05-20-2011, 04:57 AM
I don't really have a problem with games that play similarly. The market is saturated with FPS games that all look pretty much the same to me but no one complains that bad company is a ripoff of call of duty or whatever the heck these games are called.
Innovative games with new gameplay are great and I strongly encourage that, but I think having games with similar gameplay is a good thing too- generally this will encourage competition between the developers which will lead to each developer striving to make their game the better of the two, and can lead to new innovations in those types of games. Hopefully having a few games like Minecraft and Terraria around will push developers to make these types of games to be as good as they can possibly be.
Without a doubt Terraria owes a lot to Minecraft, but I don't think that on its own makes it a bad game. What makes it bad (for me at least) is the half-assed presentation. Terrible (and in some cases stolen) graphics and awful sound- if you're going to sell this game for $10 the least you can do is hire some talented artists to work on it. Just because you already have a community for the thing pretty much guaranteed doesn't mean you should throw away efforts for making the game presentable.
anyway i traded some games for it over steam (wasn't going to pay for this, and that person already had this extra copy of this so whatever) since I did think the gameplay looked interesting and different enough from Minecraft that it'd be worth trying out.
Haven't done much in it so far but here's what I can say: People who are interested in the building aspect (since Minecraft was pretty big on this) are pretty much shit out of luck. The graphics are ugly as sin to begin with, so I doubt you'd expect much anyway. But the lack of the third dimension here really makes pretty much anything you build not really impressive. It's all pretty boring as far as building things goes. Luckily for me building things was never really what I was interested in when it came to Minecraft, but yeah, nowhere near like anything you could get in Minecraft if you're interested in building and designing things.
The adventuring aspect is much more developed than Minecraft though. That's what I liked about Minecraft, so it's good for people like me. There's a lot more stuff to it than Minecraft already, and a lot of things work differently or differently enough where it feels like a different enough game that I wouldn't say its a blatant ripoff or a "minecraft clone in 2d." There are a few things that resemble Minecraft a little bit too much though, such as zombies at night and beds changing your spawn point. Unlike minecraft, tools don't break and you don't drop all your items when you die (just money, I guess?). Crafting works completely differently, instead of Minecraft's neat crafting system you just need to stand near the piece of furniture needed to craft something (such as a furnace or crafting table) and have the items required to craft something to do it. It's easier than Minecraft in those regards, but because there's only two dimensions rather than three its harder to escape from foes and you start with much lower health (though apparently you can get more max health), there's a lot more enemy types (such as flying enemies), and the terrain is a lot harder to navigate. There's more treasure types and even NPCs, which makes things a bit more interesting. There's "boss battles" too, where you can fight giant monsters under the right circumstances. It's neat but kinda slow, probably built with multi-player in mind. I have not touched the multiplayer though, so idk.
Graphics and sounds are awful though, as expected. Can't believe they're selling the game with such horrendous graphics and sounds, especially for $10. I mean it's bad enough that the graphics are pretty obvious Final Fantasy sprite edits (the backgrounds resemble Super Mario All-Stars as well lol), but they don't even look good. I mean geez, if you're going to steal at least do something appealing with it...
If you like the adventure aspect of Minecraft, I think this might be worth looking into. If you like the building aspect, or you like good visuals and sound, stay the fuck away. Regardless though, don't spend $10 on this. Total fucking ripoff. Even if $10 is like nothing to you, spend it on something better, I'm sure you can find plenty of things for $10 that are way more worth it than this...
Innovative games with new gameplay are great and I strongly encourage that, but I think having games with similar gameplay is a good thing too- generally this will encourage competition between the developers which will lead to each developer striving to make their game the better of the two, and can lead to new innovations in those types of games. Hopefully having a few games like Minecraft and Terraria around will push developers to make these types of games to be as good as they can possibly be.
Without a doubt Terraria owes a lot to Minecraft, but I don't think that on its own makes it a bad game. What makes it bad (for me at least) is the half-assed presentation. Terrible (and in some cases stolen) graphics and awful sound- if you're going to sell this game for $10 the least you can do is hire some talented artists to work on it. Just because you already have a community for the thing pretty much guaranteed doesn't mean you should throw away efforts for making the game presentable.
anyway i traded some games for it over steam (wasn't going to pay for this, and that person already had this extra copy of this so whatever) since I did think the gameplay looked interesting and different enough from Minecraft that it'd be worth trying out.
Haven't done much in it so far but here's what I can say: People who are interested in the building aspect (since Minecraft was pretty big on this) are pretty much shit out of luck. The graphics are ugly as sin to begin with, so I doubt you'd expect much anyway. But the lack of the third dimension here really makes pretty much anything you build not really impressive. It's all pretty boring as far as building things goes. Luckily for me building things was never really what I was interested in when it came to Minecraft, but yeah, nowhere near like anything you could get in Minecraft if you're interested in building and designing things.
The adventuring aspect is much more developed than Minecraft though. That's what I liked about Minecraft, so it's good for people like me. There's a lot more stuff to it than Minecraft already, and a lot of things work differently or differently enough where it feels like a different enough game that I wouldn't say its a blatant ripoff or a "minecraft clone in 2d." There are a few things that resemble Minecraft a little bit too much though, such as zombies at night and beds changing your spawn point. Unlike minecraft, tools don't break and you don't drop all your items when you die (just money, I guess?). Crafting works completely differently, instead of Minecraft's neat crafting system you just need to stand near the piece of furniture needed to craft something (such as a furnace or crafting table) and have the items required to craft something to do it. It's easier than Minecraft in those regards, but because there's only two dimensions rather than three its harder to escape from foes and you start with much lower health (though apparently you can get more max health), there's a lot more enemy types (such as flying enemies), and the terrain is a lot harder to navigate. There's more treasure types and even NPCs, which makes things a bit more interesting. There's "boss battles" too, where you can fight giant monsters under the right circumstances. It's neat but kinda slow, probably built with multi-player in mind. I have not touched the multiplayer though, so idk.
Graphics and sounds are awful though, as expected. Can't believe they're selling the game with such horrendous graphics and sounds, especially for $10. I mean it's bad enough that the graphics are pretty obvious Final Fantasy sprite edits (the backgrounds resemble Super Mario All-Stars as well lol), but they don't even look good. I mean geez, if you're going to steal at least do something appealing with it...
If you like the adventure aspect of Minecraft, I think this might be worth looking into. If you like the building aspect, or you like good visuals and sound, stay the fuck away. Regardless though, don't spend $10 on this. Total fucking ripoff. Even if $10 is like nothing to you, spend it on something better, I'm sure you can find plenty of things for $10 that are way more worth it than this...