Holy dumb fuck. One of the few games in recent years truly worthy of praise. And it’s an indie game made in Java? It just goes to show that simple is better.

High polygon counts and high-def textures can suck my dick. I’ve always said graphics don’t matter and this proves it with a vengeance.

If you spend any time on the netternets, you’ll have heard that Minecraft is the greatest thing invented since all those other greatest things invented since sliced bread. And the nets aren’t lying to you. Minecraft actually is fucking amazing. For those of you that somehow don’t know what it is, it’s a first person construction-survival game. Yeah that sounds about right. Essentially you play the part of some guy who’s all alone in a randomly generated world that’s potentially 8 times the surface area of the Earth. If that sounds a little daunting, shut up because it doesn’t matter and I don’t even know why I mentioned it. Maybe to convey a sense of scale that’s otherwise hard to grasp. Yeah that’s what I’m going with.

So you’re this guy, right? You show up in a world. Maybe you’re on a beach, or in a field, or on a hill top. It doesn’t matter. This is your spawn point. And now you have to build stuff. Anything, really, but it’s a good idea to start by building yourself a shelter, because at night zombies come. And skeletons. And spiders. And skeletons riding spiders.

All you have at first is yourself. And your right hand. So naturally, after jerking off which is the logical first step in that scenario, you go break down some trees and collect the wood from them. You can then turn that wood into lumber which can be used to fuel fires, build walls, floors, ceilings or basically whatever you like, or be turned into sticks which you can then use to make tools like shovels (to dig earth and sand faster) or pickaxes (to smash rocks and collect the stones to use as building materials, or to construct more resilient tools).

It goes on like that, and it’s difficult for me to really explain the scope of it all. The only real limits are your imagination, amount of free time, and your own personal fear of giving in to your nerdiest tendencies and admitting that you’d rather spend your Friday nights constructing a full-size rendering of the Enterprise D than going out with your friends, picking up drunk chicks and convincing them to do anal.

Anyway this isn’t gonna be a review. Minecraft is still only in alpha testing right now. It isn’t even a beta. It’s a pretty damn stable and incredibly entertaining alpha, but it’s definitely missing some things and you often find yourself playing only to think “Aww man, if only there was ____, I could make a _____.” But that’s pretty much just my own imagination holding me back. People have built actual, working computers within Minecraft. Don’t ask me how, because I could never sit down and focus long enough to comprehend that. What I’m trying to say is, you can already build basically anything in it, and it’s only in alpha and there’s a whole ton of stuff planned for the future releases. It’s gonna get bigger and better a thousand times over in the next 6 months to a year. But yeah, due to its alpha status I won’t review it in full until it’s actually released in full.

Although I think its initial popularity explosion is now going to start winding down because by internet standards Minecraft is already about a thousand years old, it’s got a tremendous foothold and is going to be around for an incredibly long time. For a couple more months we’ll see floods of “Some huge nerd built something amazing in Minecraft” videos until people find the next random youtube of some fat kid with a concussion to edit celebrity audio clips into and Minecraft will gradually fade out of the mainstream again, and maybe once every six months some massive turbonerd will complete a year long Minecraft project and post a video as a monument to his lack of social skills and the internet will briefly remember how huge it used to be. It’s sad, but Minecraft is doomed to burn out after a while. Or at the very least, burn out with the mainstream crowd. It’ll always have a massive following, just like Garry’s Mod still does, because it’s so creative and entertaining, but its time in the spotlight probably won’t last too much longer. Which is a real shame because it really deserves a lot of attention. And it’s kinda sad that its moment in the sun is probably going to pass before it’s even reached its full release. Everyone’s played it now, and they’ve had their fun and will most likely move onto something else. When Minecraft is finally complete, it won’t be big news anymore. Kinda makes me sad.

Everybody go buy it, you’ll have fun and it’s only ten bucks. Seriously, this is far more than $60 worth of fun for a fraction of the price.