Minecraft Out on Xbox

It's been nearly a year since its official announcement at E3, but Minecraft is finally available for download on Xbox Live. Costing 1600 Microsoft Points ($20), Minecraft won't make much of a dent in your pocket, being $40 cheaper than a full retail game. Being an Arcade title however, this is to be expected. Minecraft is the last Arcade game in Microsofts' new series of arcade games featuring 600 gamerscore as opposed to the old 200 gamerscore (it still doesn't do anything :'( ).

Minecraft is very similar to the PC version, but with a few minor differences from the Beta 1.6.6 version represented on Xbox. I don't really remember when shears were added, but they're not available in the current version on Xbox, returning wool-gathering to the ancient sheep-punch-fest of last year.

Worlds are also limited in that they don't generate forever like in the PC version; the Xbox's limitations in memory is unfortunately going to have to make me generate new worlds to access new materials in updates, such as when Lapis Lazuli was introduced; since my world already had the chunks generated, I had to travel far, far away in order to gain access to the shiny blue stuff. The process included a nether portal in order to cover the large distance. I'm not sure how the Xbox is going to handle this, but I'd rather not get thrown into the void while jumping out of my portal.

The graphics in the game are also slightly degraded from the PC version; fog doesn't have a presence, so you can see where the game is loading chunks in the distance; also, the shadows are particularly rigid, but I'm just assuming that since smooth lighting was introduced later in the Beta span.

Finally, I noticed that the grass/leaves are all the same shade of green, and I REALLY hope that they'll fix this later. Having the same color of leaves makes the game feel like it's still in the Alpha era, and the leaves are just...too green.