A Minecraft Movie – Movie Review

TL;DR – It is a film that absolutely captures the essence of the camp it is adapting. Even if all the added features should have been enough to torpedo the movie, it remained a solid kid’s film, even if it made some questionable choices.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film

A Minecraft Village

A Minecraft Movie

This was such an interesting movie for me to review, not in the least that it has been in devilment hell for ten years or so, which makes it fascinating to see what was finally produced. But also, this is a film about a video game that I have probably had my second-longest relationship with. Every year, I dive back in and build a new Minecraft world from scratch, discovering all the wild changes that have been made since last time. But video game adaptations can be very much hit or miss, and that long of a production period does give me pause.  

So, to set the scene, one day, a boy really wanted to be a miner, but no kids were allowed. Time went on, and when Steve (Jack Black) became an adult, he ran back into those mines, found a cube and activated a portal to another cube-based world. It was a joy to create until, one day, he discovered a portal to the Nether, ruled by Malgosha (Rachel House/Allan Henry), who loves gold and hates creativity. Forced to send his dog fleeing with the cube, the portal remained undiscovered until one day when four weird and different characters, Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), Henry (Sebastian Hansen), Natalie (Emma Myers) and Dawn (Danielle Brooks) from the town of Chuglass rediscover it. When they step through, they find themselves thrown into a world where everything from the trees to the grass to the sheep are all now cubes. It is a wild world that becomes even more dangerous when the sun goes down.

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Video Game Review – Minecraft Nether Update

TL;DR – It brings life to a forgotten world, giving it a personality, a new direction. It also changes one of the games longest static features for the better.                  

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Minecraft Nether Update. Image Credit: Mojang.

Article

Last year I took a look back at my time with Minecraft over the previous ten years. In many ways, whether I intended it or not, it was epitaph to my time with the game. Well, that may have been the intent, but reality had a way of changing that because COVID happened and I needed a way to connect with people in isolation and well what’s Realm between close friends. Since diving back into the game, we have our first significant update since the BEEESSSsss, so I wanted to explore as see how it changes the game for better or worse … it is the first one.    

For those who have not played it, Minecraft is a Survival-Sandbox game; there is no traditional narrative to pull you through the game, bar the one you make for yourself. You mine for resources, and then you craft new items that give you access to new resources to mine and thus the circle continues from wood to stone to diamond and now even further. In a regular unmodded game of survival, there are three levels to the game, the Overworld the main world you spawn in, The End with its dragons and its pastel aesthetic, pastels everywhere, and finally The Nether, which is what we are focusing on today.

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Countdown – My Personal Top 10 Video Games List

Countdown

Because of circumstances in my personal life, these last couple of weeks have been a real drag, to say the least. So I have been struggling to find the motivation to write anything of late as I binge cooking shows on TV. However, you can’t stay stuck on the couch forever, and I thought if I was going to write it should be on something I care about a lot, so bring on those video games. Much like my personal top 10 films list I needed to come up with some criteria to be able to sort through all the really good games I have played in my life.    

  • Games that are beautifully constructed (art, story, etc)
  • They have to mean something to me
  • Video Games that are re-playable
  • Games that engaged me emotionally
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Article – My 10 Years With Minecraft.

TL;DR – I look at the highs and lows of the last 10 years of my Minecraft story, the video game I have probably spent more hours playing than anything else.

Minecraft. Image Credit: Mojang.

Article

This year is Minecraft’s 10 year anniversary, and if you are like me and can remember when it first came out, well that is one of those numbers that will just make you feel old. In those 10 years, Minecraft has gone from this small Indy darling that you heard about through whispers on the internet to a full-on industry juggernaut. There have been countless videos and tutorials, and while there have been a lot of imitators, nothing has ever reached the heights of the original.

As I thought back through the last 10 years, I had the sudden realisation that I have probably spent more hours in Minecraft than any other game I have played, bar maybe Civilization thankfully Minecraft was never on Steam so there is not a tracker out there with the exact hour count. That was of course then a prompt to get all nostalgic about a simpler time, a time of dirt and cobblestone, and when zombies dropped feathers for some reason.

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Video Game Review – Ark: Survival Evolved

TL;DR– Bringing the survival gameplay into a world of dinosaurs is a fantastic idea, but for me,the balance is not quite there.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Ark: Survival Evolved

Review –

If you have read my reviews in the past, you would know that one of the easiest sells for me is to add dinosaurs to something. Movies, TV, Books, you name it and if it has dino’s in it I am there for it. However, when it comes to video games with dinosaurs I am much more hesitant after getting burnt in the past with games like The Stomping Land,and more generally in this genre with Day-Z.So when Ark first came out I was not prepared to invest in another Early-Access survival game, but now it has been out in full release for a year I thought it would be a good time to take the dive into the world of Dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, lots of Dodos,and oh the mechanic that lets you know when you pooped.

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