Minecraft PlayStation 3 Edition

You’d have to be living under a rock to not hear a mention of Minecraft over the last decade or so. It’s one of the highest selling franchises of all time across all platforms. Now, it wasn’t always on all platforms when it first released. It was first ported to the Xbox 360 in 2011 to the delight of Xbox fans, but PlayStation 3 fans were left in the dark for years. Then in December 2013, 4J and Mojang finally brought the phenomenon to their console in the form of the Minecraft PlayStation 3 Edition.

Explore, Mine, Craft, Build

For those who may know of Minecraft, but don’t know what it’s exactly about, it’s a game designed to bring out your inner imagination. You first spawn in a randomly generated world that is created from voxel art. Every block you see is something that you can try to collect.

Collecting is what you’ll be doing a lot of, at least in Survival mode. Since you start with nothing, you’ll punch blocks until you collect enough materials to craft a tool or item you need. Once you craft tools, this really speeds up the mining process.

Mining and crafting are two of the main activities you’ll be partaking in, but you’ll also need to explore the world around you. This means digging down into a mine, taking a long hiking trip to the ends of the map (which we’ll get to later), or taking a boat ride along the streams and into the ocean. The world is your oyster, so they say.

Finally, you have the building aspect of Minecraft. This is where your imagination can really run wild. Starting out, you’ll more than likely struggle to even build a structure that can protect you from the angry mobs (Zombies, Skeletons, and the forever scary Creepers) out to get you. Now you may not be building replicas of a Death Star anytime soon, but over time, your skills at building were surely improve.

Changing for the Better

When Minecraft came to the consoles, there was evident there would need to be changes to make it work. For instance, how was 4J and Mojang going to make the game work as smoothly with a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard? Well whatever the answer was, they nailed it. The controls on the PlayStation 3’s DualShock feel intuitive and responsive. In fact, they feel so smooth that players coming from the PC version of the game may ask themselves which version of controls is truly superior.

What might be the most controversial, but it my opinion the best addition, is the ability to craft your items by simply finding it in a list and press a button - barring you have the necessary materials of course. You might be asking why this is a big deal. Well, the Minecraft PC community has always needed to form the actual shape of the item when crafting it. This added an extra layer of knowledge to the game as you needed to know what you needed to craft the item, as well as what shape it took.

On the PS3, you’ll simply press a button and the item will be crafted. This has rubbed some Minecraft purists the wrong way, but it’s a welcome addition. After all, the console editions of the game are supposed to be easier to play.

Taking the Bad with the Good

It’s not easy to transition from a PC to console game. There are technical limitations that you need to overcome to get the game working, then you need to worry if it will perform smoothly.

Sadly, the PS3 version of Minecraft runs less smooth than I had hoped. You’ll see a bit of choppiness here and there while playing, especially if there is a lot going on the screen at the moment. When it rains or snows, you’ll really see the performance drop. It’s not to the point where you’ll want to quit playing, but it does get quite annoying. Nothing more stressful than lagging and hearing a Creeper come up behind you.

The draw distance is also much less on the Minecraft PS3 Edition, so instead of scouting from the top of a hill, you’ll be out trekking a lot more. But hey, at least exploring the world of Minecraft is fun!

Coinciding with the craw distance is a far less smaller map size. On the PC, you’re blessed with massive (even infinite) lands that take forever to explore. Resources are abundant and the world is yours for the crafting. On the PS3, you have to work with a much smaller world that has an invisible wall protecting you from exploring further. This was a bummer as those with big creative aspirations may be tied down by this limited world size.

Pros:

• Same old Minecraft you know and love, just a bit behind in updates
• The controls feel great on the DualShock 3
• New crafting system simplifies the whole experience

Cons:

• Performance drops a bit during weather and high activity areas
• Draw distance and map size are far less than on the PC