Minecraft – Xbox 361

Even if it is playing with blocks in 2d rendered environment, it the best, safest, fun game you can get for your children, and your husband or even grampa. It is for all ages.My children have been playing mine craft on the PC, the digital Xbox version, and even the mobile or pocket version for a year. This version that they can see, relate to, and not have to rely on virtual gaming is the best. For some reason, having this on a disc makes all the difference. It is something my autistic son can now relate to. He can just pick up the disc and take it with him to family or friends houses to share. Whereas before they were lugging their whole gaming system.Anyway mine craft has greatly improved my sons social interaction, his speech, and his self esteem. He realizes that he is the creator of his own world, not only in mine craft but in the real world now. It has opened up so much opportunities for him. It has also taught all of my children the benefits of sharing, and the loving peaceful environments that do exist if only we could all pull together and build them.You create your world. And there is no game lag with this version. Xbox live is not required. Yeah! You can build almost anything you want with the blocks. Especially if you play in creative mode. Then everything is provided for you. This mode gives you an easy play. Survival mode becomes a small challenge as you have to go out and work for or earn your items and blocks. You must dig for and mine your items. Example. You must first locate 2 sticks, and either 3 diamonds, iron, or cobblestone to make a pick axe that helps you mine blocks. In order to get the iron, you need a stone pickaxe which you make with sticks and cobblestone. The better the pickaxe the better at breaking and mining certain blocks that use to build other items. Or "crafting" in other words. Sort of like recipes. For food you must go catch a pig for pork chops, a cow for steak, find milk, sugar, egg, and wheat and make a cake etc. For the milk you need the cow and craft some iron buckets. The egg comes from the chicken you find. The chicken will follow you if you have seeds in your hand. Other options are for pets. You can get a dog with a bone and keep him. The dog must be nurtured and fed just like in the real world. If you get 2 dogs you learn you can actually get puppies. As for your health and house, you require sleep and food. If you go too far from your house and something happens n you die your stuff you collected may dissappear if you can't find it in time. So if you have a bed and slept in it, then when you respawn you will be beside your bed. Your stuff will be where you died. So the reason you might lose it. But at least in this version you can fly, and have greater chance of getting to your items before they disappear.There is so much more you can do. I will be happy to answer any questions if you just leave a comment. This game is truly awesome.

I was hesitant to buy the game for my son thinking that he would get bored with it and it would end up in a growing pile of games in our entertainment system.He played the Pocket Edition on my phone for a while, but so many games bore him after he beats the game....this one has turned out to be different.The game seems kind of pointless at first, but after evaluating my love/hate relationship with Minecraft, I can say, this is probably one of the best games my son has picked out.I see that the game does offer some valuable lessons in geology and it has helped his creativity grow by trying to think of new things to build and how to get the materials he would need in order to build it.I also like that I was able to use Minecraft in our home school model by having him create a world specifically for homework. At the end of every unit I'll write down a project he needs to create on Minecraft with certain requirements to include and then I let him go to town on his project.So far this year, examples of his creations include the Nina, Santa Maria and Pinta ships when we learned about Christopher Columbus. He has a little farm to recreate Jamestowne as we learned about settlers in America, a duck (chicken) coop from when we learned about the life cycle and hatched baby ducks in our house, and (maybe a little graphic) but a recreation of a witch victim being hung when we learned about the Salem witch trials. Yesterday we finished learning about Inuit Native Americans and he created an igloo in his home school world on Minecraft.I think that being able to incorporate his favorite game with his education helps give him a break from the mundane and it's also a nice little reminder of everything he's done in school so far. When his friends come over he'll show them his world and explain to them its significance and that makes me feel good that months later he is still able to summarize key ideals that he's learned about each topic and I know that they are sticking with him.