There seems to be a big trend at the moment for games that give you the tools and the minimal amount of training before pushing you firmly out the door into a big wide world and leaving you to it. People clearly enjoy these types of games, otherwise the phenomenon that is known as Minecraft wouldn’t be so successful. The reason they’re so popular is that they combine the blissful elements of adventure and exploration with imagination and inventiveness. You can voyage to the ends of the world to find new lands and opportunities, or you can stay at home and create anything your mind can generate from the weird and random ideas floating around in there.

Terraria may be yet another one of those games, but it’s not just a cheap knockoff like so many people believe it to be. Terraria is a game with matter and enough game content to satisfy you hours upon hours. Terraria was originally released for the PC back in 2011, but it has finally made its way to consoles after approximately 2 million copies sold with countless fans and acclamation. Its colorful 2-Dimensional world looks like a collaboration between a Metroid game and with Minecraft. Before you even begin you must create a character who will occupy the beautiful world, then you need to name your world while choosing a size that best fits your play style. Finally you will need to decide whether you are going to be playing online or not. If you do decide to play online, it means anyone can join your game unless you select ‘invite only’. You cannot pause the game in online mode. This means you may end up seeing countless tombstones meaning all the times you died when you went to do something other than playing.

Before you do jump straight into the game, it would be to your benefit to try out the tutorial. You will be lost unless you have played the game before. You should be gathering some resources and building a home before sundown. Your character chops down trees for wood, digs deep into the ground to gain access to those precious ores, and also maybe chomp on a mushroom while you’re at it. There’s so much to do to begin with that it’s easy to get lost in the scope of it all, but once you’ve got your first sturdy shelter out-of-the-way you’ll be able to concentrate on doing what you want.

Building what you want is simple enough, although the controls can get some taking used to. Take, for instance, you want to build the walls for a house made of wood. You can select the wood in your quick bar easy enough, but then you have to place it in your world. There are two methods for doing this. The auto cursor will clasp on to the nearest block in the direction you push the right stick, while the manual cursor otherwise known as ‘mouse mode’ acts like a mouse cursor. The former is easier for mining as you don’t have to keep shifting the cursor around to cut out a tunnel, while the latter makes it easier to build things as you can put blocks where ever you like (providing they connect to something). The controls are obviously going to be easier to work with on the PC, but developer Re-Logic has done well adapting mouse controls for the console version.

Combat controls are not bad but they are frustrating at first until you learn how to deal with it. Once you create more powerful weapons it can get less aggravating, but that’s more because your weapons do more damage hence making the fights shorter. Hitting Y brings up the menu system that consists of crafting, the inventory, equipment and housing. Crafting is obviously where you will be crafting all of your gear and building materials. The inventory is where you will be putting all the items you be carry around. Things put on the top row will appear on the quickbar. The equipment page is where you can change armor and clothing. Housing is where you can assign homes for the various NPC’s in your world.

It definitely is uncommon these days to see games that support split-screen, even 4 players at that. Terraria does indeed let you do 4 player co-op but also lets you have up to 8 players in a world if you prefer to jump online. This obviously speeds up all the work you have to do in digging up and creating your world. This game is indeed massive. If you hit select, it brings up map and you will be amazed at the scope of things. Just when you think you have seen everything there is to see in the world, you find something new. Just when you start to get comfortable, a new element shows up to contend with. Even though it happens continually, it is somehow surprising every time.

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