I have a certain group of friends over about every week on Fridays. About 2018-ish, we started a little thing we've had going on for years: one person out of the three plays a game, and another person of the three will narrate it.

For reference and privacy's sake, I will be referring to the members of this friend group by their internet usernames.

The group consists of three members:
Me, obviously,
cool kid k,
and Grassalina.

(The whole narrating thing originally started because of one of my Grassalina's at-the-time lack of reading skills compared to the rest of the group, but she has since caught up with us and now we read the dialogue for fun. Sometimes I even do it when playing games with my mother!)

Minecraft: Story Mode was a game that I had played a couple times when I was younger. Back when that group of friends had just started this whole ordeal, that was one of the first games we played.

About October, we decided that now that we're older and have a more actualized idea of what's going on, we'd play through the game again. cool kid k was actually playing the game, while Grassalina and I watched and made decisions.

Telltale's writing in Minecraft: Story Mode had us all scratching our heads at certain times. While funny, a considerable amount of the dialogue options wound up having a way different meaning then what was originally intended; being that Minecraft: Story Mode is primarily a story-based game, this often leads you to make the choices that you don't want to. Due to this, we have ended up restarting an episode a lot.

The combat engine in Season One is also abysmal. The Telltale engine seems more designed for the cutscenes then the combat, which ends up leading to a combat experience that feels... not great. Thankfully, Season Two improved upon this.

Despite the negatives mentioned, I think that Minecraft: Story Mode, had Telltale survived longer, could have been fleshed out into a better gameplay experience. There's definitely a lot of good ideas here, but not enough to really cultivate anything.

I've been koola, and see you in 2023.

(I didn't really want to end the year on a negative note...)

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