Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition

Up until now, the PlayStation Vita version of Minecraft has been the best way to get your portable building on. That reign has ended now. For forty Australian bucks you can download the superior portable solution of what must surely be gaming’s greatest non-game toybox (and the makeshift babysitter of an entire generation of OCD children).

For those of you who have been living under a rock on Mars with your fingers in your ears, Minecraft is basically an open-world Legofest. With the infinite in-game resources of its Creative Mode, and a lot of wasted hours of your life, one can construct ridiculously grand and complex edifices, also dicks. In the survival mode, you can pit your blocky avatar against aggressive wildlife as you rape a randomly-generated world of its natural resources to build garish safe-spaces like castles or forts. Forts shaped like dicks. None of that core gameplay has changed in the Nintendo Switch version.

Technical compromises have been made, however. The Switch can only support “medium-sized” worlds of 3,072 x 3,072 blocks. That’s a big drop in sandbox play-space compared to the PS4 and XB1 “classic” sizes of 5,120 x 5,120, but an increase over Nintendo’s last version, the Wii U’s 864 x 864. Speaking of that one, you also get the exclusive Super Mario theme skin pack that it came with. So that’s nice.

Aside from that bit of lovely Mushroom Kingdom flair to the graphics, there’s nothing especially interesting to note about the visuals. The draw distant is decent, and in TV or undocked mode you get an acceptable 720p, 60 frames per second that shows no hiccups, even in multiplayer.

The latter is what puts this miles ahead of the Vita in our opinion. Online multiplayer for 8 people is possible, as is 4 local people on one TV, but it’s the “two-person split-screen in undocked mode” capability that truly rocks.

If your buddy brings along an additional joy con, you can both get your boisterous build and/or battle on wherever you please – long train trips in quiet carriages, libraries, funerals, your disciplinary hearing at work – anywhere!

So rejoice Minecrafters-on-the-go. No longer shall you be constricted by the smaller 5-inch screen and dated hardware innards of Sony’s failed handheld. Likewise, you don’t need to subject yourself to the hideous touch-screen controls of Minecraft on your Android/iOS device – with the Switch there’s two-thumbsticks and no waiting.

Let’s be honest, Nintendo Switch is at its best as a portable device. If you need to kill some time in transit, you’d be nuts not to have this, and Mario Kart 8, sitting there on your HDD, just waiting to swallow boredom and spit out good times.

Score: 9/10

Posted in Blog, Games