With all the hype towards graphically superior first person shooter such as Call of Duty and Battlefield 3 being released this year, the biggest attention has been towards the online PC game Minecraft. Minecraft, developed in Sweden by Markus Persson and his company Mojang, is the online phenomenon that has been bought by over 4 million people worldwide. In essence it is a first-person sandbox game in which you are free to build whatever you want in a randomly generated world. They can be basic such as a hut or something extraordinary like a castle. With the popularity of this new franchise, Minecraft is now available for 10p/C (limited offer) on Android and £4.99 in the App store.
Pocket edition is almost an exact clone as the PC version but is just as enjoyable on a smaller screen. The controls are as fluent by using a D-pad to move in different directions, flicking the screen changes where you look and touching down on certain blocks makes you place down or mine blocks. You are able to mine and build various structures just like the PC version however there are some limitations.
With the original Minecraft, there are two different modes that you can choose from. The first being creative mode. This is where you all the different blocks like wood, glass and bricks are available from the start so you are able to create anything you want straight away.
The second more popular mode is Survival. This mode gives you a health bar, no resources and living creatures and enemies that affect your experience. The Survival mode gives you more of objective to survive the world especially at night when you can be become defenceless against the enemies that appear. The way you gain resources is by mining different blocks and crafting them together to make new materials that can be used within the game.
This is the more popular mode in Minecraft and is what draws people to continue making new creations. However the pocket edition does not include the Survival mode yet and leaves you with the creation mode. This may be put-off for fans of Minecraft especially if they are not getting the full content that is found on the PC. Since the release Mojang have confirmed that the survival mode will appear on the pocket edition soon. Also the price of the game is pretty steep especially as other popular apps like Angrybirds and Fruit Ninja are 69p.
However there is free version of the Pocket Edition available which lets you create things in the randomly generated landscape but gives you less blocks to use and does not allow any online multiplayer world or save your world. The free version is still useful to get used to the controls and shows what the game is about, especially if you are new to Minecraft.
Overall the pocket edition is a good addition if you want to be mining on the go. However it is not the revolutionary change from the pc version
