Minecraft: Story Mode Episode One Review

When this was announced it did make me wonder how they could do a story mode of minecraft…. What could they possibly make of Minecraft as a story based game, would it work out?

The story for this episode tells of a group of friends who are trying to win a building contest… Things from there go south pretty quickly when a rather dodgy character doesn’t honour his end of the deal and runs away with a Wither skull… Petra and Jesse try there hardest to find this shady character with the help of their friends… At this point, a hero called Gabriel who is/was part of a legendary order is doing a Q&A at a convention is confronted by said shady character whose name is Ivor and a Wither is released into the world… Chaos ensues and now the remaining members of the order must be found to help out destroy the beast that has been leashed upon the world.



I have played through Episode One and have immensely enjoyed my time playing it as well. The story starts off really well and it gets better and better for me throughout the episode. By the time I was at the end, I was itching for some more, and I can’t wait for the release of episode two.

One thing I love about this is that is continues to Minecraft ethos and brings together everything that Minecraft is in a story mode. Its brilliant that they have kept the full style of Minecraft, with a few tiny alterations for it to fit with the story mode, but everything from crafting to animals and mobs are all as they should be, and for me that is brilliant to see. The game keeps to the Minecraft ethos but it also sticks really well with the Telltale style of games, which again if you have read from my previous reviews of Telltale games you will know how much I enjoy them.

Speaking of crafting, the story mode takes on the PC style of crafting where the pieces have to be in the right place for the crafting to go through. Luckily enough with this you can see the recipes and how they are meant to be, so that is pretty easy.



Another thing that I was impressed with was how the levels were set out, it was one of those things were you could see the buildings that were there and the things that had been built and thin that those are the type of buildings and structures that you would build or have seen someone build.
There are a lot of cinematics within the game and I have to admit, it is the one thing that’s really frustrated me about it. I loved the story and everything, but it felt like I wasn’t playing the game that much and that I was watching a TV series.

This was a brilliant start for me to the series, and I look forward to the other 4 episodes that are going to be on offer, but I do hope that there is more play time than cinematics in the follow ups. I have to applaud Telltale for the way they have handled and structured the game. They have seen how people play and build on Minecraft and emulated that throughout the game.

I’m going to give this a solid 80%