Reviews - Talon

One of the first mods I ever played for UT, and to this day one of the best. MaxSMoke and his team did a great job on this, and I only wish they'd have finished carrying the project forward into future versions of UT.

I've enjoyed what I've played of Minecraft, and would recommend it to anyone interested in open-world creative gameplay. The sense of freedom is what makes this game truly stand out. Imagine a world made of Legos where you can do whatever you please. Now, you've got a basic idea of what Minecraft is all about.

That said, though, there are a few issues that keep me from giving this a 10. The first of these is Mojang's insistence on sticking with Java instead of moving to a more capable engine. This game pushes Java further than I've ever seen it pushed, and you can tell in the way the game runs. A world made of cubes should not require the system resources this game does. Recent updates have helped with this, but compared with other recent block-based games like Ace of Spades, it still runs poorly.

The second issue is a lack of a proper mod interface. Having to completely rewrite the .jar file every time I want to modify the game is a pain, and can lead to corrupted game executables. This has supposedly been in development for some time now, but it's always pushed to the next update. I'd love to see what the modding community can do if given the proper tools.

Even with these issues, this is a game I keep coming back to over and over, and will likely continue to in the coming years.