Review: Minecraft: Wii U Edition

What’s a GamePad?

Minecraft is quite the success story, isn’t it? It went from one man’s fun project to a household name in a seemingly small amount of time. Everywhere I go, I see Minecraft-related items: t-shirts, plushies, costumes.

It has also inspired (probably) thousands of terrible knockoff games in its wake. Now that Minecraft: Wii U edition is out, I shudder to think of what will happen to quality games like Cube Life or Stone Shire!

Minecraft: Wii U Edition
Developer: 4J Studios, Microsoft Studios
Publisher: Mojang AB
Released: December 17, 2015
MSRP: $29.99

Given its status as a cultural phenomenon, I probably don’t need to explain the basics of Minecraft in 2015. In case you’ve been experiencing the same thing as Brendan Fraser in Blast from the Past, I’ll give a quick rundown. Players spawn into a randomly generated world created entirely out of individual blocks. It is up to them to harvest materials like wood, coal, and stone to create tools and survive the many dangers present throughout the game world.

Personally, I guess I’m more of a Minecraft purist. I’ve been playing on and off since the alpha stages, and began to grow a bit disinterested with many of the later additions like brewing and enchanting. That being said, I absolutely love the purity of vanilla Minecraft. I’ve never added in dozens of PC mods to completely change the game or even alter the original tileset. To me, it’s at its most elegant when it is untouched.

The Wii U Edition does have some extra tilesets thrown in for players to switch between, and some extras to purchase on the eShop. New player skins are also offered for purchase, like The Simpsons, in case players don’t want to be “Tennis Steve” or “Black Steve” — oh wait, I mean “Athlete Steve.”

Naturally, the thought of playing Minecraft with the Wii U’s GamePad is rather exciting. It could be used for inventory management, a second screen for cooperative play, easy crafting — the possibilities are endless! Well, unless you’re 4J Studios. Then the possibilities are one. The only benefit of having the GamePad is the ability for single-player Off-TV play. And even when players are using it for Off-TV play, it does not function as a touch screen for inventory management or anything else.

When playing locally with a friend, players are forced into split-screen mode. Playing split-screen with the GamePad in hand feels like a complete waste of an opportunity. 

The game runs fine, though snow tends to tank the framerate in cooperative play. Also, when playing locally, if one player opens up their inventory, there’s a pause for a fraction of a second that is absolutely infuriating. It sounds like it should be barely noticeable, but just the opposite is true. I ended up calling out whenever I was making an important jump or otherwise being careful, so my partner wouldn’t pause the game and screw me up.

Speaking of pausing, trying to move items around with a joystick is awful. I’m sure this is what Xbox players have been dealing with for years, but man is it bad. The joystick emulates a mouse cursor, but everything snaps to the inventory grid, making it a painfully slow and annoying process to move things about. This is made worse by the fact that I’m literally holding a now-useless touchscreen in my hands.

Playing online only works among friends. At first I thought the game was buggy, since the “Join” tab was completely unpopulated. However, a quick jaunt over to the Miiverse showed people posting screenshots of the main menu asking if anyone would like to friend up and play, making the situation very clear: you can only play online with people on your friends list. Well, okay then.

Minecraft is still a beautiful game. The first time I heard C418’s ambient soundtrack kick in, I was beaming. The first time night fell, I nervously holed up in the ground. Despite my adoration of the game, I ended up being frustrated at just about every aspect of the Wii U Edition. This is the epitome of a wasted-opportunity, bare-bones port. It’s great that the game is coming to yet another audience, but this is hardly worth the investment for someone who already has the opportunity to play Minecraft elsewhere. 

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}