Minecraft: Story Mode - The Complete Adventure (Nintendo Switch) Review

Telltale Games used to be seen as the saviour of the point-and-click genre, creating some fantastic releases featuring popular licenses such as Wallace & Gromit, Strong Bad, and even Monkey Island. Then, ever since introducing quick-time events and more action elements into the normally slow-paced adventure scene - starting primarily in The Walking Dead line of releases - the quality has been somewhat up and down, since true action fans do not like the slower story elements as much, and old school point-and-click fans are rather appalled at the major deviation to the age-old formula they love so much. Is Minecraft: Story Mode - The Complete Adventure, which brings together the first five episodes from the first season's release, as well as the three extra Adventure Pass tales that came out post-finale, any different than the recent Telltale escapades?

The short answer is: no. Therefore, if you cannot stand rapid button presses to fill energy gauges or having to move the analogue stick (or swipe the correct way quickly on the touch screen) to 'survive' certain situations, then already Minecraft: Story Mode is at a major disadvantage, unlikely to win over any new suitors. However, The Complete Adventure has, as just mentioned, the pleasing inclusion of actual touch screen controls for those wanting to play in a bit more of a traditional PC-with-mouse manner in handheld mode, bringing in some actual pointing and clicking (or more like 'sliding' and 'tapping'). This makes for a much more enjoyable journey, and tied in with the comical writing throughout, the concise nature of each episode, and growing likeability of the cast of rag-tag adventurers, this ends up being surprisingly gripping.

Players get to guide a character called Jesse on numerous missions related to a legendary group of heroes called The Order of the Stone, with a group of unusual friends in tow, some dropping in and out of the story depending on the episode played, but always keeping one or two familiar faces around for continuity purposes. Sadly, everything gets a bit off-point not far in since the original story thread of terror being unleashed at the annual EnderCon ends seemingly far too early, before the actual final episode of Season One, in fact. Then the writers desperately try brush over the jump in style, aiming to make a smooth transition into regular one-off episodes as quickly as possible, hoping nobody noticed anything. This is likely why the Adventure Pass originally existed outside of the Season Pass in its original episodic release format. Those three extra individual stories, all with a tenuous connection to the original core theme of 'friends that like to build,' make the move from continuous story-theme to standalone adventures slightly less jarring, albeit things do still feel a bit confusing and disjointed at times.

Think of a TV series that has a running theme that then abruptly ends and each episode after that has a self-contained story. It just would not make any sense, right? It shows that perhaps development of this first season was somewhat poorly planned or the initial topic written was deemed not strong enough to stretch out beyond a handful of episodes. Thankfully, though, The Complete Adventure has enough overall pizzazz, with its likeable core characters, great voice acting from its star-studded line-up, and plenty of amusement found in its script to ensure these quirks found in its makeup can be overlooked.

Sadly, though, despite undoubtedly being entertaining, and indeed holding attention long enough to finish all eight episodes, it does lose its actual 'game' status far too often. Story Mode has a bad habit of becoming a case of sitting back and watching events unfold. There are some against-the-clock conversational choices to choose and keep the discussions moving along, heading down different avenues dependent on selection made. However, these do not take any real effort to work through. As for puzzles, they are barely existent, and those that are included are just a case of pressing switches in a certain order, re-arranging objects, or using the 'crafting' element, which relies on those in charge checking a recipe book and placing items on a crafting table in the exact same pattern to create something that will be automatically used when appropriate (no inventory, no thought needed for what item to use where, no actual brainpower needed whatsoever…). It really does lack the substance expected from a great point-and-click style affair.

Then there is the now all-too-familiar element of being tricked into believing any decisions made throughout really have a big impact on future episodes (spoiler: they do not). Choose to save one person over another? Well, flicking through the selectable chapters on the main menu shows both characters happily on the title screen of future episodes, so clearly not a big deal. Annoy someone and watch them leave? Again, look at the other episodes title screens and there they are, so again no issue. Name choices may be remembered, or a scowl given rather than a "thanks, pal" at certain junctures, but nothing worth being concerned about, or worth firing up a second play-through for.

One final thing that should be noted: there was a game-breaking bug found during the review process, with the save file corrupting after the end of the fourth episode, not allowing for new episodes to be started, and currently Telltale's support team has not confirmed it will look into the matter further, despite the issue being raised a few times now. Cubed3 was able to work around the problem by re-downloading the game and then transferring the save file to a new slot, which luckily worked a treat, but it is not an ideal situation, so hopefully readers will not come across such a problem It may have been an isolated case, but the warning is necessary, just in case others come across it.