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Been putting a little time in on Minecraft over the past week because the grandkid is really into the idea of playing, but he sucks so bad it's impossible for either of us to have any fun. That said I think minecraft is a great game and he'll have a lot of fun once he gets a hang of it.

He really only has 2 problems to overcome before I think he can start to enjoy the game. First he needs to figure out how to use both sides of a controller at the same time. This is actually something I noticed while playing mario and other nintendo games with him. An example would be jumping up onto a platform where you need to jump while moving forward. I think this is just something that will come with practice.

His other problem in Minecraft is keeping his sight lined up with the horizon. I'll look at his screen and he's staring at the floor or the ceiling. On top of this the ps3 pov switch from first to third person is done by clicking the left stick which he does by accident quite a bit, and I'm not sure he really understands the difference between first and third person view.

I spent the week grinding to try and collect enough resources to make him a maze out of hay in survival mode, but I had no where near enough material by the time he came over so last night I dropped into creative and built him a big maze out of concrete. I used blue concrete for the floor and orange for the walls.

My hope with the maze is to give him an actual target since minecraft's only real goal is don't die, and kind of limit his movement to an area I control. I put a chest with a diamond sword and armor in a cave and routed a maze out to the cave. I think it worked great. It only took about 30-45 minutes to come up with a pretty cool maze, and with a little verbal assistance he managed to find his way through to the chest in about half that. He still had problems but I think having fewer colors and textures on the screen helped him sense which way is up easier, and he was able to navigate without getting stuck in corners. I have more room to expand and add more chests into the same maze, and the map generated a mansion right next to spawn which he wants to explore. Once he has the basics down I can start adding obstacles. I can add traps and even make the whole thing a pvp game to get him used to in game combat. Once he has all that then we can start a new survival game and punch some trees.

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