Game Review #4

Castleminer Z is a game that was published in 2011 by DigitalDNA Games. It is an indie game on the Xbox 360 Marketplace that takes two very fun games and combines them. Minecraft and A FPS shooter. The player enters an infinite world surrounded by caves and mountains to explore alongside monsters that try to attack you. Mobs like Zombies and Dragons made your experience challenging but not impossible. Build structures and various tools by mining trees for wood and construct guns by mining for iron and other types of metal. When thinking about this game ten years later I realised that this is an eighteen or older Minecraft. Since Minecraft was all the hype in 2011–12 Castleminer Z was a little less known. Because it was less known, I felt that much cooler playing it. I felt like my friends and I had a fun little secret. The game mechanics were very similar to Minecraft’s and the shooting mechanics were the same as your typical Call Of Duty at the time. A strong point in the game was its carefree feel. You could do anything you please without the game punishing you for doing so. The vast amount of guns to construct was also a sight to behold. There were about 20 guns to build including cooler ones like a railgun and a laser gun. Along with the things mentioned above, I really enjoyed the “story” it had behind it. The point of the game is that the player and his group farm enough materials until they get the best equipment and weapons in order to defeat the Dragon boss. It makes the end feel rewarding and not lackluster like other sandbox games.

The game wasn’t all that perfect although. Some things that I disliked about the games were it’s long loading times and grainy graphics. The grainy graphics made it hard to play in some darker parts of the map. Also. there was a lack of NPC’s. There are only about 10 NPC’s and the rest of them are reskins. Majority of the reskinned NPC’s even had the same sound effects. It just shows the developers lack of creativity and care about the enemies that we have to kill. They just took two things that young kids of that time loved and combined them very nicely. I can proudly say I was one of those young kids who defied their parents and played this game against their orders. It was too fun not too. This is one of the games that I personally would love to see be remastered for newer generation consoles. After reading some forums about this game, I am sadly writing that I doubt that there will be a remastered version. The developers have stopped updating this game as of 2015.