The finale to Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two is finally here, meaning you can now play the entire game from start-to-finish in one sitting. To be fair, this may help the series a great deal, as Season Two has really struggled to produce lengthy episodes that keep your interest. The finale is no different clocking in at around the 75 minute mark, although that includes some unnecessary padding in the form of uninteresting conversations.The final episode takes place almost entirely in Beacon Town, where the Admin has taken the form of Jesse and is reshaping the whole village to his liking by building a lava covered tower that looms over the area. Of course, Jesse and the gang rock up to put a stop to his plans. If we’re being brutally honest it’s nowhere near as memorable as Season One’s Wither Storm plot.
The Season Two story on the whole is a mishmash of various elements without an overall key focus. Yes, there is a main villain, the Admin, however the way in which he is used fluctuates wildly between episodes. One minute he has taken the form of a giant sea temple guardian to destroy Beacon Town (oh how we wish he had, we’re sick of that place), the next minute he is a snowman who has challenged you to navigate a labyrinth of puzzles, then suddenly he is bedrocking over the whole world trying to start a fresh one. Throughout the entire season his motives are left a mystery to the player and as for his masterplans, they are utter nonsense.
Season Two also suffers from pacing issues and using the same environments too many times, Beacon Town being the main culprit. It was a pretty uninteresting location in the first season and then to be forced to explore it again in the opening of Season Two only for it to be brought back again for the majority of the finale is disappointing to say the least. The pacing is rather slow throughout the season and the finale is especially slow to get going as Jesse and gang take their time planning their approach to stop the Admin in a flash-forward scene that you then play through a few minutes later almost entirely as planned. As if to rub salt in your wounds, the most interesting bit where you get to fight the Admin is rushed over like it’s irrelevant and feels like a really anticlimactic ending to the season.
About half way through Above and Beyond is a puzzle that has no explanation on how it can be solved; it's also required to be solved to progress. It involves removing blocks from a grid with numbers at one side; all you have to help you out is the code #Potato451. As for what that means or refers to we have no idea, as far as we're aware it’s utter nonsense. Although it’s just a simple enter the code puzzle the way in which it is designed is confusing as you have to remove blocks from a wall and if you can’t figure that out you won’t be able to progress and just be left staring blankly at a wall.
The finale spends a lot of time undoing the decisions you made in the previous episodes as characters that you thought had met their demise magically reappear to save you or just because they can. It’s a real shame as it makes all the decisions feel redundant even though at the time of deciding it seems critical to make the right choice. The outcomes generally end up the same no matter what you choose.
Conclusion
Above and Beyond is a rather disappointing end to a rather lacklustre second season for Minecraft: Story Mode. The season’s plot is forgettable, the pacing is slow throughout, and the same environments are used repeatedly. Although the final boss fight is enjoyable, the ending is surprisingly anticlimactic. Unless you were a huge fan of Jesse’s first outing, you won’t be missing much by skipping this season.
What would MPavilion look like if it was co-designed by kids using Minecraft? Find out in this interactive workshop hosted by our friends at Matters Journal, as they bring to life a feature story from ‘Mini Matters’—the first ‘mini’ print publication of Matters Journal.
Based on the ‘Block by Block’ program developed by UN-Habitat in partnership with Mojang, this workshop gives kids aged eight to fifteen a chance to bring their creative visions to life, using the video game Minecraft to build a virtual model—all the while exploring new ways of using technology and design to engage communities in the public realm.
If you or your friends have children who love Minecraft, building things or all of the above, bring them along to MPavilion for this workshop facilitated by some highly experienced and tech-savvy big kids. Channel your love of Minecraft, architecture, engineering or design as an online facilitator for this IRL multiplayer activity—redesigning MPavilion Minecraft-style! Following the event, Monash University’s Department of Materials and Science Engineering will 3D print the designs created during the workshop.
This is a free workshop. Drop-ins welcome but registration is encouraged! This workshop is limited to 24 kids (aged 8–15) and 16 big kids (aged 15+).
Minecraft Realms are servers run by Microsoft where players can invite their friends for private games.
It's a great place to play together if you want to work on a particular project or collaborate to a higher degree. Today, the Minecraft team revealed Realms Clubs, online meeting places created specifically for members of your Realms to share creations and socialize. In your Realms Club, you can share posts with each other and like videos, photos and comments.
Realms Clubs will begin rolling out today for Minecraft on Xbox One, mobile, and Windows 10. They're are automatically created for your Realm, and anyone you invite to your Realm is also added to the Club. You can access your Realms Clubs from the Xbox App on PC, mobile, or console, or directly from your Realms menu in Minecraft.
To take a screenshot, just pause the game and hit the button with the Camera icon next to the “Feed” button. Pressing this button will take a screenshot of the current view — excluding the menu — and add it to your list of saved screenshots or directly to your Realms Clubs feed. This is a great way to share your structures with everyone in the Club.
For those worried about what people post, players can report comments and posts in your Club to the club administrator, who can then delete posts and comments and remove players from the Club if necessary. It's a curated experience which should make parents feel comfortable about their children playing on them. For example, children need a parent to adjust their permissions in order to use Realms and Realms Clubs. They can't see any content posted in Clubs without additional parental permissions.
Realms Clubs sounds like great ways to collaborate with one another so it's important gamers only invite people they know. It's the administrator's responsibility to make sure their Club operates smoothly and is a positive experience for everyone.
SAN RAFAEL, Calif., and STOCKHOLM, Sweden, December 19th, 2017 — Award-winning developer and publisher of digital entertainment Telltale Games and world-renowned game developer Mojang today launched the fifth and final episode of Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two. The episode, entitled ‘Above and Beyond,' is now available for download on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android-based devices, as well as through Telltale's own online store.
The home Jesse left so long ago — Beacontown — has succumbed to the iron rule of the Admin. Menacing guards patrol the streets, anxious citizens tremble in fear, and worst of all, everyone believes Jesse is responsible thanks to the Admin's devious disguise. In order to save the city, the real Jesse must find a way to zap the Admin's powers and take him down once and for all…
Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two continues Jesse's saga in a five-part, narrative-driven, episodic game series developed by Telltale in collaboration with Minecraft developer Mojang and members of the Minecraft community. Though players' choices from the first season will optionally carry over into season two, this new season is intended to be accessible to both returning fans and newcomers alike.
This second season includes Telltale's unique multiplayer ‘Crowd Play' feature, which allows friends and family to engage with the adventure together by helping to decide the direction of the story from any mobile device with an online connection. This season also features voice work from Patton Oswalt, Catherine Taber, Ashley Johnson, and Scott Porter, as well as cameos from Stampy Cat, stacyplays, and other personalities from the Minecraft community on YouTube.
Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two is a standalone product separate from both the core Minecraft game and season one of Minecraft: Story Mode. Season two is available for download on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android-based devices. A retail version on disc is also available. Episode five has been rated ‘Everyone 10+' by the ESRB.
For more information on Telltale Games, visit the official website, follow @TelltaleGames on Twitter, and like Telltale on Facebook.
For more information on Mojang, visit the official website, follow @Mojang and @Minecraft on Twitter, and like Minecraft on Facebook.
About Mojang
Mojang AB is a Microsoft-owned games studio based in Stockholm, Sweden. We're responsible for the relatively popular video game Minecraft. We also created the card-collecting tactical battler Scrolls, and have dabbled in publishing with Oxeye Game Studio's awesome side-scrolling robo-blaster Cobalt. We're developing more games, too, but we're not ready to talk about those quite yet.
About Telltale, Inc.
Telltale is a leading independent developer and publisher of games for every major interactive platform, including PC, home consoles, and mobile devices. It also pioneered the episodic delivery of digital gaming content.
Founded in 2004 by games industry veterans with decades of experience, Telltale quickly became an industry leader, with numerous honors and awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, BAFTA, IMGA, and more. In 2012, Telltale was named Studio of the Year after establishing a model for successful episodic game creation and digital publishing.
Telltale's reputation for quality has been established across more than three dozen different product releases over the years, earning acclaim from publications like IGN, The New York Times, and Variety, as well as over 100 “Game of the Year” awards. Telltale is a fully licensed third party publisher on consoles from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, and also publishes games on the PC, Mac, and Apple iOS platforms.
Mojang, the creators and original publisher of Minecraft, today released Cobalt WASD, a new game created by a team that includes one of the a lead developer of Minecraft.
Developer Oxeye Studios describe Cobalt WASD as a multiplayer follow-up to their robo-RPG Cobalt. The game introduces competitive team-play in the style of a side-scrolling Counter-Strike and controls tuned for mouse-aim and keyboard.
In the game, two teams of bots fight across multiple rounds to try and plant and detonate bombs in their opponents' base. Each round earns money the teams can spend on equipment and weaponry, much like in popular first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. But in the case of Cobalt WASD, the equipment and weapons are a bit more unrealistic, like a stealth suit, reflector shield, radioactive crossbows and a time-slowing bomb.
The game is available starting on November 30th on Steam for Windows machines and will support player-createod maps and modes through Steam Workshop. The developers say they created the game specifically for PC, which means it has mouse-aim, dedicated servers, lots of camera settings, a native resolution of 1920×1080 and can even run at 1000 frames per second. The game will sell for about $8.30 (it will be €6.99). But it will be free to folks who were alpha testers.
You can also pick up the original Cobalt for the reduced price of about $18, once WASD launches, or get both in a bundle for about $23.
Oxeye game Studios is an indie game studio made up of former Minecraft lead developer Jens Bergensten, Daniel Brynolf and Pontus Hammarberg.
Dragon Quest Builders, Square Enix's Minecraft-style construction RPG, is coming to Switch next year on February 9th.
The game originally launched on PS4, PS3, and Vita last year, and was very well received. Despite its obvious similarities to Minecraft, both in its blocky aesthetic and in its core crafting and construction loops, it's an altogether more structured. focussed experience.
Dragon Quest Builders goes beyond mere open-ended survival, featuring a proper story-driven adventure. Here, you're charged with restoring the world of Alefgard, completing tasks to rebuild towns and attract new citizens. These in turn will help fend off enemies, and offer quests that send you exploring ever-further afield. It was a strong enough twist on the classic Minecraft formula to earn a Recommended badge in Eurogamer's review.
Dragon Quest Builders on Switch will apparently feature an exclusive “Great Sabrecub” which can “boost your speed and grant you special material by defeating enemies.”
