Mindlesscraft

I’ve been playing Minecraft for the first time this past week, on the 360. Why the 360? Because there’s a genuine risk that my computer might crash while writing this. It’s already crashed twice this morning, so it’s not really a gaming machine.

The first thing I’ve noticed about Minecraft is that I suck at it. When I first started, I spent hours trying to set up a new world for myself. I was constantly killed my every conceivable monster on Easy. I don’t think I was able to craft anything more complex than stone. Then I found out I was using the wrong pickaxe on all the Iron Ore deposits because I didn’t read the, “What’s This?” box. I deleted the whole level and started again. After hours and hours of playing, I have yet to find diamonds or obsidian. Finding gold must have taken me a dozen hours. Then my stepson wanted to play. It took me half-an-hour to find both those deposits. We were playing split-screen on the level he made. After finding my way to the bottom of a cave filled with diamonds, he insisted on joining me. I told him I had no clue where I was, and referred to my map to tell him which way to walk. I’d taken my eyes off his side of the screen, and somehow he’d managed to get completely stuck in a pitch black cave with no way out, and no torches. He could try digging, but there was no way to tell which way was up or down. I took his controlled and tried for fifteen minutes to get out while he complained about how I sucked. I tried building a furnace and burning whatever useless item I could in it to make a light. I found a small room only a few blocks wide, with no clear way out. I still have no clue how he got in. I eventually had to go back to my controller and try to rescue him. That meant abandoning all the goodies I just found and climbing out of the cave, which meant I had to dig my way out as I hadn’t established an exit yet. So I used my map to figure out which basic direction to go and started digging up, for about ten minutes. I eventually broke though and the tunnel flooded with water. I’d dug my way to the bottom the lake. Fortunately it was only three blocks deep, and I could swim to the surface before drowning, but now there was no way back through the easy path I’d just made without diving for it.

Then, I had to search over the rough terrain for the cave where he must have started exploring. There were about four separate entrances, and no telling which one he went in. On the way, I found a monster generator and chest full of saddles, which is apparently the only way to find them, so that was the only good luck I was having. I was far, far away from our base camp, and quite lost. I settled on finally digging straight down on an angle to reach him. That took about ten more minutes. After frequently checking my map and breaching into his chamber, I did some more exploring and found he was all the way down to the lava level. He’d dug himself probably forty blocks deep in the few minutes I hadn’t paid attention.