Minecraft: Story Mode – My 5 Year Old’s Review (and Mine Too)

If you’ve read any of my recent posts you know how excited my son has been for Minecraft: Story Mode to come out.  Today while I was at work I got the notice that the game was now available.  Being the loving father that I am I logged in to my Google Play account, purchased the game and began the download process (760+ MB).  When I got home from work I told my son the great news and made his day!  We of course had to negotiate on the terms for him playing the game and settled on three bites of his dinner and doing some housework.

Once we ate our dinner and the housework was done it was time for the fun to begin!  I took it for a quick spin so I could show him the controls and get a general idea of how to play so that when he had questions I would be able to help him.  I turned my tablet over to him and with great excitement we started a new game.

The game begins by giving you the option of which character you want to be.  In Minecraft: Story Mode you play the titular character, Jessie, and have your choice of male or female, each with three slightly different appearances.  Once chosen a short video giving you some background on the game’s story plays through and then you begin the actual game.

The first few minutes of the game feel a lot like a choose your own adventure novel with you picking responses to your friends’ comments and questions.  You have a brief interlude where you walk around your treehouse and grab a few items and look at some posters (oh and you have a sentimental moment with your pet pig).  You leave the treehouse and then there is more of the choose your adventure dialogue.  After the dialogue is complete there is a scene that feels like it came right out of the the Rocky movie where you lead Jessie through several exercises.  The game continues from there and gets more and more interactive as you get further in.
Although my son enjoyed the game I can say it is definitely not geared towards Minecraft’s younger audience.  His biggest complaints were that the controls were nothing like the original Minecraft and that the dialogue selections went way too fast for him to choose the choice he wanted.  There is a place in the game where you break the sword you start out with and need to craft a new one.  As my son primarily plays Minecraft Pocket Edition he wasn’t familiar with the required crafting layout to create a sword and got frustrated pretty quickly.

In the short amount of time I had to play the game before handing it over I was very impressed with the quality of it.  The game retains the look of the original Minecraft but seems to pull it off with a little more flair.  Playing it on my Nvidia Shield Tablet and my Galaxy S5 I noticed no lag and had none of the freezing that some players complained about in the reviews on the Google Play Store.  I felt the controls were a little simplistic and limited the choices I had but I didn’t feel like that took away from the game.

One feature I found that both my son and I liked was the save slot feature.  There are four save slots so that up to four people can all play on the same device and save their games without wiping out someone else’s saved game.  You just have to make sure and select the right save slot before playing.

The dialogue between characters was fun and there were a few tongue in cheek moments or “inside jokes” for the parents playing along with their kids.  One scene very reminiscent of the last scene in the movie Babe, featured Jessie patting his pig on the head while saying “That’ll do Reuben, that’ll do.”

Overall I was pretty impressed but I’ll have to spend some more time on it before I am completely sold.

You can get Minecraft: Story Mode today on the Google Play Store or the Amazon App Store for $4.99.

Source Link: Google Play Store | Amazon App Store