Minecraft: Wii U Edition Preview

I had never played Minecraft before. I had heard about the game and I had seen previews of it, but being an exclusive Nintendo gamer, I hadn’t had the chance to play it. Of course I had played some of the countless Minecraft clones that have come to the Wii U and 3DS. But now, Nintendo has given Games Reviews a review code of Minecraft Wii U and I am tasked with reviewing the game. Before the review though, I thought I’d give you a preview of my Minecraft experience so far.

The world of Minecraft is much more interesting, so far, then I thought it would be. I had played the Minecraft clones and while I thought some of what they presented was neat, I never saw any of them as something I’d want to play in the long term. Minecraft: Wii U Edition, on the other hand, could be a game I play for awhile.

The first Minecraft world that I created had to be a Mario world of course. The Mario world creation tools are exclusive to the Wii U edition and so they seemed like they would be the most exciting to me. Plus I’m a Mario fan, so I just had to see what this Mario Minecraft world would look like. I was not disappointed at all. The Minecraft Mario world looked very much like a Mario world expect, you know, more blocky. Everything was bright and colorful. I also loved the Mario music that played in this level. I tried the Mario world on Create mode, so my experience in the Mario Minecraft world was easy going and fun. It was a totally different experience from the Survival mode!

I decided to try out the normal Minecraft look in Survival mode. This mode was a lot more complex and I didn’t fully understand it at first. It wasn’t until I tried out the Tutorial mode that I learned about Crafting items and some of the finer elements of Survival. Of course, I’m still learning about Survival mode. There’s just so much to do in that mode. Its very complex and pretty interesting too. Create Mode just lets you run wild in the Minecraft world, while Survival is a bit more intense. If you are a newbie at all to Minecraft, like me, I suggest you play the Tutorial first.

The tutorial isn’t short, in fact, its just as big as the normal game. The tutorial starts you in a small area, which quickly expands into a big area and tries to cover all the basics of Survival mode. That’s a lot of material to cover. Thankfully, the tutorial lets you save and come back to it later if you want to. You’ll want to check out the first section of the tutorial at least. It will help you come to grips with the game’s controls and the finer points of Survival.

As you might note, I’m not talking about the controls of Minecraft: Wii U Edition in this preview. I haven’t mentioned any Wii U exclusive things other the Mario world too. I want to leave all of that for the review. I can say that I’m happy so far with Minecraft’s single player mode. In the full review, I’ll talk about the game’s controls, some of the multiplayer experience, and much more.

I hope to have a review of Minecraft: Wii U Edition on Games Reviews next week!