We’ve been running around games killing our friends for years, but Assassins’ Creed was smart enough to really step back from the chaos that results in, and focus on the joy that comes from the hunt and moment of success instead.
When there’s a lot of stress or anxiety in the world, it’s nice to take a step back and relax. Animal Crossing is a game that does this well while alone or even better when hanging out with friends. It’s hard to find a title where doing next to nothing can feel rewarding, but in Animal Crossing just running around with friends feels like a fun time. There’s a sense of companionship when sharing items or fruit and rivalry when catching bugs or fish. The core of Animal Crossing’s entire identity is community, sharing interests and differences. New Horizons has players starting from nearly nothing and building their own world along the way. Eventually players can show off their hard work with a fully decorated house or a fantastic visit to the museum. Even just sitting down to take a picture together with silly expressions gives that relief that it’s alright to take a break without thinking too hard now and then. Not even a wasp sting can hurt long when a friend is there to give some medicine or at least laugh over how ridiculous it was.
The story also deserves notice. Minecraft itself might not have as intense of a story, but Telltale was able to grab some of the more important factors of Minecraft and create a lore to follow and better understand what the characters with. Previously, your goal was to mine for enough materials and minerals to make a portal to the End to slay the Ender Dragon. Now, that story doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone, because the ones who slayed the Ender Dragon were the members of the Order of the Stone. The members are essentially the people that you would have normally gone to the End with to help you fight the dragon, so it almost makes it seem like you were some kind of legendary hero for being able to do that if you were able to do so in the past. Everyone else in the episode doesn’t have that same goal and, funny enough, don’t look at all like the villagers that you sometimes wander upon in the original game. The storytelling and characters leave you with enough of an impression that leaves you waiting in anticipation for the next episode. You begin to make connections with your friends and build a relationship with them in the span of one single episode so it leaves you wanting to know what will come next for this party of builders.
The episode doesn’t stop there, because once you’ve returned from either of those two paths, you head off as a group with whichever other character you picked up in the first episode (Lukas for me) to find the last member of the Order of the Stone, Soren the Architect. This path also follows a relatively fast-paced action sequence, but falls a little short with its sub-par cliffhanger. It’s only episode two, but the weird events surrounding the Order of the Stone and exactly what they’re going to do to stop this crazy Wither Storm seems as though it will never be resolved.
Minecraft has been around so long that it’s easy to take it for granted. The decade of its existence has seen it explode from an indie project to financial juggernaut, but at the heart of all the licensing has been a game that’s never stopped growing its list of features. One of the biggest parts of Minecraft’s longevity has been its multiplayer options with endless servers available almost since the beginning. The reason for this is simple — it’s fun to build things with friends. Whether or not that means everyone works together on a massive project or people go off and do their own thing in a communal area doesn’t matter, so long as there’s something new to see. Working with a group where everyone’s online, working alone or just tooling around the world sightseeing, it’s all better when doing it in a shared world. The thing about Minecraft Tips, though, is that it’s become so generic it’s easy to forget how entertaining it is. Over the years I’ve obsessed over Minecraft, walked away for extended periods of time, come back, then left again. I’ve explored single-player worlds and gotten involved in multiplayer servers, and the one constant is that each time I play there’s something new to do. There are endless worlds stretching on forever made of giant blocks that, despite their size, are still enough to suggest the shape of almost anything you want to create, and the nice thing about Minecraft’s ubiquitous nature is just about everyone is already familiar with it. Now may be the best time to dig out an old log-in and see what huge, inspiring, strange, ridiculous, epic creations you and a group of friends can come up with.
Players can choose to venture through the hostile, prehistoric wilderness solo, or team up with others (even form large tribes online). Each mode has a unique dynamic — but both prove fun and exciting in their own way. Ark players have to deal with a fairly steep learning curve and ample grinding, though Minecraft fans are no strangers to either. And really, the vulnerabilities early on just make Ark that much more rewarding when overcoming t