During the early 90’s, many of us were involved in, as coined by James Rolfe, the "bit wars," the point where competing systems developed a brand loyalty with the consumers. It was a Genesis/SNES world and the market intended for you to pick a side. But those of us who were first exposed to video games during this time didn’t originally intend to side with either Sega or Nintendo. While there were certain characteristics of each console that we preferred, our focus was never on what games were better. The first big step for any future gamer is one devoid of partisanship in the gaming community; when you first enter the gaming world, you aren’t involved in the console wars. In fact, they did not exist to you back then. I personally chose Sonic the Hedgehog as my "gateway game" simply because I liked who he was as a character. I liked his cool blue color, his tough-guy stare, and the acrobatic nature of how he moved. Level design, physics, replay value, music, even the buzz term "blast processing" meant absolutely nothing to me. It was Sonic himself that captivated me to join the gaming world.
This has been gone over in many other articles, but the short version is that what the player sees in VR is strong enough to trigger an instinctual expectation of motion that, when the body doesn't feel it, causes a nausea reaction. You're seeing something that the brain knows is wrong based on physical feedback; the most likely cause based on data from the last several million years of evolution is some kind of ingested toxin, so systems get purged to remove the poisons from the body as fast as possible. Personally I just get a nasty headach and woozy feeling, but other people need an emergency bucket available. The cost/benefit ratio to FPS VR is completely off, no matter how cool it seems before the reaction kicks in. At this point I've learned the best thing to do with a VR FPS is to poke in for no more than two to three minutes to get a sense of the environment, and then switch back to the monitor and never use the headset for it again.
It takes a while to build up a full arsenal, especially due to how many gems are required to level up equipment skills, but once you've got a foothold the game opens up into a fun combat romp. Minecraft Dungeons is designed with younger players in mind, so on standard difficulty it's too easy for any kind of seasoned player, but after a few levels you can crank it up to the hardest and eventually get a decent challenge that can actually run the risk of killing you. Enemies attack in large numbers, whether they be familiar Minecraft creatures like zombies, spiders and skeleton-archers or newer threats such as the corrupted Illagers (like villagers but ill) or zombie-summoning sorcerers. Combat is initially a simple matter of holding down the attack button and letting the combo animation play out, broken up occasionally by needing to shoot archers that don't want to hang out in melee range. The final levels do a nice job of putting all your abilities to the test, though, requiring regular use of magic, support pets, keeping an eye out for traps in the environment and giving the bow a good workout.
If you haven’t already boarded the hype train for minecraft Survival guide: Story Mode , the newest episode from Telltale Games might not convince you. The review that was done for the first episode ended with the hope that the following episode would be just as wonderful and expansive. Unfortunately, it didn't meet the standard appointed to it for a variety of reasons. This new episode taps into the lore, one that you would normally have had to guess playing the original game, delving into the world that Mojang had created for us. Depending on which member of the Order of the Stone you decided to pursue in the previous episode, you either begin the episode with Olivia (if you’re pursuing Ellegaard the Redstone Engineer) or Axel (if you’re pursuing Magnus the Griefer). While which character you begin with doesn’t necessarily matter at the beginning, the stories begin to change as you near the middle of the episode, causing you to have to play it twice in order to get a full understanding.
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.