experts TellTale Games has crafted an adventure game based around the Minecraft universe!\u00a0 It\u2019s available for nearly all current home consoles, PCs, and tablets, but reviewed on PS3 here.<\/p>\n

In the game, you can choose to be a male or female (both are named Jesse).\u00a0 You and a group of friends are entering a building contest at a convention, when you run into another old acquaintance named Petra.\u00a0 You help her with a trade with a shady character in exchange for a diamond, but when she gets swindled, you and your friends give chase and find out that the mysterious character is planning on unleashing a monster into the world!\u00a0 Now you and your friends must search the areas for warriors belonging to the Order of the Stone and find a way to defeat the monster ravaging the lands.<\/p>\n

Like most TellTale games, Minecraft Story Mode is told in episodes, each one releasing a month or two after the last.\u00a0 You can download them separately, or buy a season pass so you can have them when they are ready.\u00a0 You can also buy a disc that acts like a season pass, too.\u00a0 However, the game plays more like a kid-friendly Walking Dead title (another popular TellTale entry) rather than a true point and click adventure.\u00a0 Most of what you do is listen to people talk to each other, and every once in a while you can choose what you want to say.\u00a0 But be quick because you are timed, otherwise you\u2019ll just go with the \u2018silent\u2019 option.\u00a0 Choose your words wisely, though, because people will remember how you react to them later on.\u00a0 This encourages a little bit of replayability as you can try different dialog options in another playthrough.<\/p>\n

Every so often, you\u2019ll get a chance to move around on your own.\u00a0 You\u2019ll control Jesse directly with the left pad, and can move around a cursor with the right stick.\u00a0 You can highlight items to look at, pick up, or talk to certain people.\u00a0 These parts of the game are most like a point and click adventure, too bad they don\u2019t last very long. \u00a0Finally, sometimes you\u2019ll have to do quick time events, where you must press buttons prompted on screen quickly to dodge obstacles in action sequences.<\/p>\n

One neat aspect is that every now and then, you\u2019ll get to craft new items from materials you\u2019ve found.\u00a0 You must place the correct items on a grid to make new ones that you can use.\u00a0 However, all aspects of this game feel like they are just leading you around by the nose, and there is hardly any actual gameplay involved.\u00a0 I know that the Walking Dead style of games proved popular for TellTale, and that\u2019s why they probably went that route with this one.\u00a0 But I miss the \u2018old\u2019 TellTale games like Sam & Max, Wallace & Gromit\u2019s Grand Adventures, and Tales of Monkey Island, which all felt more like \u2018true\u2019 point and click adventures.<\/p>\n

But TellTale does have a tendency to improve a season as the episodes progress, and this is only the first episode.\u00a0 If anyone can improve it, I believe TellTale can.\u00a0 At the end of the episode, you can see how many other people who played it made the same choices you did, which is kind of neat.\u00a0 The voice acting and storytelling are certainly top-notch, and while the game has blocky graphics, they are still charming and expressive.\u00a0 Another good thing is that you don\u2019t have to play Minecraft to enjoy this game, but I think fans of Minecraft will get the most fun out of it.<\/p>\n

\"MINECRAFT_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Minecraft: Story Mode is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Mild Language.\u00a0 You can attack monsters with swords and other weapons, but they just disappear when defeated.\u00a0 There are times when you can die, but the screen just fades out and you can start back over shortly before you made your mistake.\u00a0 Plus the blocky visual keep the violence from looking too graphic anyway.\u00a0 Language is used very sparingly; in fact I only heard the word \u2018hell\u2019 just once.\u00a0 Good reading skill is a must for the text.\u00a0 I think young Minecraft fans will still enjoy this one, especially since it is so simple.\u00a0 After titles like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, it\u2019s nice to see TellTale working with a family-friendly license again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minecraft is an incredibly popular open-world building adventure game with stylishly blocky graphics.\u00a0 It\u2019s become a bit of a phenomenon since its release a few years back, especially with kids.\u00a0 In fact, Toys R Us has nearly a whole aisle dedicated to Minecraft playthings!\u00a0 But there\u2019s not really much story behind it.\u00a0 Well that\u2019s about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14282,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14280\/revisions\/14282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}