Minecraft is one of the biggest gaming phenomena in recent history, with versions of it on the PC, consoles, and tablets.  It’s spawned countless products like T-shirts, toys, and keychains, and I think it was even featured on an episode of South Park (I wouldn’t know, I don’t like that show).  ALL my brothers have been into Minecraft at some point, and with its free-roaming nature and retro graphics, it looks appealing even to me!  Only reason why I don’t play it is because I’m afraid I’d get sucked into it too much.  But if you’re looking to get into Minecraft, BradyGames has a book that can help you get started.  Let’s take a look inside.

Mastering Minecraft is set up into several chapters.  In “Before We Start,” they go over the menu screen, icons, and controls.  The next chapter, “Let’s Begin With the Basics,” is probably the most important to beginners.  It guides you through the first and most crucial hours of game time to help you get the most out of your experience.

The next chapter, “You Can Do Anything With a Little Practice,” goes over more advanced techniques.  Things like farming, crafting, mining, and much more.  After that is a short chapter on “Playing With Friends,” which goes over how to join games online and even set up your own Minecraft server.  The last parts of the book have lists of every item in the game in “Tools, Resources, and Consumables.”  And after that is a list of all the monsters in “Creatures Big & Small.”  And finally is a short chapter on mods, packs, and skins in “Modifying Your Game.”

Even though this guide claims it’s for beginners and experts, I think most Minecraft pros would already know about everything in this guide.  But for beginners and intermediate players, this guide would be more useful.  Only problem I had with this book is that it looks a little bit less professional than most BradyGames guides, only because BradyGames usually does such a great job of making their guides look so official and professional.  But there’s really nothing wrong with that.  When I was a kid, I read a lot of unofficial strategy guides and game books that were just as good as the others.  In fact, a series of Unauthorized, Unofficial Nintendo game books helped inspire me to write game reviews even today!  So don’t judge a game guide by its cover!

Tags: Misc