While fans of the series are waiting for October, wanting to quickly watch Minecraft Live 2024, let’s talk about newcomers who have not yet walked around the cubic world and built a dugout to hide from monsters. Is it worth launching Minecraft for the first time 14 years after its release? Grab a cup of tea and some sweets. In this review, we talked about all the reasons why you should play Minecraft even in 2024.
- Release date: November 18, 2011
- Developer: Mojang Studios, 4J Studios, Xbox Game Studios, Other Ocean Interactive, Other Ocean Group
- Download: Xbox
Constantly updating Minecraft
Minecraft is developing live service functions. Simply put: this game is constantly updated and adds new features and functions for players. Useful for attracting and retaining the audience, as well as for the company’s wallets, because sales are stable. There are risks that there will be a lot of content, and the game will be overloaded with many unnecessary mechanics, which means it will become difficult to master and unfriendly for beginners and gamers who have given up playing for a while.
Modern projects are guilty of this. Let’s remember Genshin Impact: the game is only 3 years old, but there is so much content and mechanics that many cannot complete all the quests, clear chests, and new territories, and level up a character with a weapon. Gamers are tired of the game feeling like a second job.
Mojang focused on Minecraft’s core features and added content slowly. For example, sakura: they are organically integrated into the world and perform basic functions – they provide wood for crafting and aesthetics for buildings; they appeared in patch 1.20, a year ago. Bees were added in 2019 with the Buzzy Bees update, but these insects also fit in perfectly, as if they were always in the game.
Every year at Minecraft Live, players can vote for a new mob to be added to the game; the developers take into account the opinions and wishes of their community. Content appears methodically and thoughtfully. This approach is not a coincidence; Minecraft is a sandbox; in this genre, it is especially important to update the basic mechanics and not overuse adding new ones.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or just haven’t played for a long time, the first hours in the cubic world will pass as standard. The basis remains the same – spawning in a world without anything, freedom of action, and complete plasticity of the world. And then, as you progress, new objects added by patches will appear: animals, monsters, ores, and biomes. This makes me think this is the feature of Minecraft that makes it relevant.
The project does not need to change radically, since it depends almost entirely on the players themselves. If you wish, you don’t even have to dig deep underground in search of new minerals and calmly build a farm, raise the usual pigs and sheep, and potatoes and carrots.
Multiplatform and popularity of Minecraft
Minecraft is still huge and accessible to users of any device.
The full-featured version of the game is available on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch consoles, computers with any system, and Android and iOS gadgets. And on each of them, it is among the best games. This allows the project to reach the widest audience and maintain its relevance for several years.
Active community and modifications
When discussing why the game is still relevant, it is necessary to talk about the enthusiasts who create fan content. Try to imagine YouTube without videos about Minecraft, did it work? We do not have. Videos, drawings, fan fiction, sculptures, embroidery. And, of course, the creators of mods, resource packs, skins, and other game elements. Fans of the series “inherited” it in all areas of art, thereby maintaining interest and attracting new gamers to Notch’s project.
Minecraft Mods
Modifications in Minecraft are fan-made additions to change the gameplay, adding new features, items, mechanics, graphics, and other objects that can be found in the square world. With their help, you can customize Minecraft and turn on thirst and sleep, thereby increasing realism. You can hunt overpowered monsters, craft new types of weapons or tools, and increase or decrease difficulty.
There are mods that add elements from other games, movies, or books to the game. You can even hunt Pokemon or summon demons using a spirit circle.
Cards
These are specially created worlds that are generated using the map editor or in the game itself. For example, there are levels with challenges, adventures, puzzles, parkour, or survival in extreme conditions. Want storylines? Find a topic of interest on the Internet, and within a few minutes, you are playing as a square minion from the cartoon “Despicable Me” and walking through secret laboratories.
Are you tired of the physics of “vanilla” (the original game without mods) “Minecraft”? Go through a map where you have to jump up on blocks, trying not to fall so as not to lose. Or maybe you’ve seen conversational videos with a Minecraft Let’s Play in the background in the style of the game Only Up? There are such cards too. The choice is limited only by the imagination and creativity of modders.
Minecraft Resource packs
This is a graphical file set that changes the appearance of the game. For example, if you want something absurd, try swapping the textures of the sheep and the creeper. You can find realistic selections or, conversely, with barely changed textures. Not only game items are modified, but also the interface: making the backpack menu transparent or repainting the panel with a quick selection of items in a different color is not a problem.
Some gamers create entire collections, replacing not only the structure of the pictures but also adding authentic sounds, fonts, animations, and shaders.
Minecraft Skins
The files are narrowly focused and only change the appearance of the player’s character. There are many websites on the internet with sorted selections by color, gender, accessories, clothing, and a host of other customizations. There are skins that make your game avatar look like a character from memes, movies, and TV series. They add the appearance of fantastic creatures, as well as the textures of game mobs, for example, a creeper or a villager.
All these elements make Minecraft more diverse and personalized, allowing you to express your individuality.
Minecraft graphics in 2024
Despite the fact that Minecraft has been successful for many years and has not lost its relevance, critics like to talk about the “death” of the game due to outdated graphics. Let’s figure it out. The project has a unique style based on pixel cubes. This is what open world, gameplay, and endless possibilities for creativity are built on. This doesn’t make the game old-fashioned or uninteresting. Rather, recognizable, optimized, and attractive to players of different ages.
Since its release, the project has had many imitators. Studios around the world were eager to take a bite out of the square pie of success and lure at least part of the audience to themselves.
Yes, initially the game had simple pixel graphics with low-poly textures, which not everyone liked. Some even thought it looked awkward. However, the textures were redrawn, the squint of the pigs was corrected, and the contours of some blocks were improved.
Now, thanks to shaders and other graphics mods, the game has become polished and beautiful. Shaders add shadows, reflections, sun rays, fog, and clouds, enhance water, and much more. Players can choose different styles, from cartoonish to realistic.
In addition, this is completely optional; gamers with powerful PCs can play around with RTX and compare with each other whose hero is better at reflecting in a puddle. Owners of mid-range hardware can afford undemanding shaders with reduced functionality. Weak gadgets get along well with classic textures.
Is Minecraft worth playing in 2024?
Definitely yes. The game is being updated, and new modes, objects, mechanics, and collaborations appear. The gamer community, like the developers, works tirelessly with shovels, hoes, and picks. They film Let’s Play, thereby popularizing the game, creating modifications and maps of real and fantasy worlds, and attracting users of other franchises.
Minecraft has achieved success by maintaining Notch’s gameplay principles and philosophy. The project is based on the simple idea that the gamer controls the game. You are the author of the square world and its history. Even numerous updates do not change the core gameplay – the ability to do whatever you want and be who you want. A simple concept that many other projects have failed to implement.
If you have never launched Minecraft or are familiar with it only from the news or stories from friends, then when you enter the game in 2024, at first everything will seem familiar, as in the pictures and in Let’s Play. For all its superficial simplicity, there are many new features hidden in the pixel world after numerous patches and updates.
Yes, the developers strive to ensure that Minecraft remains as accessible to beginners as it was at the time of release. At the same time, they need to expand opportunities for “old” fans, who, if you wake up at night, will tell you all the crafting recipes from memory.
Thanks to this competent approach, a balance of content is maintained between pros and “dummies”: fighting creepers and building portals to hell are equally interesting for gamers of any age and experience. Beginners will entertain themselves with the basic mechanics of Minecraft, while experienced players will dive into the depths of various mechanics.
Farming, mining, construction, research, combat, fishing, collecting, crafting, potions – Minecraft has a lot to offer. Whatever your play style, the project will easily adapt. Single adventures, cross-play with friends, various servers based on interests. If you get tired of the abundance of features provided by the vanilla version of Minecraft, you can diversify your gaming experience with countless modifications from the fan community.
According to Marketsplash 2024, the average age of a Minecraft player is 24 years old; with 141 million active users worldwide. This result can hardly be called surprising because the project gave players the opportunity to realize all their fantasies in the virtual world. Write in the comments if you like this game.
