The update makes it clear when you've left the protective, smiling benevolence of 1.7 landscapes and basically cuts them off in mid-flow. Actually the game occasionally makes a cliff for no reason anyway but this one is specifically due to the update and new terrain gen system. At that point I knew I was lost. So I kept running in whatever direction promised new features and exiting lands that would be lost immediately afterward.
Fortunately, getting lost was entirely worth it. Exquisite landscapes popped into being around me, replacing the bland rolling hills of the totally boring game that Minecraft was pre-1.8. Yes, the game has come of age. It used to make awesome delicious landscapes and then stopped making them for a while, in an effort toward coherent geography, and now it makes delicious insane landscapes again with an effort towards geographic coherence. All in all there are many, many, many different places for people to build their phallic towers and insane castles now. Instead of building 1) in water 2) on a shore or 3) on the side/top of a hill/mountain/cliff you have the chance of being able to build on an entrancing combination of all three.
And if that hasn't convinced you to buy Minecraft yet, or start playing again, the update brought many new dangers in addition to new combat and movement abilities. Now when you've painstakingly crafted a map, compass, and several diamond-grade tools you have a chance to lose them to incredibly deadly and tricky terrain.
Even in the sedate 'Peaceful' difficulty the world now has dozens of new ways to make you ragequit when you lose your cool stuff – be it a devilish, almost invisible drop into surface-level lava (which as been around since 1.5 but occurs typically 1-3 times per crafted map area) or running off a precipitous ledge into a deep chasm. Minecraft is dedicated to making karst style landscapes as often as possible, and when they introduce glaciers I imagine they will make them treacherous as well. What this means for the average player is probably some type of hoarding behaviour where all good equipment is stored in chests (which are now animated to open upon use) and left to collect dust during the inevitable exploration deaths, which will probably go up twofold for incautious players.
In short it was an impressive gesture that indicates the game is still alive and may well become highly interesting and rewarding. As it stands you get out of the game what you put into it, multi or singleplayer, and that means that most people will build a large thing, find diamonds, and die a few times and call it a game. Things I'd like to see include a robust, unlimited leveling system with useful perks, a sprint toggle, further developments to the combat system, some kind of decent mineral spread (even with plentiful caves it can be a half-hour or more before you find diamond or gold) and some way to branch minecart lines. A lot of proposed additions cover parts of what I refer to, especially since the EXP bar will pretty much have to lead to some kind of leveling system, but the game is still pretty good as it is. What I fear is that Minecraft will become the GTAIV of its type - pretty, ambitious, even clever, but essentially empty.
(PS: Really, really want shoggoths to be introduced and mining imps a la Dungeon Keeper)
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