Minecraft: Story Mode by Telltale Review

Newest baby of the line, Minecraft: Story Mode, has been out since October 13th 2015. This is by Telltale, who have proven themselves as a strong games company in the field of interactive stories. They brought us the magnificent “The Wolf Among Us” and also showed that they are good at adapting their games to existing universes by making a great “Game of Thrones” game.

Adapting their styles to Minecraft may be their biggest challenge so far since they had to build a story on a universe well known for not having one! As I write this review only the first episode of this adventure has been released. The story begins with the legend of the Order of the Stone, a former group of heroes who managed to beat the ender dragon.

Choose who you want to be, Jesse

Meet Jesse, a Young boy, girl, whatever you want to be, who lives his/her ordinary life with his/her ordinary friends. But Jesse wants more than this, so with the help of Olivia, Axel and their pet pig Reuben they’ll try to win the building competition at Endercon. The winner of this competition will get the chance to meet Gabriel, famous warrior of the Order of the Stone. But as everything goes normally in the beginning, trouble is waiting just around the corner. As something is threatening the world, it’s up to Jesse and his/her friends to save the day.

Since it’s only the first fifth of the Story, I won’t be too harsh. The bases are here and they are pretty solid. The universe created by Telltale is coherent and you actually enjoy seeing a living society in Minecraft. The main problems are actually the character. It is actually pretty hard for Jesse and his/her friend to seem real. Their personalities seem too cliché for the game. All the characters make you feel that this game is made for younger people. The story compensates with more jokes and humor than the previous Telltale titles but even they seem more to targeted towards the younger demographic.

Minecraft going blockbuster style

You have to admit it, the world they created is pretty nice. Of course the graphics aren’t off the charts, but they are loyal to Minecraft and that’s all we want. But the Minecraft spirit is flowing through the game. From the scenery to the animation of the characters (except a few face animations which ruins a bit of the dialogues magic) everything is perfectly constructed in this game. They are even a few construction moments which will surely remind you of The Lego Movie.

Talking about gameplay, this game looks a lot like other Telltale games. You switch between short adventure sequences, quick time events and dialogues. But Telltale brought something new by adding a few crafting sequences. Minecraft fans will really like crafting their items in-game, even though you can only build what the story wants you to, it looks incredible. This game also allows you to fight zombies with your swords in an all to scripted fight.

Minecraft: Story Mode relies a lot on what made Telltale’s success but adds a few exclusive features. The main problem being that there you won’t be able to find any difficulty. The game is just too easy, the failure of the quick time events won’t kill you and you won’t have to even think to solve the puzzles.

This post was written by our very own Hearsch E-Sports, follow him on Twitter here and Facebook here.